Will O' the Wisp

   The bell rang. We were to go to the field for Physical Education like other days. A long queue of students quickly snaked away from the oppressive textbook-laden classroom towards temporary freedom. The physical education class was our favourite! We would scamper around the field, play games, and sometimes deceive the teacher's eyes to do everything apart from playing the assigned games. 'Not all who wander are lost,' we told ourselves sagely.  The mango trees in the field were ripe with fruit, but we weren't allowed to take them home. So we would pick the mangoes up, scrutinize them carefully, and hold court on the difficult question of whether they were good to eat raw or as pickles. The squirrels and the cats were our field mates, although the squirrels would never bother to stay for a second when they'd see us. They were very quick to disappear into the trees. And the more they disappeared, the more they would fascinate us. I remember we would have discussio...

There is a temple across where I stay, and they were playing the Sri Krishna bhajans on Janmashtmi. The music was so mesmerizing that I was completely immersed in the songs, when one particular line of a very famous song struck me. It says, "Kaun kehte hai bhagwan aate nehi, tum Meera ke jayese bulate nehi". I kept thinking about it. How do we know if we have already met God?  In what form do we want to meet God?  In one another epiphanic moment, I realised the idols in the temple have nothing written on them as to what they represent.  Our beliefs, our thoughts and our perception make them supernatural. I can not speak for the people who think God is a wish-granting machine. I stopped asking God to fulfil my wishes since very long. I found it extremely selfish. Instead, as a child I'd talk to them, trying to make conversations. I'd talk and they'd reply.  Even then, their replies were a reflection of how I'd want God to speak. It is almost like the mirror of ...

 This is probably the 100th time I'm trying to pen this down in the last week. I was not getting the right words to start or to end. This continual attempt to have this written is because I want to have a record of this, so that I can come back to this, read, and re-read it.  It is about something most of us try to search for in others, or oneself. It is about something I have tried very hard to search for in every possible place from the very first day I gained my consciousness. There has been a phase of desperately looking for love, in people, in parks, in benches, in other animals, in everything. Not only for myself, but in general as well. But with time, I have moved on from that phase with immense hopelessness and anguish.  And then there was a day. Very recently in the past. I don't think I have seen love more closely before. It was so near to me. As if I could touch it. But, as Van Gogh says beautiful things need perseverance and disappointments. It went very far v...

I never wanted a castle built for me for saving the frog in the sea who accidentally turned out to be a fairy under a curse. I wanted to build the castle myself, choosing every part of it carefully and consciously, with love and affection. I believe I'd find the bricks and cement in course of life. But I probably was not prepared for the crumbling of the grounds, the natural disasters that have the fair chance to shake the surface.  Each day is a learning experience, I'm not sure how much of what I had thought the castle would be made of, will I find, but I still hope to build the castle. Perhaps with different elements. Perhaps on a different ground. 

 Lately I've discovered the immense power of sounds. The prison around me is not made of iron rods that you can cut them through. They are of sounds. Sounds of words which probably you don't wish to know. Because they already are so harmful.  I struggle. To keep the meaning and the sounds separated. To deal with "one at a time". In some places you can not. The sounds come to me as strangle of rope around the neck. The meanings like light in a thunder take time to reach. The harm is already done. The relation with sound and physical problems may not be usual, but they are a reality.  The beauty of life is understanding the shades of it. Like Sound. It's not so bad always. My equipments are limited. I can not deal with it.  But sounds surely have reached to people as wonders as well.  Two vibrant colours seldom exist. One of my fascinating experiences of existence include looking for and finding the shades...

Every time I look at the sky There is a story, in my head  It has you and me It has all our meets and departs It has all the bareness and despairs So every time I look at the sky I see you, in different forms I converse, not in language, in emotions And every time I look away  I take along my story, you take yours In the hope of seeing each other again All meetings are pretty much the same Except some happen solely inside the head Yet give me strength to live, as if so real. 

I think we should stop romanticising the concept of forever in every other thing, especially (in any kind of) relationships and (including) friendships. Why if it's not forever it was never a thing? I was friends with xyz in school and I'm not their friend now. In school, we had different ways of looking at life, different crises, a different definition of fun, different life, I enjoyed being with the people I no longer like to hang out with because now we have different lives, different problems, different expectations, different kinds of fun and most importantly different sets of ideals, why should that mean we were never good friends? Or our friendship was never worth it? Why does the present have to validate the past? We need to learn to appreciate having different people in different phases of life. Having said that it's equally amazing to have relationships (of any kind) that last forever.  I think we should avoid looking at certain concepts in opposite spectrums. Two...