Choked up or breaking free

Yet another book down, not the bottoms up variety, but the savoury and quiet one, heady and morose in the same breath, in a dark sort of way (ref.-Manjula Padmanabhan’s Kleptomania)

How would you define ‘freedom’? The feeling of not being bound by any external entity, be it time, space or spirit; the not being weighed down and pinned to a wall, emotional weightlessness of a kind or the soaked in emotion so frothy that one floats to the top and skims away aimlessly, radar-less. Priya used to assert her freedom by revolting against the very concept of time; ‘no watches for me’, she would say. She climbed high on my respect ladder for free thought, based on just this assertive act. For Angad, it is probably about humming in the gurudwara; a place of peace and godliness right? What could be a better connect than soulful music rendered straight from the heart? Isn’t the idea to invoke an atmosphere of lightness and happiness here? His logics… always bang-on. Bharat finally physically clasped his hands around the concept by losing himself in a free-fall; yeah… it helps and makes you fly; defying the boundaries of one’s physicality to assert victory over the contraints.

Freedom, to some, lies in self-expression in the best way we know, thereby making it the most apt self-defining route. Freedom, therefore, to some becomes not a break-away mantra, but about stamping the footprint deeper in the cast, making it last for forever more. Sparsh asserts his mini-package to the max by being crystal clear in his articulation and therefore, being his most persuasive self in most situations. Aayat has honed her goal-setting ability to the hilt; set your target and adorn blinders to all but the fish-eye and then, go for it and how!

For some, even the concept of freedom lies outside of us making it a little complex to attain at sheer heart’s will. Nupur wants to throw herself down the river and finds solace and peace (read; freedom) in being rescued. The only way she knows to salvage herself and her freedom lies in the hands of another, scary, isn’t it?

The classics, Vedapuri, our odd slipper, would turn to the clichés for seeking freedom. She would transform herself into the ‘cliched rebel’ and do everything ‘un-Vedapuri’; albeit clichéd (very irregular for her odd sized self) to break free from her self-created, made-to-order, customized mould – breaking out of the Plaster of Paris like Sunny Deol in Narsimha. Used to be quite a spectacle, but then, it was meant to be. Lakshmi is born a free- spirit. Nopes, no antidotes for this one. You just cannot bind her down. Her every act, every monotonous seeming chore, even the excessively routined hard working day- all are assertions of her free choices – the ones she has made more from the heart than the mind. Therefore, each and every one of them is charged, pulsating and throbbing with life. The classics, well, I salute thee! Proud to say that they would go down the anvils as two of my closest co-conspirators in the game of life.

Bringing things to me, moi..i lie somewhere along the continuum and can be extremely mobile along this scale. I want to be the Sharmila Tagore of Greh Pravesh at one go and Umrao Jaan at the next stop; with equal measures of honesty and feisty-ness infused in both the masks. But peel it all off, and beneath the moulds you might find an individual who is at once the prey and the predator, trying to figure out where exactly does she stand in the food chain? High enough to be free from looking over her shoulder at frequent points in time or down the pyramid, free to be resigned and enjoy it while it lasts.

Not Writing Today

An ache persists in my system, like a pull, the talab to write, a pang of a pointed need to express – a small, little whirlwind originating in the pit of my stomach, the epicenter of my being. Is writing an addiction? The letting out of steam to propel oneself forward...

I like the pinprick-like pangs and the tugging pulls; they make me feel aroused, wild. Aware of the throbbing need, I feel I live, I exist. It induces a controlled high, makes me feel good but not lose control; happy but not nauseatingly euphoric. But what if the small, little whirlwind of a beginning thrusts itself into a tornado of toppled emotions – the addiction takes hold, strongly and firmly – wrenching me dry of thoughts and feelings; making me vomit out all memories and kicking in a dehydrated state bereft of any ideas and a barren-ness of the mind. Is survival even a possibility from this bleak, fatal scenario?

