Twisted Realities…

An embittered life….like a Poison Ivy affecting everything in its vicinity….suffocating with complete domination…for as long as I can remember…my days are not my own…my life is not my own…I struggle to bide my time….clutching at a wisp of sanity…fighting for a morsel of hope, the ambrosia of my life…

It’s a strange thing…memory. A double edged sword. Makes one want to remember, yet want to forget…to remember the lessons, yet forget the experiences….is that possible?

I hope I remember.
I hope I forget.
I hope

White Flag..

and when we meet
which I am sure we will
all that was there
will be there still
i'd let it pass
and hold my tongue
and you would think
that i've moved on....

Voices in my head…

There are voices all around me
My enemies and my friends
Do this, dont do that
The chorus never ends
But I shall always listen to that quiet inner voice
Its strong and gentle; and I have made my choice..

…….familiar strains of a hymn learnt long back…when life was simple…choices were uncomplicated…and thinking meant deciding what to wear at my best friend’s birthday party…

As years flew by, and I ‘wisened’ up to the ways of the adult world…I realized it became more and more complicated to keep life simple…the no. and gravity of decisions I had to make each day just kept on rising exponentially…and a day came when I realized I had a problem….which has caused me endless suffering over the years…I cant seem to stop thinking…..ever.

There is just no place for silence in my head anymore…and it is scary….coz I know,
‘its the spaces between the notes, that create the music’ …

Preoccupied all my waking hours…(and mostly the dreaming hours too), trying to sort out the voices in my head…sifting through the barrage of probabilities, possibilities, consequences of decisions already taken, and those to be taken in future…people and places….hopes and fears….conversations already had and the thoughts I have yet to put in words…mental attack and defense…..past regrets and wishes for future….thinking about friends tht have become strangers, and strangers which will be my friends….

Imagination has almost become a curse…the need to escape becoming more and more frequent…

........

where are you?......

i have become tired of searching....

An alibi for a life….

Each one of us goes through life hoping that we made a difference….that our presence mattered in the grand scheme of things; for the short time we are in the state of consciousness….thinking we know exactly what we want out of life…setting and unsetting priorities….looking for an alibi for a life…probably that’s why people marry…to ensure that their lives didn’t go unnoticed….their children and spouse…a testament to their time spent on earth…

As for me, I have yet to outgrow that adolescent preoccupation of figuring out where I am headed in life….what I want out of it, and what I m willing to give…I keep waiting for that epiphany…a sudden awakening to my role in the grand scheme of things…a call for my vocation….thus explaining my predilection for uncertainty; probably one of the multitude of opportunities it spawns might lead me to my THE GOAL in life…

Then again…I have been searching so long….that have developed a comfortable familiarity with instability…trying to escape the wastefulness of a routinely led life…am almost beginning to accept this exploration as THE GOAL of my life…probably there are others like me, I hope…who are destined to be the travelers….their lives one long saga of exploration….just like the bees….whose goal is to flit from flower to flower….thus contributing their bit in the name of the bigger cause of pollination…

And I do believe we have a role to play in the bigger scheme of things….a part to perform in the grand saga of the universe…we all like to arrogantly think that our decisions are ours alone…attributed to what is called ‘free will’…but then what is destiny? Does it exist? And has it already been written? Are we then mere puppets that are given the illusion of free will to keep them happy?

There is a lot I am confused about…

method and madness....

My time at NID has made me realize one thing – Sanity is overrated.

Insanity, or its less pungent cousin, craziness, is a much more productive state of mind…History reveals that no truly great work of creativity, whether in arts or science was achieved by pure logic alone..whether it was Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci, Van Goh or John Nash…all true geniuses had a twist of madness to their method....makes me wonder why logic alone is perceived as the one great hallmark of intelligence…..in fact madness, in my understanding, is the single thing that will always ensure the superiority of man over machine…of a human mind over a supercomputer…

NID, on the other hand, has always extolled madness as the single great indicator of genius…madness IS the method here…craziness being considered as the petri dish for creativity; and logic frowned upon…

Probably, both the view points are the extreme ends of a spectrum…of the age old rivalry between madness and method….and the creative maxima is reached somewhere in between…at what point this maxima is achieved depends on the individual, and the field of work..

