Will O' the Wisp

 Five, six, seven, eight ... forty four, forty five, forty six, forty seven ... I keep counting.  I count the seconds by listening to the wall clock, sometimes I lose myself in other noises, the fan, the cricket, the breaths but I come back and I count, again and again and again not remembering exactly from where to restart.  Numbers are so cruel and so fascinating. They never stop. You can count, count and count. The steps, the seconds, the bugs, the bees, the fallen leaves and those that are on the trees, and definitely the days. The numbers never stop, nor does the counting.  You are amidst a pandemic, you suffer for you don't know whom and all you do is you count, you don't know where's the end, and if there's an end at all ... Maybe there is, maybe there is not. So you count, I count too. We all count, for different reasons, for different purposes and for different days.

 I have been a part of many events in school and college. But for obvious reasons I always worked with teachers and professors, so wasn't much aware of all the different kinds difficulties, responsibilities and the small extra efforts of joining the wires in times of need. For the first time, I got an opportunity to arrange something without any help of a teacher or professor.  And it was amazing! But what is the most special part of it, why does it still stay? It's not the after credits, it's not the compliments which you receive, it's the bond we grow while working together. I don't know if I'll ever get another opportunity to work with such people or people who would be as nice as them, but this stays, stays for long, stays at the times when I feel not very good or very monotonous with everything. This stays ...  Also, not always you arrange something for the people who have impacted your life the most!  It was the teachers day event btw :)

 I just came accross a writing on Facebook by one of my friends titled 'Independence now".  Independence now and Independence then... I have very less knowledge to talk about these. All I have fathomed till this age is like every perception, every beauty, every ugliness, independence is personal.  You and I have our different individual independent ideas of independence. And we all have our struggles to aquire it.  So if we are independent today, in our own way, let's celebrate it. Independence is an everyday celebration and what is a better time to realize this than today, when we are locked and are longing for freedom the most? Happy Individual Independence Day to you and me and all of us. Let this independence never slip off ... 

I often find myself at an edge, I exactly don’t know of what. It could be of a far off cliff, could be of a mountain, could be of a terrace, I can’t imagine the entire picture, I see the edge, just the edge.And I see a girl on it, with every confidence, I assure my mind that it’s me. The edge can make me fall any time, with one wrong step. Make me fall where? I don’t know, again because I can’t imagine.  Sometimes the edge feels like the shore of a nearby waterway, because that is the only possible image comes to me.  But sometimes the edge feels like a broken nightmare or a daydream, as if somebody has woken me up suddenly, I gain my consciousness out of nowhere and then I’m with people I don’t want to be with...I panic, I don’t know what’s next.  And this, scares me.

Waiting for that one miracle to happen is never easy. You have rambles of thoughts, some pleasant, some unpleasant, you have the thoughts battling between themselves, you have you not wanting to but yet fighting with the thoughts. Words become just sounds, some pleasant, some unpleasant. They don't resonate, you try to listen to them carefully, consciously, but all in vain.  You try to understand whys of everything, you try to calm yourself down, and restart them. Then again the words disturb you. Words which are just sounds to you. Loud sounds, and louder in the head.  When would the one miracle happen? That is the hope, the only hope. You count days without knowing how many to count.  But miracles do happen. From finding someone you know in a far away city, making great friends in the most unexpected places to getting discounts in your favorite books or things. I have always believed in miracles.

Sometime you try to ignite a hope within yourself, you repeat in your mind that everything would be fine just like it was, sometimes you try your best to understand what happens around you, you try to reject the reality, you try to accept the worst that can happen in future, sometimes you struggle to comprehend the easiest of things because you just don't want to. You fail to reason out the simplest of things, you fail to explain, you fail to synchronize things like both of your hands. And among these difficult sometimes, which also make you guilty of the fact how much for granted you have taken freedom in your life, you find yourself taking shelter in the memories of the best recent times you've spent, among the people who have made an entire new world for you. (I remember once copying a sentence from a song and writing to one of my friends which read "hum duniya se lar lenge, par tere bagair nehi".) And then you realise, the world for everyone is not the world for y...

To that one unknown being - Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll turn 22.  There are so many times I missed you. I missed being with you, I missed your hug and I missed your presence.  Tomorrow I'll turn 22. We have spent 22 years without each other. 22 years with just having each other in our minds and struggling with the intense longing to be together. I wish someday we meet and I never have to let you go. I wish someday we meet and meet in the most beautiful part of the world. We'll stay. For as long as we want to. We'll stay. Till we never have to leave again.  I have always loved you and I will always love you whether or not we ever come to know each other

We often judge or see things in black and white. Both the colours are extreme opposites to each other according to our colour palettes. We start with a white page and end with black borders in necessary areas in a painting. The use of the phrase "black and white" to denote right and wrong is very frequent in our conversations. When today I see a lot of posts and awareness on racism, I realize that black to denote wrong and white to denote right is something we all do. And how small but strong this seedling of racism is, which we very frequently and casually use in everyday conversations.  The irony of the story is this, when we were children and scratched with all the crayons in one circle, with colours obviously not restricting to the drawn margins, it often ended up being black. I was always told in my art class, to use black at the end because black merges all your colours, because black consists of all the colours.

Truth is relevant and irrelevant to mind with and without pain. What if all of them are knotted in the most complicated way possible? It sounds crazy, but it feels worse.  You question the universal truths of life, of existence because you can no more bear the pain of hearing what is not true, so you believe what is not true as the truth. You know it can't be true, you know there is a universe and it has nothing to do with your petty existence but you still question. You keep questioning until you fall asleep, you question the trees, the butterflies and the bugs around you. You question all of them around you and expect an answer. No one answers. Is it because it is the truth and you were in denial? You question again, the more you question, the worse you feel.  Truth is relevant. An imposed truth also is a truth to you.Truth is relevant and irrelevant to mind and time.

This has been just a week of this quarantine period and I'm already frustrated with this. And after all these months, this morning a news scared me for the first time. The thought which occurs to me frequently from then is what if this is it for me? This would be worse than I thought, I wouldn't be able to meet anyone for one last time. A few days before I read a letter of Kafka to Milena (which I also shared on Facebook) where he wrote "Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much." Where is the end? Has end ever come with a warning before?

There is a person, and there is no one. There is love and there is nothing. There is a world and there is darkness, there is a way and there is space. There is autumn, there is spring, there is summer and there is scare. There are long canopies, there are illusions, there are music, there is happiness, there are people and there is no one. The no one is sometimes a tunnel, it leads you to all the former things, the no one is peace, the no one is your heart, the no one is everything you wish it to be or it is null  (:

We live between significance and insignificance. We live between being significant and insignificant. While there are some people who are very significant to you and you suddenly realise how small a part of their universe you are, you also feel happy with the passerby who behaved very sweetly with you, with the classmate of yours who was very kind to you,  with the kitten in the street who walked with you till the roads diverged. The sadness is as much as the happiness. The being empty is as much as being full. You confuse, you comprehend, you embrace and you grow.