The lone body of water in the middle of a parching desert, a miraculous drug dose, or maybe just a thought…. the light at the end of a cigarette stub when sucked on, lights itself up. The thought might take seed and grow. A thought born from the very recesses of the mind-plasma, a thought germinated not from within, but from the outside – taking cue from the love, hope and life that has miraculously seeped in from the beyond – an idea we call fiction. Parched of all musings personal, fiction might just be born.

But then maybe, just maybe, if I ignore the dull ache and the distant craving, the pain might just go away. The parched throat will moisten itself, the feverish burn in the eyes might be blinked away and then, the heartbeat will normalize. The sea will be calm again, waveless and quiet, without a trace of the tempest that could have been….

Phones ringing – like the train ride in Sliding Doors

So, I am becoming vaguer with my titles, but hopefully clearer with my writing.

Conversations on the telephone have a weird personality of their own. They are amoebic in nature, they don’t come in standard shapes and sizes and can be changing characteristics over the course of their lifespan. Devoid of the physical contact, the face-to-face element, they lack the eyes in the right place. They substitute the same with the mind’s eye, making all interactions more subjective than they should be. This happens as the circumstantial evidence, the 3-dimensional physical characteristics of a meeting are completely erased from its equation. Therefore, very subjective and transient variables become more pronounced than they would otherwise be – the moods of the conversationalists have a very strong bearing on the experience, the overall environ in which the conversation is set (and mind you, there are at least two of them) also becomes an all encompassing variable in most cases. All of the aforementioned and many others, the mood, the smells, the mind pace of those involved – make every phone conversation a uniquely different experience, thereby, maybe altering your life course just a wee bit.

Just like the train journey that would alter the physical coordinates of the protagonists, thereby presenting a whole host of differing choices for the both of them… similarly, maybe phone conversations also have the power to alter mind space settings , making us see the world differently pre and post the conversation.

They also change our relative settings with other beings in the cosmic sphere, some people we talk to, connect with on a more regular basis and therefore, we get more influenced by them and the energies they impart and the ones, we are more distant with, fade away slightly, leaving a cold void in the zone of our existence.

But beyond, all of this, there are cosmic connections, soul threads, that go beyond the physicals. No amount of choices not exploited and trains not caught can alter the settings on those. The heat and wave strength dynamics are inexplicable by physics or for that matter, all objective theories put together. These entities, or relations– the unreal and the most solid ones are the gorges, and the Himalayas of our emotional topography. They are and they shall endure – for forever.

Nobody’s Fool – can’t let you go without a mention

Well, sometimes in life, they say love just ain’t enough and then again some of the times, all you need is love. That’s the paradox of it and somewhere in the middle-earth, we spend all our life trying to figure out which side is it that we belong to? And most of the times, we end up parched, all dried-up and right spat in the middle.

A story about a town (named Bath) waiting for its time, patiently. So patient is it that it borders on the illusion of being frigidly immobile – a forgetfulness seems to accumulate about the waiting for the day the sun shall rise and the snow melt away to reveal all things green and spring-full. The town is a sum total of the psyches of all its residents put together (well, on an average, of course).

All the characters, layered, after having lived life on the brink for soooooo sooo many years, well what do you expect? Mere wrinkles with no substance in their folds, naah! The one-legged Jewish lawyer who is always in a good mood in spite of never having hit the nail on its head, the contractor waiting the coming boom out with the most earnestness; waiting for things that he knows, deep down, will never be, the old landlady who hasn’t lost her spunk or her attitude, merely honed it over the years and uses it all in high energy concentrated display of individuality (miss beryl), the I love him, I hate him wife of the contractor who cannot get over her innocence, the friend who is really in need of friendship over all else, and the man who sees through all of the layers but adamantly refuses to look within – all this, entwined in their myriad relationships. But not complex at all, as simple and succulent as life itself – with its sweet and sour tangy taste. Some parts we like, and most we wanna turn a shut eye to.

