Solace in Solitude (and vice-versa)

I often wonder, in times of distress, when we blame God or pray for respite, God would have just... shrugged his shoulders! Not out of indifference, nor out of callousness, neither out of the sadism we often accuse him of, but simply, because of having no say in our matters. Simply because, whatever distress we may be reeling under, was visited upon ourselves by the fellow humans we are doomed to share our spaces with, by the circumstances which erupt out of these damned encounters, of all the misery of having indifferent, callous and sadist people around us. God, I strongly believe, is just looking down with saddened eyes, drooping shoulders, despairing with us in our distress, for the lack of an agency to relieve us of it. And, it is precisely this empathy, this mutual communion in despair, that makes heaven what it is.

On earth, we are consistently pushed to acknowledge the futility of endeavouring towards a meaningful companionship. I guess, we are persistently made to experience the very singularity of our existence, in the entire multitude of mobs, people, relations, friends, family, everyone. We constantly have to face the loneliness we all carry within ourselves, that dark void we vainly try to illumine with the hope of ever fathoming it, that cold dungeon we dupe ourselves into believing could ever be conquered. 

Its this constant denying of our essential nature, this mad searching for a mate, and then that frugal celebration at having chanced upon someone who matches the list but who ultimately fails the entire purpose... this never dying craving for human companionship, where nothing could be more chimerical, is so exhausting. I am tired, I so am. I am tried of building relationships and then watch them crumble into a debris. I am sick of    camping down by the riverside, lush with promises of bounty and plenitude, with the hopes of establishing myself there, and then having to look for a new place because the land has just gone barren, all of a sudden. Its this constant heightening and crushing of hopes, I am tired of. Its this perpetual disappointment that makes me just so sick in my stomach, I am so emotionally "done for", that I truly do believe in the non-existence of a happy human relationship. I would rather doubt should I get across one. Things with the blackest core seem the rosiest on the surface.

After having borne the lashes of human misery, I finally arrive at the enlightenment- its no use shying away from solitude, since it is the only constant shadow that remains with us.
When I unknowingly glance out of the window, and looking at a lush green tree swaying in the breeze, that I realize not a single leaf sways the same way or in the same direction, its then I understand the immense solitude each one of us needs to negotiate with. We may stand together, we may live together, but we may never, out of no chanced or pre-determined possibilities of events, be in sync with any other being. Its a single course that we chart as life, and its a lonely road we tread, and any notions of an alternate reality carry their own demise.

God up there would just sit, and watch us tree leaves ruffling in the wind of times, and as he watches some of us drop down, or turn dry, he would just sit there and shrug... because none of it was his doing. He never wished it so. But then, who would you blame, God, the leaf which couldn't hold on, or the tree that let it go?

Its best to sit back and let the wind carry us. In the end, we all reach where we had to. Its only a lonely journey, altogether.  

22 gone on 23

Exactly two hours left for my birthday. Oh, should you know, I take birthdays very seriously. Its like, something as sacred as the Sunday Mass. Yes, you have to attend it if you are a faithful friend, admirer, family member (these don't have an option), or whatever or whoever. And as I sit anticipating an avalanche (and nothing short) of wishes and just a light breeze of gifts appropriate, I muse over the year I had... the 22nd year on earth. Quite a year, that was. I think I really have grown. I have known disappointments and failures, but above all I learnt how to deal with them.

1. I came to realize humility beats every thing to dust, and no matter how big you grow up to be, a strong hold on the ground is more endearing than any pinnacles of success you might ever reach.

2. I learnt the sad truth about change, the fact that, its the only thing constant. I saw people change overnight, I also saw fortunes following the same trend. And yes, while change in them both is intimidating, it is overwhelming, but at the end of day, every high tide subsides.

3. I learnt no matter how technologically advanced or sophisticated we may become, laws of nature have governed us and will continue to do so.

4. I have loved and lost. I have sworn off love and have seen myself blush crimson when someone out of the blue was able to touch my deepest chords.

5. I knew that life is what you take it to be, and when the going gets tough, the only way for the tough to get going is to hold on! I learnt just how much "hanging in there" helps.

6. I learnt that loneliness is a haunting disease, it plagues you anywhere and everywhere, but then, solitude is something which can conquer the dread.

7. I learnt physical pain is all engrossing, and it can literally make you forget everything that has been mentally harassing you. Not to say, physical pain is the resort to deal with emotional pain, but then, of the worse I have the bad lot most of the time, and I should just be thankful.

8. I learnt that people love you the most when you don't bother what they might be thinking of you.

9. I learnt a little bit of distance always becomes the saving grace.

10.  I learnt we all are as ugly, as fat, as pathetic, as lonely, as broken in the inside. The only difference is how gladly do we manage to smile despite all that.

