May-BE

May be it’s a repetitive pattern of sorts. Or may be it’s the overthinking brain that says that. Or maybe it actually is, who knows? 

What we believe in or do not believe in is influenced by all our previous years of existence, how then are we supposed to find out what “messed” us up in good or bad ways? And what may be good for me may be bad for you? So where do we really meet? Do we meet like the sun meets the vast limitless ocean at the horizon? A place where we “feel” that they are meeting but it is only just a realistic fantasy! 

One question leads to another and before we know it the session hour comes to an end with both the client and the therapist feeling something about the session. One may think it was a fantastic session and the other may just feel a little more broken and torn apart, yet term it “overwhelmed”, a word she uses for both exciting experiences and ravenous ones too! It’s interesting, isn’t it, how one word means both good and bad? If that can be true for just a word, then what about people and their experiences? 

 

Then there suddenly pops up the colour gray, denoting in its presence all that lies in- between the shades of black and white, a place where the so called ‘good’ and the so called’ black’ simply merge together, making an all- encompassing being. Now you may call that being a human/ a heart or even a mind. Ah! The workings! 

The writings of a solemn mood are different. They make you question everything. While it may be ‘good’ in some areas but what happens when you begin to question everything, deeming your existence a big question mark!? See, how easily we put things into the ‘good’ and the ‘ bad’, never really letting the experiences be? Perhaps one reason is the discomfort some experiences lead to and that leads us to evading them, sweeping so much under the carpet, until one day the carpet rises to be a mountain! 

If you are thinking what I just wrote was in a melancholic frame of a mind, I’ll say        “ maybe/ maybe not”. You might then respond by saying that it is either a yes or a no. I’ll then say “ What if I’m currently living in the world of maybe’s? Isn’t that what the gray is all about? A place where the good and the bad meet, giving me a possibility of the both? You might then reply “ It’s a dull colour nonetheless, right? And then I’ll scoff at you, thinking what might be dull for you may be bright for me! But then what about the majority? What about the other colours on the spectrum? What shall you say to them or call them if gray is your brightest colour? Well, how about not naming them anything for once? Really? That’s absurd! Indeed it is! For sometimes we forget that name calling things and experiences becomes so innate in us, that we forget just letting them be! We forget just letting them be!

The Growing Silence

The poems of this phase have been the best I’ve ever written. When my friends urge me to share it with them, I tell them they are too precious and sacred to be out in the open in the wild and callous world of internet. They need a heart as divine as they deserve, to carefully and gently place them on pages of a book with a gorgeous cover and a soul, for not any page shall understand their worth and not any cover shall envelop its existence.

At times when words fail, the rivers bleed with pain and  anguish, that is, for them to bear and for words to witness. The words sit by the river and simply try to be ‘present’; that’s all they can do. They feel helpless for being unable to extract the hydrogen from the oxygen, as the two have been intertwined for life. The words cringe, wince. They try to cry but nothing compares to the bleeding river. The words have a voice which the river doesn’t. The river hopes to turn its colours from black to red that it originally possessed. As goes for the words, to the outside world, they have only turned more graceful, poignant and charming as ever. Their magic makes people swoon and their effect stays like a lasting fragrance.

Between the spaces of the words and the river lies an abyss of great depth and silence. The Silence is exploring its own existence in its nascent birth. Ever since it stepped into this world, the cries have been shrilly and extremely painful to bear. At times, she simply sobs to sleep. On other times, there are sudden bursts of agony making her feel death was near. Yet the river would bleed from her eyes and she would still exist in an existence which felt nothing but absent. 

The silence has matured with time.  She’s growing.  She has begun to breathe with her own lungs. Her wisdom has given life to words. Times change: for a silence which was overbearing for her own self, she has begun to add beauty to others lives. As they thank her, she lives a little more. She lives for all that is yet to come and unravel itself in the most magnificent ways. She lives, with herself.

On being in-existent

When the tides of emotions rise like a tsunami and fall into cracks like an earthquake, there is nothing, no- thing to save. And when there is simply no- thing to save what shall one get by saving beings?

 The depths of the forest are so dark that stepping in for a trek seems like a foolish idea. But what do you do when you know that the only way to get going is by finding the very map which, inside the very forest, holds the answers to your future life? With weak steps you move nonetheless. The fear walks on one side and the courage on the other. In between walks a being of insurmountable potential often beating itself over the obstacles that come in its way. Perhaps it’s the easiest thing to give up on life when you know that the quicksand will gobble you up as you decide between losing and fighting. That’s what wallowing in grief makes people do: to give up on not just one’s dreams and endeavours but on one’s life. A second look makes one think “There’s a reason I came this far, with all the hurdles that came my way. If that is the case, giving up would not only be a coward act but missing out on a bright future which holds the promises of tomorrow!” But, like many other stories here’s a but too. It is of the never ending struggles, the anguish, the unspoken needs and the ever destructive masked face of anger. The cloak of this but is a long one. Every part of the body covers itself, feeling filthy and disgusted. The wonder is, amidst all this “how is it still surviving?...... How?”

And when soul(ace) is difficult: A book reaches the heart

As I walk with a gorgeous book to board another metro to work, I wonder "What do people think of this book when they go by the name? She looks so engrossed in the book, oblivious to conversations around her; it’s been a while I saw someone with a book and a title never heard of!" These thoughts of mine quickly rest in peace as the words by De Botton melt my heart like a solid mass of chocolate losing its existence with every stroke of heat. As I begin to break the cubed pieces of mine, a rich liquid begins to form, leaving an aroma of memories fused with a flux of feelings and thoughts which taste like sea salt.

How often do you find a book, a comfort where every single word resonates and strikes the chords of your heart, which once belonged to someone else. The guitar lies in the corner now, feeling useless, only to be awakened by De Botton, now and then. Waking up from slumber, the music formed by the chords is disturbing and soothing all at once. There are shrieks, soft strumming, and sometimes a senseless noise.

Off late words feel alien and familiar to me. They carry the surreal and the mundane and mould themselves in a vague form. And sometimes they are so raw and blunt, it's like a woodcutter chopping an arm of a tree, ruthlessly ,not knowing it breathes and lives, in its silent existence.

There's nothing more to say or write. "The stories we tell are always too simple. how much of mobility and inconstancy of my emotions can sentences carry"? For now, Alain De Botton heard me in my silence.

P.S: Line in italics by Alain De Botton in “Essays in Love”.