Donald Sullivan (Sully) as Paul Newman (or maybe the other way around, but that is irrelevant here) is not a shining hero. He has a punched armour to say the least (not to mention the bad knee) and yet, you want to be around him, just like his friend in need. You kind of understand that need of Rub cause you feel it to. You want to be around a guy who gets you and then, does not judge you because or in spite of it. That is a huge quality to have. An outlook one acquires after having a lot of red marks in one’s own notebook.

The story is about making Sully look inwards, a journey he has been running away from all of his life, yeah, in spite of his bad knee. And then, making him stay unaltered – almost. Maybe a little unselfish, but mostly unaltered. Yup, he would be making all those very same mistakes again, if we would turn the wheel of time backwards, cause that’s what its about. You don’t go back and erase you reasons-why, you just understand them, stack them in categories with labels, come to terms with the closure and move on. That’s the beauty of it. Nothing changes – not the pace, nor the music or the scenary, nothing. Dreams crash even though the bleakest of rainbows do appear once in a while, but overall, everything is pretty much the same…and yet, a little more understood, tolerable and …yes, we do nudge ourselves a little bit towards the fireplace called love on a chilly December night in a sleepy town called Bath.

Out in the world, without a care

One fine day, with a small little nudge from Angad and lot many cumulative from Tarun, Ma and Pa, I finally decide to come out into the sun from behind the screen door. And no, this isn’t a grand entrance, just a soft footstep on the grass, quiet and unnoticeable. Of course, I am completely unprepared, like me for most of the seemingly big and well-thought out strategic changes in life, I am oh so thoroughly unprepared. No sun screen on me, no, not even the right footwear for the pebbled pathway. Nothing.

And yet, the world never seems daunting. I don’t feel exposed and inadequate. I think its because nobody is even stopping for a second glance (I love it this way, couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate conduct). Its like the private world is very much similar to the public domain, just that maybe the noise levels are a little higher and that maybe you catch yourself saying hello quite a few times during the day. Saying hello and moving on. And I sit here wondering, why did I take so long? What did I expect? To be scrutnised and judged, exposed and violated, made accountable for every breath inhaled and credited for each exhale? No, even out there, there is space. In spite of the smells of the thoughts of others, you can still breathe in and out your rationales without getting choked. The shor in the city, so to speak, adds to the throbbing in your brain and sets a rhythm to the heartbeats. I realize that I am not that much of a recluse that I had made myself out to be, that me too thrives on the wet waste of the universe. It acts as fodder and even spurs me on. And I like that about me. Finally, I think, I maybe a little more normal than I knew myself to be.

I never know what is going to come out of this…or that

Before I start to pen down my thoughts, while I get my laptop out and place it alongside my quintessential charger, a hot cuppa almost-masala tea, till I reach the word document and scroll down and set position of the cursor and begin to let my fingers fly away on the keyboard, I never ever know what is going to come out of this one. It does not even seem like I snap my mind connection out from the rest of my being. I think I don’t even make the effort to know in advance. Not like deliberately avoiding to read the review before watching the show of the movie tonight. It is like not even being bothered by any of the buzz around it. Going in fresh, untainted, virginal. And come to think of it, that’s exactly how I handle most of the life experiences that come my way. Its easier to operate that way if the situation mostly doesn’t involve too much of any other. My job at epigram, my stint at MICA, the escape trip(s) to USA, and a whole host of others which would seem exaggerated to most if I would list down here. I am always optimistic that things would turn out right, at the end. And they almost, always do (touch wood). Some more right than others, but none too grossly wrong (knock knock). Is it my low expectation? But I seem to enjoy myself all the same. I have a lot of fond memories and a bank of laugh-out-loud anecdotes from all of my meanderings and trials, and I distinctly remember being quite a light and happy being through most of them. That’s taking out quite a bit from them all, ain’t it? See, I didn’t even know where I was going with this one, for that matter, I still don’t have the vaguest of idea.

Maybe having a road map to life isn’t such a bad thing, after all. It may let one get to the sunset point actually before sunset (sunrise, we haven’t attempted, and sunsets too, we have barely managed). And lets you enjoy the view, the one that is really breathtaking and awe-inspiring. And also, it reduces the hurdles, and lets you expend your energies in more positive ways, putting more of a sprint in your step. And…..

