Of foolishness and forgiveness

Yes I was a fool.Yes that’s an understatement.No I will not elaborate.

What does one say when the magnitude of their stupidity surpasses everything they know?When they look in the mirror and a stranger glares back reproachfully?When their conscience berates them for letting it down?When you expect people to look through you because of what you have done , but then they MAKE you look AT you?When they care enough to have faith that it was not you but your demons that they saw?

And what exactly does one say when the weight of others' forgiveness weighs more than the weight of your foolishness?

Nothing.

IN SEARCH OF THE SELF

People, who I know and respect, tell me that they are in search of the ultimate truth. Or if not that , then in search of some meaning and the purpose of our very existence.

My mind is such that it would be interested in answers to these questions.But something inside me tells me that the answers are most likely to be so simple it would let the seeker down.

Moreover , I dont think i can even begin to understand the universe when i dont understand myself.I have heard time and again that no one can understand you better than yourself.True .But you can add:- and you are much more than you can understand.

I know how i would react to particular stimuli.But i don't know why.I can break down the emotions into tiny segments but i don't know where they originated.Ialso realized a few days back that i had started a scavenger hunt for emotions.I was a starved vulture looking out for any scrap of meat and then falling on it and trying to relish it for as long as possible. Good or Bad wouldn't matter.

Whenever i felt something...felt anything...be it negative or positive i would nurture it and try to add fuel to it until not even a shadow of the real emotion remained.I would think up situations and imagine how i would react just to simulate the feeling.

confusing? But think of it like this. Suppose your fingers go numb suddenly, wouldn't you do anything possible to get some feeling back even if it meant hurting them by pinching them? Simple as it gets isn't it.this insane urge to feel. But i fear, what happens when your fingers stop feeling numb. Would all the damage be irreversible?

Then again is the fear a real one or is it another sad attempt to feel?? how will i ever know? i will never know....

Impossibly Human

How many studies have there been on human relationships? How many "experts" have claimed that they have the solutions to human dilemas ? How many humans have proved exceptions to all the studies above? How many studies are there to "study the studies"? alright! i will stop.The answer anyway is either innumerable or i dont know.

Personally this topic has occupied most of my thought time. And like walking along a pebbled path and turning over the pebbles to find something new, i have always found a new train of thought for the same topics.But the end point of most of these tangents are that we humans are utterly ridiculous. We are cursed . We go round and round and round in a million circles.Each of these circles dont make sense in the first place.So they definitely dont make sense when the connect with circles of other human beings.The pattern of our lives end up looking like the mindless doodle of an infant.{maybe even that is saying too much}

Ok.Pause.Why am i rambling so much?Well an incident occured today which totally surprised me.There is this old security guard of a our neighbouring hospital. Well now he would have been totally unremarkable except for one thing.His rulership of the parking lot. He keeps moving the board"hospital parking only" towards our office thus stealing most of our parking spaces. Then he goes ahead and saves the stolen parking spaces for people who bribe him. We have all thought one or two vicious thoughts abut him when we drive down and see all the spaces full.

Today i found a space and triumphantly parked there. He came running from somewhere to protect his precious space.He promised he would clear up some space elsewhere for me. I acquiesced to see what he would do next. He started moving the bikes an inch here and an inch there, all the while looking at me and grumbling about his back. I realized this was not a task he could do so i moved the bikes myself and squeezed in my bike. I assumed he would ask me for money but he just smiled and went away. He had made me late by 15 more mins so any charitable thought towards him vanished.This incident slipped from my mind by evening.When i slowly limped to my bike on my injured leg the old man appeared again from nowhere.I thought he was going to ask me for money now so i started limping faster. He walked faster.Finally he got to me and said

"madam.you were alright in the morning what happened to your leg.anyway, take real good care of it.put Iodex and massage and keep it warm water for sometime and then take lots of rest.It will become alright" so saying he smiled and walked away.

I think i was just too stunned to react. I stared after him in perplexed amusement.Maybe i should have felt guilty for harbouring bad thoughts of him.

But i was too happy! Happy that i had found one of those elusive reasons as to why i am still idealistic and amused because he very well could deny me a parking space tomorrow even if I was covered from head to toe in bandages!

-a tribute to our old man, the protector of all innocent parking lots.

