Should Death Inspire Compassion?

Though every man knows that he will die someday, his belief systems are forged on continued existence and place little or no value at all on the day of death. Isn’t it so? He feeds his vanity with the idea that he will forever be beautiful in youth. As it gets washed away, he believes himself to be the person of yesterday forever and continues to hold on to his pride of forgone days. His thoughts cannot cross his beliefs. And thus ignores the burden of human condition. It saves him from pain, yet the lack of experiencing pain disables you from ever understanding it in ourselves or those around us. If thoughts are immobile sheep, subconscious beliefs encircle them in a fence and hold them captive. Learning to break free robs you of a safe haven of joy, but it takes you to new pastures of human compassion.

As Bukowski would say:
"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing" 

Savanna

My room is on the sixth floor of a dormitory. It’s a sunny space of four hundred square foot, on the other side of our building facing the Hawaiian wind. The wind runs over the seas, flows over our ever-green mountains, ruffling the valleys and enters our dorm rooms through windows and tiny cracks. It enters our dusty, red stone corridors with a loud whistling noise and flows around our legs. When Savanna enters the room in her pink top and torn denim shorts, she brings the breeze with her into my dreams. She has dark sparkling eyes like the night sky. I know that it’s a clichéd metaphor, but some days when she is feeling talkative, and she goes on excitedly describing her country, she gets that far off look in her eyes. Slowly she stops talking and switches on her notebook. After a few minutes, they go blank and start staring at the screen with no emotion. But, once you see the feeling in those eyes, you cannot compare them to anything but a vast universe hidden behind the darkness of the night, sparkles of emotion lighting them up and fading suddenly. There is something inside her that keeps struggling to come out. Once in a while, she tries to put words to those feelings. Like when she told me, “Our house has a red-tiled roof and we have white bougainvillea running all over it.” I understand how small those words seem when written here. But it’s the long silence that followed after the sentence, which told me the most. That was when I knew that she was just as lost as me. I never voice myself. I smile, all the time. The feeling that someone’s watching me never subsides. So, there’s no way that she knows. But, I feel her. From the day I met her, I always have. 

Fall Notes

A mute Blue bird
struggles in my heart
I let go
It has nowhere to be
I hold on
It has nothing to say

Its silence
drips into autumn winds
I sigh
They frost and flee
I breathe
They sting and return

From Giovanni's Room

‘Nobody can stay in the garden of Eden’, Jacques said. And then: ‘I wonder why.’

...

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don’t know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.

James Baldwin

On one side, it is delightful to see a writer put your thoughts into words, exactly. On the other, it feels bad too. Does it not? I mean, it hurts to see your pain banalized. The voice of all those tears, quietly living in a library corner, in crisp old golden pages of an obscure book no one cared to hold.

The sound of those pages, as they are flipped through, calm the murmurs of restless dreams, with a song like the waves and scent like their mist, clouding senses, enveloping my environment, just singing, lulling and luring... ‘To where?’, I wonder. ‘To home’, they answer. Need I tell you that I follow? Always. 

India after a month and a half in Hawaii

Chronologically speaking,

Left India, came to USA, raging bouts of angsty home sickness, depression, work, economics, lovely strong cynical economics, love, teaching, gratitude, pain, longing, memories, distance, closing choking compelling distance like being stuck in a room with no corners just a globe of darkness that haunts your lonely dreams, you hear the voices far away, just around the edges, you want to go somewhere to that voice, the faces, the familiar scents of faces you understand, and they are just a memory.. as near as a thought, as far as only a memory can reach. I wake up and realize, that I'm here.. just here... still here, the trap remains, the hope of a voice distorts. Why am I walking here at 9 in the morning? I just need to wake up, and I'll be in a street somewhere there... I just fainted on the road in the afternoon in Nizampet Road and all of this, is just a dream, a dream, a dream that does not know how to hurt.. just a cruel joke some cruel thing is playing inside my head.. because it doesn't know how else to touch me... it just terrifies me, with what? Nothing. It has nothing but my sands of time on it's silky cold fingers.. and it plays.. plays with me.. I play along.. because I'm a slave. I swoon to be enslaved, to the addiction of love, the idea of purpose and other vague nonsense..

Hear songs, lots, but hear this song.. realization dawns (inside my dream of course..) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlDwgYWnJWY

The Proud Indian

If anything, I'm a proud Indian. I'm also an ashamed Indian. But I'm more a proud Indian than an ashamed one.

It took me to come this far to know the value of home. All this while, I considered ideas of patriotism, religion, caste and home as lines that divide people. But now I realize that we’re all divided by our uniqueness, we are all individuals and these places are the blocks that build our identities, they are the mirrors we look into to search for our reflections, dreams and roots. And we are united as much by our differences as by our similarities. 

And just the way we work every day to build ourselves, we ought to work to build our country too. For we are our countries, in little queer colours that we recognize only when we are out of the picture. My country is my pride, my contribution in return to all the beauty and blooms it filled my life within it-a shame.  Even if it’s just to silence my ringing conscience,  I need to make the best of myself and go back to it, better, stronger and more effective. 

No. I'll just wake up. I've been pricked by the bewitched needle.. Please, wake me up, someone, anyone... I want to feel my mamma's cool palm on my forehead, feather light, kind, soft, absent minded-ly loving, so absent minded-ly programmed into loving me, that all the longing songs that the trees sing to the sun is nothing but a little breeze in a storm before the depth of her touch. Her love is universal and unique at the same time. Just like her kindness. A lot of things and creatures were kind to me, but nothing has been kinder than her love, that kept up with me even as I couldn't keep up with my self. 

