The burning water

Have you ever trusted the waves of the sea?
the anger within them, the burning fire in water which promises to ruin the tired you. The adrenaline rush which it fills you with a splash, that roaring sound which dissolves you and you feel that you are sea yourself. You bask in the glory of being the mighty. The yesteryear minscule you becomes grand for the moment. Thank you sea.

My experiments in quarter life crisis

There was this sudden disturbance for which I could not find out a reason. After conversations with people who were going through the similar phaseI realized that I have also been hit by 'quarter life crisis'. It started around 25 and became quite unbearable . I read alot on the subject. The best thing I came to know about it is that it helps you to build a strong foundation for your life if you sail through it succesfully and you are least likely to experience mid-life crisis. I just thought of sharing some adaptation tricks I have devised. They still need some more time to yield results but the effort is making me positive each day.

1. I never wanted to work in such office.

After slogging for years and taking huge loans for the studies, you finally land up with your 'dream job'. You did lot of reasearch in your initial years, fought with your parents to do what you really wanted to do and here you are questioning the relevance of it at this point of time. It's a dream come true yet deep down you ask yourself, 'Is this what I really wanted?' 

It's ok. Finally you are here. Stop looking into the past and  thinking what you could have done instead. Set some short term goals in your work life. You may not have an idea what you want to do ten years down the line in life but you might have answers like I want to smile genuinely more often when I am in a meeting, speak from the bottom of my heart on the subject or be more engrossed in what I do. Build up on these. It helps. Rememebr 'Rome was not built in a day'.

Don't think of quitting the job. There must be something good  about it that you chose it at the first place. Please don't overstretch your working hours. It does not help anyone. Go home. Spend time doing something which you really love.

2. Where is my love?

It hurts I know. You are on the wrong side of 20s and you do not know where your soul mate is. You were always the kind of person who wanted to live all phases of life with that one person.You found that person also but the person found his/her soulmate in someone else.  Bollywood sets wrong expectations. True unconditional effortless love exists but for the lucky few. Make peace with it. Try being with people who you think understand you and appreciate you for little things. There is nothing good as healthy flirting but beware of those obnoxious flirts who make you feel  choked. No negatives please! You don't have to chase that someone who is just not intersted in you. You are making yourself pathetic by chasing them.  Every lock has a key or may be your key is lost in the universe. In that case, you might end up being single forever. It's not a big deal. Give a whack to people who pity you for being single. Love yourself all the more when you feel dejected and lonely and how do you love yourself? Eat well, work on your fitness level, develop a style of your own which may not be the latest fashion but you are very comfortable in it, cook for yourself during weekends, have a cup of coffee and long conversations with people who you enjoy with. You need people for reflection and not necessarily affection. You deserve love. Rememeber ,'Beloved is within'. One best thing about it is the more you love yourself, the more the universe would love you. Sounds preachy. It works.

3. Friends; they have changed

You thought your college friends are your forever friends. You try talking to them and they don't understand what you are talking about. They have differnt lives. You cease to be siamese twins. Life has moved on. Your directions have changed. It does not mean they don't love you. Cherish the time you have spent together. Keep your expectations low. Drop an email or make a call on birthdays and remember the good old days. Relate to them; that's what friends are for.  Feel lucky to have spent some good time with them. They have a contribution in shaping up your identity. Forgive them if they are not able to be the way they were once. 

3. Parents; can't they leave me alone?

They irritate you. They want you to settle down and if you are a girl, life is hell. I know. Talk to your parents. Tell them you are clearing some mess in your life and you need their support on this. Don't experss your anger infront of them. Never argue. Stiop blaming them. They are living their lives and as a child you are an integral part of their lives. Be thankful to them. Take them out for a shopping/movie. Sit with them and talk to them on general subjects. (their health, realatives or may be see the old albums). Learn new recipes from your mother. Try speaking to your grandparents more often, if you are lucky to have them till now. Listen to those piece of advice. Believe me it's a treasure. Since, I have lost my grandfather recently, I still regret not spending lot of time with him which I could have. 

4. Siblings; where did they come from?

So your siblings are very differnt from you in everything now and you don't like to speak to them often. You earn more than them and hang around with differnt kind of people altogether. It happens. You can keep the differnces aside and talk on the common things. Take out the younger ones for shopping. Play those childhood games once in a while to refresh your bondings. Plan a surprise for your parents together. Remember, they are the first friends god gifted you. This treasure can never be replaced. 

