Chasing moments

I am one of those who believes life is lived in discrete precious moments. In fact life is made up of tiny moments, each like one precious pearl, and we must live it like that. We lose so many moments of life all the time in trivialities we ironically call 'living', in sorrows and whines and all the muck of this world. Yet the few we manage to grasp are what define for us our life and its purpose forever. They become pearls of memory, or lessons of living. They become the windows from which we can look at our life, or the meaning of life itself. That is why, I am the silly one who tries to 'create' moments sometimes and to engrave them in memory. Silly but harmless fun!

This afternoon was a mini-exercise in creating moments from the Stockholm stay, now in its last month. I had a few hours to spare, and felt less lazy than usual. So I wandered to the city centre and started walking around familiar streets, now beautifully decorated for the approaching Christmas. Evening fell in and the lights started looking better in the darkness(my watch read 3 pm though, and my watch is working fine! :P ) I went in all those big shops I never went in, maunnly for window shopping. I wandered observing how people rushed about or strolled, how they behaved, the expressions on their face, the way they talked, the way everything existed around me..it started feeling surreal so I went up to the big Culture House library and fished out a Vikram chandra to read, sitting comfortably near the glass wall overlooking the sprawling city beneath. More wandering and more shopping later, I finally got home very tired but preserving a treasure of tiny moments.

However, the incident of the day was while I was coming back on the metro. There were a couple of Indian guys standing almost next to me talking in Hindi. Now because it's so rare, and feels so nice to hear something in a recognisable language in the chatter around me, I always turn around to notice who the speaker it is (even English, anything but Swedish) So these guys were blurting about their work when I sort of turned to notice them for a few seconds. One of them noticed me and began talking about me as I silently listened all the while turning away. The other said in hindi, so what if she's looking at us? Why do you have notice? Let her if she wants to. He replied, I dont have a problem yar, just that it feels good when some girl is looking at you. And so they continued, while I had a hard time suppressing my laughter. I had to get off soon, and while exiting, I turned to them and said, "Have you ever thought what if somebody could actually understand what you are talking, I mean ek billion Indians hain, kai jagah ho sakte hain na..." And walked out finally laughing.

I bet they were a little stunned.

Nostalgia: Farewell

A few minutes past midnight, a young girl mad with passionate love and nearly choked with emotion stood in the light of a half moon that shone twice as bright as a full moon any other night, and looked into the pair of eyes dearest to her full of an infinite amout of deep, pure love and laced with the moisture of a sharp sadness. Staggered to her feet, for a while she didn't know if she was dead or alive, or if her heart that was literally in her mouth now was still beating, and then she saw those eyes turn and leave, walking back till they disappeared in the horizon and her heart returned to her chest, now with an additional lump that weighed on forever thereafter.
I was the single tear that single tear that dropped from her eye and inundated her soul with an emotion that was a mixture of immense joy and immense pain. I was the moment of time that stopped and was buried alive forever.

Crap

Moments die sometimes. But they never disappear. A death of time and a death by time is never a natural death. And nobody gets away with murder that easy. He killed me with innocuous weapons. He brought me back to life with deceptive potions. In the interim, some moments became droplets of pain and crystallised in the depths, lifeless. Did I survive?

***************************************************************************

Ashiyana dil ka mere, kai baar simta bikharne ke baad

Daraarein hain ab deewaron mein itni, har barish bhiga deti hai

Jaane kis sahare pe har baar khada ho jata hai

Ladkhadati minaron ko har aandhi hila deti hai

Mere tootne ka intezaar kar rahi hai duniya bekarari se

Par duniya ko bhi wahi nirashayein milengi jo duniya mujhko deti hai

***************************************************************************

I felt the silence seeping
Inch by inch inside me
Till every pain was numbed
Till every voice was dumbed
Till every desire shunned
Till every joy stunned
Till molecules stopped their collision
And then the heart stopped it's rhythm.
Silence seeped within me
And now emits just peace.

***************************************************************************

"Did you hear it?"
"What?"
"Nothing."

And she walked off forever.