11. I learnt that no matter what happens, there is a power higher than any you may have come across, that cares for you and keeps you blessed.

12. I learnt that whatever your talents are, however small or insignificant they may seem to you, there is someone in the world who would value them, and value them for good.

13.  I learnt that the present, more often than not, is all you have, and the best time of your life is now.

14. I learnt that gymming doesn't work if you don't diet simultaneously. I also learnt that no matter how miserably you fail at losing weight, you will always manage to turn on someone on this earth, and thats quite something.

15. I learnt if something that you desperately wished for doesn't happen, its basically because life has something grander in store. And yes, I learnt, if you think things can't get any better or worse, thats just your lack of imagination.

Yes, thats quite a lot for a year, and what a year that was!
Time of my life!

Here on, I welcome another year, hoping it to teach me more, and transform me into a still better person.

Happy Birthday ME!

All for Love

I'll paint my lips red.
Pinch my cheeks for a rouge
Put on the lashes that never were mine,
And flutter my eyes out of love-
The only thing pure, love becomes me.

I'll hold my breath in
For my collar bones to stick out
Let my bosom assume another shape
And I'll become what I am not-
For the love so pure that it becomes me.

I'll wear the suffocating corsets,
Don myself in lace and satin,
Do my hair as fashion commands-
I'll change my countenance for the love-
Purity of which restores me, it becomes me.

I'll laugh at the lame jokes
Bend my neck at just the right angle
Heave a sigh when none is required
And I'll let it be known, that its love-
So pure, that it becomes me.

I'll go that one extra mile, thinking little-
Won't weigh my actions against the odds,
For love is what overpowers me,
Mitigates my superficiality, I supposed-
Would evoke a pure love in you too.

But while, my love, pure as it is, becomes me
Your love, ephemeral as it is, bids adieu,
When I drop the charade -
How completely lost is love to you?

The Road Not Taken

Sneering, they tell me -

"What you do is not meaningful.

Think, what a decade later would you be?

Accolades hoarded so far, only abysmal".

Truth they say, not forged their decree.

Meaning not immanent in my endeavours-

Meaning which only they foresee,

The only life manifest in those "now's or never's".

The world they inhabit offers solace 

To undying obedience and a bowed head

A noose charades for a pearl necklace,

Laurels due to servants thoroughbred.

Anarchist you turn, challenge you dare

"Down with the autocrat", factions instigate!

These servants sting you with venomous stare

Duped loyalists! your life they debilitate.

Meaning of it all, they demand to know,

Why this perjury, whereto bound the wayward-

Why not sow the same seed, the same plough?

What end is your life heading toward?

Do they know the shallow meaning,

To which, solemnly they themselves adhere?

Do they know every willed act of their's

Is but ordained by a greater profiteer?

Glad then I am, for no such meaning abounds

In a life I lead, in the decisions I undertake,

The truth in me, to me my life expounds

What happens otherwise, is not for me to partake.

Unchartered is my path to the Promised Land,

Though doubt and uncertainties cause dismay.

If its the "Road Not Taken" for me,

Then, its the Road not Taken, all the way. 