She is my mother, she is in India and she is India. May not be all of it, but a consequence of all of it. For such beautiful people to happen more regularly than once in a millenium, I need to go back and learn to arrange things that way. Because she is my definition of love. And India is what I love. I owe them both, in a queer way. Or I surrender to my conscience the distraction of owing to them either way..  I cannot differentiate. But all that I love, I love because I lost. I'm coming back to speak to them all. In a few years, or a few minutes, or decades away, like sunny timeless kisses by the sea shore the days shall float by.. whether the way it's done with a person that I love or one that I don't is the question... though, no, not really, a lot more lonely than that, but a lot more beautiful than that because the highlights of waking dreams are touched by lustrous truth along it's daisy white edges. 

Which voice do I listen to? 

The whole risk of going insane lies not in the loss of sanity, but in the loss of insanity somewhere along the way. It's scary to think of holding the memory of a passion, where it took you and what it made of you and not feel it. Who will you be then?

FRACTAL ART

And then there came forth a world where there were no boundaries that limited science from mathematics or arts from the sciences… all of them simply blended into one language and expressed themselves in a splash of colour, spiralled, and danced to celebrate the beauty of human thought. How could anyone ever not fall in love with the show?

By the way, this post is just written to share a few beautiful pictures I came across on the internet.. they are not mine, neither do I know who created them to share it with you. Apologies.

What if there was a war? A third one now?

What would I do?

Weird, isn’t it? How oil and dollar conversion rates in some far off country can change your dream, your love and all that you’ve wanted to do for so long. I hope there’s no war…

There’s so much chaos as it is. Corrupt politics, illogical customs, money, management, pressure, junk food, cement, so much of it.. that the very air makes me miserable. Sunsets, like censored adult scenes, golden light visible at the edges of those clouds, while the sun is swooped by a gray peeling building.

If I have to stay at home for another year and the year after without hope, I swear I’ll just pack a bag  and run away somewhere alone. I asked a lot from life, I had asked for both comfort and recklessness, freedom and dominance but don’t we all have to experience every edge of those emotions to understand what we truly need?

Approximately about half a dozen years ago, my brother told me that the only thing constant in life is change. And I had waited for it with a welcome heart, it never came. All those writers tell me that change is a matter of perspective, but to gain such a perspective, one still needs to explore and understand it. I agree that home is a warm place to be… but how can it ever be enough? Don’t we need to feel the speed, the excitement, and the pulse scrambling as you pack your bags knowing tomorrow you shall wake up in a world entirely different. A world that you have waited to touch, with both your mind and body, for half of your life-time. And it’s so busy in itself, it fails to notice your needs as always. You go running to it with feverish excitement, having failed to eat or sleep in the past few days and you end up being brushed off aside. There is no journey in store, the man takes you nowhere.  And  you could not let yourself anywhere away.. in the end you feel sorry for yourself and go off sulking in a corner. He just couldn’t come along, because he was too busy fighting in his dreams, lazy and unwilling to even notice your reality while you just waited for him as the hours flew by in a box hating him for all that he does, the number of times he stood you up, and yet you can’t let go, there is no one else to go to, and no place else to exist without him. You have fallen for him, irrationally, unreasonably and you continue to love the beauty of his voice when he opens his laughter to you loud. Even the memory of the echo of it in your heart can fuel your love for a life time.

You’d think he’d come after you, pleading, apologising for the stupidity and the violence, but he won’t, he’ll go on and you see him, planning to destroy himself, you know that no protests would make a difference, none of it. You cannot come in between the greed of a man and the illusions he chooses to trust in, no matter how hard you try. People stopped counting to him, they are measured by the worth of their investment. And you’re tired, bone-tired… and you just want everything he gave you to go back, just a little to the days you played in the streets, in the warm comfort of certainty believing that all adventure began with your footstep into adolescence… while the rest remained a dazzling audience. Why wasn’t it so?

I’m frustrated, why must he fight with himself, over oil, pipes and power. If only every one within a tangible geographical region like India just stopped using their cars and bikes, for one day, just one… the dollar shall fall.  He’ll start making sense. If done over a week, his arrogance might just be reduced to a joke. But who stops? Who leads? Who understands the pain of all those millions of star fish dropped over at bank… dead or dying? What sense of judgement could they appeal to?

Maybe it isn’t just change that is consistent, but apathy too… whatever the reason where could me and my sea of books explore hidden? Where would the waves dance and the golden sunsets spread to the extent of our perception. To drink from that deep blue starry sky to your heart's fill, where tomorrow once again has the capacity to bring salt spray to your lips, wind tugs at your pages like a jealous young girl, whispers and clamours in your ear till resisting no more your mind warms to peace, the lips sigh and the eyes close, and then she takes you. Fast through the clouds, laughing out loud and yet, you fly just skimming the sea, the waves assuring you of what is true and the wind filling you up with what is not. If a man dies, where will his dreams go? Into oblivion, never noticing the worth of their colours, why would anyone wake such a man, why do people wake up? Why do they not, sit back by the sea, sip a simple lemonade, read or listen to things that make them feel good. When the man had not yet achieved the equilibrium of his destiny why can’t he just continue to find out? Why must we fight?

Short Stories of Munshi Premchand

No romanticism. These are stories of regular life in India. In spite of, or because of which, they strike deep.

They are true, they are stories I have heard of around me and never noticed their exquisiteness, lost in the conundrum of life.

I wish that I had stayed, I wish that I noticed. But then again, if people like me could notice and talk about it, then what would be the beauty of Premchand.