Having said that, I still believe that the unknowns make everything all the more worthwhile, making you push the envelope in ways and means that would seem impossible in origami to-do books. I think, we would take much longer to get there, get there late (making the whole trip pointless ) and maybe not get there at all (all the missed sunsets, please rise and take a bow) …but then would we ever have dinner table stories of the time when we went all the way to the aquarium on a Sunday (yup, closed)…went all the way to the train station for a long distance trip (wrong date and time), went all the way to the station (wrong day only) ..and then some with no errors involved, but just plain and pointless journeys – panvel rain ride on the Kinetic Honda, pennyless - without ticket to and fro to matheran (and this one is one of my best-est ever), finding Samir on a whim, having Jasmeh and Aayat as part of our lives (a newspaper photo moment of brightness, one that will never fade), Laksh and me, all the time – pointless but oh so inspired (rattling telephone, love letter to Shweta, bunking Subbu, pepsicola binge, discovering the typing class love affair, analyzing, re-analysing and de-analysing all specimens except ourselves, the junior college science exhibition, the nature camp….), Angad and his insightful theories and acerbic remarks – all bulls eyes, all of you that have been a part of me have lent some of your unplanned, un-thought through, lets go ahead with it adventure spirit to complete my shortfall…heaps and heaps of thank-yous for the same. Love.

Wings of fancy

I am poised to take flight … and surprisingly, I am all ready for the dive that awaits me as well. Along with the anticipatory gushing wind in my hair and eyes, alongside with it, I look forward to the water gushing into my lungs and I getting choked on emotion, or the lack of it. I wish for the buoyancy that both water and air will lend me.. am I greedy or what, for wanting the heady-ness of two worlds put together.. or then, maybe even a third one thrown in there.. to add to the vertigo of it. High up there, clamoring for oxygen in the frozen skies and down in the abyss, fighting hard for sucking the air out of the water.. again, why do I crave these? Maybe just to escape the mundane and the repetitive… maybe to stretch beyond and explode to bits, maybe just to endure more than now… more than EVER.

Is this the final frontier or is this a new beginning, the ironies seem never ending? Maybe the much awaited final orgasmic apocalypse will finally result in rebirth. I just hope that I don’t get stuck mid-way between down and beyond into the here and now… now, that would be the hugest irony of all.

Motherhood and its antonym

Is this what they call motherhood? This feeling of being beside oneself with either worry or happiness for most of your waking, or for that matter, even sleeping moments? Is this what they call motherhood? The constant feeling of being more alive to each and every passing moment and also, at the very same time, the passing moment’s slipping away from your hands causing you to feel the fatality in its passing? Is this what they call motherhood? The forgetting oneself oh-so-thoroughly and also, at the same time, living life to the fullest, with each emotion heightened to exaggerated awareness? Is this what they call motherhood? The mirroring of a you’re my hero gaze in those believing eyes and the alternating how can you do this to me when a curfew installation is levied? Is this what they call motherhood? Immense exhilaration mixed with the heady fear of a thousand negative what-ifs? Is this what they call motherhood? The feeling of a quiet sense of patience and a stillness that runs deep alongside restlessness that hastens to increase the heartbeats and the rhythm of life beyond control? Is this what they call motherhood? The tearing apart of you v/s you and the uncertainty of whom you want to see wrestle out of this one? Is this what they call motherhood? The brazen confidence of I know how to handle this to the pendulum-ic hysteria of virginal fear arising out of inexperience? Is this what they call motherhood?

A layer of conflicting feelings, all stemming and procreating in the same environment making a heady cocktail mix that gives you an un-precedented high and also, the world’s worst hangover – all at the same time. Yup that’s what we call irresistible. Will not trade it for anything in the world – and this one, has no conflict within whatsoever.