Love

A conversation with a friend triggered a thought process. It was the most tried and tested topic of all times.Yeah, what else but love.Love a security blanket for some people,the light at the end of the tunnel for others...... A stranger you want to talk to but you can't cause you don't know the language , to most. For me , till now love has been a Concept. I have believed that it is something made of everything that is pure. I have thought that it is something that would be available in abundance if the world had been perfect.But since our world is so flawed, i have thought that the concept has become so complicated that we can only dream about it but never understand it let alone achieve it.
But I revisited that thought today. Is it so complicated that we cannot understand it , or is it so simple that we have ignored it? Is it not love that a mother feels when her baby first smiles at her. If so then what is so complicated about it? Is it not love when you share your sandwich with a friend even when you are hungry? When your friend is crying and all you can do is hug her and hope to ease the pain? When you move a puppy away from the dangers of a busy road?When you save a movie ticket stub for years , just because you watched it with someone special?When you die for your country just because you were born there....when you smile at a stranger on the street ....when you say thank you ...when you clasp the hand of someone who has no hope left anymore..... When you pray for ones you never knew and will never know , just so their suffering is eased..... When you sit in front of your t.v and cheer for your team even when they can't hear you...
What is it but love? Why is it looked upon as the gold at the end of the rainbow? Why is it hyped up so much that the very essence and purity that love is made of gets marred by jealousy and anger. Why do we keep searching for something we already have? I have come to realize something.Everything is a circle. We keep looking forward to something we so desperately want ,that we never realize that we actually left it behind.

C'est la Vie

Another chapter has ended. No I am not talking about a book.Though come to think of it I wish I was. While reading a book you always wait eagerly for the next chapter regardless of whether the current one is tragic or happy. The words "what next" play in the mind constantly like a background track.

Life unfortunately is a different story. Atleast for me. I love living for the moment and the what nexts never bother me. If anything does bother me it is the "what was". Oh how I hate those! There is nothing you can do about the "what was"s. They leave you feeling helpless.

Imagine this.You get so comfortable on a particular road in life. You go to and fro a million times and you know all the curves and bumps;all the funny signboards and all the secrets. Then one day Fate rubs sleep out of her eyes and looks at you. You are smiling. She thinks "that can't be right." So then she comes up to you and says " hey there, girl. You are done here. This is a one way road for you now. You can walk by once more but at the end you gotta decide which way and move on." She knows what you are going to say. Why not, she has heard it all. Before you can utter a squeak she's gone.

So you walk slowly down the road, one last time. Trying to keep alive the dying embers of experience. You revisit every memory try to feel what you felt before. You remember every tiny bit of emotion that had been evoked and a sad smile touches your lips but you don't notice.
You reach the end. The other roads beckon you. You don't spare them a glance. You are too busy staring back , wistfully, at what you have to leave behind. The pain in your heart is like a song. A song mourning the loss of a loved one. It's too hard to bear.

You try to shut the doors of your heart. You are surprised to find them open in the first place. You had thought that you had been vigilant, but sometime when you had gotten comfortable enough to forget, the risk had been taken and the doors had opened. Now all that was left was regret.

You realize that the time for decision making had come. You look unseeing at one road then the next. You don't really care. You look back at the one you have to leave. Your every thought goes towards distancing yourself from it. Your mind is strengthened by resolution but your stupid heart is weakened by pain. You stand motionless. You cannot afford to break. As the mind becomes stronger the doors shut with a painful creak
Without a single nod or word of farewell you turn and walk down the new road.

Conflict

A friend of mine asked me to write about confusion and conflict....At first glance she seems to be going through a phase of conflict due to confusion....Is that truly the case? I think not.Conflict did not arise from confusion in this case.but what happened was that there was conflict in the mind, a war between desires and necessities ; a war between what's right and what's easy ; a war between inner voices....a war....a war between choices.

Now what happens when you realize the conflict is too much for you? What happens when you add 2 + 2 and get 4 when you wanted 6. To put it in a nutshell , What happens when the mind refuses to face reality? It takes the easy way out.It cloaks the core issue with this deceptively innocent thing called confusion.Cause as long as you are confused you have a decent excuse to not do anything. To remain stagnant and hope some external force pushes things one way or the other. As long as you are confused , your conscience rests easy.

Harsh but rings true.Now on one hand this is pardonable. All of us want easy, care free lives, free of responsibility.We like to take the path of least resistance.Why ? Simply because it is the most easy and natural thing to do.We try our best to live in a state of inertia. We tread carefully , making sure that we don't upset the delicate balance of our lives. And if this inertia is upset by something outside our control , well there is that convenient scapegoat...yes destiny. So we adjust until we are comfortable again and begin moving along this new trajectory with an easy mind. It was meant to happen wasn't it?

Now why is this pardonable? Cause control is an illusion. you will never be able to plot your life to the last bit and expect it to work accordingly.So since it is an illusion, why bother right? Wrong...can you rest easy knowing that you didn't try? That you had no hand in trying to shape your life the way you want it? That you sat back in the courtroom waiting for the verdict from the faceless jury, and you didn't even hire your lawyer?Are you comfortable with not having a say?

Now as is the way of the human world, both paths have their own merits and demerits. What you have to decide is who makes a better bed partner? comfort or satisfaction.