Coffee Break

Phoenix's Philosophy Lecture

"Life is so tough."
"Tell me something new!"
"Yeah..true...life ain't easy...and everybody feels this all the time. Life got to be the most cursed of 'em all!"
"Maybe...but the number of curses you get and deserve must be giving even life a run for its money! ;) "
"Ha ha..very funny...but I'm serious you know...all the time everybody keeps saying life is this life is that..a bitch a whore a battle a puzzle...there's just no end to those words. Half the literature of this world revolves around interpreting and symbolising life. Half the world's philosophy is just that. Yet it remains the ever-lasting enigma."
"The ever-lasting enigma...and each answer to the puzzle is as right as it is wrong, as complete as it is incomplete, as true as any other...Have you ever wondered how remarkable it is that whenever things work out fine for us and life is smooth, we so stop digging into the puzzle and nearly everything else as well. But inevitably it'll quickly return to the "normal" course again with a twist or two and we'd be back on business...thinkind, pondering, reasoning, anguished, cursing. Almost like every short sunny patch is a mini vacation for us engaged in the job of discovering life."
"I don't think it is meant to be a vacation...I feel it feels like a short vacation because we treat it like a luxurious holiday and stop doing our job. We stop putting in the effort and the thought...we take things for granted. And life surely doesn't like THAT. So it twists again, saying 'you just don't deserve it bloke' !"
"So you think we would never be able to get out of the loops, the vicious circle...from birth to death must we agonise to find the answer to the unanswerable question...what is life and what is it's purpose?"
"Are you trying to ask whether or not there is a Nirvana...an achievable state of liberation from the maze..."
"Maybe I am...I don't know...but now that you put it like this, what about the people, saints et al you know who claim to find the peace and the Nirvana? By the way, all Nirvana reminds me of is alcohol, drugs and tranquility..."
"Tranquility is the key..alcohol nd drugs are just the popular myths that claim to find it for you. I don't know anything about the saints, maybe they do have some way to break out of the loops that others don't know. Maybe it is all false and there is no escape. You know this book I was reading last night...it said, Peace begins with acceptance and dies without perseverance!
Maybe I understand it a bit now. I guess there can never be an end to putting the effort as long as one is alive. That effort, the quest is the process that is the elusive meaning of life itself we seek to find. And the moment I know this, unless I stop working, I'd be at peace with myself."
"You know this now...are you at peace with yourself?"
"I will be I guess... as soon as I get back to work idiot. This is too long a coffee break. Boss is soon going to pop in here with a nasty twist for both of us."
"Ha ha..see you at dinner then."
"Yeah sure. Bbye."

?

All
my life
I lived by
a set of rules
and beliefs;I stuck
to them through high and low
Putting all my faith in their truth
And working, and struggling for
the elusive goals.I sweated;
I met disappointments
Yet, stuck through
Just because
I believed
in what
I
believed
in.
It worked.
Finally, one day
I did get to my goal.
I got what I had been
looking for; And just when
I took a moment off. To catch my
breath, with a sigh of contentment,
of delight, of reflection and of a search
for a new goal. Just in that moment when
I stepped back to look at myself, and the past
To find the seeds of my future.
I suddenly realised, my set of
rules and beliefs that had
made me what I was
were all so
untrue.
False.
Baseless.
Now what?
Where do I go?
What do I trust?
Who, at the end, am I?

About Me

Orkut:

I'm too many things to limit in mere words
I wanna fly higher than clouds and birds
Yet stay on the ground, firm and steady
And life..whatever you are..come to me..I'm ready....

Blogger:

I walk a lonely road;
The destination...unknown;
I die and am reborn;
I cry and I frown;
I am the phoenix from the ashes of your soul;
I live in my words, that from your soul I stole...


Sylvia Plath:

Colorquiz:

Phoenix took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in ..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

The world:

Infinite lots. Love and hatred. Disgust and indifference.

Me:

I don't know. I still am, none of these and all of these...And something else.
Words, however, fall so short.
So so short, even if that's all I have.

:|

Deja vu

A moment, an emotion...relived.

I see you rising from the silhouettes in your might
As the shadow that walks beside mine in the night
And then as I watch the shadows merge
The emptiness of my embrace hurts

The Agony...

She said
or at least,
I think she did...
or maybe she just
mumbled on as usual
with me not hearing
but I think anyway,
though I didn't hear,
she did say
something.

It's hard to focus
you know -- if it were
a word or two
I'm sure I'd listen --
but how could I
ever concentrate
on a full sentence!
Still I try
to listen, or to appear
as if I am.
But this time,
I missed it.

She tried, she did
switch off the television
and took me in her arms
to softly say her words.
But I guess I was too lost
in the residues of
commentary in my head
and the fragrance of her body.
She said, I smiled,
and said Okay!

As I walked out
she gave me a loving glance
and said "Do remember"
but in my thinking
of how happy she looked
I assumed she wanted
me to remember
the match scoreline
and walked out in glory.
But now I think,
she said something.

It's not that I'm afraid
of not being able
to remember,
or asking her again.
But I remember when
last time I didn't remember
she cried,and didn't say
anything for a day.
Not that I don't like
the silence; just that
I don't like her tears.
And so I must remember.