The Closure

Revelations are daily affairs. They come down to us in a moment of epiphanic bluntness, like a thunderbolt in a tumultuous night - it illumines the darkness for a split second, makes the order of things visible in a strange light, catches one unawares and then disappears; an impression so sombre yet enlightening that leaves one dumbstruck at his/her own lack of insight. The things have always made perfect sense, if only we had the eye for it. Revelations are not long, sordid lessons, sermons that can be read out or passed onto from fathers to sons, they are not genes that cannot be helped with. Revelations are those little secrets we all look for in our own peculiar ways, those personal enigmas that we all try to fathom, and which, after years of persevering, happen to just animate themselves towards a coherent meaning we overlooked in our vain pedantry.
Revelation that was, when it came upon me after four excruciating months of denying, eliding and wishing away a past I thought is non-negotiable. Revelation it truly was, when it occurred to me that the answers lay in front of me, and I only need acknowledge, only need flip the coin otherwise, and see for myself the world resurrect itself from the chaotic debris, I had watched it fall into. I don't know who owes the credit for saying that things have a time, and a course to run, and the end is the only plausible direction any beginning would steer itself to. The whole notion of eternity and timeless don't apply to all the things, eternity is emptiness, eternity is the toil of Sisyphus, eternity is when after a shattering experience one tries to put the pieces back into a whole and make some meaning of it. Eternity is loneliness, eternity is time come to a halt, because life ceased to be meaningful.
Passions are terrible! they are all-consuming. They demand total surrender, an absolute annihilation. They ask you leap tall bounds, plunge into the deepest depths, try deeds unheard of, push yourself to the extreme, and leave you battered and at a loss. Love is one such. For some reason, I cannot stop myself from grappling with this, and though I have persevered with all my might, I know resolution lies nowhere in sight. Although, resolutions elude me, revelations grace me nonetheless. And here, is the latest - a closure that granted me a deep respite, a relief from a haranguing passion that plagued me for two years and took another four months to wane away. A revelation that caught me, one night, tumultuous among those crying fits and bouts of loneliness, like a thunderbolt, that left me dumbstruck. I was cursing my heart, holding it up to ridicule, when a voice in me interjected- Do you feel unlucky for having eyes when you come across a blind man? Or wretched at having legs when you see a maimed person? Why then must you feel such revulsion at possessing a heart for having come across a person who is heartless? Why do you consider yourself doomed for having the faculty to experience passions that wrench you, for someone who could not imagine the scope of his deficiency? Why curse your plenitude for the penury of the other?
Passions are all consuming, but what would life be bereft of them? Straitjacketed? Bland? All safe and secured, but utterly unbearable. It is what makes our stay on earth, human. I have a heart, and I feel the stings and whiplashes, but I also feel the warmth of a glow, the flutter of the cool winds, I feel the tingle of the first showers, I feel it all. Wishing away it all for a life placid devoid of passion, is paying too high a price.
For how pitiful would it be, while rushing for a routine day, I don't happen to smile at a bright purple flower growing wantonly beside concrete tartar roads! How devastatingly would I shame myself before God, disappointing his endeavour to catch an attentive soul, not blind to heart's bidding, not maimed by the daily mechanical toil, not gone cold to the warmth that still abounds.
Revelation, it was! A closure it brought me.

Long, Distant Relationships

One thing technology and whatever that kept happening on the world political stage that plausibly would have set in the age of globalization, have done is make the world a small place. It definitely keeps hopes high, the Promised Land is certainly somewhere close, "at hand"! There has got to be a person that would make life meaningful, and thanks to Edison and whoever that was who invented the Internet, chances of "chancing upon" such a person have increased exponentially. Although, no consolation that is! I only know as many people, who in the course of our interaction, I only wished I hadn't. And the only interactions I have had with these chanced encounters I have no qualms in wishing away, were through wireless connections that float around me, that I breathe, take in and that surround me! Very romantic to live life vicariously through signals, electromagnetic waves, fibre optics, et al.
Oh the darned Internet! And the despicable mobile phone! Thanks to these, I live, not in the here and the now, but in a metaphysical sphere, that often overpowers my present, because it entirely draws its victuals from the enticements of a future perfected! Enticements nonetheless. For how long could someone relinquish their present day, talking, chatting, dreaming, desiring and then immediately deferring it to a future which is incessantly promised, and sadly never realized. The sheer waiting, the palpitating corporeality of so much at stake, the unwavering supernatural faith in the good of all things, how innocently they all get murdered in cold blood. The chimera, like all others, breaks, and then the existentialist crisis cracks down like a thundering of an angry Jove up there, and I, poor thing, caught in the midst of it, simply crash and burn!
Yes, the sad truth about long distance relationship is that they are doomed from the word "go". Its a slow poison, that drips down like an acid, drop by drop, on your hope- that is strung taut at both the ends of the world which the two lovers inhabit, and though it is the only thing which connects them, it breaks inch by inch, atom by atom... moment by moment. Its like, being left at the crossroads of life by a "phantom" of a person, a person you don't even know exists in the voice you hear from the other end. Life seems like a dream turned nightmare. And you wake up suddenly because the nightmare got too unbearable to endure, wondering if the dream was real and vehemently wishing the nightmare wasn't, knowing fully well, its the unreality of both that pierces like a blinding light into the darkness which suddenly has come upon you. There's no point in asking "why", because there is no answer to it.
To the say the very least, it is devastating! Nothing hurts more than a hope gone in vain, nothing leaves someone more caustic than earnestness gone waste. It kills something inside, as the final nail in the coffin! It aches, and it goes sore, and it has to be left unattended because that moment when the relationship has decayed to its very core, you realize it was meant to. Not a healthy state of being! Not something you bargained for in the first phases of high hopes!
Its the times! We have become impossibly connected, and yet ever so alienated. We come close, only to see the ugly side of things, and then run back in repulsion and horror, like scared little children. Its the times, that this alienation from one another has caused a corresponding alienation within ourselves - the incommensurability of actions and words. When in a world, words don't account for actions, its utter imbecility to bank on promises! Life teaches you things, and you learn the hard way!
Well, you (wo)-man-up! You gather yourself, get a grip and walk steadfastly down the road you had chosen. Its an indelible scar, and you bear it well, like a medallion - a  reminder of the times you probably thought you were knocked out for good, but then you survived nonetheless! It didn't kill you. It just chastised the idiot in you! You emerge out saner, less of a frantic in your head, a little of cynic and a good amount of skepticism ingrained to check any reckless associations.
You start valuing the present, because it is all you have. yes, present is all that is there- to life, to relationships, to career - the very here and the now. The today, which is the only thing offering itself up to you, in full faith and absolute surrender- at your service. Its rude to let it go for an elusive future, which elides the present for all practical purposes, and gets converted into a past you wish you never had.
So say thanks to the thundering Jove, and trod on! The world remains a small place, and that special someone is just at hand, mobile phones or no! The Internet or no!

