tête-à-tête

A sense of familiarity makes me happy but at times makes me nauseous. Yes nauseous. I feel like I just want to run away into the unknown whenever that happens. Freud would diagnose it as one of the myriad disorders that he made up to sell himself as a serious thinking person but I feel this one's mine. My own unique symptom and my own unique disorder. I have diagnosed it so it belongs to me. I wanna be attached to it selfishly. Sometimes I want others to tell me that they feel that way too, but not really. Times when suddenly everything makes sense like your knowledge is fathomless and the next second you are at a loss of any basic understanding? This also happens.

I wish I had time to coin words for these feelings. Actually I don't, on a second thought.I am pretty sure some stupid page that comes up with words for obscure feelings will definitely come up with it and trademark it like a bitch. Schadenfreude is what I would feel when somebody sues those idiots for taking away the sense of vagueness from people's minds! They wanna name everything so that nothing remains hazy. Why does everything have to have a definition or a name or an identity! It does not, in my opinion.

Anyway, even as I pen these absolutely futile and dimensionless thoughts onto this white virtual paper, I feel like somebody is inking my own brain with something quite abstract, nebulous. I probably am appearing high right now but I am not. I am making perfect sense to myself, may be not to you guys who are skimming through this because you have something else to click urgently on the world wide wild wild web.

Going back to running away from the familiar, I wonder if it has to do with the upbringing. I have barely ever been present at a place for not more than a few years and part of those years have always been utilized to erase the previous place and the ties to it. Sort of like a fancy blackboard which is white where you write with a fancy fluid marker and use a fancy eraser to wipe it off. Erasing always fascinated me more than writing on those white boards. It probably comes from enjoying cleaning things. Life is not as easy to clean up as that fancy black-white-board, is it? Or it is. I am sounding like Schrodinger's cat who is and is not :)

Sometimes..

 I realized a while ago (I mean A WHILE ago) that no one really reads my blog so I don’t need to give a fuck about that I write and whether it is presentable or not, literarily or otherwise.

So I just moved to this 200 year old house which used to be a carriage house for horses in the 19^th century! Its old and charming and I hope the horses had fun. It has these tall ceilings and an old world charm that reminds me of my grandparents although they weren’t that old. Yup they are no more. They passed away in 2011 taking a piece of me with them. A huge piece. Back to the house, which is my home now. I set it up and felt good about it. I oddly take pleasure out of mundane things like that. My kitchen, my bathroom, my vacant living room and my sparsely decorated 2 bedrooms look perfect…to me. I feel like now I could invite all the people in the world and make them sit on the floor since I have no couches or chairs and serve them my specialty aka Indian tea. They would like it but not their hurting butts so much, I guess.

Traveling, shifting, moving has been a way of life but each time it fills my stomach up with horrible nervous knots. I feel the inertia holding me back, not allowing me to take that final step where I would say good bye to all the memories made in that place and start pretending to be excited about a new life altogether. I have lost count of how many houses I have lived in or moved out from. It’s nomadic but strangely familiar. This routine has become a house for me. Ok wait that requires explaining. Basically in certain movies, sometimes an inanimate object or a place becomes another character; in the same manner my nomadic life has become a place to live at, for me. Well I don’t think I explained that very well but since no one is reading and giving a fuck, it’s alright.

I wanted to write something yesterday and thought will write it, the first thing I get up in the morning but now I can’t recall what it was about. By the way I am typing away furiously in Word than on Blogspot because guess what the new house has its internet all screwed up which resulted in having time to jot down my abstract thoughts. I even found time to read books. Yes, it’s amazing to have no internet but really..actually not. I wanna see my worldcup matches and other crap on the laptop that I devote my precious time to.

I wanted to talk about the brevity of life a little bit. Yes it is going to go into the existentially fraught thoughts. So embrace yourself. If anyone is reading this and has reached this point, please read the next sentence. Leave a comment asshole, so that I know you just didn’t electronically stalk me while conveniently taking a glimpse into my soul without my knowledge! Its creepy as hell!!

Where was I? You know what, let’s not talk about existentialism right now. It’s depressing as shit. But you know the other thing I realized? That blogging is so underrated. I mean you have this amazing piece of tool (the word tool makes me giggle! ) that helps you regurgitate your puke all over the world like you just don’t care. Its liberating as fuck, isn’t it?! Almost like taking a dip in a secluded lake when no one is looking, no one can ogle, no one can small talk with you and it’s the lake and you. I love finding simple small pleasures like that. Blogging needs to be a character of its own in a movie where blogging can think out loud and tell the blogger       “ seriously hun, you want me to showcase this piece of crap to the world? Mm hmmm”.  I think I just made blogging a sassy African-American old lady!

 I have been blogging for over 5 years now and it’s been wonderful. I am so grateful to whoever introduced me to it. My short term memory loss doesn’t allow me the privilege of remembering situations, dates, faces, names and other such memory trivia. None the less, I am grateful to you my friend.

