When its really very cold, all you can find is a single sock, a single mitten and surprisingly not even a single woolen cap by yourself. After hunting around for a while you keep coming back to mismatched socks and mittens and no cap still. My mom and my sister vehemently vouch that it happens only with me but thankfully my younger brother can testify in my favor!
Then there comes a winter evening when suddenly you realize you have grown old, very old and oddly cold! You find yourself standing at your home balcony and waving goodbye to your brother as he heads off to his college. Your mind keeps thinking of all the goodbyes when he was young enough to be at home while you visited on college breaks and office leaves. Me, my mom, my sister and my brother all can agree this time, it is a different goodbye when the youngest in the family takes on to the road!
Wishing him good-luck and hoping to have our rendezvous again. God bless!
I slipped back into my life in India with an involuntary ease, neither the people around seemed to sense much change(yeh to jaise gayi thi waise hi dekh rahe hai..) nor I seemed slightly out of practice when I shouted at the taxi people outside the airport early in the morning for trying to point me to multiple taxis when my token clearly said 41.
Driving around Delhi on a Saturday morning at 6a.m. has its own charm. The sleeping city is slowly waking up, but there is no rush of the techie office crowds instead there are the regulars jostling around with chai, some nimbu-mirch threads, newspapers. The people who live on the small earnings of the day do not have the luxury of weekends.. As we drove to the hotel in Paharganj where my friends had managed to find the most posh hotel, I listened to the trials and struggles of a migrant taxi driver with IIT dreams for his kids studying in Kota. I at once assumed my old identity of a techie working in an Indian company and listened to his stories with a sympathetic ear. Luckily for the taxi driver, right at the hotel entrance there was an anxious father with a suited up son who was looking for a ride to the airport since the taxi they called didn't show up on time. My taxi driver was all happy, dropped my luggage inside, forgot about his earlier pitch for some extra chai-paani and gladly drove away!
Then it was the grand reunion, college friends, old flatmates from Kolkata, my sister. 7 girls can create a lot of noise especially if they meet after such a long time. The hotel people had no clue why girls kept dropping in at regular intervals in this weird Paharganj ghetto. From Paharganj to Comesum at the old Delhi railway station, we scared all the sleepy eyed Delhi places with our loud laughs and old reminiscences.
I was wide eyed all along, until my train lurched gently for the sleepy hills. And then I slept sound and deep until the train finally came to a halt. Waiting at the train station was my tall little brother coming to pick his two elder sisters. And that is the story of the homecoming.. to be continued later..
There sure is a pot of gold hidden somewhere in the sky above. Sometimes the winter sunset gives it away..and against the silhouette of the leafless trees you can catch all the radiance of the shinning doubloons!
I tried
to refrain from writing another nostalgic post, but the chime of 'memory bells'
broke into my school anthem and I thought I better write it down before I
forget the lines.
**********
The bells of St Mary's ring out far and wide Their echo resounds from the lake and hillside They call the young ones to work and play They call us to duty, they call us to pray.. O Bells of St. Mary's we hear you repeating The dear song of gladness of sweet memories. You tell us of striving, of frank and fair dealing. You sing to us of truth and love and victory. In the school of St Mary's we spent happy times We learnt the fine arts and the rhymes In the church of St Mary's we find comfort and light To fight a good fight and do what is right..
***********
Their echo resounds from the lake
and hillside…
We hear you repeating the dear
song of gladness, of sweet memories…
To fight a good fight and do what
is right.
For me these three lines encapsulate the entire 11 years (prep->10) of schooling- the town, the friends and the lessons of life. I believe that there are certain things in my life which always find a way in any conversation somehow. I can see it in the eyes of the people around me, they can see it coming- a story from Nainital, or my farm or my school! I appreciate how they patiently listen to the same story nth time and smile politely when ‘the memory bells begin chiming’.
I believe most people love the place they come from,
it’s a part of them in some way and stays with them wherever they go.
Alternatively it may not be your birth place but the place where you feel most
at home. I may be biased but I also believe that your school stays with you forever;
it is your first version of the outside world. In some ways we humans are like trees,
we might branch off far and wide but still be rooted in some way in some place,
in some school of thought.
It’s interesting how the word bells bring to mind my
schools and the sight of the bells reminds me of my home and my father.
He is a believer, he believes in the existence of a power above, he believes
that his prayers watch over me. The sound of bells reminds me of his daily
morning prayers culminating in the ringing bells.
The sound of bells reminds me
the morning prayers in the Naini temple resounding all over the hills. The
afternoon bells from the church, whispering grace. The
evening prayers on the Ganga- the Arti with the light lamps floating on the
river.
Perhaps bells may be the most powerful symbolism in
my life. They ring in my school, my hometown, my home and my relationship with
the god above. Photo credit:sr
This should probably suffice for this entire winter. The pics below are from the 'picturesque' bus stop where I spent quite a bit of my time this year, both in the summers and now in the winters.
I walk alone along the lonely road, in the company of the sombre overcast sky and the empty trees. The wind decides to occasionaly creep up from behind to look for any leaves hidden in the safety of the tree branches. The anxious streetlamps wait for the faint evening light to subside as well. Eveything around is so peacefully silent and cold that I cannot help but remember the cozy winters spent back home with family in Naini.