5. Listening to that godfather's advice?

We all find some people really impressive and look forward to have an identity similar to them. We start believing in everything they say but do you realize what damage this person is unkowingly capable of inflicting on you. You change the trajectory of life. You live it their way and not your way. Beware of this. Apply your head. Your life's aim is not success in a conventional way, it's something very personal. Listen to people but you don't need to follow everything they say. What all matters is a drop of sweat after hard work and that million dollar smile you crave for. You get it in your own way and may be not their way. For you, it could be just a running session in the morning or dancing incessantly till morning, for them it could be solving complex sudoku for hours. Get rid of godfather.

Oflate I am trying these and it is making me really happy. I would continue adding to the list. I am sure I would sail through like I have always. Happy sailing to you too. 

Oscillating pangs(Part 2)

They say the world stops,

For me it moves,

Against the inertia,

Slower and gradual,

With the connecting dots

Line or a full stop?

Oscillating Pangs

When I play with the strings,

Never does it whisper in your heart?

The beats together, forming the circular rings,

hoping to reach your centermost part.

For me it happens always, that I tinker with my ways

to reach the lighter you.

Seeing you virtually, with the ‘green’ light,

I often laugh at my plight.

Didn’t you get that sudden pang,

When the telephone bell suddenly rang,

Hoping to hear the softer you,

With the possibility to see the real you.

The hopes ended in vain and the pain oscisllating again!!

Let’s end the mind game of ‘red’ and ‘green’

Let me remember the days when you were not so mean,

I wonder if it is just my wish list

Would my desires will always be covered in this thick mist?

Random Echoes

It's intersting to see how nature favours assosciation of things to create innovations.This happens in two ways;when the old sheds and when union happens.

Alchemy is so amusing. The search for gold, the coversions for something better. It's evolution into chemistry which made us believe in amalgamations to form something new. The same happens when insects moult to form a novel life form or a pre-step to that, egg to cocoon to larva to butterfly. The beautiful change, the shedding of the old to meet the exhilerating experience which life offers at each stage. How nervous larva must be inside the cocoon. The foetus who otherwise was silently laying in the womb would have such a harsh encounter with the stimulus of light falling on the pupil. How much pain must have been endured in leaving the old and meeting the new.

I wonder why god has been so biased in this change process. I have no memory of light falling on my pupil  but it excites me to see the new born's reaction when it happens. How my identity would have been as an egg who was quitely sitting in the uterus or may be as a sperm who never knew that it would survive to contribute to a newer identity. It amuses me how I am sum total of all the randomness that happened in creation of my identity. I have no memory of these random encounters though but I try hard to understand it even at the cost of proving myself a fool. Well, do I care but conditioned thoughts make me think that I care but I still know I don't care.Oflate caring for larger masses have been such a utopian philanthropic thought for me and I am fed up of all philanthropies. Why god decided to make me forget all these random experiences but wished that I remember some of them? I would never ever forget the ugliest feeling I had to see the travails of my grandparents in old age. How can I ever forget my public humiliation as a kid when I would come last at 100 m race. Why can't I forget the ugliness of my assosciation with some people. Why  god wants me to get a vicarious experience in certain aspects and the first hand in some? 

In both the cases, I moulted to become something new. The transitions have been tough but the sail has been adventuraous. Tlhe pleasant and the unpleasant, both have contributed to my 'I' at this point of time. I am glad that I am not a monolith and I wonder how confidently and how long I wiill be using this 'I'.

The Truth Beckons

I came back with the wrenched heart with so many philosophical questions. When I first read about Gautam Buddha’s tryst with philosophy on witnessing the travails of old age, the understanding could not permeate me. As they say examples are better than precept and I add they are bitter than precept, especially when you see it in real life.

I took a train to Kashi to meet him. He was my first encounter in life to strength, power and authority. Everybody was scared of him. He stood like a banyan tree giving shades to all of us. There had been complaints that he could never see anyone above him but I reject them as small weeds in his shade. I love to have pillars around me. I love holding them dance around them, the way I did as a kid. You grow up and you are suddenly thrown in this sea where you keep swimming. Those pillars become hindsight. The heart is relieved to let the fleeting memories get washed away with time but the scar which entrenches in the personality constantly reminds of the aches. His seventy five years old frame of 71 inches lying on the dilapidated bed, the orangish yellow eye opened as I touched his feet. He smiled and to me that moment meant the world. I could not control the sudden rush of salty liquid from my eyes. Yet I managed to hide it somehow. I wanted to hug him and cry my heart out. It was my pillar falling infront of my eyes and I was helpless. The first encounter of strength in my life is my latest rendezvous with the fragility and weakness. I could not see the coin reversing. He tried being as normal as he could but I felt his pain in my heart, soul and mind and my eyes were refusing to obey my brain. He kept smiling and slept.

