From being a writer ...to living as a reader

There was a time when I would crib over the fact that reading was not something that I could do; after all it required sitting and reading and that needed patience. My Masters course offered no escape from reading for we were expected to read approximately 150 to 200 pages per week and comment on them with our two page reflections. Perhaps that was the first time I began thinking, reflecting and questioning as I read.

Today as I look back at my reflections of readings of Plato's The Republic or Gandhi's My Experiments with Truth or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye amongst various others, the reflections appear alien      (as they have a profound touché!). I wish to bring up the difference between reading and reading with reflecting. The latter is what truly nurtures the soul. The questions raised the doubts that bud and the everlasting confusions, all are tiny seeds of a soul that come out nourished after a good wordly meal. Last year, specifically, marked for me a new beginning in terms of reading books. We psychologists or psychotherapists ought to read to work to the best of our potential for our patients. Thanks to my profession, I read some elegant, classy yet raw and brutally honest books. I read Alain De Botton's Essays in Love, which still mesmerises me, ( I'll be re- reading it again sometime), Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, Tanya Byron’s The Skeleton Cupboard, Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda, Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle, J.K.Rowling, Irving Yalom, two renowned psychotherapists Jon Carlson and Jeffrey Kotler, Erich Fromm, Winnicott, Richard Bach, Rumi among many others. I simply read and as I did I found how I gradually began appreciating the authors I read.

 Reading is like drinking green tea, you need honey to start sipping it initially but as you begin, the green tea itself seems sufficient ( for me Tulsi flavoured) and each sip a dip into eternity. So, even if you read a page a day, don't fret, you're on the right track! Today as I write on my cellphone I was amidst reading Ruskin Bond's "Falling in love again". It's a poetic treat. He is my kind of writer. His metaphors are like streams of waterfalls and his words are like music on harp. His book is my third book of the year (the other two are partly read, yes I have begun to devour books now) and his lines melt my heart like a chocolate. I rise and fall in the waves painted by him on this canvas. For those on goodreads, an advice - Reading is not a competition. Among all the things you run for or about in life, please spare reading! It's supposed to be a leisure (I'm not including textbook reading here) and let it be. I purposely haven't synced my goodreads with FB friends for I do not want to get worried by who is reading how many. Goodreads is one favourite site for me. I love their reccomendations. This year my cherished gifts were all books and I'm only glad! There are some 60 books waiting to be read and the list only gets longer by the hour. Have a blessed and a nourishing reading year ahead!

 Love

Have a reading year ahead!:) 

P.S: I just finished Ruskin Bond’s Falling in Love Again and Virginia M Axline’s Dibs in Search of Self

Tuesdays with Morrie : Afterglow

I’m getting fond of Mitch Albom now. He befriended me one fine day as I was surfing through Amazon. He just came by and flashed himself by offering me faith, just when I needed. I spent some good days with him, soaking in all that he had experienced, only to see me start walking on my experiential journey. I gathered faith, through essence and in spirit. I think the beauty of special friends is that you keep re-visiting them, even if it seems like eternities passed between you and them. Every meeting is like a beautiful chapter, written in conversations, added to the book of life. If this metaphor was to come true any day, I would randomly open a page and start reminiscing along the pages.

Few days back Mitch called me. He knew Buddhism is what I had found my calling in. Funny, isn’t it? After all these years of wait and wonder for a Guru I could believe in, I found that the faith was no where outside but with-in me. I could see the power of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo reach my soul, cleansing my spirit with every chant. He asked me to spend some time with his favourite teacher and coach Morrie. I was all for it. Pages after pages wisdom overflowed, making me think of the person I have been, the values I stand for, the culture that imposes itself on me and the love I feel for my loved ones. All through this journey, not once Mitch conversed with me and yet he did. He let me in his world of ‘lessons learnt’ with Morrie. When people are so beautiful inside you are head over heels in love with them. Isn’t it? Ah! I’m glad to have fallen in love with such people in my life!

There’s something I feel going up and down inside my chest. I don’t know what it is. My spirit or the warm fuzzy afterglow of Tuesdays with Morrie?

A memory: The other day I shared with my brother that I’m working on publishing something these days.

He said “I hope not fiction or something like Do this, do that?”

 “You mean self help books?”

“Yeah”

“Oh! Not at all”

“Thank God”

“Haha! Cum’on I know I’m not good at writing fiction. All I want is my book of poems to get published someday”.

Amen.

P.S: I purposely didn’t add “book review” in the title. A book so sacred as this one deserves beautiful words, not clichéd ones!

There’s a book lying on the shelf…waiting to be picked

 Ever thought which words shall whisper into your dreams or crawl under your pillow as you lay there, opening a case of pages, immersing yourself into a world far away from ‘reality’? Oh! too long a sentence, was it? Some sentences like it brief. Some like to stretch their muscles nice and long, some like it crisp. Some like it warm. Some like it cold. Some like it fluffy. Some like it flat. Some like to rise. Some like to wallow. As each word dips itself into the last drop of hot chocolate lying besides your lamp, it kisses your lips, quenches your tongue of the longing you’ve always had, slowly entering your bloodstream, permeating the cell boundaries, only to enter the nucleus and make you feel the feel of the words you just tasted.