I listen intently to the trees as I walk along. The leaves are but the rustling sound that you make as you walk along the road. The ideosyncratic fall colors are but the democratic brown now.
However if you listen intently you can hear the trees whisper the word 'snow' as a constant chant..You can feel the anticipation for snow and then the hope for the spring!
I get frequently distracted by the groups of birds noisily making their way back home. They are like the memories(I cannot think of another metaphor) that frequent you when you are all alone, may be to give you company or to mildly torment you, I am not exactly sure. All I can offer is a kind welcome as they come to revisit the now vacant branches and comfortably rest for a while.
And perhaps hum along as I make my way back home..
"Woh pathjhad mein kuch patton ki girne ki aahat kaano mein ik bar pehan ke laut aayi thi pathjhad ki wo shaaqh abhi tak kaanp rahi hai woh shaaqh gira do, mera woh saman lauta do woh shaaqh gira do, mera woh saman lauta do.."
Sometimes my mind surprises me then it completes a visual image with some old hindi song..
There are few times of the year when everything around slows down, everything else briefly gets all silent and you feel all the more closer to the place you live in. Its seems that the place belongs to you alone and you do not have to share it with all the passersby on the roads or the stream of cars making you wait at intersections. You feel a particular kinship with the solitary beauty of the place, standing aloof and vacant. Its weird because the same scene might very well be the sorry tale of a lonely soul left all alone in a deserted city.
Since I am again all by myself for the Thanksgiving break in Champaign, I try to tread carefully given the dichotomous situation I find myself in. Now the reason why I ended up all by myself for the break could range from- being lazy, not listening to friends, saving up a little to buy some gifts for friends and family.. etc..the list can get very long. So in everyone'e best interest lets just skip this part.
I sit by myself doing things that I like most, starting with going back to swimming after months.(Thankfully my body didn't hurt so much the next day!)
Reading a stolen newspaper for straight three hours..ahh what a feeling. I might have to do some explaining for the stolen piece. But in my defense the newspapers lie dumped on the ground near the mailbox and I have never seen anyone religiously picking up their copies. And secondly with all the proliferation of smart phones and internet, who in US wants to sit down and read some over 100 printed pages of weekend Wall Street Journal. And thirdly my public apology to whoever sorely missed their weekend newspaper because someone else picked it up and actually read it when they were out of campus for a glorious Thanksgiving break.
Honestly I sat down with a newspaper on a Sunday morning after almost one and a half years. Somehow in the course of settling to the new ways of life in US, the television and newsprint paper have totally gone out of my life(substituted by assignments of-course! ).
The television got a revival since August this year when one of my friends moved into an apartment with a Television set and my room mate started her weekly trips to Chicago to her husband's place. (Those two chance coincidences have spawned a lot of things, the television viewing being one of them.)
But the lowly old newspaper was missing from my life until today. It was a reunion so dear, i remembered all the lazy Sunday afternoons spent with a newspaper and my diary! Imagine my joy at finding an article on Oscar Wilde( her wife actually) but I wouldn't complain because it had a generous sprinkling of Wilde's pithy, witty, rye-humored quotes.
I smiled inwardly reading this quote:
"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life"
And you bet it went to my diary, though slightly modified, since I am not so aware of the married life as much as the Facebook life of people. I wonder "when people will begin to get suspicious of anything that looks like a happy Facebook life!" I bet it will be the marketers who will get the wind first because they have the highest stakes in this marriage!
Guess who possibly could be the opposite of black hole?
If black hole stands for all hope lost, the opposite of black hole, well is opposite. It is full of light, hope and inspiration.
I should perhaps offer a little help to make the question answerable.
Who won the US Presidential elections 2012?
If you answered Barack Obama you actually answered both my questions. Yes Barack Obama is the opposite of black hole. I had this brainwave when I read Barack Obama's speech after his re-election in Chicago. I missed the actual histrionics since I just read the speech text and didn't watch the actual delivery nonetheless I can still confer on him the title of 'opposite of black hole'.
Sometimes victory speeches have a cockiness, sometimes they are outright humble and sometimes they picture an imagery that elevates people to envision a glorious future with no black holes. They call it the American vision, it is interesting to look at the dichotomous reality of the vision, but topics of politics and economy later. The blog is intended to be the opposite of 'black hole'!!
I dread the black hole- no escape, no hope for anything to come back, to my mind it is the single most ominous reality. With everything in life that doesn't go your way you still have a flickering hope that your fortunes can reverse some day but a black hole represents the absolute irreversible truth. It represents the place in space where you hurl your stone each time with greater force hoping to finally make it stick and may be even shine like a star someday. Alas, nothing ever happens, the stone is lost, the effort is gone and you know there is never going to be a star smiling down at you.
However as I type the above lines I am wondering whether by condemning the black hole, I am maligning the wrong guy. Are we actually guilty of hope?
Its hope that makes us pick a stone each time, the black hole is simply the finality of the result- a dead end that seekers just run into. Sometimes hope can be brutal, it makes you go down the same path innumerable times only to come out all bruised and hurt. May be the black hole just tries to end the misery, bring an end to the vicious cycle of hope and trying. May be God just became tired of seeing folks hurl stones, and so created a black hole to stop them, dissuade them from trying.