Kismat

Berang sa samaa tha
Khamosh sa jahaan tha
Lab muskura rahe the magar
Dil khoya jane kahaan tha

Shor tha awaaz nahi
Ant tha agaaz nahi
Khali thi gehraiyan ankhon ki
Shabd the par saaz nahi

Zindagi usko bhi kehte the
Lamhe usmein bhi rehte the
Dil se ho ya aankhon se
Aansu to tab bhi behte the

Phir unhone aake jeena sikha diya
Har saans ka mujhko mayna sikhna diya
Rang bhar diya meri muskurahat mein
Zindagi ko meri aayana dikha diya

Phir maine suni apne dil ki awaaz
Phir maine jana is jahaan ka raaz
Jhalki gehraiyaan aankhon mein
Phir hua zindagi ka asli agaaz.

Jab unko jana, khudko pehchana
Dil ko mila dhadakne ka bahaana
Rooh ne jaana ehsaas kya hai
Samay ne seekha lamhe sajaana

Yehi to hai zindagi, kehkar gaye
Kuch pal is dil mein rehkar gaye
Par jaana to tha hi shayad unhe
Achha hai jo mere paar, behkar gaye

Ab dil ko bhi aata hai rona shiddat se
Muskuraiye nahi to kya, hum muddat se
Phir bhi khush hain kyunki, jante hain ye
Woh beete pal chhin bhi mile the humko kismat se.

Change-V

Well, of course the change series was supposed to end at part IV, but I just chanced upon something too good to miss at this blog. Thanx Nikhil!

It's from an Italian movie called Cinema Paradiso, and the story below sums up the essence of change. With time, perspectives, needs, aims and desirability changes so much. Sometimes we can't understand it, and that's when it hurts. But we must, for time is the most powerful of 'em all. The tormenter AND the healer!
This one's about love, the volatility of love, the time-bound falsification of love, the fact that things can be wrong even if nobody involved was wrong, the fact that nothing is forever!
Love perhaps is one of the prettiest untruths ever. Perhaps.

MAN: "Once...a king gave a feast for the loveliest princesses in the realm. Now, a soldier who was standing guard saw the king's daughter go by. She was the most beautiful of all and he fell instantly in love. But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king? At last he succeeded in meeting her, and he told her he could no longer live without her. The princess was so taken by the depth of his feeling that she said to the soldier, "If you can wait for 100 days and 100 nights under my balcony, at the end of it I shall be yours."

With that the soldier went and waited one day...
two days...
then ten...
then twenty.

Each evening the princess looked out, and he never moved! In rain, in wind, in snow, he was always there! Birds shat on his head, bees stung him- but he didn't budge. At the end of ninety nights he had become all dry, all white. Tears streamed from his eyes. He couldn't hold them back. He didn't even have the strength to sleep. And all that time, the princess watched him.

At long last, it was the 99th night...and the soldier stood up, took his chair and left."

BOY: "What happened at the end?"

MAN: "That *is* the end. And don't ask what it means. I don't know."

Moral of the story, anyone?

Chaos

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's experienced "thought collisions" at times, which is to say experiencing a number of rather unconnected thought processes and relevant emotions nearly simultaneously or shortly after each other, randomly switching over. All I know is it's happening suddenly a lot with me. One moment I'm laughing over a stupid PJ, the other reflecting over the Current Song's lyrics and the third battling an existential query with near-frustration. And the fourth I switch to writing a random post like this one. Ever heard of "chaos theory" guys. Used to be my favourite timepass years ago to dig about it, but I'm suddenly reminded of it again. My mind is in a chaos.
Bottomline: Joblessness can be injurious to health, especially to workaholics like me.

I started reading this poem randomly scrolling through my old blog: the abandoned crazy home and suddenly felt as if those words, that were once written rather impulsively and thatI later thought had become redundant with added clarity and understanding in my life, I suddenly felt they are true once again. Life indeed moves around in circles, though my theory as I repeatedly tell him has always been that it's more like a spiral with short purposeless detours allowed but everytime you reach back the same state you come with something additional (experience? added knowledge of what to do, or one of the things NOT to do?) so that it's slightly different. But the point here is as clear as that poem. I'm lost.

Talking of which, I'm reminded again of something I had opened this page to write about. Just like girls and dates, what is it with guys and asking for directions?? I mean i'm not talking of driving and any comparisons there at all, I'm just asking in general of the reluctance of guys to ask for directions while walking to someplace new. Of course I do know of many many exceptions, so don;t fight with me, but I thought that all stereotypical driving and getting to places jokes were reserved exclusively for females and recently I've come across so many guys who just won't ask for directions at all! I had the ill-luck of being with one on my recent trip to Paris and his rather bad aptitude with maps and reluctance to ask anyone or listen to me combined with his will to just walk anywhere any direction he felt like --mostly the wrong one -- ended up making me really really frustrated and eventually we split. Exploration is anyway more fun alone. Another friend of mine recently told me about the day when he was to join university and reached the new town all alone and missed the only bus in two hours. so what did he do? Just walk and walk and walk randomly for four hours, eventually making it to one of the higher sites of the city from where he could point his university and then walk towards that. Phew! I only had one question. "Have ypu heard of a word called 'ask'?" "I don't like doing that!"
Well...