Your intuition calls you. It slowly rises from ashes, the one you never thought belonged to you, becomes a molecule and fuses with your spirit. In moments of oblivion, when the chatter outside makes you deaf; in moments of catastrophe, when the pieces of self look at themselves, all broken and shattered; in moments of elation, amidst smiles filled with glee, a voice speaks, only to find us no one around. Who do you think it was? Cum’on! I answered it right in the big-inning of the sentence.

As I read the text on language, it’s development and theories, words called me. My body felt hot with all the heat that the city was giving away. They contrarily felt cold. I invited them over. We had a chat, a very small one, just when Yalom wrote “Patients will resist your disclosure”. Our chat was mere a thought which was blank. No word spoken at my end yet understood by them. They knew it reached me. However I knew it too, yet I didn’t understand what chord they struck in me. Some are magic, they are all smoky, light, enchanting, vague and alluring. A swoosh! And they are gone, leaving behind a feeling unnamed.

Did I know Yalom would invite me for having breakfasts, lunches and suppers? No! actually Yes! We all carry answers to our questions we never think we will ever be able to answer. We reach out to those we think shall know. Why? The heart needs comforting, my friend. Far away in the corners of the heart lies a part which hears nothing but words. Words written are what it listens to; those that play music which enters the soul, so gradually, making them feel a part of our veins. The next time somebody invites you to open the pages to their world, give it a thought “Why now? Why them? Why You?” and may be as you shall ask the why’s, more shall emerge as more shall die.

            

Currently reading: Gift of Therapy by Irving Yalom

On the list: Tuesdays with Morrie, Illusions and There’s no such place as Far Away by Richard Bach

P.S: I'm on Goodreads, let me know if you wish to join:)

I read you

After all this while of reading

That which was so obscure

I found a light beside that street

Leading straight to your heart’s core

Wondering if you were two people at once

 A question I once had asked

Got my answer in time

For some words have filters in dark.

Your vagueness enticed me

Into reading the soul behind

For true hearts lead on

Hidden paths become a treasure to find

As I compared myself to others

Sun’s rays beating to outshine

You said I was a sun of my own

To each his own, their kind.

The trust gathered in those ink scribbles

The ones petite, pretty and fine

Are the ones that brought this soul

To a love that your words defined

C( Qu)oated*

Be glad that you don’t have instant manifestation. This buffer of time is really your friend. It’s your opportunity to observe and to ponder and to visualize, and to remember. It’s your opportunity to take an Emotional Journey that might be different from what you’re actually observing.~ Abraham

Before it could even start, I had a lump in my throat; an imagined one. You know how memories haunt you, as you lived your life trying to escape the moments which were only running towards you, following you like ghosts of the past, the past you never know would turn out on you, only till the time you were in present, for real.

Experiencing a vacuum is a phase which many of us have lived and those who have not may wait for. Life being itself has its ways of helping you experience myriads of emotions, only if you stay connected to them (myriad: how I love this word). Of course, vacuum has no air. It makes you feel breathless.  You live, only to question. You live, with anguish that burns through your skin. You live, with your heart that wanders to a place you’ve never been to. You live and that my dear friends, is the sole problem! Why? Cause it’s not really a happy place to be in. Yet it’s a place you ought to be in, in that very moment.

Having been in that vacuum before, the memories rushed through the mind, like blood rushes through the veins, in that fight-or-flight mode. “What if it happens again?”, “This time I shall definitely get crazy!” Work being the most important part of our lives makes its presence felt so vividly that you invariably get dependent on it, not just for income but for time’s sake too. And there stands the time laughing at you, as you walk past it hurriedly for the bus to catch, the metro to ride, or the breakfast gulped in few bites, only to see you walk back with fatigue in your bones and years added to your soul. For the lives that love their work and consider it a blessing, I offer my smiles to you, for those who complain, I offer my hand to you, come along, feel the vacuum, if you must, for it answers those questions you always ran away from. READ, beckon your soul’s voice and you shall be freed!

Not having any work after you have spent your two years of existence, slogging, writhing in pain, fatigue, exhaustion, can be difficult. Work has a powerful way of taking your life away from you even as you live each day to work! It’s a mystical charm that cloaks itself on your life hiding away the true facts, until you see them in your dreams or feel them as a ‘déjà vu’ or daydreams as you nonchalantly swift through your daily chores.

This time, the vacuum beckons me on and off. The grace of words calms me down. Both their words, are soaked in, one who holds the wand of mighty thoughts and the other where death does the talking. There is one more writer who needs to be allowed to enter the doors. His time shall soon come. When will yours?

* read as coated and quoted at once!

Thank you Leo, for the lovely prompt:) Link up at a prompt each day to get your words flowing.