I wonder if we can really be charged guilty of hoping, for that would raise questions about existence. An existence which lives in the constant shadow of its own black hole-death. Isn't life ironic, for all the hopes, struggles, black hole- it still should go on until the fateful end.
(Thoughts of an anxious job seeker braving the media frenzy of hurricane Sandy- crazy times)
Photo credit: sr
It is good to receive Durga Puja pics after posting the blog :) Rana sent across this picture this morning and I thought I'll build a new collection this year with picture charity from friends. So this year it is 'collecting Durga's)!
Manged to retrieve the following from the old is gold collection-sony ericsson camera phone. Didn't find any Durga images but just some pandal decorations:
This one was some upscale pujo pandal in the salt lake area(AD, Tank no. 3 may be)
This is one was a more traditional decoration with generous use of bamboo
11/19/2012: M just sent me these pics today uploaded them as well :)
M is not the same as the 'M' in 007 but a dear old school friend who also has a Kolkata stint on her timeline!
Thanks buddy!
Pujo's in Kolkata have their own unmatched charm. For a rational mind it will look like 10 days of relentless incongruity where the otherwise inconsequential people collectively assume a state of drunken happiness. All one thinks, talks, sees is the celebration around- the bright lights, the creative pujo-pandals, multitudes around in their best set of clothes, the food, the fun rides.
To truly understand the significance of pujo, one not only needs to witness the pujo in Kolkata, one also has to live in Kolkata through the non-pujo days to see the transformation the city undergoes suddenly!
I cannot match the Bengali nostalgia for Pujo but still in my own way I still remember and miss the celebration.
I would have so loved to have an old Pujo picture on my blog, but just as I dug into my pictures folder, I realized I accidentally deleted all the folders with names starting with I onward therefore no more Kol pics on my laptop.
I next thought of searching my phone for some beautiful Bengali Pujo text messages although I really doubted that I would have anything saved from 2008-2010. I still remember few words of those messages, not sure if I can retrieve them with Google search.
Next I dug into my old loyal diary hoping to find something preserved there. Thankfully you can trust yourself for some afflictions without fail. Found a note from 9th Oct, 2008. Pujo that year must have been earlier than this year because this note was about immersion. The last ritual after all the festivities.
'In some ways, acceptance of transience rests on the way one treats the word 'immersion'. You immerse in joy as well as in grief. the joy of creation lies in accepting this duality, in understanding that any work of art or even emotional grooming blossoms in a state of detached attachment!
Immersion takes a quick dip!
The whole of creation, its beauty all its splendor everything is transient. With as much as a blink of eye, you can gain all, you stand to lose all. Just have the heart to rejoice..'- newspaper article (TOI or Telegraph)
This note suddenly appeared more relevant than anything else I had read in quite sometime. Each one of us have our own ways to handle the 'immersions'.. Its beautiful to think about the symbolism of immersing the deity in the waters of the Ganges. To let her go whence she came from with just a promise that she'll come back again with all the fanfare next year..in another form and with another story. (I learnt that there is always a different story and a theme associated with how she will come back next year!)
All the beautiful things so far away.. Distant clouds, Distant lands.. Distant sounds, Distant lights Distant sights.. All the friends so far away.. Distant laughs, Distant walks, Distant fights, Distant gossips All the noise so close, All the fears so close, All the falls so close, All the losses so close.. I still try to look beyond, I still try to shut the noise out.. I still try to fight my fears.. I still try to smile as I walk home in the cold winter rain..
Each of us have our cellphone stories, how and when we owned our first cellphone(self purchase/gift/second hand passed on by sibling). The basic model, the initial promotional plans, the coverage hiccups, the first polyphonic ringtones.The longest call that you made, the call that rings in happiness, the ones that break your heart. The times when you sit in anticipation for the phone to ring and the times that you dread the sound of the phone ringing. How each one of us traded our basic models for the swanky feature rich 'smart phones'. Some of us were always quick to lap up the latest model only to be enamored by the next new thing that came along. And some of us still live in bliss holding on to our mobosaurs. This would be a sneer from some smart phone geek who thinks he is well past the Jurassic age of mobile phones. Only if he could realize that the mobile Jurassic age has shrunk to a couple of months and he will always be on the run..
So each one has a story of our relationship with our mobile-the technical specifications, the grand stories of acquisitions, possessions, upgrades, theft, and relinquishment.
The other aspect of the story is how the phone has changed the dynamics of our personal relationship.
A daily call at 10pm ( 8:30 am India time) is my only link to my parents except for the occasional skype calls.
A phone interview is my only make or break chance to get that million dollar job that I have always dreamt of..(honestly neither have I had any such dream nor am I close to any such phone call :P) but still for the purpose of argument it is a valid proposition.
Some arranged marriages entail an awkward phone call as the icebreaker(how ingeniously convenient)
Surprisingly some friendships are about long phone calls, sometimes small phone calls snatched between busy day schedules and also the yawning exchanges before you finally begin to snore.
