Today

He tells me he saw me at Pizza Hut (or was it McDonald’s?) the first time in CP, and found me pretty. He tells me I bullied him to sit straight for the group photo on the way to XL in the train, and he thought I was rude..

He tells me of the times he noticed me around but never quite.. :)

I remember the boy with an interestingly shaped head, standing mostly by the open door of the train compartment on the way to XL (with no co-relation somehow to the boy I apparently bullied)

I remember the confident and somewhat arrogant demeanor of one who looks too young for that arrogance :)

I remember the pointedness of the questions and the replies while in class. I remember noticing the unwavering attention of one set of eyes in every class… I remember the eyes :) and all women talking about how it makes them go weak in the knees.. I remember not opening my mouth in such discussions..

I remember the same stern and arrogant pose turning into fluid poetry on the volleyball field.. delicate, refined, fluid, strong…

I remember the same stoic attention return on the badminton court.. and the same poetic grace.. if ever there was a man both handsome and beautiful, he was there before my eyes.

If ever there was a man with both strength and finesse, he was moving there before me. If ever there was a combination of machinery and poetry, I saw it then in his movements.

He forgot he had put someone’s question on hold while he went on to make a perfect serve..

He moved and ran with precision and concentration. And then he smiled… the most innocent and genuine smile, like a young baby’s smile, like the sun shining on a bright day… like someone’s heart shining through one’s eyes…

And he did all this wearing mostly the same shade of grey.. and I thought grey never looked so good on anyone..

I remember wanting him

I wanted to be around him, and luckily, soon enough, so did he. Though he didn’t quite figure it out that easily, and spent many days pulling my pigtails (figuratively speaking)

We worked together (God bless Fairy god mother..er god father :)) We hung out with common friends.. and then we started walking

The legendary walks :)

Laughter, wit, intellect, imagination, whims, fancies, non sense, more laughter…

We became us. I remember thinking to myself that I would never want one thing more if I knew I would have him.

And I did.

He became my world.. an innocent, happy world..

He taught me yoga to drive away my sinusitis, ‘ and all other illnesses’

He got me to take care of my health better..he inspired me to start taking some care of my grades :D.. he taught me how to run better.. and fought with the authorities that women should have separate finishing certificates, when I was among the first women to finish the XL dream run..

He saw what I could do well, and recognized it. He did not make a big deal of what I could not do well.

He saw in me the goodness and the potential that I didn’t know existed

He displayed unwavering faith in me

He reminded me who I was when I seemed to have lost the mirror

He became my mirror

I saw him take on leadership naturally in a group situation, a kind of leadership that is not stifling, but facilitative.. I saw him help anyone who needed his help, and wherever he felt he could make any positive difference.. I saw him push boundaries of natural human capacity in order to do the kind of work that would meet his standards.. I saw him work up to an internal standard that did not necessitate, and in fact surpassed, all external standards.. I saw my hero

He danced on wet nights, though he was not the dancing kinds… He sang ‘Guncha koi’ on the stage though it was not an XL junta kind of song, he sang for me… he stayed awake with me late into nights doing nothing in particular, though he liked to operate with clock work precision, when I had first met him.. he tried teaching me taxation, in face of stern resistance from my side and a suicidal mission to flunk…

He held me in his hands like a gardener would hold a butterfly

Like a father, like a friend, like a confidante, like a lover..

To all that is great in you, my salute!

Happy Birthday, Ashish Pant

We

are no more where we had started

Something tells me

this is also not where we end

We have changed... so has the path

We can no more measure our progress

From the vantage point of where we started from

There were forks in the road

And so the beginnings have shifted

And the paths

And the ends

Look around, and take cognizance- 

This is not the start

Nor the end

This story is still untold

This mystery unexplored

Because what was known has changed

And we stand today on new ground

Who knows where we go from here

All I know is, we still exist

And we go forward

That there is a path

Maybe this path has no name

Certainly not known by the names most often identified

Nor even, the names we had given

And therefore we are here

Free to not know

.. Free to explore

Free to explore..you, me

And the future

The beauty of it makes me smile

To know where we started

And to have come this far

And to know that this is not where we end

To know not, where we go from here

But to know there is a path

Which we had not seen on the map we had drawn ourselves

With those shiny innocent eyes

Glimmering with hope and certainty

The beauty of it makes me smile

That those eyes have wisened up

And the certainty displaced by searching

And still to know somewhere

That we go further from here

We go further from here…

It's not ok

Look around. The world condenses to small rooms,

big rooms.... rooms... walls..

