Life Itself

I look at you and wonder who you are. Who are you when you are alone at night? When there is no one beside you. When emptiness fills the room and the only sound is the whirring fan. I wonder what crosses your mind as you close your eyes and drift into sleep. I yearn to uncover your last thought, to discover its essence - to discriminate between that which signifies fear and loneliness or that which beams of achievement and pride. Do you hold onto something when you sleep or let it all go? Are you a dreamer or do you find dreams wasteful?  When you partition yourself from all your appearances and devices and pretenses and identifications, are you still beautiful? Are you still recognizable? Or do you become a little bit of everyone? If I could exist around you then, without altering you, would you still seem daunting and mystical? Would you be your first self - the child? Or would you be covered up in years of heartbreak and deceit and restrain?  Most people in your w...

I like sitting by my window and staring at the metro. Most people find it an inane architecture, almost a spoiler on the skyline. I find the ferry-like lights of the train cabins extremely beautiful. You know that "happy place", where everything seems alright, this is mine. Sometimes I like standing in my balcony late at night and watching trains pass by. Or the lights of the city. Or the silence. Hearing the silence is always the most fun part. It doesn't last very long. Eventually the solitude makes me uncomfortable and I go back inside. Why do we reject that which brings us peace and go back to the clutter that traps us? Why do we let the shackle of reality stop us from projecting, dreaming, becoming? Why does the "as-is" fetter us? Why does the sound and light and confusion allure us, and the awareness and calm and isolation elude us? Sometimes I close my eyes and lie on the grass, even float above it. I watch the chirping birds and hear the light bre...

I can't explain to you in words what is unarticulated even in my head. You ask me questions, plainly, innocently. You demand answers, animatedly, angrily. I cry, because thats all I can do. You wonder why I seem so numb, so impossible to break into, so hard to comprehend. I try to talk to you, through my eyes. I send you words, without using my voice. I almost touch you and slowly pull back. I scream in pitch-less silence. I hope you will connect the erratic dots and make sense of the imperfection. I plead with fate to let you into my mind, for one moment. I can see that I am speaking in languages that are almost unintelligible to you. I sense that my imploring is having close-to-no impact on you. I know that we are trying much harder than we should be. I hear our laughter, and tear it down to its naked essence. I hold our memories and turn them upside down, one at a time, gawking at points that turned into today. Were we in parallel universes, unaware of our own misgiving...

The first time I learnt to let go of someone took many, many years and hurt a truckload. I remember trying every way to reach out but I was only a child and this was my first heartbreak and he was immune to pain and hatred and blame. He had been through too much to let a child's desperate need for definition, explanation, pull him back. He shut me out, almost mercilessly. He said, "you are always in my heart". I never understood how that could be true. Now I look back and realize how much that taught me. All my protective covering comes from the pain you left me with. Over time letting go has become easier. I now know that nothing is permanent and I appreciate the fleeting pleasure of companionship and the momentary sense of security and the fleeting hope that maybe loneliness has a cure. I have come a long way. I have moved far away from where you left me. And I have grown to understand that even when wounds don't heal, the pain numbs and reality becomes a shade...

Usually I don't like to explain my posts but there are too many people that questioned this one in the first few moments of posting it. So here's a disclaimer. This isn't a post about understanding "me" as in, the author. This is a post about understanding "me" as it could be, anyone, in any relationship. I would like to believe the "me" and "you" can be used interchangeably.  ______________________________________________ And then it all slowly adds up. All the seemingly meaningless symbols come together and make a pattern that is comprehensible.  Am I the selfish person you sometimes see? Am I the anger that comes across as ruthless? Am I the manipulator who always gets their way? Am I the liar you confront occasionally? Am I the version of me that is easy to stereotype? Or is my complex mind and its non-linear decision making comprehensible to you? Do you understand how I can be so enraged by something and be able to ...

The biggest trouble with having an active imagination is that reality often disappoints in comparison.  You don't cry when the worst happens, because you have already cried imaging it so many times that by the time it happens, it doesn't feel real - it feels like reading a novel - a sort of distant, nostalgic pain.  You don't go to new places and feel exhilarated, because in your head the mountains were greener, the water bluer, the sky clearer.  You never meet someone who exhausts, confuses, compounds, scars, twists, controls, connects, wounds - because you can always give them the benefit of doubt, for anything.  You never get in conflict, because you can always be the victim and evictor, within a split second.  You never move beyond, because in your mind you can always go back and replay, deconstruct, reconstruct, and relive.  Nothing novel, nothing surprising, nothing intense. Life is boring when you are a dreamer. 

(This is post number 4 in my series of year end posts. 20 year old me would have never imagined that I could actually carry on a tradition for four years in a row.. Turns out I can.) There was an earthquake, I was sure of it, the table shook, I was the first to get up and leave the building. 2013 taught me that self preservation was my strongest instinct in more ways than one. You were a year of final decisions, of finally biting the bullet and moving on. 2013, you pushed me in ways that I have never been pushed before. You helped me look within and make decisions I didn't know I was capable of making. In the past, standing up for what I believed in always seemed to come easy to me. Those who know me well have heard a story about standing up in a new school in the very first week and insisting that the school timings are inappropriate or the story of how I stood up to my dad. That always used to be my way of doing things - of taking a stand and speaking up, no matter what everyo...