We can almost look at relationships through the prism of our phone call registers..(just took fancy of the word prism and used it, though in this context we can clearly disqualify the usage)
Communication experts explain that communication entails both the verbal and non verbal aspects. A phone conversation communicates the verbal piece depending on the quality, reliability,coverage of network service provider. That's a lot of compromise already as for the non verbal you just have to make the best guess and all of us have our stories of how tricky that gets at times. So good luck with the phony sixth sense :)
Overhead this conversation on the bus this morning:
"I remember it was 1998, I was in junior high school and it was the best year: The temperature in winters was a pleasant 70-80 F, Gas was 79 cents a gallon & the Illinois football team won the game which was the reason why a super strict teacher gave an additional one week for a submission"
What a year would it have been! However I have not verified any of the above facts and I didn't have my morning cup of coffee before i overhead this exchange. This conversation jogged my memory back to a side note which I wrote down from a budget editorial in India back in 2006-2007, I can vouch for the truth here:
"It was the best of time-GDP 8% growth
It was the worst of time-reforms have disappeared like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the grin
It was the age of wisdom-FM agrees that growth is the best antidote to poverty
It was the age of foolishness-we believe in antipoverty flagship programs of dubious efficiency and delivery
It was the epoch of belief-PM has raised the bar of growth to 10%
It was the epoch of incredulity-nothing in the budget to move the trajectory from 8-10%
We had everything before us..
We had nothing before us.."
Economically how do I remember the year of 2012.
The year when USD INR exchange rate reached an all time high of 57.13 in June 2012, an average drop of 27% against the US dollar over the course of a year. The year when round trip flight tickets(US-India) in Dec were above $2000 mark. The annual GDP growth rate was a dismal 5.3 in March 2012. To sum up in the words of a senior economist, India's economy is suffering from "policy incoherence, shifting global risk appetite and a comatose government"
Not the best of time for sure..
Yesterday was the presidential debate here in US, I did not follow it closely to make any intelligent comments about it or form any opinions. Lately I haven't really been following any economic-political stories. All that I seem to notice around me are the Apples and Google's of the world and their petty wars. Guess this is what happens when the newsprint papers gets replaced with smart phones and I only look at news feed courtesy Mashable on my Facebook page. No more Dickinson commentaries for me, no more argumentative friends around. May be after posting the blog I should read a real newspaper for a while.
In the last few days there were two small motions that I noticed around me that triggered a chain of thoughts in my damp head.
The chill is slowly trying to sneak in and how I hate the lousy companion it has chosen-the dim witted fog and the half-hearted rain. The depressing fog greets you every morning and the constant drizzle tests your patience through the day. This sloppy weather is making me miserably miss the sunshine, so much so that I sense a certain dull humidity in my own head. I hear myself singing,
Give me some sunshine, Give me no rain..
Give me another chance, I wanna love the weather again!!
Before I ramble more about the weather, I will come back to the initial purpose of the blog and talk of the two motions.
1) The digital clock on my mobile going from 9:30 pm to 8:30 pm as I just crossed over from EST to CST. We were driving back from Indianapolis to Champaign and since I don't drive, my job was to extend moral support to the person behind the wheel and keep her company with an entertaining but not too distracting conversation. I would have so wanted to shut up and snore peacefully but I was duty bound. Since I was so awake I glanced at my mobile and saw the digits change in front of my eyes. To lose time on my way up and then gain it on my way back is no bargain but still to get an hour at 9:30 pm, made me suddenly more awake!
2) I sat by my window watching the light drizzle outside with not much of an appreciative look. There were clear signs of the onset of winter, the changing season. As I registered all the changes around I noticed the rain drops landing on the sun dried leaves, the leaves getting detached and fall freely to the ground. For me the movement of the falling leaves was a beautiful personification of Tom Petty song Free Fallin'..
And I'm free, free fallin'
Yeah I'm free, free fallin'..
I guess both these triggers were significant, they made me conscious of time and change. Perhaps the two most powerful things in our life's. Its really a cathartic experience to look at life sometimes and think how time has ushered in so much change in us. All the 'what if's' that come to mind, wondering what life would have been if time took you back or forward in life. All the people and places come to mind and I just smiled for everything that has come my way and brace myself for the winter that is inching closer with each passing day.
However all I ask for is a little reassuring sun somewhere in the sky above! I have no answers for this solar fixation but I blame my pahari genes... :) Or may be the sun is just symbolic of a constant that I like to have in my life when everything around keeps changing with each passing hour..
Mausam badla hai dil ki basti mein kya keeje, jaante hain kyun par keh na paayein wajah kya keeje, dil, dil hamesha se hi tha masoom kya keeje, aaj samjhe hai dhadhkan kahan gayi hai gum shayad isiliye yeh ikraar baaki hai... shayad isiliye yeh intezaar baaki hai...
Epilogue: Thank you Shivani for writing the second stanza of the poem :) Loved the song from Barfi so much, that had it running in loop through the day, and the song inspired the first stanza. And the poem will be incomplete without the following dedications :)
sache aur ache dost dil ki baat samjhte hai.. aur shabdo ke jaadugar hote hai..
sache aur ache dost dil ki baat samjhte hai.. aur tasveer main badal dete hai.
sache aur ache dost dil ki baat samjhte hai.. aur ache gaane sabse pehle share karte hai.. sache aur ache dost blog padh ke dil ki baat samjh jate hai.. sache aur ache dost bus aise hi hote hai kya keeje..
I had 20 minutes before my creativity class and so i just went and sat outside the library to soak in the sun. And I just became a part of the game between the sun and the cloud.