There are these multiple worlds/microcosms..and most of us entrapped and inextricably enmeshed  in one or another of these pseudo-worlds.

I see people walk amid these..into and out of these..back again to one or another..running from one...running right into another..out of choice, out of guilt, out of compulsion, out of hope, out of fear...

The question doesn't matter. The answer will seldom be anything else.

Lifetimes are spent banging heads against these walls... in decorating these walls... in leaning against these walls when no one is watching, in a wave of sudden existential crisis...

Lifetimes are spent, staring at these walls...And then sometimes a stolen moment or two...staring out of the window...staring at the wind outside...staring at the flying dust...sometimes daring to stare as far away as the sun!

You wonder, 'That 's far away'.. and you realise there is a place far away..somewhere far away from this room...it means you can get out of these rooms and traverse that distance to 'far away'...

Something in the room will sooner or later scream for attention...a phone/ a doorbell/ a colleague/ a superior/ a spouse/ a stranger...and you re-enter the room.

It takes a while..

You can't see the room anymore..The sun is powerful, so much more powerful.

It will take some effort before you will be able to see the room again.

But you know what breaks my heart... that you think perhaps you're not supposed to stare at the sun that long..because it blurs the room

You CHOOSE... the room over the sun

You know you experienced something worthwhile.. you know you felt alive

and the conclusion you reach is- Well, probably windows are quite important!

You break my heart.. because you reach the conclusion that windows are important.. Do you see..do you SEE.. you need windows because there are walls

Windows are a part of the wall

But we never ever challenge the wall

We would doubt the sun

We would not doubt the wall

And so we create windows. We take pride in creating windows. And I see men and women, become slave to windows, and declare joy in it.

They become slave to windows, just as they were slave to walls.

And what breaks my heart is this.. what really breaks my heart is, you think you have escaped, but by being slave to windows, you are still slave to the walls!

You are a slave.

The sun is truth... and you know it...it will give life, or it will burn

But the walls...these walls.... they house hours and hours of quiet desperation

Of scores and hundreds of souls...segregated by walls

They house suffering. They house deceit. They prevent you from seeing what lies beyond this wall, and the next, and the next..

The fear is we may begin and end, in one of these self proclaimed, self reinforcing, pseudo-'world's..believing that the rules are real, and the festering desperation to break them unjustified.. that the walls are for keeps and the sun only to peek at discreetly now and then... that we are alone in taking a pause to think whether we want to enter the next room, or the same room ever again...that it's not ok to say it's not ok...

The fear is we may become ok with not struggling for our lives. The fear is we may in fact struggle to keep ourselves from living the lives we deserve.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? 

So with sanity and insanity.

—Herman Melville, Billy Budd

We have met the enemy- it is us...............And also the only hope

I find you

rebelling against yourself..

What did you

make yourself do?

That you, today

refuse to follow you?

The intensity of your refusal

Would have me believe

That you held your breath

And wouldn’t let it relieve

Did you decide to wait awhile

When it was all accumulated inside

..but still, did you wait to exhale

When it could have burst a vein..?

Did you push yourself

When you had refused to be pushed

When you thought you had found a way out

Only to be ambushed

By yourself..no one else..

ambushed by yourself

Did you turn a deaf ear

To your voice

Till you beat yourself to believe

There was no choice

No choice, but to follow your way

And not as if there was much to say

Did you exhale….?

Did you exhale..

While you could still have lived????

Did you exhale?

What is this relationship

With yourself

You are out to defeat

Your own intent

I don’t understand

How this works

You refuse to be a master

to your quirks

Did you exhale?

You were running…running…

Did you exhale?