Keep your hopes high! It takes efforts but they are all worth it!

We The Penelopes

Confound the Cinderellas and the Snow Whites who reign our infantile imagination! Those are the ones advising us to wait for the right man, one day, he would come galloping on a white horse and "claim" you. Till then, sit tight, learn all the activities that might help you serve him (better known as "accomplishments" in a girl) and when he arrives, thank your stars while the "happily ever after" scrolls daintily up from the bottom of the screen. Sighs! no one talks of the after scenes, because then fantasy risks getting real, and reality is ugly, often "fantastically counter-productive", if I may. Anyways, there are instances of what happens after the "happily ever after", but sadly, the issue is dealt in hushed voices and furious whispers! No one prepares you to bear the impact when reality strikes. You are left to smart under the blow, and fend for yourself. When you actually are able to grip the monster by its horns, you realize, all this while what you expected to be a fairy with a halo and sylph like wings, is actually this horrid thing staring right into your "charmed" eyes. I have my heartfelt sympathies if it has happened to you, you have my shoulder to cry upon, and I'll be more than glad to gently pat your fantasy-ridden little head which is in a tumult keeping the presentiments in mind. You have my awed applause, and reverence, if you lend me your shoulder, because I am one of those many women, who wait and pine away for a galloping horse than never appears in my line of sight, for a call that never comes, for a man that never existed. I am one of those many women, who stay enshrined in an ivory castle, looking out the window for a Lancelot or an Odysseus to come and "claim" me (as if I am showpiece on a mantle, waiting to be claimed), and weave my future dreams on an enchanted weaver, and live a life doubly removed from reality. Maybe thats why it hurts so much to fall without the safety net, from the lofty heights of imagination and fantasy, on the hard hitting reality.

But then, when you are done whining and cursing Cinderella and Snow White for their good luck and for duping you into the make-belief of the shared good-luck of all woman folk, there comes a moment of revelation, that it all ends when you put your foot down and squash it under your heel. You only wait until you wish to. Penelope was stupid to have waited for her husband fighting the decade long Trojan War, and rejecting suitors! What was her lot, after all? A discontented husband who found that the youthful bride he left before the war is now aged, and to be fair lets grant that was a hard hitting reality too (why must men not have their share of weird fantasies?). So he feels he's being caged and trapped and finally sets on to another decade long sea voyage, and poor Penelope, waits again! 

I think, we are a result of the choices we make. If today I choose not to wait any longer, and plunge head long into life, and take it as it comes, who stops me from living. Why must I long for a man to come? I'd rather anxiously wait, if at all I have to, for the people I am yet to meet as life progresses. Its astoundingly strange how the unnoticed advent of people influences our life, and its often pleasing on a hindsight to gauge the changes that occurred when we weren't aware of them. How pleasant to dwell all night long into those mysterious forces that work strangers into our life fabric, knitting together two threads into one. Waiting, or anticipating robs the sheen. Doesn't even the quantum theory says something on similar lines, observation alters the result? Well then, its time you, me and every Penelope here takes the Grand Fall and while we are mid way, lets shriek, lest fill our stifled lungs with gushing air, and enjoy what it means to be free ... from all the waiting, weaving senseless dreams and feverishly believing in them, freedom from inhibitions, from moral codes that apply to only us, lets for once, tell the men what they miss when they are terribly late!

As for me, when I have children and they happen to be daughters, I am reading them no fairy tales, so that they harbour no silly notions of white horses that turn out to be lame mules, of Knights in Shining Armours who are no better than retards in tin foils, and no ivory castles to incarcerate them! I'd rather tell them how women made their own choices and did not grudge the consequences that didn't turn out well, because at the end, its something they wanted to do at a particular time, and they did it! Nothing else matters! Absolutely nothing!