Space and solitude

This space is free from bitterness.
This space is free from loneliness.
This space is free from pain from sadness.
This space is free from expectation and disappointment.
This space is mine.
This space is me.
This is my solitude.
This is my peace.

New adventure and old mates

I was looking at that cut on the backpack, and looked at the backpack itself. It is decorated with painting that look like some five year old got its hands on it, but I know when and why each one of the paintings on it came. I made them, I know when and why I made them. I made them to remind me of the great time I am having and the travels that gave me sense of adventure and awe, through which the backpack was there. Now, I can not use my backpack as the strap has come off and the zips wont come together. It made me sad to look at it. I kept trying to hold the pieces together, but all my efforts went to waste and despair hit.

Looking at my desperate attempt, my mother suggested - "Just buy a new one. Why do you carry such a dilapidated bag anyways?". How do you answer that, why do I have worn jeans, why I wont throw away the tattered floaters and why cant I buy a new backpack. In the past years I have traveled a lot, and these have accompanied me. I know them like the back of my hand, I have learnt each and every seam of the jean and it is now my second skin. My floaters now are finally adapted to my feet. And then there is my backpack. When I bought it years back the shopkeeper told me the weight limit and the sturdiness and gave a timeline till which the bag would last. The timeline passed a year back and I was happy that it had no issues. I have surpassed the weight limit and tested the bag under severe conditions. All the essential items that the bag has, is all I need to survive anywhere. I could live out of the backpack.

Now I am in a dilemma that has also caused much disturbance to me. Do I need a new bag, do I want to leave this bag? While my mothers suggestion is very logical, it makes me wonder how is it that most of the things are so replaceable now. I have hardly seen people getting things repaired. If anything is not functional people just go ahead and replace it with a new one. Have we come to a point in our lives, where it is easier to just replace non-functional entities than to try to mend the broken pieces? Does this extend beyond the material realm of things to even the relationships, career and life itself?
Each and everything is a bit more complex than before. The phone was a simpler circuit than the hidden software driven smartness of the all powerful handheld device (I cant just call it a phone anymore, it is much more). To attempt to fix it in case it ever breaks down is to undertake hell. The simple ball point pen, a refill costs as much as a new pen, but the casing is dumped. Where does it stop, does it even stop? If a relationship breaks, will you replace the person in your life?

I am afraid to know the answer. But today I am not willing to let go of my bag. I will make an honest attempt at mending it. And guess what, in the remote corner of the locality I live in, I found a little shop.

She repaired it, and now it feels better than before. I am now ready for a new adventure with my old mates.

Invasion of stinky-diaper aliens

I log in to the social scene accessible from facebook, what do I see? A load of photos of engagements, marriages, kids. Then it gets worse, once there are kids, even the photo of the kid burping is put up with grinning parents with the kid. While most of the travel, meeting and other normal pre-married life photos make sense to me, the kid scene is a bit much to handle.
I truly wonder if all the little bags of goo and drool are not just alien invasion that changed my otherwise sensible friends to a mass of mush! I feel lucky that the couples still keep some details to themselves, like the date and method of conception and the first poop colour. Other than that, almost everything is on social network. I dont know if they expect us to involve us into their lives or are just sharing the moments. I wonder what the pre-FB parents did to share these joyful to them, pain to others moments. Maybe they had secret societies where they met and then told the little details to each others. Maybe the other friends like me who have no inkling in appreciating a foot long, semi-human who is not even familiar to them, are supposed to keep out of this zone. I have full speech faculty and watching someone choke on words is a comedy at times, so, someone who cant speak is a mystery and an object of no interest to me. Their first words or the first steps and other first things must be very interesting to psychologists, biologists and other scientists interested in studying development and behaviour. On the other hand for a commoner like me, it holds no interest at all.
Worst yet is the part where you have to participate in the little ceremonies and be a part of their naming, birth and first year birthdays. Unfortunately these are a must social scene, else it means alienating yourself from your close friends from the pre-baby era.
Then, while these thoughts hog your mind, you just glance at this one picture. The picture where your friend is holding an alien lifeform, and for some reason the friend looks like they are in absolute bliss. You have seen this friend through absolute patches in life, you have made a joker out of yourself just for a twist in the lips that resembles a smile. You then realize, what the friend needed was just this little alien lifeform, to bring that heartwarming smile. If it is worth that smile, then this speech deficient, mass of muscles and fluids, stinky-diaper alien is absolutely precious.
At this point I pick up the phone and call the friend and ask how the bundle of joy is. As it truly is a bundle of joy, especially for the friend, and listening to the excitement in the friends voice gives me joy too. All I can hope at this point is may you and your family smile like this at all times.