In engineering, we are always taught, that there is just ONE right answer…one perfect solution…and all other solutions are wrong…this has the effect of looking at life as a series of zeros and ones….blacks and whites…without acknowledging the presence of grey…we forget that grey is what acknowledges the presence and necessity of both black and white simultaneously…in the same world…..grey, then, is the most stable state of existence…not only for everything in the world outside, but also within our own being..

In our logic driven world, undue importance is given to the sovereignty of the Solution…while the context is relegated to a background…unable to see parallel realities, we don’t realize that what maybe appropriate in one context maybe completely misappropriate in another context…why then, are there heated and endless debates on The Right and The Wrong…without little, or no awareness of the context?

Like I read somewhere….

“I have my way, You have your way. As for the Right way, the Correct way, or the Only way, it does not exist.”

So true.

spaces....

Have been recently back from NID….my home for the past 2 yrs….it was an overwhelming experience..

Wondered what it was about its empty corridors that made my heart so full…cud still hear the laughter…feel the people….a feeling of absolute, rare calm...jutst like the perfect tranquility of a fish bowl when the fish dont move...

I am a nomad at heart…the fear of stagnation always keeps me on the move…both mentally and physically…and I never thought it was possible to spend a great length of time in any one place and not feel restless…the urge to move on usually comes too soon…

But was wondering what was it about this small pre-fab structure in the middle of nowhere…with crickets and beetles for company….tht tugged at the heart strings so? I realized it had nothing to do with the space outside but the space within…the way I hv been affected and changed forever…

Every animal (including us humans) is a territorial being…I remember feeling very hostile when my juniors came to share my campus…wht I till then thought was ‘my’ space…we always like to believe tht we were better…our times were better…probably to substantiate our illusion tht our lives didn’t go waste…..tht we made a difference…. and tht the place was special becoz we were special…this may be a very arrogant view to see our relationship with the space…but if this belief contributes to the highly valued thing called ‘memories’ then I think it is worth it…

And any external space is only as important as the degree to which it affects the space within… thts why the places whr we spent our childhood are the most beautiful… thts why thr is only one home…

a passing thought...

“The scars of a battle with one’s self take longer to heal than others. And sometimes, perversely, you desire that the scars remain, as a reminder of what it is like and what it could be like again.”

a long, long time...n then some more...

Its been a long long time….a lot of water has flown under the bridge since I poured my thoughts out….not that I am in a habit of doing that often…maybe its sheer laziness, or maybe my belief in the sheer transient nature of most thoughts and feelings…the few that are of permanent nature….they are, well…permanent..

Also, deep down, my long held belief that nobody gives a damn anywayz…yet a lingering hope, that somebody does…and thts y this outpouring..

Two years have passed…two years of peeling away…of layers of prejudices, hang-ups, doubts and judgements…a return to innocence…purging away the algae over my mind…

Two years of preparing myself for the long journey into the horizon….like a small boat tied to the anchor….bobbing up and down along with the tide…low and high, low and high…the tides just clearing away the debris of yester years….gradually realizing the fleeting nature of the tides themselves…the only constant thing being the immense ocean…TIME…the only balancing force…

How many wrongs must a heart suffer
Before it knows there is no right?

How many people do u look to for happiness
Before u know it lies inside?

How many paths does a traveler walk down
Before he finds the one that leads Home?

How many ‘choices’ does a mind make
Before it realizes they are just a compromise?

How many hurts does a heart suffer
Before it knows that the healer is Time?

How many ‘values’ does a child have to learn
Before his innocence dies?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind..