Will O' the Wisp

I gaze through the windows of nearness and truth, searching for what is real and what is not I transverse across a million versions of myself,  Somewhere, I tug at a turban; somewhere, I wear a skirt In one place, I iron a blazer; in another, I stitch wool. I discover more windows, and through them, I keep looking At what is truth and what is not Until I return to myself, with a sudden gasp of air A faint breaking sound of glass I return having seen versions of myself I do not recognise  Some versions of you too perhaps And as they come together, they lead me closer to the truth  until it falters, and no truth remains.

Let love come to you, in the rawness of its form. Let it walk, crawl, leap, but perhaps never rush Let love find you In a random seashore, in an old gift, a photograph, or a misty morning In the company of friends, in the quietness of a partner. Let love magnify your heart for someone Let love magnify someone's heart for you Let it make you one with their contentment, anxieties, and awkward silences. Let love come to you Don’t settle for empty labels or shallow ties Love can not be a refuge from loneliness. Let love be honest with you And you, be honest with love. For neither happiness nor sorrow, neither certainty nor hesitation Can bring you the peace that honesty with love can.

Nobody tells you how long to wait. People ask you to be patient, to not rush, and that things take time. But how long? I love what George Eliot once said: What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other? Yet, in a world of billions, who wants to do that? Who is out there, making someone else's days easier? Life can feel heavy, even suffocating. So why would I care about your landlord troubles, your rude HR, or the dress you’ve been longing for but can’t afford, among my already messed up days? Its overwhelming. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t overwhelm me. I love to participate in everyday moments, I love to know what conversations you had with the auto driver, why is the delivery taking extra time when it was about to arrive today, what has your manager told you about the new projects, I love to discuss, how annoying is the boss, how polite are the neighbours, and how to save more money.  My happiness does come from making that so called extra effort, the k...

This morning I chose to have coffee over tea. These choices, whether to drink coffee or tea, to take the metro or Uber to office, give me immense joy, and a hint of contentment. Having some, albeit very little, control over certain things that I do is gratifying. I no longer have to drink milk and bread in breakfast out of compulsion or remember to call someone if I'll be coming home late.  In a new city which has its own aura of clusters and glories, achieving these small joys, and to be able to make the choices are a tremendous source of mental comfort. I have never truly had a home, so for me, home became an idea, a comfortable state of mind.  Choosing coffee over tea, gives me that comfort, the luxury, which perhaps I might just start calling home.

As an actor  You play roles Everyday You play roles for the audience  Doctor, fisherman, teacher, pilot Child, friend, sibling, neighbour  You read the dialogues You try to understand the words to the best of your ability  Interpret the sounds, the stage, the light, the wit  You question yourself if you are interpreting it right, You take time -  You go back to playing roles, some you like, some you don’t  While being in one character, you miss playing the other Sometimes you try to swipe roles  Sometimes you break characters  Perhaps because you don't like this one, or just plain because you're tired Sometimes the audience don't clap in which you think is your best shot Sometimes they mistake you for being the role that you play. The play ends  The curtain falls You take back some characters  You leave some in the theatre You imitate some, and you detest some  Yet you love to play them You find peace in knowing how different p...

There's a gnawing pain, which keeps coming back, in fragments  It is not a part of my heart, but perhaps part of some air around me.  When I am without it, it hardly touches me, and when it does, I become a part of it.  There's a gnawing pain, which I don't complain much about,  it is an occasional reminder of the things that hurt me.  This pain shapes the bottom of the shirt I wear, sometimes I keep it loose, sometimes I tuck it inside.  This pain decides my hair in the morning, whether to comb in the most serious mood or to keep it casual.  The gnawing pain eventually fades, and I don't complain.  I go back to my everyday routine - breath, eat, travel, work, et al - the basics. I forget about it amidst a very busy day to decide whether to come home by bus or metro. In the middle of all these sometimes I remember that I had felt that pain, I smile And perhaps that keeps the heart alive ....