For a brief 10 minutes I was aiming my camera at the shining sun and the clouds floating beautifully at a distance. Perhaps that was just part A of the celestial game. The winds of change soon came over, I felt a cold chill run through. The brightness around disappeared in a fraction of time as a big dark cloud overshadowed the sun. I angrily aimed my phone camera at the arrogant cloud.
They say 'every dark cloud has a silver lining', Thank God for cliches they do come true!
I encouragingly smiled at the sun peeping from between the clouds and walked back for my class.
"Not all who wander are lost .." ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring I may not be a fan of the Lord of the Rings(gasp of horror!) but I absolutely love these lines. I like to believe that I am not a lost soul even when I wander apparently lost in both land and in water . I listen intently to people who have a plan in life, know where they want to go and how they want to go there but I am not sure if I believe them. I appreciate their way of life, wish them well but I choose to take refuge in the above line again. To each his own!
here it rains all the 12 months here the clouds roam like cows here the eager green grass closes in on the door...
The rains in India are special, it doesn't feel the same in firang land. No words can ever do justice to the beauty of the rain. Thanks Rana for the beautiful captures :)
Photo credit:sr
Nam sa bhutta jab sukhi se lakdi ki chulhe par bhunta tha..
Kuch mehfil se jam jati thi chulhe ke pass
Aag ki lapte,bhutte ke daane kuch jugal bandi zaroor karte the
maa dhyan se ek seera pakde, ghoomati rehti thi bhuute ko aach pe
dheere dheere jaise seekta jata tha bhutta
lalach bhari aakhon se Neebu ki khoj shuru hoti thi..
A friend of mine just posted on Facebook that wherever we go we just try to recreate the sound, the smell, the taste of our childhood. For me growing up in a hill station, bhutta stands out as very symbolic. It a sight that follows you all along the curving road- a small shanty selling corns to tourists. A smell that makes you remember your small farm, small kitchen garden and the loving hands that grew them..A taste that recalls all the conversations with friends walking along the mall munching on a corn. But for now all I can do to recreate those memories is sing along these lines: Hari thi man bhari thi, laakh moti jadi thi Raaja ji ke baagh men dushaala odhe khadi thi O~ Kachche-pakke baal hain us ke mukhada hai suhaana, ichak daana Bolo kyaa? Bhutta..
Today was the start of possibly the last year of my formal education. I don't know whether it was this overarching thought, or the effort of sitting in different classes to still figure out what classes I wanted to take or the nagging thought that the 'what-where next in life' question will stare back stronger with each passing day that made me slightly less at ease. I could sense a certain pressure in the air..
Once in a while you live through one such days, when you feel a little overwhelmed and insecure (at least I do). And this is what I do- I go about life doing the things that I am suppose to do while keeping a ear out for 'my song'. I don't dig into my song collection and try to decide which song would help me sail through the day, I simply tune into a radio station in the hope that something will come right by my alley. I have this weird theory that if randomly I come across the song that sounds just right then there is someone playing out music just for me. And yes there is someone who is watching out for me. Physiologically speaking my decision to not put the effort to search for the song and instead wait for it to play places me in a category of people who cannot claim to be truly action or result oriented. However I cannot feign happiness to prove or qualify as someone else..
I let myself be content with the sudden wind fall of a good song that played out just for me..
So today Pandora genome project picked up the following song for me as I sat down to figure out my classes, my resume, my winter travel plans..And I knew that this was 'my song'
"Another turning point a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go So make the best of this test and don't ask why It's not a question but a lesson learned in time [Chorus] It's something unpredictable but in the end It's right I hope you've had the time of your life So take the photographs and still frames in your mind Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial For what it's worth it was worth all the while.."
I guess this will be the theme song for the year that starts today...
"In a life lived long enough, there are strange symmetries that we recognize only later, if we recognize them at all- moments when an experience or a perception has a parallel moment in another time, a balancing echo, years in the future, or perhaps years in the past, a moment when it feels as if a circle is closing, encompassing and completing something infinitely precious.
Often this circle begins or ends, or sometimes begins anew with a slight disturbance in the world of the senses- a sound, a smell, a glimpse of something, an inkling vibrating just below the level of our conscious thought. This is a world we civilized people have been taught to dismiss. When the French philosopher Rene Descartes wrote "Cogito ergo sum" in 1637, those three words in Latin- 'I think, therefore I am' ushered in an era historians call the Enlightenment. In a sense, we still live in it today; it is a world in which the mind is elevated above the senses, where rational thought is judged superior to feelings. And yet, and yet.. things happen in our lives that challenge this conceit: slight shifts occur in the firmament of everyday existence, the turning world hesitates imperceptibly, the known constellations of experience inexplicably blink-- and everything is changed.
These are the moments that do not lend themselves to rational thought; they are entirely unusual.."
This is again a piece that stayed with me from some Sunday news paper reading in Kolkata. It stayed with me because I believe in it and I am a hoarder, everything that resonates with me goes into my collection.
But honestly some days are just too queer to explain. You cannot explain how certain things play out in a certain way.
Then when you close your eyes at the end of the day, the fading ripples of the day slowly conjure some familiar patterns, and you can sense a certain clarity below the surface, as if 'a circle is finally closing' in front of your tired eyes..