Do read them, they are short and simple. They are small books, easy to carry, easy to read, easy to forget and light on your head. Till someday you’re cooking in the kitchen and you see the steam rise and spiral, in slow twirls, and you think of that strong unloved woman who lost her husband and grieve for her in the middle of a day. Or as you’re preparing for an exam, your eyes seem heavy and the mind feels so drugged, you just go on repeating that line in your head, as each time it makes lesser sense than the last that you thought was the poorest, you faze out and think of books, or exams, of schools, of the two boys who went to school, of one little boy who had been punished and the other who was rewarded and you tell yourself that life is unfair. And then laugh at your folly at trying to find justice in the world and in the end, gain a headache and get back. Once again, you attempt to make sense of that god-knows-why it had been created sentence.

The people from his book, they settle down slowly, and intermittently come back. But nevertheless he softly touches something deep inside you. Mostly, the something deep happens to be a sense of justice, hope, or simply your attachment to the stories of this land. They are the earth of India, the furtive gossip and the plaintive songs.

His stories range from those of childhood to feudalism, women, relationships, work, ethics, religion, love, loss, pain, hope and strength.

I am very sad to say that I’ve lived for 22 years, not knowing the magic of his thought. At least you don't go off living like me...

 

Read...
 

Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You’ll find what you need to find. Just read.”
— Neil Gaiman.

I like the stress on the read part, being repeated so many times.. and the aimless reading that I do.. comes close.. that's what I do to block out thoughts.. of a strong book.. so I read another, and then I go on reading one maddening book after another and the next one, grave serious books.. So strong.. I can feel something tear inside me.. the breathing seems to hitch and stop, hitch and stop.. till I roll down on the floor crying.. because the book killed some hope that I probably could have gone by without hoping.. a book I could've passed by without picking when I know it had something as painful... and they leave a void inside my head.. as soon as I finish them.. like you're not sure if you're living real.. but then again, you're sure too at the same time.. because it's a routine you're used to accepting. You must open your eyes, however glazed they are from all the dreaming.. and go on. Happy to have at least had a life time where you could touch their minds. All those amazing dead people.. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Hugo, Goethe, Buck..

 
Then I read the comics Garfield, Tintin, Chacha Choudary, Archies, Asterix and Obelix.. hahha.. the Powerpuff girls and so on.... listen to Enid Blyton's stories at bed time of Enchanted Woods and sweet school girls.. and calm down.. get into a soft love story or an animated movie with those Sakura petals falling slowly, ripples in the water and little girls, their kind parents and so on.. I gain peace.. like the sound of rain drops against my window when I'm cosily tucked up to my chin in a soft rug in my warm bed..


 I have no clue as to why I cannot stay at that equilibrium point.. but there slowly starts an itch, for something, a little more deep, wise or dramatic. And I tell myself, just one book, and I start with something a little serious, but not overly so. I feel refreshed, move it a notch higher, and higher and till I get to a very serious book.. followed by another.. again and again till it starts pounding in my head dhud dhud..

 
Recently I've asked myself as to why I read such books, any books for that matter.. I tell others , knowledge, wisdom whatever.. but I know that's not true.. I read to replace the emptiness that one book creates with another.. better the book gets, worse the emptiness it leaves at the last page.. and I don't know as to why the emptiness had to be there in the first place.. it all goes in circles, and if the cycle stops.. I don't know what I'd do with myself.. probably then I'd swim more.. or I'd  paint more.. but I'm not sure if they're as mindless or purposeless or so private. A picture, the minute you know that other eyes are going to see it, changes.. the innermost chord that it touches in you, gets veiled. Some stuff, you love so much, you won't have the strength to lay out all of it to judgement. Probably the artist needs to be mad to risk so much, or be utterly sure in his heart of hearts that he'll go unseen or unperceived. Books don't ask you for that.. there is no compulsion.. no risk of judgement.. no one judges you on what you feel for a book.. it is too easy to conceal. And the same thing with swimming, you don't have to be the fastest or the best or limit your emotions to the swimming pool timings. Books are definitely better, but that's not why I read them.. I don't think that's why anybody falls in love with anything.

 

In the name of 'Order'

"Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is the virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies it's cries."
- Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz.

