Grey

Not all silences are peaceful

Not every solitude is calm

Not every clinched fist holds a secret

Sometimes, it's only an empty palm.

The enigma of some smiles is but a hidden night

The spark of some eyes but a hidden tear

Not every tragedy is a perfect ruin

Sometimes, it's only an empty fear.

Unheard

खामोशियों कि ज़ुबां भी समझना भूल गए वो

लब्ज़ों को जो पहले से ही सुन नहीं पाते

अश्कों कि चादर ने धुन्धला दी है लिखाई

वरना शायद इन आँखों को ही आज पढ़ पाते
अनसुनी मेरी धड़कनें थम थम के चलने लगीं
टूटे हुए दिल में रफ़्तार कहाँ से लाते

जज़्बातों की हर डोर को बेरुखी से तोड़ा था जिसने

काश वो इन साँसों की डोर को भी तोड़ कर जाते

Forgotten they have hearing silences

Those who already never heard the words

A blanket of tears has blurred the writing

Else they could have read these eyes, perhaps.

Unheard, my heart beats intermittently

For pace couldn't be managed by a broken heart

With harshness when they broke every single bond

Wish they'd also put an end to my life's path.

Living upto...

No matter what and how much we do to fulfil the demands of the ones we love, it's never enough. No matter what you think how understanding and undemanding you're trying to be with the one you love, it's always a bit too less on your part.

Kitna bhi karo, kam pad hi jata hai! Hai na?

Angry kya?

Aakhir ye gussa kyon aata hai??

Anger, that familiar emotion, both complete absence and too much presence of which ain't good. Sometimes you need to be angry enough to be provoked to do something, take an action, put a strong fight and make a difference. Lack of anger can breed callousness and indifference in entire populations, and that's good for none. But mostly, anger is harmful, for it often provokes you into doing the wrong, impulsive thing. Negative thoughts, rash words and actions and murder of calmness, patience and love are direct effects of anger. And even more dangerous is the unexpressed version of anger, that simmers inside, makes one irritable and impatient, frustrates and demoralises till it eventually explodes. No wonder somebody's silence is often the most dangerous part about her/him.

I get irritated much more often than I get angry, and in 98% of the cases my anger rises and boils off within minutes (if it doesn't you're screwed!). But I wish I dont get angry at all. Patience and perseverence types, you know. Now I know most of those that know me even a bit or read this blog have labelled me moody, cribber etc. for good. I've become too expressive for my own good, and it's high time I return to more silent, contained, patient and forgiving modes :)

But enough about me, anger happens to everyone. On a jerk of a boss/teacher or a pain of a neighbour/spouse. Even those who claim "I never get angry" can be provoked by sufficient mischief itself ;) But what would this world be if anger weren't there? I cant imagine. None of our "elders", sacred texts and moral science lessons have advocated anger, so I should imagine it would be a better place. Perhaps...

Anyway, I'm in a good mood today, and if you wanna make yours better, or get off some anger/stress try this link. Mighty fun, just use your imagination and beat anyone up :D

Take care!

In the last 24 hours

• Almost made a new friend. Realised can't make mistakes over and over. Stopped.
• Got proposed,for marriage. Yes, MARRIAGE... :O :O... by this totally random guy who works in office, over emails and a fonecall. Hardly know him, but he claimed "you're someone i'd like to take home to mom"..What?I mean What?!?! He doesnt even know me.Finally got my back off him. Phew. Men! How can someone be so foolish as to be willing to love/marry me? ME?Pre-marital mishaps are a part of my life I guess.
• Read this wonderful line somewhere."There is a game called 'What might have been?' that everybody plays. And nobody wins."
• Fought with people when I least wanted to.
• Was looking for something. Found this instead. Also this. Sigh.
• Survived.

Once upon a time...

...I wasn't Phoenix. I was Envisager, who wrote silly poems and prose here, a blog I cremated two years back for reasons unavoidable, unmentionable. And before that, I was noone.

Except what I still am. A nobody who isn't even a Nobody. As a friend of mine said, the basic nature of people doesn't change easily, or never perhaps. I'm one of those who long to become either the quintessential Nobody or the quintessential Somebody, and always stay somewhere between the two.

Unbelonging, that's who I am and have been; that, is how I truly feel. Deep down, I know I want to belong. To something, someone, some place, just about anything. I just want to really belong to it, not in the name, address, college, company, phone number, blog id types form-filling way...but really belong. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to do that. No place would accept me, nobody would own me; I'm too evil to be owned and called so.

Perhaps.

I take solace in writing; rants like these and random words disguising as verse or prose make me feel temporarily lighter, like a vomit, but a big part stays inside and unexpressed, and instead of making me feel full, makes me feel emptier all the time. When I was Envisager I was younger too, and fresher. Barely 18, I dared to imagine and envisage more than I can now, and although I can't say when the downward slope started, I feel more tired than I ever have. And only 20 am I. Twenty. I never expected to live this long though. I wanted to die a nineteen-year old. I still hope that when I die, I preserve a 19-yr old's heart. But I fear it's hoping against hope. I am getting emptied. And the bigger the crowd around me, the smaller my sphere of existence shrinks, and the bigger this feeling of not belonging grows.