In life all we need to know is 'one thing', as simple
as it may sound it is the most honest realization that I have ever had. I cannot
claim to have explored an exceptionally wide array of experiences in life. I
cannot claim to be the medallion at the end of the race. And I ain't no 'Sir Oracle; when I ope my lips, let no dog
bark!”. I guess enough self-depreciating disclaimer, however we do grow
wiser about some things as we go along.
When I learnt cycling back in first year in college, I
would borrow it from my second year seniors and would try learning by myself in
the free open spaces we had within the hostel compound. I took to the road only
once I had learnt enough so that I wouldn't 'repeatedly' become the victim of
cycle-hazing/ragging by the school kids who couldn't fathom how someone could
make it to college without knowing something as basic as cycling. This fear
wasn't a figment of my imagination; I learnt the hard way that you take to the
road only when you can confidently be decently inconspicuous there!
However this learning wasn't the 'one thing' that changed the course of my
life. More basic than the fear of taking to the road was the challenge that I
couldn't balance my cycle. I would focus on the wheel to make sure I wasn't
banking either way and try to adjust the handle only to fall each time. Seeing me
struggle 'the oracle doth spoke- child take your eyes off the wheels and look
straight ahead...just don't look down.' He was the hostel guard; 'baba-ji' and
he just shouted across to me from his watch tower and went back to smoking his
bidi. Honestly that was the only fear I had to overcome, I didn't have to fight
any rowdies or intimidation. I didn't have to learn to focus and align my eye,
hands and feet and the wheel, I just had to learn to look away and look
straight ahead. The rest would fall in place.
Yes it was that simple, just one thing to get the wind
talking as I rode along in my purple ladybird!
The other anecdote isn't this prehistoric, this one is
more recent. As I ran along the beach in Rio, I was jealous of all the people
who could get into the waters and play with so much ease and absolutely no
care for the world around. At that point swimming didn't just look like a
physical activity it looked like a cultural hallmark. In India I felt our
relationship with water is ostensibly sanctimonious or a little hypocratic in
some ways. I have always loved the waters but I had never experienced this
freedom and ease before. I'll have to admit that I have never been to Goa,
and everywhere I did go I found myself around people who would walk gingerly
along the shore secretly wishing they could throw themselves in the water with
no care for the world. As a society we soak in so many inhibitions that we are
afraid to be seen all free and wet and frolicking in water! All this critical
realization wasn't the one learning that I needed in order to woo the waters when I went swimming this summer. I didn't enroll for any professional help
and went all cultural. And what a cultural learning it was, my Chinese roommate
was kind enough to religiously coach me for the first two days.
Her Chinese bunch of friends took me under their wing and I was
learning 'frog style' just as all Chinese kids in primary school! The south East
Asians were the only persistent swimmers, the Americans loved to take a quick
dip and then sloth and float in the summery sun. The learners, the having fun
and the lazing crowd all shared the same lane and you could strike instant
comradeship with the exchange of few smiles and sheepish grins. I persistently
went every alternate day, initially just playing around and then slowly pushing myself a little harder. I observed others swim almost effortlessly but for me the waters were like a strong opponent that I had to fight with my hands,
legs and my breathing. I had
some what learnt to move my legs and hands which had some resemblance to the
swimmers around me, but my breathing was killing me. I couldn't time it, and
would end up coughing out or drinking in the water. I knew I was doing
something wrong, I was missing something. One fine day after admiring for long
a Korean guy who swam past me every time I was gaping for breathe I
asked him for a helpful tip. He was caught a little off guard and in that
slightly awkward exchange of English sentences mid water I could only pick up
the word 'rhythm'. Yes that is the 'one' thing about swimming, following your
own rhythm.
The hands, legs, breathing all need to follow a rhythm and when you
get one, the waters sing along.
Ah I feel so inadequate at times, learning to do all
the things that most people seem to know since birth. And may be this should be
a consolation for me that fundamentally I am just missing out on ‘one thing’
before I can join the elite club. So I tell myself it’s just ‘one thing’ that I really
need to know before I can drive someday. Inshallah!
I can
think of no better way to write this post than to use the words and images of
people I took refuge in when I was really bored and aimlessly scouting for just
anything under the sun and hidden somewhere in thin air .. Although
technically that wouldn't qualify as being bored because i was reading
interesting stuff and not really doing 'nothing'.
For
me the '2003' milieu extended till 2008 (maybe) because I read the
following article on a boring lazy winter Sunday morning in Kolkata. I don't
remember if it was TOI or Telegraph because we got either depending on the
newspaper dada's whim. I couldn't agree less with the article so i took my pen
and diary and wrote the damn thing down. Reproducing it here so that I have a
electronic version with me (Google didn't show up anything when i tried
searching) and sharing it across with the few loyal readers I have!
'Boredom's
doldrums are unavoidable, yet also a primordial soup for some of life's most
quintessentially human moments..
A
long drive home after a frustrating day could force ruminations. A pang of
homesickness at the start of a plane ride might put a journey in perspective.
Increasingly these empty moments are being saturated with productivity,
communication and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array
of slick mobile devices.
We
are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is
one of life's greatest luxuries- one not available to creatures that spend all
their time pursuing something (can't figure out the actual word). To be bored
is to stop reacting to the external world and to explore the
internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover
something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory
about the way the universe works. Granted many people emerge from boredom
feeling that they have accomplished nothing. But is accomplishment really the
point of life?