Recently, I spotted a Spider web at my brother's corner, where he keeps his computer. Immediately I made a run for the broom stick. My brother stopped me and asked what harm did the web ever do to me? I responded saying that it was not neat, clean blah blah blah. He reminded me that it was a creature's home. The little blotch that it created in our anyway untidy room didn't make that much of a difference to us, while it meant life to the spider. He was telling about how it kept the mosquitoes at bay and so on. He had a point. I was too hot-headed to agree. As I kept listening to this, I kept justifying myself saying things like how it was my parent's home, and that mamma would definetely support cleaning that little corner, how my brother had an innately untidy nature, I told myself that he was too lazy to care and justified his laziness under the pretext of flexibility, kindness, acceptibility and so on while he hampered my desire for order in the name of rigidity and passiveness. Well, he did call me those names and a lot more, and they hurt. He usually come to a conclusion as to what I think, and why I think so and lays them out like facts. The names happent to be by-products of those observations. That hurts. On one hand I'm too proud to give him an explanation saying it wasn't so and on the other, too angry to nod and let it pass. And then we had a fight along the above lines, I ended up crying. He ended up close to screaming. I ran out saying I had whatever right I had and went to the broom. I couldn't take it. It was too horrible a thing to hold because when I talked about the web, I forgot about the spider that built it. I was just trained to think of it as something untidy, and I did. It wasn't that I harmed the spider. The rest of the argument, the twisting of it towards personal facts and so on.. had been to win the case, indeliberately of course. But I did that just the same.
So irrespective of all the why's and what's, I think, why did I feel so compelled to clean it in the first place? Why is the 'desire for order' a right thing? Is it not a pretext a person uses to fill his otherwise blank time into pushing people to do things they are not interested in doing? Most often I see that the people who push, who dictate/ discipline people aren't even pursuing their aims through the suppressed but just do so to show their superiority (?).
My aunts very often reproach my 70 year old grandmother for not keeping her house clean. Her house, them being visitors. And she accepts it and tries explaining it to them that she has been trying but there is no time only. They use the word 'Orderliness' or 'cleanliness' to dominate the lady, and the lady doesn't even try to hurt them back or utter a truth for the fear of offending them. She loves them too dearly. Inspite of them liking their mother, they fail to give her the minimum age reservation, carried away by their ideas of how things should be.
Isn't it the same reason that the RSS gives us to justify beating couples on Valentine's days or the girls who go to pubs? Isn't it the same reason that can be given by the English teacher who hit me on my knuckles with the edge of a scale till the hands bled and clotted, in my third class? I was about 8 years old with small pale trembling fingers as she 'disciplined' me one sharp rap after the other.
All kinds of publicly accepted violence in one way or the other, is justified in the name of 'order'. While in some cases we realize it, in some cases we don't.. realize the 'violence' of the act. At max., we simply use the 'order' justification to override the guilt, if we have any.
That things were meant to be that way and you are just doing your part in putting them so. 'For greater good' as a young Dumbledore would say.
But it remains that 'order', 'discipline', 'greater good', numerous 'rights' and 'wrongs' donot simply exist by themselves. They are a result of human perception. The opinion of majority. By inclining with which we possibly feel a vicarious sense of shared power and pride of belonging to the winning group. However, it must be remembered that, non confirmation to set standards is a silly and absolutely unjustified reason to hold someone at a fault.
If one agrees to the fundamental reasoning that there is no fixed way to see a world, (owing to the changes in environment, the government, the peer group, parenting, books and by the sheer presence of a multitude of psyches), does it not imply that there exist no single sense of an idea called 'order', or 'right' that justifies oppression? Does that not mean we can pursue our ideas of freedom and let ourselves be anything that we choose to be, without holding ourselves at fault for violating others ideas of 'order' as long as it does not lead to another creature's oppression? Does it not make one person free from boxed images of another person's and his own? Isn't it happier to not judge and not be, and live free, instead of trying to chain everybody to the invisible opinions of the 'majority'. Because there exist no majority that agree upon everything. No sect, home, nation or couple, that express the same opinions of right and wrong. Even assuming that they exist, it doesn't mean that the person who likes an orange is wrong because 9 out of 10 prefer apples. Such a situation doesnot in anyway justify the superiority of apples over oranges. Eventually, by time, there may be too many apples in the market and the majority might drift towards the oranges with one left back. It doesnot imply that the one left back is at fault, or at a greater realm, but that attributes are simply so. And that there is no 'right' answer that can take the place of tolerance.
P.S.1 : If one still finds a necessity to judge, is it not happier to frame your own values, keep them at a point fixed enough to act upon them, yet flexible enough to be modified, and not push anyone, ever, to act upon your whims?
P.S.2 : Yes, the spider lives and the web thrives :) Happy ending, isn't it? :D!?




 

Comin Thro' The Rye                                         

O, Jenny's a' weet, poor body,
  Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
  Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
  Comin thro' the rye!

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need the warl' ken?

Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the grain;
Gin a body kiss a body,
  The thing's a body's ain.

- Robert Burns

Just sharing a poem that I like a lot. Especially because every time I read the poem again, the meaning seems to change over horizons. And every meaning felt dear and close. Social stigma/ erotica ? I wonder what played in his head as he wrote it. Was he smiling because he knew how confused I'd be, was it why he put in the ambiguity, or was the ambiguity a shroud to hide something clear? How are we to know?

A facebook habit and times otherwise (and me degressing- a part that ought to be ignored or unposted or whatever?)

There are hundreds.. ohk.. wait, thousands of pictures literally where I smile with all my teeth, eyes and all. Most of the times when I sense a camera nearby, I play the part, like it was just an act, put my heart in and believe that I’m happy. I start the smile with my lips, show my pretty teeth and narrow my eyes. I’ve observed that people who crinkle their eyes a little when they smile happen to look very convincing.  The photos come beautiful. I am happy that they come so. And I forget them. It’s like they aren’t a part of me. Like the way tourists see things. They go to a place, do a thing, and tick it off their list. Very unlike the traveller that I had I always wanted to become. To live, breathe in, and make the place a part of me. That I guess is what’s wrong with my photos these days. They do not live. Like beautiful jewelry that steal eyes off the face. And then it all loses the point.

But then again, some pictures come, where you jump and you remember the way the wind felt in your hair, feet off the shoes, salt on your lips, skin warm from the setting sun- red over the water, the launch, stretch, jump and a friend who makes you feel right. Bright, in a way that I don't even realize that I'm glowing and laughing and storing the image beyond it’s frame without meaning to. Those pictures make me happy, a little sentimental as I see them. I own them up so much that they’re too meaningful to be exposed without their unique circumstances. They make me so happy that I feel sad, a sweet kind of sadness, full of longing. 

Sometimes it's gurgling sparkling humour or anger, involvement. Friends, love, silent, sweet, textured, funny ones and a million more.  

So you know, I've decided.. not that my decisions hold like Nagarjuna Cement or anything.. but yeah.. I kinda decided to post atleast one picture every week that means a lot to me and tell you the story. Why? Because when I write- I do not talk. And I've been talking too much these days.