Dates

Just what is it with girls and dates? I'm sure it is not just me, the memory of many others are similarly corrupted and programmed to remember dates and counting days. But it surely is a serious case with me, and since I'm one of the hapless lot who don't even have the other kind of interesting 'dates' (to go out at with handsome hunks :D) in their destiny, I guess it's a case of over-compensation. Only that can explain why I remember birthdays and anniversaries of weird long-forgotten fringe people, and girlfriends and cousins of such fringe people. Only that explains why I count days in free time almost involuntarily. I'm absurd, am I not?

Of course there are the few advantages. People kinda feel touched and glad when their birthdays are remember and wished. It helps me keep wavering friendships alive. And I do not miss anything important and get curses and brickbats for that(something nearly monopolised by the menfolk... I mean to forget your girlfriend's and sister's birthday IS outrageous). But then, as defenders among men like he once said, memories are finite aren't they. And God knows how many important things I forget because I know an old friend's sister's boyfriend's birthday! Of course, this is not a substantial excuse for guys because they don't remember anything important in return, except amybe some vital-stats. But I must must must find a middle way between the two extremes. And I'm improving for sure these days as I have forgotten some birthdays, mostly consciously, but it's been more like I know the bday is on 4 Nov but I didn't realise for some time that today is 4th Nov. Blame it on my laidback life here!

But I got to do something about myself anyway. Like I know I have 50 more days left after today here. That's a precise 50 days for my birthday as well :D And some beautiful moments are 250 days old now, and that seems like atleast 2 lifetimes ago.

I really have chemistry and mystery problems with Time! :)

Change-IV

It was like waking up from a dream after a really long sleep in a dimly lit room with nobody around except an alien silence. It was that surreal, that numbing.

But of course, she hadn't really slept at all. She had nothing to dream of, either. It was just that the pain that poured out from her eyes had finally drenched everything around her and the thoughts in her head stopped to collide, or exist. It was then that she snapped out of it, suddenly noticing where and why she was, and not seeming to remember anything at all. But it was hard to think; it was impossible to feel anything, and for the first time in her life, she was not trying too hard to do anything. She knew she had to let go, and this was the first step. She had to let go of her instinct to think in any definite direction. Things had changed.

Sometimes, change happens slowly but is recognised and accepted effortlessly. Sometimes, it happens in an instant and takes an eternity to sink in. If Chloie had been able to think, she would perhaps be busying herself with recognition, classification, and stepwise breaking down of her problem, which sooner or later meant working for the solution. But some problems are such that it doesn't make a difference whether or not a solution exists. She knew things had changed already even if she couldn't feel it, and some changes are irreversible.

Things moved outside the window. Maybe people, maybe just the chilly breeze. Things stopped moving inside her. Nothing could reach her anymore. Nobody. No thoughts. No words. Chloie thought of her daughter for the one last time. Her daughter had been to her the meaning of living for nineteen whole years. Nineteen years in which she had lost her youth, her husband, her parents, her social life, her energy, her identity, and today her job and the very goal she had been living for. Maybe from another point of view it would make sense. Maybe her daughter really was right in all her accusations. Maybe she really was a bad mother jealous of her daughter. She had tried to think all of this; she had tried to think why really did she have to object if her daughter wanted to marry her ex-boss's son, also the new boss. She tried to think why her daughter would hate her so much because she opposed that alliance. She tried and tried for hours but reached nowhere. And then she was tired and suddenly she realised that this was not it. She had gone wrong long ago, somewhere else, maybe everywhere else. Relationships don't break visibly for many tiny overlooked moments much before they break visibly in the one moment one could spend a life-time understanding and still reach nowhere.

Chloie knew this. She knew she had lost her daughter and her pain drove her to thinking of suicide. But there was no energy in her body to even move. For hours and hours tears flew, eyes swell and not one thing made perfect sense in the plethora of thoughts that piled in her brain.

Until, numbness took over. And then she snapped out of it.
Things had changed. Her life had changed. She had no meaning, no goals, no identity at the moment. Her life was unidentifiable.

But, it existed.
And if it had managed to persist despite the change, it deserved another attempt. To live.
To try to live.

Change-III

Two weeks back...it was autumn. It was coloured. It was pretty and silent.





This evening...it's winter. It's white. It's snow everywhere, and really really pretty.





Seasons change. Beauty, where it exists, persists.
Where it doesn't, you eventually see the dirt, the darkness, the malice, the cracks, the shallowness.
That's the job of change in life. That which is really worth it, persists and evolves.
The rest breaks down.