This house inspired me to write. I can’t stop thinking about that specific old world where there was no electricity and there were horse driven carriages. I mean the Victorian era. There is an old mansion nearby, to which my place acted as an ancillary horse carriage place. I wonder who lived there. I wonder about the problems of all those people who passed away worrying about building a mansion and a house for horses. Did they worry about food, healthcare, water, utilities, education, partner in life, entertainment etc? Did they know they would, one day, not exist and all this hard work would be passed on to a babbling renter like me? Think not.

Ok lost my train of thought.

Poison Ivy

Last summer
I often saw you near the pier
prickling my skin
like poison ivy

Shooting memories into my veins
where have I seen you before?
may be some other life
a different time

Intangible as a shadow
you appear dark inside
or do you shade me?
Wish I knew

The more I seek
the more you slip away
you try to forget me
as I forgot you

Sublimely
you evaporate, but
take it along with you
the poison ivy.

Can I get my melancholy suit dry-cleaned, please?

"Tere ishq mein tanhaiyan, humne bahut bahlaiyan".
This simple line means:- there are different kinds of loneliness in your love that I have humored innumerable times.

Simple but a world of philosophies packed into it. Simple and heavy. Brevity with depth. It can apply to a lover humoring and nursing his heart break or a connoisseur of life entertaining the ups and downs of it. I leave the interpretation to the reader. The mind often wanders and clings on to the memories that have made you weep, sad or just made you think. Don't you just hate when things make you think? A dear dear friend of mine says he has a feelings-switch which he switches off, on command and switches it on if need be. That's a super power that we lesser mortals cant afford. Why does melancholy feel more welcomed at times than the world of happiness surrounding us? Birds to watch, Skies to look at, rivers to touch and flowers to behold, yet the pangs in your heart cling on to you like a spider on a cobweb in a dilapidated forgotten building.

So should we stop feeling melancholy, stop acknowledging it and try to unwelcome it as soon as it knocks on the door?

We often look for meaning, patterns, purpose to life. And the revelations, results sometimes make the already difficult existence even bleaker. But should we just sit and let life pass us by because of that? I don't think so. So here is what I have realized, if something moves you, then you move! As plain and simple minded that sounds, it kinda makes sense. Do something if it moves you! Anything, even if it is talking about it or writing it down in your journal. Life would be a little less mechanical, trust me. Cynicism and pragmatism and hundred other 'isms' would tell you that nothing can be done, nothing can change but don't give up just yet :):)Hang in a little longer. Just a tad.

Perspective can be ruthless and a downer but we need it in life. Through perspective we can try nurturing empathy, at the least, if not an out and out helpful nature. It is better than apathy right? What's a man who cant shed a tear externally or inside for the ones suffering. Suffer a little with them. Just a little bit. It would bring melancholy faster to your heart than light but we can turn it on its head and make it purposeful as never done before. If melancholy helps you get up and go through the motions, for just one more darn day in order to be of use and alleviate the pain of someone else, then its a feeling worth keeping inside you. Don't you think so?

So next time when you look for solutions of how to always be happy, in a self help book, wait and think. Give it a fleeting, cursory thought that what if it is fine to leave the wretched melancholy in your heart, searing. What if it can make you more empathetic and relate more to the 'Les Misérables' and their miseries. After all, you are also looking for every one to understand you better, aren't you? A tad, I bet.

This is the only solution that I can think of which could turn melancholy into some kind of a catalyst to attain a semblance of happiness which is often misunderstood with success. Music, books, movies, food, healthy body, fame, travel, money, partner, kids can add so much to one's life, but if even in the company of these blessings the pangs attack, do not panic. Let melancholy, sorrow, sadness be another facet to your being. Don't send them for dry-cleaning as soon as you feel the pangs and the twinges and the stabs. Humor them a little. Let them co-exist along with the happiness, brightness, mirth and the light that dwells inside you. Let them do their work and move you. A tad.

Let me know if it works?

haya

haya na aayi unhe jab khilkhilaake hasi woh
wafa mujhe zaroor ho gayi
jafa-e-ishq unka aisa,
nigahein utha ke bhi na ek bar dekha
mehar phir bhi us khuda ki ho gayi

Rukh par unke lagaye taktaki
shab se nisha ho gayi
saans rok kar palkon ke uthne ka,
jhukne ka, karte gaye intezaar
befazool aisi meri aadton ki inteha ho gayi

Hamari maujoodagi me woh parda karein to karein
Zulfien unki bandishein todkar befikri ho gayi
fana jo na hue hum un beparwah
behichak behaya adaaon pe toh
had haamari kafiri ki ho gayi

Sehra-e-tanhai dil me mere
mulzim tasveer unki  ho gayi
aashiqon ko ruswa kare woh amooman
ajnabi bane rehne ki unki raza me
ek poori ghazal ho gayi

English translation:

she felt no shyness when she laughed merrily
but I definitely fell in love
her love is a disloyal love
not once she looked at me through her eye lashes
but I still felt the blessings of almighty