Did you exhale?

You were in the meadows

And something told you

You should spread your arms

And breathe in the beauty

But how could you, my dear!

You refused to exhale!!

Why do you run away

When I call you

Why do you hide

From my glance

Why do you not listen

To my words

You and me are the only chance

I promise I will listen

When you whisper

I will not 

laugh away your concerns

Not anymore

disregard your needs

I will do what it takes

to strengthen the trust

Stories we tell ourselves

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

~ Joan Didion, The White Album

(Sounds familiar....??)

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our Abilities"

~ ( One of the Harry Potters' )

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

रांझे नु ढून्धन, मैं चली

मेनू रांझा मिल्या नाही

रांझे  नु ढून्धन, मैं चली

मेनू रांझा मिल्या नाही

रब मिल्या 

रांझा ना मिल्या

रब मिल्या

रांझा ना मिल्या

रब रांझे जैसा नाही

रब रांझे जैसा नाही

रब रांझे जैसा नाही

रब रांझे जैसा नाही...

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.

~ Woody Allen

Ask, and it shall be given you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
  

May you work from the wisdom that what you ask would in fact be given, and hence know what it is that you may ask

May you have the courage to seek, and seek with the utmost purity..for then it shall find you

May you know what door to knock, and when opened, may you have the gumption to walk through it

May you have the eyes to see that God delivers on every promise he makes

Wondered several times today..is there anything I want to write...?

A quote in my head..? A song...?

I don't hear it.. no, there mustn't be anything today.

Yet I come here several times. And stare like one stares at the mirror.But don't wait long enough to catch the reflection.

No, maybe there reeaaaly isn't anything today.

I switch everything off..I am sleepy, like, real sleepy!

But wait, I can't sleep..

And I come back..to reassure myself, there really is nothing I will write about today..

A post to those who find me

She pinged me.

As usual.

That's how our conversation usually begins. She finds me..when I am looking around, waiting to be found, and not quite knowing it.

I tell her I have started a blog.. and don't quite know what to do with it now. She checks out the link, and says, "Your blog is certainly different."

I am pleased that it is, without having made any special efforts in that direction. I am wondering if she means the template.

"Most people don't quote Will Durant or recent articles they have read", she continues.

I explain that I haven't followed too many blogs before presuming to begin one myself, so perhaps I am not in on what possibilities exist in the quoting business. I just wrote what was top of my mind at midnight, I further explain.

"Most people write about general stuff that happens in their life..", she says.

I am most uncomfortable and sheepish at this point. In my defense, I point out that it is a bold enough thing for me to begin a blog in the first place, considering it's so completely uncharacteristic of me.

She doesn't think so. "In fact I think it's quite logical for you to do so. You like sharing such things with people, as much as you resist having to reach out... It's not like you don't want to..."

She knows. She knows.

"It's mainly that you are incredibly lazy!"

She knows...My mind is suddenly doing numbers..We have not met in the last 2.5 years.. It's been 6 years since we have been regularly in touch...

"In any case, you are just absorbed in what you want to say", I am guessing is what she'll say next. She had said something to this effect, and I had laughed, and we had become friends... How long ago was that..??

"Happy Friendship day", she says, instead.

"Oh shit", say I.

And the mind again races back... Should I give her the green and black friendship band, or the pink and yellow one, I had wondered..How long ago was that...?!!!

"I love you," I say. "Be in touch.. you can visit my blog now," I cheerily point out.

She is kind not point out, that it certainly was the intention with orkut...and then with facebook! Instead she says, "Yes, this should make it much easier."

I don't know why I am starting this blog..it began with clicking 'Create Blog' while visiting someone else's blog..and then with thinking what name I would give if I had a blog...and then what template I would like to have..and then..there was a post..then 3 posts... and now this.

And this post does talk about general stuff happening in my life. So, there!

"I would just like to share it with a few people, you know", I had said... Maybe I want to make it easier to be found! Lol..

In a perfectly theatrical manner, it does happen to be Friendship Day today, and for the 'just a few people', most of whom I depend on to do the finding, I do hope to find you too..