Still hurting after the Hurt Locker

War movie - full of grime, dust, guns, gunshots and adrenaline soaked men with unmasked brutality. And yet, somehow, the hurt locker peeled off all the grime, dust off the camera and characters and showed them for what they are – chewed up men, half eaten, half leftovers…never ever to be complete again. Chewed up by the artillery, by the defacing humanity that they face day in and day out, eaten up and un-burped by the fear of loss, death and of never finding themselves again. And small portions of leftover hope, longing, loneliness still burning inside of them..keeping them sane, still bleakly human. And then comes along with it the longing and fatal attraction to never wanting to be whole again, to live incomplete, on the fringe of human-ness and roam in the dark alleys of danger and risk it all…as the all isn’t all there to begin with, is it?

And come to think of it, how different are we from the war movie characters..waging our own internal wars every *ing day, living out incomplete dreams, pushing ourselves to achieve half baked potentials…all of us incomplete, unfinished and chewed out like still sizzling cigarette butts…main yahaan tukdon mein jee raha hoon, tu kahin tukdon mein jee rahi hai

Amidst all wars won and lost, the search for the whole is endless and never found as it is eternally rested under the debris of splintered possibilities. Never to be unearthed. Ever.

Never Never on a Sunday

Well, Sundays for me have always sported the blank look. Not bland though. Blank. Sundays have been about the beauty of immense space. No inked in plans to distort the white-ness and nothing-ness of it. That’s what I crave for, a let’s-please-do-nothing-today day…for one full day and one full night and then one more full day. And then, maybe, I will all set to face the chores of life again. Wow, what a dream!

And yes, the selfish me wants the entire day to be just for me…no impending guests, no we-haven’t-met-in-a-long-time-so-let’s-catch-up meetings, nobody else….except maybe you. And that’s when I realize how you actually have ceased to exist outside of me and have creeped in, slowly but surely, through the pores and maybe the air that I breathe in and also the moisturizing lotion that I vigorously apply (pores again). And you know what, having you inside of me is a nice, wholesome feeling. I feel full. And like he said in that ultimate love movie…you complete me.

And what will I do with such a wondrous day, if I do get it, well, I don’t know, isn’t that the whole point? Even the question posed here is anathema on a day like this…there will be no what next or what now or even the pondering, planning ummms allowed to trespass on my ideal Sunday. It will be virgin (well, almost) and it will amount to nothing in the final scheme of things. But in my balance sheet of life, it will show up there along with those fixed, immovable, non-liquidifiable assets. Naaah….it will be worth more…way more. It will be the ideal. It will signify us…and the love we share and non-purposeful-ness of it.

A sunlit day, how do I capture thee

Life, i think, the sum total of it is a summation of these seemingly ordinary and beautiful moments. Their beauty is so ordinary that there is no way of capturing them for eternity. But let me still try and attempt the impossible here..

The sunlight is streaming in through all the windows here at sabari ashiana..and you know how much sunlight that can be. Jasmeh in his namazi position is playing with his myriad toys in the spiderman room, aayat is asleep in her room and air supply’s lost in love is strumming on in the background. These are the physicals. The emotionals are the tough ones…I feel relaxed, at ease. And a little quiet inside. Something I now realize I haven’t heard inside of me in a long time. And I think it is this quietness and stillness that is responsible for the glow in the house and blanket of calm that envelops all. And that is the quintessential ingredient to the ‘ordinary beautiful-ness’ of it. All out of love…but still here and fighting.

I want you come back and carry me home, away from these long lonely nights…there is no easy way, it gets harder each day. Please love me or I’ll be gone.

Melodramatic, tragic and final. That’s how we would like sometimes our lives to be, but alas. It turns out to be monochrome-ed, continuous and unrelenting. And yet, like we heard last night, that’s where the challenge lies, in turning something dreary and ordinarily boring into a work of art …or maybe, at a simpler level…just to make it interesting enough for a single read, a single glance back. No applause, no standing ovations, no exclamation marks…sometimes, even a moment of sincere attention is enough. More than enough.