Dedicating to all my friends new to parenting.

Name of fear , wings of dreams

I am not a religious person, but I cannot describe the overwhelming feeling I feel when I walk into any place of worship. I see people with hope without hope, with fear, with love all walking into the temples. Some have tears in their eyes and some just love the God, they are worshiping. I feel small, I feel insignificant. All the pain I have fades and feels insignificant in front of all the troubles of people around me.
They are regular folk, walking besides me and talking besides me, laughing and chatting, but here they shed their masks and speak the truth. They accept and acknowledge their sadness, desires, wants and needs. They pray for themselves, for their loved ones, for everyone or for no one. I look at them and think of a prayer, whatever whoever deserves and fights for, I hope they are able to get it. I know there is uncertainty in life, the factor that keeps us at our toes. I hope for the ones who are fighting the battles with all their might, for what they deserve most, get it.
Isn't my prayer futile; i wonder. The ones who are willing to bet it all for a dream, are the ones who do not care for the failure, they will cry for the hurt they faced, but will get up from the ground. They will nurse the wound and dust off and walk with a stance that is stronger than before. These are the people, who are not here today looking at the ground they fell upon, they are the ones staring at the stars. They are the ones that are moving the stars to makes a space for their dreams in sky.
For them it is not the name, not their name, not anyone's name that matters. They make their own labels. They make their own Gods. The rest pray those Gods that were left behind by them, they worship the inner strength of the ones who stood up.
I get off, and get out of this place. I acknowledge the ground that is under me, but I am not letting the ground hold me down, because I am discovering that I have wings. The wings of courage to wipe the tears, the courage to face the darkness inside me, to feel the moment that is as is, call what is by its name. I am calling on fear. I am calling to control it, to take spread the wings and fly. Fly into the unknown and make space in the stars for my dreams. My dreams are not of the earth, my dreams belong in the sky.

Pebble wish

It started out the way all days start, and then I saw a pebble. A smooth, simple pebble that was not from this city at all, it had the face of a pebble that had seen the wild waves that kissed it, tossed it and sculpted it into the very shape it was. Over years and years, its coarseness and rough edges had smoothed out and it had a band of contrast in it. Suddenly I had a wish to sit where the pebble had come from.

Where was it from? The  pebble was not from the ocean, no, it had a more homely character, something inland, perhaps a stream of sweet water that flows into a large river. I don't think it was the pebble's location I was thinking of, I was thinking more about where I want to be. Soaking the waves that lap me on the shore of a crystal clear stream of water, that is surrounded by a thousand birds, crickets and frogs singing in perfect harmony. I want to escape. It is just a wish, but it is still a warm wish that is making me smile.

Why should I even care, I wish a new wish everyday? That is not true is it? There is a true wish, something like a dream that is in all of us. A wish to make something impossible, possible. There are is such a wish that the thought of it brings this smile on the lips, a secret smile that escapes the lips when you least expect it, like on the bus, on the street, sometimes in the shower. Such a wish brings the possibility of a warm memory that the heart will treasure for all times from the moment it is fulfilled.

These are not the wishes that built the detailed machinery that sent men to the moon, but it is the wish of a boy, who thought he would walk on the silver dust on the moon and eat the cheese that was there. It is the wish that makes you want to take off from the ground and fly like the birds that soar the sky. When such a wish is chased, it becomes what the reality can never be.

It is not just a pebble, it is the place, the feeling and all the beauty around. This wish has stayed with me for a long time, and now it is time to fulfill it. Now time has come to find the most apt place for the pebble and sit besides it. This wish to be where the pebble was just a simple wish, so I think time has come to make the wish come true. To open the online ticket portal and escape with the pebble.