( A result of joblessness.. Oops.. My final year finals begin in a week and look at the weird decisions I'm taking.. doesn't matter. What is important is that I write, and that I read. And more importantly learn. And share my process of learning and growing, with a future me and you. Now that I think of it, it's not like I learn much, or that I share the useful part of my learning.. I just like the drama of imagining you reading my page. Not that I write for you alone or that I morph any of my writings to please you. That's the best part of being read by you. I don't know what you expect from me, so I won't be trying to impress you in the way I'd like to. But I know, that if you've had the patience to read this page as far as this sentence, you must have considered my existence and that makes you worth being considered as a friend. )

P.S.: It is fun to dream with open eyes and touch a person, reach a place. Still such a pity that one can't dream a life away.. and then again, who can prove such silly stuff otherwise, that this whole life is not a dream? Just the way as you get closer to waking you gain more control on the dream.. maybe waking is dying and to dream is to live. Maybe it isn't so, it just is what it is. But how would you know? 

Shelley's Ode to the West Wind

We had this poem in school and I fell in love with it the first time I read it.

So I read it again and again, so many times that I still will never forget a single line from it. Everytime they talked of board exams or careers or percentages, I'd open this page in my english text book under my desk and for a while float through the autumn wind, feel vicariously the power of the stormy winds, nodding my head to everything he yearned for and made it my sigh too.


There were lots of poems that touched me, that made me sad and ones that made me happy.. but this one always reminded me of a huge mermaid like angry Maenad with red hair and arrogant chin, skin- like ripe sunshine, golden; rising from the sea; along with all that wet hair as deep grey stroms and angry winds blew about her.

It made me feel first a little sad, then a little enchanted, and then a surge of power and then sweet as if lost in love as though the love was nought but a dream and the eyes still remain closed for the last sweetness of the love's touch remains as a smile on your face pierces the dream and just gently touches reality as if a tangent would touch a sphere just at one sweet point through face; and then he asked me to open my eyes and yearn along with him for ever having to wake up to knowing that I am seperate from the wind..and I felt it just as he intended, I too wanted to float, soar and gush. Atlast, he made me feel through all those class rooms full of people who would not listen to him, like I was the only one who could hear his secret. Who could feel the chains on his hands and all those constraints binding, physically, metaphorically.. he told me to never forget him. To never stop something free.

Never to try. For in freedom lies naturality and that chaos is a form of beauty unforgettably beautiful by it's sheer individuality.

Ode to the West Wind


I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,


Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed


The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow


Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:


Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!



II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,


Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head


Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge


Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might


Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!


III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,


Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,


All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers


Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know


Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!


IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share


The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be


The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven


As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!


A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.


V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies


Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!


Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,


Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth


The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?


Percy Bysshe Shelley

You do like it, right? I mean, how can anyone not?

Goa day.