I have seen daybreaks in the middle of nights  I have seen night breaks in the middle of days  I have known the weather outside anchoring the inside  I have known the weather inside embracing that of outside And I have loved all of them, always Now, for once I specially love the evenings  I can see the day and the night both in the sky  I can see the contrast in the clouds  The contrast of colours which are neither too light nor too dark  They are somewhere floating in the middle Creating shades, in the sky, in my eyes  Among all these convoluted and exquisite colours, I can see you. I can see you Before the clouds, and beyond the clouds  I can see you in all the shades that exist in the sky,  The blue, yellow, orange, purple, red I can see you through the spectrum of million rainbows, and through the monocle of absolute nothingness I can make anything that I want of you And thats what makes life beautiful ... ❤️

  Dear God,  Make them stronger who hurt without knowing the pain they cause,  Make me strong, but make them stronger so that they can face the words they once threw at someone Make them stronger so that they heal from the wound they've been a part of Make them stronger so that they can let it go, even if it is repeatative  Make them stronger so that they don't lose hope of loving and happiness after they come across such agony Make them strong enough, so that they can forgive those who have bled their heart,  And themselves if they realise they have done that too... 

 Sometimes I want to be rescued  Not by a prince charming or a princess  But by the time,  By my fate, by destiny if I can call it so Because sometimes I desperately want people to be gentle with me I want situations to be settling, if only a little I know it's not only me It's a lot of us, and we all fight a relatively equally terrible battle  In one way or the other  I'm not sure whether to believe in God  But the wish to be rescued almost resonates like a prayer  Not always, not often, but sometimes Sometimes I wish the people were gentler  The time was calmer  Or perhaps I was rescued ...

If I could tell you that I followed you through the barren land  The decayed forest, the people less roads. I have followed you through the heavy wind  The ruins of the dead and through the void of my heart,  To see how far I can go  To explore what I carry for myself Because only when I can let you go  I can hold myself stronger  And through this quest for the ideal soul, which you were to me I have come a long way with myself  Through this quest for the ideal soul, which you were to me I have become one  The one I wanted to be I have become one, with the journey and all its atrocities  I have become one, that may have cost the deepest grief  The grief that permeates your heart, because you know you need it  The grief which you embrace with time The grief which my friend has called to be a beautiful sadness  Because it teaches you that beauty can be felt with both filled and empty heart

 It's been years, and maybe you've buried my memories by now It's been years and maybe we've forgotten our ways to each other And since it's been years, and we are miles apart  I know for sure, how much you meant to me  How much I cherished you  How much you lit my world up  And now since it's been years, I can see you clearer  There's no fog in the sky, there's no pull backs in my head Now since it's been years, I know for sure how much you meant to me Maybe I, to you It stays this way  Because since it's been years and maybe you have forgotten me by now I know for sure that yours were the first touch of love  That made me feel life's worth it, despite everything Just to know how beautiful love can make you feel. And although we are miles apart, I go back to it quite unconsciously, time and again Without having even the slightest hope that you remember me How you made me feel stays It stays  This way, till the end

   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...

 While growing up most of us have come across many encouragements and enthusiasms from caregivers of the unit called the family to pursue education as long as one wants. All the concerns, appreciations, criticisms and gifts of the child surround the fact of how much they secure in an exam. The first disruption in the smooth and active encouragement happens when the child takes up humanities instead of Science, especially if they had required marks to go for science.  Many find institutional education useless, many find it useful, either way, one is expected to carry out education till they receive a certain degree.  Fair enough. Many among them struggle to complete their education, some are very convinced with the social conventions, they like to flow with the river without a rift and many start liking the subject they take up. I'm one of the latter students.  But one of the greatest shocks happens when after a certain point in life, education seems like a distant r...

The customary exercise of the night following the day and the day following the night continues. The questions with no answers keep piling up. The remembrance of the one who is yet to be met brings tears to eyes. The theories beyond science take a new shape with every passing day. The self boundary narrows for the world outside and widens for the one within.  Life continues its tale Without caring much for anything else The bugs keep buzzing, I never know if I have seen them before. I look at them wondering if they too suffer pain and happiness like humans  Maybe they wonder the same, looking at me.