There
is a strong argument that boredom-so often parodied as a
glass-eyed drooling state of nothingness is an essential
human emotion that underlies art, literature, philosophy, science and even
love...'
This
breezy read was followed by a philosophical entry from a book, 'The unbearable
lightness of being' that I read in Hyderabad, 2010. The book did not talk of
commonplace boredom that we experience in short spells of idleness. It talked
about a chronic aimlessness, emptiness, ‘lightness’. I felt that the
following extract beautifully captures the whole essence of the book
“The
heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground.
But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the
man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of
life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives
come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the
absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into
heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half
real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we
choose? Weight or lightness?”-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness
Of Being.
This is
the thing with philosophers they can use dense arguments in the opening and the
middle only to leave it open ended in the end... I love to do the same
sometimes when I post a blog at 1:39 am.
There are some questions that we try not to ask ourselves; we are afraid of the answers..Honesty is not the sweetest potion for the bruised soul. I know of the people I have hurt and the times when I have been selfish.. And for all the above times when I ask myself if my regret today would earn me forgiveness for the past I am afraid of the answer.
There are some equations in life that remain unbalanced; we are secretly afraid of change.. To change for someone is not the easiest for the human soul. I know of the people I alienated and the people I failed. And for a small subset of people above, I sense their uncomfortable absence but I am afraid to change the nature of silence in any way.
There are some moments in life when you pause and reflect and realize that we are but human in the end., far from perfect..
Yet we can strive to be a better version of ourselves as we grow and learn each day. Yet we can have the heart to love and accept the less than perfect version of the people we meet.
There are some moments in life when you are just caught unaware on the camera. Lost in thought somewhere in your own world..before you shake off your reverie and break into a wide smile for a pestering shutter-bug but beware sometimes these are just a bunch of posers!
epilogue: Dedicated to my old laptop..-''Not' for the camera.. but actually 'For' the laptop!'
However the post turned out to have no reference to it. I guess just another of my imperfect ways to say: Dear old Dell you will always be missed!
"Old Friends Old Friends Sat on their park bench like bookends Newspaper blowin' through the grass Falls on the round toes Of the high shoes Of the old friends Old Friends Winter companions the old men Lost in thier overcoats Waiting for the sunset The sounds of the city sifting through trees Settle like dust On the shoulders of the old friends
Can you imagine us years from today Sharing a park bench quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy... Old Friends Memory brushes the same years Silently sharing the same fear A time it was It was a time A time of innocence A time of confidences Long ago it must be I have a photograph Preserve your memories They're all that's left of you"- Simon Garfunkel
photo credit:sr
I tried to put on a ‘Carrie Bradshaw’ hat as I tried to delve into this question, which always elicits a different response from both sexes.
I have always asked a question for curiosity sake from all my friends who are contemplating proposing or getting engaged or tying the knot in near future. I mean anyone 'in the process of', ie the stage that is beyond the safe single pad but not quite there, something like the 'no-man's land.'
Well to be honest there are quite a many questions that I can ask such a person. But then again I can recall many a college hostel nights that turned into wee hours of the mornings, debating and deliberating on many of these questions. And I might as well use a little high school Shakespeare to sum up these conversations:
“Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.”
So when it comes to this question, we are all pretty much Gratianos. Now some folks may get indignant at being referred to as Gratiano, but that's not even the point, it’s the missing ‘two grains of wheat’ even after the whole discourse.
So I just pose one standard question. The response I almost always know, but I still do the ritual just for the sake of collecting enough evidence before posting this blog. And apparently that day has come finally!
So moving on to the question:
'Madame/Monsieur: How do you feel about your life changing decision-Confident/Confused?'
I will have to admit that I manipulate conversation/people to get one of the C-words out or try to gather enough evidence in favor of either one of the two words.
Well whatever it is, this question inevitably evokes the same-different response from men and women!
Same as in the answer is the same always and different because the answer is always different for men and women(I just wanted to make the statement more obvious because sometimes my sentence construction gets totally misconstrued and the wittiness gets downright obscured. Well some people might even try to contend the wittiness part but then I am running the jury here so-'Objection Over-Ruled'!)
So here are my survey results- men always seem to be 'Confident' and most women confess to being 'Confused' ( a little/ totally, somewhat) with a very small fraction wriggling into the Confident zone. So before I propose my theory a disclaimer:
There is nothing like absolute truth so there might be exceptions, I accept cultural, socioeconomic and even political anomalies.
Then again my sample set may be biased because I am talking about people I know and not downright strangers.
There might be resemblance to people I know and who have had this conversation with me, but I have tried my utmost to conceal identities.
I detest all gender biases and stereotypes but regardless I believe I have a point to make.
With close female friends I always know when I broach this topic, I am in for one long conversation full of stories, anecdotes, assurances, reassurances, novels, movies...
The arranged marriage conversation starts with a confession of being ‘totally confused’. Slowly it banks towards feeling slightly more ‘confident’ about ‘this person’ than all the others paraded.