Mango shower

The scorching heat gets to all. The landscape looks bleak, everything is under the blazing sun and hurts the eyes. The temperatures zap the energy out of all living breathing creatures. Nights are restless and sleep is disturbed. Every morning is a day into low energy, and no remedy or respite seems to be around except to sit in artificial environments with artificial wind, or energy hogging air conditioners. A dip in pool is a welcome respite, but stepping back into pedestrian lifestyle from the piscean one is disappointing.  Sometimes it feels like this is the mirror image of our dissatisfied lives, where each day is as mundane as the one before and the brightness of everything around with the large amounts of information still cannot instill the clarity that the mind seeks. What it seeks it knows not, but always in vain it looks out at the horizon to try to see a cloud full of hope that might respite the thirst that is building up.
On the worst of these days, the humidity playing a role to make you squirm in the very seats, something changes. You suddenly notice a beautiful golden yellow aura spreading through the evening and colouring everything in its soft hue. Something magical has begun that has no rhyme or reason. Looking up at the sky you realize the overhanging bulged clouds get darker and heavier every minute and fill the sky. All you wish to do now is go out and wait for the drops that are adding to the excitement and thrill that has just turned the air electrifying. The winds blow to sooth the frustrations that had built up in you, and the everything seems lighter. Suddenly heart sings out a song in expectation as it waits. There is magic brewing in the air, and like helpless creatures we are pulled in awe to the aura. On this day, the mind had given up hope, heart was filled with despair. Did it seek love, did it seek knowledge, or just a change so drastic to quench it with awe of the change. It finds it in the unexpected moment as it is filled with the aura that surrounds the mind when a new discovery is made.
The expectation is rewarded as the first drop touch your hand. Cool and whole, and yet fleeting feeling that lasts fraction of a second makes you smile. Then another and another, air is now filled with the sweetness that earth withheld from you through the summer, the sweetness is enhanced by the drizzle of drops that fill the atmosphere now. This sweetness fills every iota of you, every iota of you. The sweetness overwhelming now makes you smile and want to dance to the drums of the thunders and the music of the winds. The first summer showers are here. The sweetness of this shower is filled into the mangoes and all creatures that are born of the shower alike.The showers where the sweetness fills all life with love and hope. The mango shower.

Ostrich to Pheonix

I am no footballer, but love the idea of playing the sport. I tried twice, both times have left me with pain that left me disabled and in pain, for a while. The last attempt at the sport has left me limping, and the toe hurts. A yelp is heard leaving my lips time to time. Many concerned souls have warned me to stay off the field and many others smile at my plight. I won't deny the magnitude of pain, it is definitely a deterrent currently to many other activities. On the other hand this not the only fall I have had.

Some falls have nothing to do with sports. There are just those ridiculous phases that loom on ones head where absolutely nothing goes right. Everything one touches seems to crumble to pieces and all one can see ahead is hopeless despair and loss of any logic in life. In such moments, the only thing that seems sensible is to hide behind the blankets of self pity and fear of next failure. At this moment, one can only wish that burying one's head would render him invisible to the world, but all it feels like is an ostrich that has left its rear exposed to the world.

When I think back on my best days at this moment, I smile at myself, because after all the fear and tension, I am still here. The world has not ended, let me correct that, a figment of the world has ended, that moment has passed. I have learnt something from that moment. I have learnt that things will be fine, all I have to do is pick myself out of the thick blanket and face the next day. One day at a time I picked my battles, till I won my first victory, and then another and another. Then I turned the tides. 

The magic hardly happened when I won my battles, the magic happened when I decided to stop hiding. Yes, I am an ostrich, an awkward, clumsy and stupid one at that. I am not here to listen to anyone's opinion of me especially today. If you chose today to judge me then it is your reckoning, and let me assure you, it is a bad one. The reason I am standing on my feet today is because I have a fire in me, it feels like last of embers today, but great fires start with little sparks. I will find my spark. I will not sleep and fade into the depth of nothingness. I will rise to be my best, and then, will be better than that. 

Yes, that is the fire that needs to be kindled at all times, every time I have made the mistake of letting the fire die, I have found myself in darkness. Every time I have fallen, I have found new strength to rise and be better than what I was. I am an awkward ostrich, but I am one of a kind. I have in me a fire that will make me a phoenix.

Before I start to fly, I rest today. I will gather my strength. Today I have determination in my eyes, and the embers in my heart. Today I heal.

Pan of dreams

On a rare occasion, when you foresee an increase in your capacity, your dreams and desires scale up to fill your capacity. Just a little extra money in my pocket that I wished to spend on something that I never had made me look at new possibilities in life. I walked thorough the shopping streets and other than the usual hustle bustle of clothes and accessories that a woman's heart so desires; I started looking at other possibilities. Here, my mind fought a battle; on one side stood logic and reason, and on the other stood the dream of something new and exciting. I found myself considering two contrasting options, a pen drive I much need on one hand; and this beautiful, elegant deep royal blue non-stick pan on the other.

For someone with no kitchen, and no true patience to cook with love for all around me; a pan seemed rather indulging. I wondered why it is that I suddenly thought pan was so interesting. I have always loved a beautiful, well stocked kitchen, with a sense of homeliness and character. I like cooking, I sing as I cook, I like the way the seemingly simple ingredients transform into something cohesive and smell of memories and new experiences. They excite all senses, and all this happens right in front of your eyes, like true magic that in some way is influenced by you. I think this dream to cook for the cooking's sake sparked this desire to buy the pan. The pan was less of an object and more of a representation of a dream of what a little more with pan could be.