Looking endlessly at her face
day turned into night
having held my breath I have waited
for her eyes to look up and look down
this inconsequential habit of mine does not ever cease

Let her hide her face in my presence if she wants to
but her hair strands have broken shackles and they wave around carelessly
if I dont give up myself in her love, when she is her careless, carefree, unbridled self
I would end up an atheist who does not believe even in love

there is a desert of loneliness in my heart
her image has to be blamed for it (for she never comes,I just have the image)
she does not care for her admirers usually
she wants us to remain strangers, and in the acceptance of her conditions
I penned a complete song.

unhealed

Invited on the promise that you would heal some old, some stale, some newly exposed, some prodded oft and other wounds,
you saunter in with a veneer of supposed understanding
you sit, you care, you listen, you offer time and empathy
you catch the tears in your hand, right before they fall and vanish

warningly and magically, waves of courage ebb and slowly swell in my mind at the offer of refuge

hopeless, fallen, I take it
your voyeur self probes to find a silver lining
it searches for the goriest bruises that can be used as leverage later, from a safe vantage point
you feed on the miseries and suck the last wheezing breath out of me until I am diminished to a non breathing, a random futile entity
you may need some more tomorrow so you bathe and dress my wounds, with a continuing, ever present, sympathetic smile
for now you are trying to live my pain vicariously through me
seeing it but enjoying the satisfaction of offering a helping hand

you will forget and move on and share this with close and like minded friends
they will admire your entrepreneurship
you will be recognized for someone who dared to live in my dirty, dirty diseased home, yet come out a clean hero
and you will lap it up

But what about me? I am as unhealed as I was before,  before I was probed, prodded, bathed, fed, listened to.

Art of arggghhh and blah

The reasons for writing this post are as unknown to my brain as the stuff kept at a high place, to the dwarfs. If that is being height-ist so be it! I am one, what are you gonna do? You didnt finish growing abruptly at 5'3 so I have the birth-growing-up-right to bring in dwarfs! Damn them and the tall models too. Yup extremely tall people shall receive my wrath as well. What are you gonna do? No, seriously what can you do?? You dont even know where I am! No not you NSA, you are as omniscient as ominously vacant I was during my undergrad engineering classes.Despite that, I did go on to achieve moderate success at bagging a graduate degree, opposite sex people and general douche-baggery.

Yes there is a lack of coherent reasons for filling up this world wide web space but I am gonna do it anyway, being a staunch environmental conservationist that I am. I save paper by littering the world with internet rubbish instead. Lets try to find a reason anyway. Ok I have been watching a lot of shows recently which are satire kinds and they satirically ridicule extremely idiotic people which is fine by me as I like to be ridiculed in satirical manner. No seriously if you come up with clever shit to pull the wool over my eyes, there's a high chance I may not punch your face immediately. Those shows have enabled my creative (debatable) juices to flow astray, splashing 'all y'all'! Ya what's the deal with all y'all? Why so much tautological redundancy? Its like if we called homophobes, dumb idiots who are moronically foolish while being illogically inane, would it be redundant? Actually no. I am bad at exemplifying.

You are getting the drift right? Or are you drifting off? Wait! I will get to the point. So basically my tolerance level for high stupidity has reduced to negative 20 from zero. The more growing up I do as a useless human being, the more I am made aware of moronic politicians who regurgitate their ignorance in front of the world media in a manner as that of how a bat takes a shit, facing down from a ceiling. You could be hit by the bat droppings or politician vomit and those two are your only choice. Go figure. One was heard saying pray-the-gay-away, the other was calling poverty, a state of mind. They could make better rhyming asswipe rappers than the better rhyming asswipe rappers themselves! You start to wonder whether they have the anatomically necessary body part called brain. May be not. Anything can happen. God is miraculous. So they say.

In the homeland, there is a debate about who is going to be the next PM. Choices are as diverse as bat droppings and (insert another bird/mammal/insect) droppings.You try to weigh the pros and cons and realize you dropped IQ points as rapidly as republicans in America drop homophobic, democrat-phobic,any-other-religion-other-than-Christianity-phobic crap on anyone who cares to listen. In the meanwhile, the public is busy weighing the pros and cons of Sachin Tendulkar's retirement. Public and politicians don't just have the starting letter in common but they also fit in together like junkies and drugs. One is as happily oblivious and gullible as the other is blood suckingly corrupt. Whatchu gonna do?

You can do the following:
1. Eat well
2. Sleep well
3. Ignore
4. Pretend like everything is joyous and shiny.
5. Also you can sometimes write posts like I do and act like it makes a difference.

Stuff like this and plenty other that makes you wanna pull your own hair and stuff it in your mouth, out of sheer frustration, gives me a reason to arrrggghhh and blah. Its as fun as watching an overtly sexual film with your grandmother. But hey something's gotta give eventually. Till then we shall wait for Mayans to reincarnate themselves and make a new calendar giving a clear, credible and cute apocalypse date such as 6.6.6066.