What came first?

Yes , what came first?The chicken or the egg.This is a debate that i have never given much thought to.I have always looked at it as an amusing quandary that would never get solved, so why bother.After all who cared. And then in one of my deeper moments i realized it was an extremely important debate.You could draw parallels from it to any situation in life, in fact to life itself. If anyone solved this problem then it would be like untangling the most crucial knot of life.

I personally do not want to know the secrets of life.But i could relate this dilema to my life.Most of my life till now has been spent in passing off everything bad that i have done as a reaction to something else. "This happened to me that is why i did this". This has been the all powerful sentence that soothes the most troublesome of consciences. I have always been able to look at it from a point of view in which i was wronged first. But now that i think of it i wonder. What if the action i was reacting to was actually a reaction to some action of mine? How would i ever know? What right did i have to an easy conscience? How can i ever blame anything on anyone , when deeper thought places the blame back in my court?You might tell me this is as pointless as the chicken and the egg problem. Well pointless or not, it has been extremely liberating.

How?Well ask yourself this.How many times have you held a grudge against a person? more importantly, how many times can u remember the reason later on? Usually we carry a grudge without stopping to think why. The reason being we human beings feed on emotion. Emotion the only thing that tells us we are alive, we are more special than the rock there. Emotion , both negative and positive, makes us feel we have a right to our space on earth.

But today after i thought about cause and effect, i asked myself what need had i for this particular emotion.Did i really need an emotion that overshadowed thought and reason and basic compassion for the fellow human being, to make me feel important? I realized the answer was not important. I would never be able to hold a grudge against someone without giving it second thought. And once second thought sets in you can't really hold a 'mindless' grudge now, can you? Hence I am free, not by much maybe but more than before. And as i learn i realize, the most complex solutions lie in the most ridiculous of situations. I mean com'on "the chicken or the egg ?" not very profound is it?. but "what came first?" yup that unlocks quite a few doors for me.Yes its as simple as that, "What came first?".

SELF PITY

I have stood on that particular verge before, a million times, put up a token protest and then jumped down.Jumped into darkness and have been embraced by it.Felt immeasurably comforted.Have spiraled deep into the darkness that deluded me into believing my problem was unique and hence so was my life.I have plunged happily away from Light.
Light,my enemy.Light that laughed at me and condescendingly showed me that I was a speck.But the soothingly whispered words of darkness had soon drowned the mocking laughter.I have lingered long enough to feel the high of low.
And as always I have been yanked back into light.I haven't fought it.I welcomed Reason and laughed along with Light at the momentary gratification delusion had given me.Yes,I have stood there before.
Today I stood at that verge again.I put up a token protest.I arched over to begin the graceful dive.But today was different.Today I stopped.Today I thought "To hell with Mr.Darkness,let me go climb the hill instead."
If this was fiction i would have been laughed at (theres still a high chance of that).But as it is not,I'll remember today as the day I had to make a choice.A choice between easily got comfort and painfully earned satisfaction.

I was made for the hills,
I was made for the sea,
I was made for solitude,
But silence killed me.

TIME

she runs
over hills, over plains,
through snow, through rains,
she runs.........................
neither to escape, nor in pursuit,
neither to defend, nor to loot,
she runs.........................
neither a warrior, nor a thief,
deaf to wails, blind to grief
she runs.........................
neither to wealth,nor to health,
neither in haste, nor in stealth
she runs.........................
of horrible beauty is her mighty race
great men cower being unable to face,
yet, she runs.........................
trip her, trap her,
catch her, bind her,
try as you might,she runs.........................
oh heartless beauty! why do you run?!
won't you wait till my task is done?
men might cry, but heedlessly she runs.........................
the wise silently watch her way,
the fools try to make her stay.
obliviously she runs.......................
hence folks don't be like everyother person i meet,
care not for the running feet,
cause you might worry and stress over your watch , but remember she runs.........................

my first crush

i thought this poem that i had written about my first crush(long back) would be an ideal start

my first crush
when i turn around and see you there,
i feel something very rare,
i want to tell you that i care,
but all i do is stand and stare...............

my friends think i am a fool,
when i tell them you are cool,
they tell me there are better ones,
but i prefer you to other funs..........

everyday i wait for you,
hoping for a glimpse or two,
i never felt like this before,
i am just not the same girl anymore..........

and then one day i saw you with her,
talking as if the world was a blur,
hot jealousy pierced through me,
when i realized n my first crush was not to be..........

my heart drooped,
my shoulders stooped,
after my first crush failed,
all other joys seemed to have paled..........

on my vehicle,one day,i went to the market,
stood there wondering where to park it,
"may i help you?" drawled a voice rich and lush,
turning around i found my second crush.