A pen drive was on the other hand more practical. I work on many machines, with a rather vagabond attitude to machines. I love the cloud, that is the most sensible of inventions that is brought with the internet. However, practicality is associated with drabness, it cannot be ignored; but, when the mind has decided to dwell upon a dream, especially one that can be conjured in that pan, arguments of practicality seem futile. A dream is always so, it tries to push the limits of reality. A dream demands one to give up logic and practicality and look at what can be. A dream is a like a version of future that is in your hands to be shaped into existence. A power of what can be in one's hand now. How can one deny acknowledging a dream? Denying the existence of a dream is to deny the possibility that oneself can be more than what one is today. If so, how can I deny what a better tomorrow can be?

This was after all, my share of extra money, that I set aside to treat myself. There cannot be a better treat than to see a figment of a beautiful tomorrow sitting on my shelf and knowing that somehow I am taking a step towards it everyday. It would make me smile, to look at that blue pan, sitting and smiling back at me. Teasing me, treating me to dream more, strive more and live a little more. So, I dropped the sober practicality of a pen drive and chose the royal blue pan. As I walked all the way back from this expedition I smiled to myself from time to time, because what my shopping bag now was not a insignificant article, but a dream of something new to come. Now this pan sits on my shelf, with space for more dreams like a potter's wheel next to it. It also has a sign on it with date, and it reads "The beginning of a pan of dreams".

I am a pickle

Have you a memory of the best summer food from childhood? It could be your favorite ice cream or mom's preparation of your favorite curry. Here is another task for you, why don't you describe how the best memory of this tasted? Yes, not the food itself, but in your memory what taste did that summer leave? Food itself seems to be composed of just salt, sweet, spices and sour tastes, but the sensation created is undefinable.
I can never do justice by describing my favorite pickle as spicy, "mangoey", spicy with flavors of  red chilly, specifically of the Guntoor variety of chilies with the characteristic pungency. Here is a better description, my favorite pickle tastes like the summer warm air, with the taste of clay from the clay pot it was stored and marinated in. It has the warmth of my mother's hands and the aroma of the secret spices she always uses. That is befitting description, but is is something you can't think of at all.
This is the problem with definitions. The desire to bin experiences and characteristics into specific words that are universal dilutes the feelings and the character into something vague and ordinary. As much as I would say it is true for food, it is true for people as well. It is so common for us to label people as timid, uncouth, smart etc., just to make life more tangible that we fail to enjoy the idiosyncrasies and the variety around us.
We do it to ourselves too. We think of the way we want to be perceived by others. I think I am smart, confident, attractive and a ordinary person (I have much to say about ordinary in my next post), but I am not. At times I am stupid, timid, unkempt, and a complete bag of crazy. What I truly am is everything and nothing. I am all the characteristics and none of what I thought I was. 
Every time I try to define myself, I discover the definition is far from the real truth. I don't see why it is not true for others. I think a person is. Yes, a person just is. A person is not a combination of features, but an experience for me, a variety in my classified mundane day and a warm memory of a good day with the person.
That is why I think I am just me. If you still insist on defining me, then define me as summer mango pickle. Because, that is who I am on my best day. Tangy, warm, spicy and an interesting summer mango pickle.

The first - the start

It's one of those deceptively simple questions, that when you open your mouth to answer, meets with silence as an answer. "Who are you?". I can tell you my name, but that is just a sequence of sounds that others use to identify you from the rest. I could tell you my profession, but that is just a series of coincidences and effort. Right now, right here, I am.  In every sense of the word I am a wanderer and an observer. I wander, but in search of something special in everything mundane. I observe what just is, as is, nothing more and nothing less.
On the other hand, what I am writing in these pages are not observations. Observations  anyone can make, but I am making an attempt to articulate the experience of things. They are often so difficult to describe as words belittle the true sense of these experiences. What are these experiences you ask. They are nothing special at all, just everyday things, but the little actions and gestures that have more to them when compared to their simple appearances. This is the shreekiness that I have.
If you have ever hesitated from a new experience, then you will understand what I am talking about in the pages to follow. The rest will just be learning to live all over again, but this time I will be staying awake and paying attention to the details that I never felt before, because maybe I was too busy to observe.
I hope through these pages, I learn what a beautiful experience it is to be alive with all the senses active and mind in its own space, and thoughts experiencing the shreekiness. Hope you enjoy the journey too.