The ‘love’ or ‘self-arranged’ conversation starts with a confession of being ‘totally confused’ about doing the right thing. There are fears of throwing in the towel too early or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (‘the baby’ being the friendship along with the freedom-‘the bathwater’). Usually here the conversation can bank either ways- a reassured happy ‘the end’ or a contagiously confused ‘hmmm’ on both sides of the line/chat/booth.
So here is the first observation, most women (guilty for generalization) can talk an awful lot deal. The ‘confused’ response gives them the perfect alibi to speak a great deal. So because women can speak a lot they come up with the ‘confused’ response.
Speaking again in some/most cases is related to thinking; those who over think always have something to say. Most women (guilty for generalization again) over think even the smallest details of their lives. So again the hyper active brain cells align towards the ‘confused’ response as they try to foresee different scenarios.
I have created the perfect stereotype: women talk a lot and think a lot and therefore respond as ‘confused’ to the above question. Again exceptions exist but some people like yours truly can be charged as guilty on both the above counts.
Coming to most men I know, they like to sound as the most confident people at least pre-game. They will tell you that ‘she’ is undoubtedly the one and quickly dart off to the next topic of discussion. Talking is not their strongest suit in most cases and the quicker they can wrap up a sticky conversation without much dissection the better. It is somehow this urge to strut as the stronger, confident person that explains the choice of response.
The decision-making process takes an entire 180-degree turn between men & women. Men predominantly play the pursuers and in most cases look(think) before you leap is an alien concept when faced with a moving(moody/mysterious/unpredictable/confusing) target! The reflection, contemplation, thinking, confusion comes later when the act is done.
I have created the perfect stereotype: men try to escape conversations and their mantra is to act before thinking and therefore they respond as ‘confident’ to the above question. Again exceptions exist but most men can be charged on guilty on both the above counts.
The bottom line: you can trust neither men nor women when it comes to this question. Psychologically, genetically socially each is more inclined to react in a particular manner but honestly no one really knows the answer to this question. At least not one that can be accurately put across in words, so the apparent myth-‘it just feels right’!
What a long wordy post.. when I could just go and post the following song. I am confident of at least one person who is never coming near this long post-my brother!
Any further insights, arguments, comments are always welcome to develop the theory better..
The earth is the playground of the mortals, the sky
ostensibly of the immortals.
The earth is a riot of colors, the sky a somber
blue.
They are miles apart, stretching far far across the
eternity. They are so distant that we fool ourselves believing in a make
believe horizon; a place where the earth and sky actually meet. It’s a
beautiful illusion but nevertheless is an illusion. I believed in the beauty of
this horizon, I believed that the horizon truly exists.
I thought if I waited long enough for the night to
give way to morn I could see the sun shine bright at the far off horizon..
I thought if I waited for the bright sun to set, i
could see the golden colors play at the distant horizon..
I needed to see the horizon to keep my faith
alive..
I needed to see the horizon to keep my hope alive..
I needed to see the horizon to believe that the sky
& the earth do meet eventually..
And then one day I just realized that all i was
doing was waiting. Wait for something to happen and was so deep in self-doubt
that i needed to look into the mirror each time to believe in my existence. I
wondered if to wait is to cease living.. Life often brings us to this point of self-doubt,
where we choose to either stay put and wait or stop waiting for things to
happen.We wait stoically and patiently and perhaps long
enough to see the horizon after the long day ends.. Or then sometimes we force ourselves out of this
reverie of waiting and choose to stop believing..
Yet every time I watch the sun set in the vast blue
waters of the ocean I still believe in the transient beauty of the moment...I guess acceptance of this transience is the only believe that can tide the eternal wait for some of the most beautiful moments of life..
I was impressed with the depth of research and description and analysis of the battle of Waterloo. To be honest I just skimmed those pages in my haste to finish the novel but i wouldn't call them irrelevant. Same with convents, we get a glimpse of the history and a slice of philosophy/beliefs/personal convictions as the plot narrated the irony of a character that has lived the life of a convict and then running from his captors’ drops into a convent in the dark night. The characterization of Paris as it plays a confidant, then a hiding place and then the hot bed of the French revolution gives a candid glimpse of the city and Hugo’s relationship with the city. He calls Paris home- a place where you seem to know the most and yet a place that changes so much that you can never really claim to know her.
There are moments of sheer beauty in the book, moments of identification as the characters deal with their inner conflicts and dilemmas; the poignancy of human struggles for the relationships that define our existence. However the poignancy of the moment when Jean returns home after Cossette’s wedding and pulls out the little clothes he had bought for her when he first rescued her as a small child, and weeps into, touches the deepest chord- how do you just let go..?
These are few other quotes that made it to my diary:
"One would have said that he was hesitating between the two abysses-the one is which one loses one's self and that in which one saves one's self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand..."
"It’s a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How all-sufficient one finds it! How being in possession of the false object of life-happiness, one forgets the true object-duty...”
Then there are those gem of sentences which succinctly say all in the fewest words possible.
"There is a way of avoiding that resembles seeking..." & then I again smiled when I read the following lines: "The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is simpler. It is two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each of other's qualities", I am not sure if it’s a sign of 'true love' but my two cents would tip in favor of courtship :)
The entire gamut of emotions, the fickle fate alternatively playing the good and bad Samaritan, the historical depth, literary beauty, insightful analysis of human character and the symbolism(the candles) all made me love the book!
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