I wonder why I fight everything I end up loving. The first time I entered the sea, I hated it.. every moment I was in it, I kept comparing it to the coolness of the lakes.. calling it salty, turbulent, unkind and all that. Seriously, the first beach I visited after my childhood was last year.. February in Vizag. It was edged with rocks and so turbulent that I could never float with ease in it. The salt would just get into my eyes and I’d start beeping it. Lol.. even through all the complaints.. I was there in it.. playing in it all by myself.. musing.. beeping.. whatever.. and when it was the time for lunch and we went to the shore for a little while.. I remember opening a book.. and listening to the waves and the breeze sometimes I’d look up and see the afternoon sun shining on the sea.. and then I’d have to forcibly pull myself into the book.. a little while of that.. and I got restless.. it was irritating.. I finished reading the book and didn’t remember a single word of what it said.. all I remember of it were the waves..
Then I went to it.. slowly.. I didn’t want to get my dress wet again or my body salty.. I’d have to take a shower again.. and I was irritated.. but I kept walking to the sea.. and I kept my brows knotted and walked to the sea still grumbling.. wishing it were a cool happy lake or something.. all that heated sand in the afternoon was scorching my feet.. and the first step into the water… sigh.. I remember that moment like one frozen in a camera.. I was wearing black and black.. and leaned a little and watched the sun on the sea for a long long time.. and then finally I sat down on the edge with legs spread out.. as every wave went.. there was emptiness.. and as every wave came there was a cool happiness.. and the whole process of the waves was… mm… I don’t know.. fun? Sublime? Something in between...
And then there were more seas in the following days.. they were lovely.. they looked good.. I felt glorious standing there… but then.. some things just touch you more.
And then I went to Goa. This December for a 15 day holiday… Sighhhh… beaches and beaches and more beaches…. Days and days of walking through them.. sailing on them.. and swimming in them right in between.. just as if you were one of those dolphins. And so many so many pictures in my mind.. but I know even now, which of them will never fade.
Here is an anecdote of my best day in Goa,
I woke up early in the morning and went to brush my teeth.. by early in the morning it was around 4.30 or 5 and it was all still very dark.. brushing brushing going on… there were a few people around me talking some phony stuff.. and I was bored and turned my head to find some constellation.. to be exact, Cassiopeia as it was the only one I knew.. and then Voila! Shooting star.. It just went by.. I am an atheist, but if was not one, I would have said later that everything happens for a reason. Still being an atheist is better, all that cynism and dubeity of imaginary stuff add peach and flouroscent highlights to the awe of natural wonders. Hahha, Ces't la vie! isn't it? Life is unfair. But if you care to work for it and explore it and learn to love it.. it is more than fair.. it is beautiful. In all it’s chaos and destructive forces.. all the people it takes away.. life is just like the sea.. flowing.. in patterns too big to be understood or maybe it is patternless.. eitherway.. it is even more beautiful because of it’s complications and the huge scope for hope. It doesn’t fling a star fish to the shore because it’s bad or good.. it does so.. simply.. just the way we came.. simply.. for no purpose. Why should there be one? Well, no.. I’m not talking all this stuff about luck and life in awe of the shooting star.. rather in awe of the shooting star along with the glorious day that followed.
Big word, glory.. if you told me the same on the morning of trek.. I would’ve thought I was going to get kissed by a Xeno. Well.. a foreigner.. you see, I’m big on blue eyes and boys with guitars who travel.. lol.. no, nothing remarkably cool happened that day…
I was one of the first when we started.. I walked in the water.. and I walked, and I walked.. dozens and dozens of starfishes and everything.. shells.. water.. more water.. stylu (my brother’s friend) who came to the trek with me.. went ahead.. and then more people went ahead and then more people went ahead.. and I was walking in the water… thinking of nothing.. something about the morning Goan sun warmed my head up.. and things were just slipping one against the other too light and unimportant to be caught or cohered in my mind.. it was just buzzing lazily with nothing in it.. and after a while I stopped feeling my feet or the sand.. sometimes when I cared, I would notice the disturbance my legs created in the water and sometimes I tried hard to mentally remember some little mollusc peeping from the shell or digging itself into the sand.. the starfishes I jumped at crazy and stuck everywhere literally bored me now with their dull green blue and grayish backs and those creamy undersides with tentacles.. they were just so many and so similar.. they were slipping off my mind.. and if I looked at the sea.. the sea too was similar… there would be a wave now and then.. and it would make a little soft purring noise in between and end up like a hiss.. wherever went the roars, god knows.. after a while of walking, I realized I was nowhere.. people ahead of me were far ahead.. people behind were far behind… I knew who passed by me.. but I didn’t know who were behind me.. naturally, I assumed I was the last, and then I wanted to care about being the last, I wanted to push myself to go meet someone.. but I just didn’t.. I was walking at the normal pace with eyelids heavy.. fuck, I couldn’t stay awake.. I couldn’t remember a single song then.. and if I could recollect a word of two.. I didn’t have the motivation to try to remember the tune.. well, nothing is in tune with such an afternoon.. except for maybe labourers beating theirs huge hammers on those iron rods Tung! Space. Tung! Space. Tung! With the sun shining on their tanned backs and those muscles glittering in it. And there was no song for such a scene. Atleast, I knew none. So I went on.. sleepy but not sleeping. Appreciating the sea and the waves and the clear empty sky, just the way I’d appreciate the labourers muscles, but after a while.. things seem like a lazy sweet dream.. the monotony of It keeps shifting from monotonous to musical a moment precious and a moment lethargic.. and the worriless, even paced quality of the rhythm cools you. The heat blocks all the senses including happiness. It just gives you darkness and dreams. And I went on with an empty head.. not understanding or trying to understand or capture or enjoy anything. Just like a lazy yawn or a slow wave.. in my own criss cross even rhythm.. and there were people now… I had no idea when they caught up with me or if I went forward and caught up with them.. but then I started talking.. then there was some unimportant talk.. and then I’d slip into the sleepy rhythm.. inbetween there were some more words.. and some more walk.. and there was the sound of the sea.. now and again there was a tiny wisp of a breeze and I’d close my eyes and go on with it.. then, I’d hear the sea and go into sleep.. I walked on.. slowly things went hazy and I fell asleep.. I walked on.. with some weird corner of my consciousness trying to fall asleep and stay awake at the same time.. the rest of it was all asleep.. and then I walked more on.. it was such a weird walk coz I’d walk diagonally to my right so much that my friend would wake me up.. or give me a slow tug.. and I’d walk again in another stupid direction.. it kinda tripled the distance.. and everytime he gave me a tug on the hand.. or he’d talk to someone else.. I was hearing and feeling it not taking anything.. but now and then when he’d say my name, I’d wake up a little in my sleep, though I was still too lazy to open my eyes.. and drift again into it..
And then we met Stylu.. mm.. or I realized that we met him.. I guess we took some swims and came back.. played a little Frisbee or catches in the sea.. or maybe it was afterwards.. but there were times when we were energised and weird enough I remember the non energetic mode much better than the energetic modes during that phase.. we still walked on and we saw Vicky.. sleeping by the shade of a boat.. we all went and slept there too. And then the battery charging process ended.. We went for a swim or something a little while later.. and then CLUNG CLUNG CLUNG… full on consciousness.. and I started not noticing things.. it’s weird isn’t it.. as the consciousness develops and happiness is bursting in you.. the pretty things you notice around you seem to go smaller and the pretty things you notice in you gets bigger.. you eventually forget it.. but then it feels nice to feel happy, alive and active. When you feel so, you become a part of the picture, a happy picture. But when you’re closing your eyes, or when you’re sad, you notice every little detail around with a magnified consciousness, you become an audience of the picture an admirer of it’s beauty or you fear it. Every little mollusc movement can depress you for an unknown reason.. probably it’s a sadness that you could not belong to it. Or that you forget how to laugh for a little while and you go introvert mode for nothing that happens around you. Well, well, lucky enough.. I didn’t go introvert mode at all that day. It was just Garfield mode… a mode which goes like why stand when you can sit, why sit when you can sleep, so I didn’t bother opening my eyes.