So much has changed between last summer and this one. Not the internship bit, not the monotony of life, but everything else. I had a full life then, with hope, things to look forward to, love, friendship, blessings and pain. Hardly anything of that left now. Not externally, but internally. Even whatever I still retain doesn't feel mine any more. So much has changed between last month and this one too.

Maybe it's just a phase of disillusionment, maybe it's just me.

Or perhaps not.

I still have a quest though. THE quest. The quest to find something I belonged to and wanted to belong to, the quest of being just like Somebody, or Nobody, the quest of finding the one heart who understood me and accepted me because it wants to, the quest of finding the security I want to reside within, forever and with contentment, the quest of finding the one place or one thing I could come back to and call my own (futile attempt to which is this blog), the quest of finding one end to live for (futile fantasy for which is my dream of living alone with a single adopted child), the quest of finding the ears that always listened and eyes that always talked to me, everything, the quest of finding a purpose and an identity that I could place over everything else, over "I", the quest of being truly understood and forgiven, the quest of the beginning and the end of this interminable tale of chaos. Peace.

I know I need to fight for it; I know I'd never find it. All of us know it inside our hearts. This insecurity is not just mine, it's shared. This borrowed optimism and instinctive pessimism aren't unique to me either - doesn't 'belong' to me.Yet I know periodic despair wouldn't lead me anywhere either, and still that's the way it's gonna be, and recur.

Once upon a time, I dreamt. I dream still, but I dream more these days of a sleep with sweet dreams. I was innocent, but I lost it. I fought through loneliness with a spirit that wanted me to bring out the best in me, and it worked. But whatever outcome it generated, didn't belong to me. I don't know what I seek, I seek in the world outside me or inside.

There was a time I seeked love. It came to me too, a few times, but it didn't appear to be mine, and I shunned it. Destroyed, insulted, rejected, murdered - I did everything heinous imaginable. Over and over again. Obviously, all that had to come back to me in some form. Yet luck held out, and I found love within me too, and loved the love. Still do, and it's enough for a lifetime. I do not seek to love any more; doesn't happen twice. But I seek something still, unworded and forbidden, and unachieved it shall always be.

Once upon a time, I was alone and I began to walk. Company was found and lost, hope was kindled and diminished, and finally I'm out of the illusion, knowing, that although I'm tired, walk I must -alone.Once upon a time, I was me, and that was all. Then I grew - Time made me - but 'me' didn't grow alongwith, and now I is bigger than me, and all that grows is the void, making me more and more Incomplete each day.

The Song of the Spirit

I'd sprinkle a spring on your winter

and paint a sunrise on your dusk

I'd brighten your nights with the radiance of smiles

and fill your mornings with the fragrance of musk

I'm your hope, I shall live in your heart

and tint your vision with promise and dream

I'm your strength, I'd not let you fall

and protect you from going adrift in the Stream

I'm the spirit, with me you were born

Let me live and grow, and listen to my voice

For if you forget, stifle me or abandon

Lonely without yourself shall you be for life

Thought for the day :)

Sometimes...

...I SO wanna cry, but can't.
Because it's for nothing. Because it'd give nothing. Not even take away the heaviness inside and bring me peace. Not even take the fake happiness around and give me unadultered sorrow.
It's powerless and hollow, just like me.
Afraid even of shadows.
Still I wanna cry, and still can't.

Sometimes, I'm so terribly short of a reason to live. Or love. I have no reasons, yet I live on. Pointlessly.
Some people, I realise, just cannot be happy.
Peace.

Love is Blind-II

This post has been in the wings for such a long time now that my thoughts have undergone several revisions since then, and I may be a little repetitive to some too, especially after the last impromptu poem. But write I still must, for the inspiration comes from several unrelated events and blogs around me that have recently got me thinking, and personal as well as shared/witnessed experiences fill me with musings that must be vomited.
So, love is blind, they say, or blinding, as some of my friends would prefer. Yet zillions of words and gazillions of hours have paid tribute to the wonders and blunders of love since forever and always will. This blog, of course, is no exception. I've also been a semblance of a hopeless romantic at times, but the point of this post is another take at THE question...is love really blind? Strictly speaking and if you think about it (or read arguments as in this poem) you'd agree more or less that love by itself is a liberating thing, something that makes you see the beauty in the world around you and in yourself, something that makes you see the shades of life better, something that helps you know yourself and be yourself to some extent. This is what poets call the magic of love; this is but a part of the beautiful irrationality that is love. I don't claim to know what love is, but I can still claim to be very familiar with the irrationality, the rationale-of-it's-own that love seems to have that is called by the eyes of sanity, blindness. There are several real examples I could quote to support from my life, my friends' lives and others that I've witnessed, and of course there're these to read if you want. Yet I get the feeling most of us have examples of our own, and thus know the point to which I'm getting to, which essentially is the question that has made me think a lot in the last year, but never with success.