His frame is still so formidable. In this frailty, he commands that respect which none other in that room can ever; the way he did in his youth, when he would jump from the boat in the mid of Ganges just because his instinct would ask him to swim the other half of the river. Now also, he was ordering everybody about how he should be fed and how his pillow is supposed to be kept. The love for his empire could not take a back seat even now. He had been sorting out all the matters related to money in that one stroke of pen and whisper.

I know what Buddha must have felt that moment when he questioned the beauty of life while seeing the senescence. It’s Karna’s lines from Mahabharata which reverberates inside my head, I see it now, this world is swiftly passing.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my grandfather who passed away thirteen days after I wrote this post. Incidentally it was my birthday that day and it ceases to be happy ever.

Diary of a Technically Retarded

I like coming back to catharsis to think aloud, when I get really pressurised and choked to behave in a certain way and guard my feelings in the shell. I like it here because I am not moderated.

I have been feeling quite frustrated with the technology of late. Well that has been the case since the very begining of my life. When I was two and a half, I peed on the speaker of a music system because I wanted it to shut up and it refused to.  I feel glad to declare myself a technically retarded person at 27 when I see half of tech savvy  friends glued to their laptops all the time. Nevertheless I must confess that I too at some level is so mesmerised by technology that I dont prefer to write on paper anymore. I am so much addicted to my laptop. It hurts me deep down when I rely on services of things which 'technically' I detest but we all fall for convenience at one level or the another. What a pity!

My childhood remains special to me for number of reasons. I was brought up in a close knit community of uncle and aunts who constituted our neighborhood. Well, they were not my relatives, my parents chose their friends wisely. That is why the bonding was so natural and nothing came as an effort but out of spontaneity. Whenever my father introduced me to someone, he would make sure that I know something special about that person. This gave me a choice to reject or accept the social capital which he offered to me in legacy. The simple things which my  mother did; inviting neighbors to home for dinner atleast twice in a month, the card games happening throughoout the night at our home, the movie sessions where whole community would go in a mini bus to watch it, just because they wanted to do things together. There was never a dearth of people around me. Uncle, aunts, bhaiyas, didis. I dont remember anyone who was younger to me. Whenever I go home my parents still give me updates on whereabouts of their friends. He has his friends who are there with him for past forty years.This is when people of his generation prefer to restrict their internet uses for professional reasons most of the time. I find the fact amusing.

Here I come back to my life. My social capital of 27 years. The fleeting one. My parents friends' kids who I was supposed to be friends with. Frankly speaking I have been unable to keep them for this long. We know each other, meet when required but definetly would not like to hang around with each other, the way our parents did. Then came the teenage when I started exercisng some choices to decide on my social capital. Those intermittent crushes who were like candies to the eye in school. Like lot many, even I would make an attempt to get closer to them. No social networking site existed then, so it was a physical attempt to stand and wait at a point where you can actually meet rather see him.Those rambles with the female friends where we would discuss endlessly about everything happening in our lives, from guys to extra curricular activities to studies. Our bicycle  rides in the evening for which we could die for, the badminton sessions, the number of durga pujas and many more. We all wanted to be together for these moments. We valued the moments and the ineveitability of each other in creating them.In my 20s, I had a new vision for my life, I met so many good people who were never very comforting but would help me in unleashing a new dimension in my life. I guess my heart took a back seat.

Every morning, I open my facebook account to wish people on their birthdays and aniversaries. It's just once in a year that I have to do this ritual. I don't care if they exist otherwise for rest part of the year. I would not have even wished them on their birthdays, if facebook would not have flashed it. Recently, I saw a flurry of b'day wishes  on the facebook wall of an acquaintance who passed away last year. I bothered to visit her wall and saw the number of condolence messages which made me write something to stop people wishing her who probably were unaware about it. As a follow up, I received lot of querries on my fb inbox about how her death happened. They all claimed to be her friends. I always was her acquaintance and told them how clueless I am. Irony is that her 'friends' were asking accquaintances about the details. All I rememeberd of that acquaintance was her beautiful smile and was deeply saddened at her untimely death.  I have close to 550 friends in my list yet I dont even feel connected to them at any level. This includes all of my socialcapital.

Every evening I come back from office, my only friends are the dinner cooked by me, workout and a novel. This is the point where I have brought down my expectation level too. Emotions are no longer the driving force. In the quest of financial capital, we have probably changed the identity of our social capital. It hurts me  but I am happy till the time I become 'numb'.