Anyway, after a swim, I don’t remember when it happened.. but I was walking with Stylu in the sea trying to remember the lyrics of the song Fireflies by Owl City. We were both trying pretty hard.. and then I got the line.. “planet earth turns slooowly”.. it was the only line I could remember and it wasn’t enough to trigger Stylu’s memory so I kept trying.. he kept trying and we started asking people who went past us.. oh finally, we came to know that Todo had it in his phone and we played.. I remember hearing it for the first time as he played.. the music went off.. the lyrics simply dawned on me like some much awaited sunrise.. every word would come and behind it I’d be repeating it thinking.. Shucks I knew it! I knew it!! One would think after listening to it with so much attention I’d remember the song then.. Hell, I was so busy going after the words that except for the line I already knew about planet earth moving slowly, the rest of the words each struck me as individual entities.. and each of their meaning I knew without worrying about the coherence or the order of the words in the sentences… I heard the song.. and I had a picture for every word of it.. but by the end of it when I tried to sing it again… I went blank. And then Stylu told me the words.. and I wrote them in the sand.. and then I took a picture of it and I remember.. singing it with him together.. I remember he jumped from one place to another in the sand and came to the place where I was writing the lyrics… and he started singing and I joined in my inaudible little voice.. and I remember it with the picture of the sand. I looked up and saw that his face was tanned and his eyes were brown and his mass of hair all dry. I noticed how funny he looked in his shorts and the woodland shoes and his trademark walk.. which looked like he was a little lamb sprightly and ready to jump from one place to another but held to the earth by the weight of those shoes. Seriously, his walk always remind me of it.. like he’s ready to go running around if not for the shoes. Like a kite’s rope tied to a rock.
I also remember him teaching me a tougue twister.. before or after the fireflies.. and it just went into my head like a tune.. he told me it was a German movie title… not so famous a movie.. but I’d like to see it someday.. thanks to the very interesting title.. and I kept hopping and jumping in the water rhyming the tongue twister to my steps in the water.. and somehow he’d fit in too.
I remember, me him and mm.. someone else, or was it just me and him.. we were running backwards, holding our hands.. and we were all laughing… and there was the sun in our face and sea at our feet.. I had flowers in my hair, wind flowing by and I was telling thank you life, thank you inside. I was happy I wasn’t alone in this trek.. happy that I had friends who could give me that moment. And if everything went wrong in the trek.. everything except that moment, I would’ve yearned to go to Goa again next year.
Going back to the chronological order, we woke up.. and we walked.. and we sang fireflies.. joking about the camp leader and old men in our group.. well, well, a litte while later.. again went for a swim.. Vicky didn’t get in, he was with the life guard talking.. we had our fun.. we came back.. I was wistfully thinking about all the benefits guys have.. and we were blabbering some nonsense when Vicky told us that he saw dolphins nearby.. he thought we saw them too.. it seems they were quite close.. my eyes went big.. and we started looking at the sea trying to find dolphins.. a few steps, and a few steps more.. and EUREKA! VOILA! OH MY OH MY MY OH MY GOD! I saw my first dolphin fin sticking out.. and then there were more fins, more and more fins… an entire school of them.. like some 6 or 7 I guess… or maybe more… no idea.. we threw our bags and went into the water. There was a dolphin so close.. it looked like it was headed our way, it looked like it was coming to meet us. I remember, for a couple of seconds it felt like my stomach was bottomless.. I felt cold, a little afraid, what if the dolphin snout came up right at my feet.. and I remember bending my head and getting lost in the shadows in the water.. Hallelujah.. I recovered and looked at the horizon again.. and then I saw this dolphin a pale gray one.. take a leap towards us.. it was so clear.. and so slow in movement like the world stopped.. like you cannot tell after wards if it lasted a moment or a day or for seasons at a stretch.. I remember feeling tears in my eyes.. and I remember telling myself to be strong… I remember so much that now as I write it, my breath is going short like I’m going to cry again.. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out… now, I saw it, and if it was the ground instead of the sea I would have got onto my knees and put my head to my ground. But it was the sea, and I didn’t know what to do suddenly, something was just welling up in me and I saw the people around.. they were alright but then I saw Stylu’s face.. I’ll tell you this much, I have no idea what he thought or what he felt, but his face was just as beautiful as the dolphin then.. I didn’t know whether to see him or to see the sea and that happens very rarely. I scream and use big words for all little pretty things. But when that something beautiful really comes across you, you have nothing to say. To tell you, he had brown eyes.. his face was all happy.. and he was like looking and moving his hands and legs a little like he’s gotta do something.. like the happiness is giving him energy to pour forth and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He was happy then. Touched or not, god knows, but then he was happy. And I saw a glimpse of my happiness in him. Obviously, as it is mine, I feel like I was much happier.. but even the glimpse of my happiness in him was like.. how to say.. like finding a best friend.. or a love.. or someone who spoke your language in a foreign land you’ve been lost in for years… he was gorgeous and he didn’t have a single clue how much.
Throughout the trek I tailed him, and every time I saw his eyes, or I’d see him happy. It felt like my dolphin was in him. Like he was my dolphin. He mattered. Not as a friend, or a crush or a pet or a habit. He felt like my dolphin. I didn’t know that I felt like it till I started writing this. I just knew that I feel for him. Now I know what. Not that I’m gonna feed him fishes now that it dawned upon me or anything. But seriously, during my entire snorkelling session, I was thinking, so this is what a dolphin’s world looks like.. this is what the pale grey dolphin must be seeing everyday.. do you think that fish is edible? And so on.. and through the trek, many times I told myself, what would Stylu see this as? What does he see the sky as? What does he see in a trek? How shallow is his thought? And how deep and in what areas? In everything he made, or did or collected I was trying to see him in it. Something that is him. In the broken pieces his patience and impatience and innovation and his unnameable qualities.. I mean, you can’t name the thousands of variations and different qualities in Stylu.. and it was fun. He wouldn’t get it. Or maybe he would. Or maybe he would but he wouldn’t, because he’d say out that all this is too complicated for him. Or he’d tell himself inside.. why the unnecessary trouble or trying to understand it? I don’t know. I have never been able to predict people.. I haven’t even tried it consciously.. I just like to look at them.. the way I look at the sea.. I like listening to him.. the way I’d listen to the waves.. and there are a lot of times when I’d not get what was he thinking when he told me this.. and it would drown out being taken over by something more interesting at the moment. Either way, I followed two things during my trek, I heard two things, maybe I was a little more partial to the sea. Ohk… I loved the sea, but Stylu comes next.. huge gap in between.. but hey, to like a person enough to bring him in the same para as a naturally beautiful and interesting object.. you’d have to be interested in him like zillions and zillion loads.
The best part is, I followed the sea in complete consciousness, I followed Stylu just like that. I never asked myself why I was following him till I returned. Or if I was a disturbance to his privacy or any such questions. He was always in the corner of my eye, he was my trekking mate.. and I followed him. I didn’t ask him any questions as to what he was thinking or anything, anytime, atleast not that I can remember, but now that I’m here in my room and I look back. I wonder at how I can remember every little brown speck of his eyeball, so well that I can draw it any moment now, only thing is that I’d never find a colour sooo.. mm.. soo.. his brown.