What is it about love, or is it love itself, that makes us "choose" certain amount of pain, hardship, hurt etc for ourselves? What is it about love that we defy nature's law of taking the path of least resistance and most stability and bring upon ourselves despair, pain and tears even when we do have an option?

Think of it, most of the part of "love" and relationships that brings constant pain and hurt to us could be got rid of, yet we don't! We get opportunities at times to avenge/to pay back for/to hurt back the person who's hurt us before, yet, in love, we don't. We choose not to. True love does something to our narcissism, selfishness and self-preservation instincts. Doesn't take them way, but allows them to be superceded at times. Allows people to question us "tujhe usmein dikhta kya hai?" or "why do you put up with so much without complaining?" when we have nothing to answer.

I have a couple of friends, very much in love till some time back, and then distance + series of adverse circumstances made the guy lot cruel and bitter, till he started mistreating her, regularly hurting her without apology, blaming, fighting and even acknowledging a lack of love. Yet her love was unwavering and she persisted. For the life of me I couldn't understand why wouldn't she put an end to her continuous misery and give up on he who clearly no longer cared. But heart of hearts I also knew, perhaps if I were her, I might have done the same, in hope or in patience, in foolishness or in love. In fact I have felt that compelling force within me before, that makes you not want to quit, to hope despite unbearable hurt, and to have faith in the golden moments that are past till the end of your life. A desire to get back the lost love was so compelling that not forgiving and not forgetting everything evil that transpired wasnt even as option. And whatever you may say, that one part about love is beautiful. It's the only emotion, perhaps, that makes you crush your own ego so ruthlessly and easily.

Love allows us to be foolish, to forget 100 tears for one smile, a dozen mean acts for one caring gesture; it allows us to do the same mistake again and again with unfailing trust. Love is what makes me actually let go the love of my life away from me when he says he's bored of me.

And the sane world around us sits back and says, love has made you blind. In our hearts, or perhaps in our minds, we do know what they're saying is right from their reckoning, but dil hai ki manta nahi, hai naAnd dil nahi mantaa for as long as love stays; when love disappears several of these overlooked acts come back to us as anger and grief, pain and regret. And then we also say, love is blind.

Until we fall in love again, that is.

Love is blind

Love is blind

or is it?

For oft to me it feels

if it were true

that love shuts thy eyes,

it is true as well

that thou shall still know

sure in thy heart

the direction of Truth and Virtue

blindfolded and smitten

just as shut eyes

of a head held high

know nevertheless the direction

from which the Sun beats...

Or perhaps better?

Tags etc

I have a couple of tags pending, but I stay horribly bad at them :P

Prude wants me to write eight weird things about myself, though I remember writing twenty about me in this post which were weird enough. Still, to be really quick I'd say...

• I often get a high, a real drunk wala high, without drinking. And though I drink seldom and have almost quit now, alcohol makes me sober down.
• Mostly when something big happens and I really want to cry, I don't and can't. But at times a silly melodramatic scene in a silly hindi movie makes me cry. I have this in-built thing of holding on, and going on inspite. But I think I like pain. I like remembering and re-reading sad events more than the happy ones.
• I don't read best-sellers, mostly. Or watch mega-acclaimed movies, unless I watch them right at release.
• I sleep 12 hours in exams, 4-6 otherwise, on an average.
• At times I can't write anything for months, somedays I can write pages back to back.
• I think guys who cant cry are useless, guys who can't blush not cute, but at all times girls are a better option to look at than guys.
• I KNOW the solution to most of the problems/issues in my life, and I hate the fact that I know them. When similar things happen to others, I hate the fact that the best solution I know, and I am offering to them, is the one I just don't implement myself.
• I like asking difficult questions, and questions whose answers I know. Mostly because I want the person answering to say it to themselves.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There's another tag by pRicky which want me to write names of five blogs that make me think. The tag started here

I wont go into much descriptions because i'm in a hurry, but here are they, not in any particular order.

1. Zubin http://anakinturnsevil.blogspot.com/
2. Vibhav http://eyes-of-a-child.blogspot.com/
3. Brood Mode http://thoughtsafari.blogspot.com/
4. Doc http://theil.wordpress.com/
5. Johney http://johney.blogspot.com/

There are many others actually, and some whose links are bookmarked on my lappy. But these would count for sure...

Pressed for words, A Scanner Clearly, Rajat(whenever updated), Chapaat, Vikram, Tapasya, Chapaat, Arpana, Eagle, Violet Drive

Don't want to tag anyone, so not posting the rules which were on Prude's and Pricky's blog. But I wont mind knowing what's weird about any of you who read, or which blogs you like.

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सूना गम जुदाई का उठाते हैं लोग
जाने जिन्दगी कैसे बिताते हैं लोग
दिन भी यहाँ तो कटे बरस के समान...