Oh we reached the campsite, dolphin site was very close to it. We went in… I had 5 aloo bondas.. Stylu had 6.. or I had 6 and he had 7.. I remember being jealous of him having one extra.. and then I drowned some mugs of welcome drink and ran back to the beach to get another swim. Lol.. by this time the whole team was there near by and I wished just for a few seconds that no dolphin should come to the shore. I wanted to guard the moment jealously. Our doc then became a jelly boy, hah.. he got a jelly fish sting.. and for us all too there was a tiny itching which then developed into stronger itching.. and we scratched and played.. scrathed and floated.. itching reduced.. so we scratched lesser and swam.. and it was all wonderful till we got tired and went to the shore… I remember walking on the part wet golden sand trying to catch the water shadows by placing my feet a little firmly on the ground.. I believe when I do that, the water gets a little squeezed out and runs in.. forming a grayish shade replaced by a little whitish shade.. and as you lift your feet.. it rushes back making the whitish shade greyish.. and it is quite entertaining to watch it as you walk fast.. the shades run across the sand in response to your step. Hahha… and then back to camp, washed up.. and back to the beach again to see the sun sink.. I was standing there.. the guys were sitting in the sand a little behind me.. and then I was staring at it.. the sun went in stage after stage.. and I saw it go in with the little blue border just above the hoziron of the sky.. you see.. it didn’t look like the sun was drowning in the sea.. it looked more like the sun was fading into the colour.. like.. inbetween the sun and the sea, as it faded there was a bluish haze.. and then it was over. I felt I don’t know what.. but I wanted to go where no one I knew could see me.. so I ran.. not far.. not fast.. but a little away.. I found a little boat parked and it had a nice white flag and I sat there holding it. Some phony old man in our trekking group didn’t know what I was doing and alerted the guys apparently, so they came running after.. either way.. I was there.. and Todo was clicking photos of me as Stylu was picking shells. I say, the best shells of our trek… I wonder how he always gets them. But it’s good that he gets them as they end up in my collection.. but then wouldn’t it have been better if I got them all by myself. Ces’t la vie! Life is unfair… or maybe I just should put my glasses on during treks. And we were taking pictures of the shells and then we were jumping.. this way.. that way.. Todo, Vicky, me and Stylu. We met with aunty and uncle.. took some snaps with them.. and all.. and went in for dinner.. my battery was already on a flicker mode.. on and off.. on and off… and then there was this delicious fruit custard for the dessert.. so I filled my meal with the dessert.. had bowls and bowls and more bowls of it. And tummy khush. Battery went to reserve mode.. people were droning on, sitting around, my neck felt boneless.. I was falling asleep here and there.. and people’s shoulders.. and I was part conscious then.. but now I can remember nothing but somehow I remember Stylu stroking my hair inbetween and someone was telling some story.. and I was too lazy to smile out.. but I purred and smiled inside and thought something about growing my hair.. and then… I started floating. Believe me, it can be counted as one of the sweetest naps ever.. it wasn’t blank.. it had the back ground music of waves, it felt free and safe at the same time with friends around me.. it was relaxing.. and it was like sleep overlapped by the aroma of a sweet dream flowing around you called reality. I have no idea why the hell I ever woke up.. but I was pushed to some dumb camp fire.. and for some god knows why reason I tried in vain to keep my eyes apart instead of crashing.. and then I’d throw my head back and see the constellations.. as I said earlier, the only constellation I can identify, Cassiopeia. And from there I tried to see where Orion was and I remember lapsing into sleep. And in my sleep I heard some stupid camp songs that faded out into stars. And when I opened my eyes I’d put my head up and see more stars and close my eyes and see more stars and there was some noise going about me.
I have no idea how I came back from that stupid camp fire.. but I remember just falling into my sheets when I was woken by a tent mate to show her the way to the loo.. I have no idea why I couldn’t say no to her.. but through all my sleepy stupor I took her there.. and came back.. and then when I put my head onto my bag again… I didn’t want to sleep. I could sleep. It was a matter of choice, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to hear the waves all night. I wanted to make out how every next wave sounded and I’d tell myself you gotta wake up early tomorrow and just one more wave.. and just one more wave always won.. finally the arguments died out into sleep.
The previous day, the next day especially the early morning of the next day were all very beautiful. But then, it’s 3.14 in the morning. If I start another day now, my impending exam will drown like the sun in the sea. And though I care not for the exam.. if I have to put a full stop somewhere to his. I’d rather it’d be here than anywhere else. So, good night and '.'

P.s.1: Sorry for the word repetitions, grammar and so many other mistakes I usually commit. I didn't read this one to check for them again. I was afraid I wouldn't want to post it if I read it.

P.s. 2: This was originally meant to be a diary entry so I added in quite a lot of unnecessary details lest I forget the sketches of my trip. Hence the length too, sorry again. :)