De-toxing

One of those times, when the duality of the necessity and the simultaneous futility of your own existentialism weighs down upon your heart...the kinds that wrenches your heart...Yes, so this is yet another one of those posts from the lower rungs of levelheadedness...

So yet again i've some questions, that i need to throw up into the void, not particularly in the hope of attracting an answer...but because they become toxic if they stay inside for too long. 

Hence yet again, I wonder why it is always elusive concepts that we want to, and hence try to capture. Tch! The very basic follies of human nature! What you cant have is always what you want, inspite of your better judgement and better knowledge.Happiness for instance - sometime the whole conscious effort to look for happiness defeats the whole purpose.

What makes me happy? The rain does, i know...so does the sound of the sea...and the soundlessness of the hills..

A dear friend and me, have had this discussion often...'dukhobilashita' she calls it..i love how the word sounds...the sound of melancholy...:) At those times, we are left questioning yet again, the meaning and implications of several intricacies of life, and the drama they inherently unfold in each of our lives, differently, yet so alike. That is when we play old songs, rummage through memories and end up talking about the futility of the reminiscing... yet the indulgence, is very endearing.

These are times when i have specifically selected a set of songs to be on the loop, and each of those makes my shoulders droop and my eyes brim.. the necessity and the inherent futility, making so much more sense then! 

But at these times, at these strange hours, as shadows cast their shadows in my mind, creating an indistinct shape here, another familiar one there, i cant help but wonder. What is it that we are actually looking for...love, money, peace, satisfaction, God-likeness? What is it? What do each of them really even mean? One who has been there, will hardly be able to explain and one who hasn't will hardly be able to comprehend. So the point is lost in trying to make it altogether. I often wonder that perhaps in seeking happiness we drive her further away, shirking away in the corner, where she stays put, till suddenly at a very opportune moment, she catches you unawares and lights up your heart. And sadly, then in the blink of an eye she disappears, leaving a sweet-bitter taste in your mouth..

I see some among us, play along, play along with life... and how it gladdens my heart to see the ease and the warmth with with they accept and embrace life.Whatever it brings, without questioning. How i sometimes wish i were one of them. One story has to end, for another to begin and then that too will end to make way for yet another. Yet again, you will go through an upheveal of emotions and yet again tides will rise and ebb, till they move on to another coast... then, you too will move on to yet another coast for yet another capsule of time..lap up the warmth of experience and yet again wander off..

Yet, the effort seems so much...

Sometimes i give a thought to how much i indulge myself..my wants have always taken precedence over my needs, sometimes even over my common sense. If you dont crave something, you will hardy ever enjoy it when you have it..and hence I've never been someone who has denied herself access to her wants...if it has been anywhere within my reach, i have usually reached out to it..sometimes, even inspite my better knowledge. At these times the feeble voice of the sensible woman trying to make herself heard has mostly been ignored. For an idealist, romantic, practicality has hardly ever held any attractions. Unfortunately, but, the ease of non-attachment has always eluded me. I've always had a favourite book, that i've carried with me, wherever i've gone. I've always had a best friend. I've always had that nightsuit i cant do without. This however seems foolish when you know that someday your nightsuit will become unuseable, a different book will become your favourite, leaving behind the faint fragrance of memories.

Distractions help. Bum-bay in that respect is a blessing. There'll be a dearth of the lack of distractions if you choose wisely, and hardly the other way around. I've been back here almost a month now and i've been breaking habits. I've always had the knack for things at their face value. They say, that even the foolish-est of us, learn with time and experience..

Nevertheless, this time the city has been far kinder to me..maybe its just the lull before the storm, maybe its compensating for the last time..who knows..i'm sure the answers will come to me...with time and experience...One thing though that has not much changed about this city is that it still is a very lonely city..i miss a particular warmth in the air that Calcutta always wore as a shawl. Inspite of being the most populated city in the country, with people and hence illegit constructions popping up their innocent heads from every corner, the city leaves you feeling very alone ...Then too people help, unless you have already found home. Home, again, has always eluded me, though i've never lacked a place to rest my head. I've been looking for those niches here that you need to have in every place, those where contentment is inevitable...some i've found, some i still am to... time and experience yet again..

These are times when you know the airbubbles will burst. Yet you put so much effort into making each..you want them to be beautiful till such time they pop and nothing remains. And all the while you have known they would. Afterall amidst pine trees, they never would have lasted. Made a pretty picture..absolutely, but of course you knew, they would burst. Some of them even before they were fully formed. Why then inspite of the wisdom, does the heart look for that something that your mind already has some ten very good reasons not to have? Then why the craving for chocolate, when its only gonna make u fat! At these times, this blog is my dearest friend; this and the other. Usually then, i try and disappear far far away from all the persons i know. I resort to all the 'people' in my life instead... Ambivalence and the people who stand for it. De-toxing! Some among them, again, if you have chosen wisely, become persons too. Rarely though.

Not that i do not reach out to those closest to me, but those are mostly the need for attention and validation. And more often than not, a phase that leads upto this one. Attachment, and the expectations that follow are of desire that grew out of one of the solemn, hardly noticed nodes. Its time i gave the whole tree a proper pruning! Somethings are just not meant to be, and they wont. Some others, even if they were meant to be, wont. Because you live in a world that is as real as it gets. There are accidents, heartbreaks, heartaches, losses, failures...n then u get up and run again. In midst of the rat race, if you see another fragile image somewhere, you strain to keep your eyes off.. Your cozy cover of the land of happiness, where in the midst of Neverland you actually hold the dreams of forever still breathing in the fragrance of freshness, will remain, just that. Your Cozy Cover!..the one you could slip into at your own will, however it is also the one that never made any promises of reality. You just played along, in search of the land of the hills, while the mirage kept shifting further and further away...

And yet again my music player chooses to play 'Annie's song'...well, i think i'll put this on the loop now..

Have you ever wished you lived the song? 

One of those afternoons

Its one of those afternoons..one of those rare ones, when the implications of the passage of time, hardly mean anything. You could lie in your skin, fuelling scattered thoughts in your mind, and smile for no reason. You are a content you.

I've missed these afternoons for a while, where you're smug and satisfied...you romanticize the songs, sit and soak in the serenity of this peasant afternoon, from the recesses of your dark house. Write a word here, another one somewhere there! Hog on some pizza in a way that would make a pig look like it had cultivated refined table manners.

One of those afternoons that you had forgotten to catch upon while walking.
Every now and then you should get off the road, stop at the side-walk and have a smoke. And enjoy it. Catch up with yourself before you yet again, take the road and keep walking!
One of those afternoons..

Habits and the likes of them!

Most things that you have grown a sense of familiarity with, eventually change, be it for the better or worse. Along the way they expect you to get accustomed to it. If not, simply accept it. Eventually you will get comfortable with the change and wham! before you know it, you are faced with yet another paradigm shift, yet again! However, as is the irony of existence, there are certain things you do want to change. And they are the ones that seem to stick with you. For the sake of making it sound better we call them 'habits'.. and for the sake of those of us, who make excessive use (read misuse) of the habit of habit, we add an adjective and call them bad habits. And pledge to get rid of them. At least try to. Or to the very least we want to. Or so we say!

Most 'bad habits' however, seem to give 'change' a tough time. The only adversary perhaps that has actually challenged change and more often than not, won! For once its mighty manoeuvres fail to imperceptibly spread its shrouded wings and catch your now-almost-second-nature unawares. This is the other end of the spectrum infact, where you  actually have to strive, to even bring about a minute change. And once you are caught offguard, wham! ur habit-friend stares right back at you, even smiles...the impish, crooked one. 'I told u, all that effort was futile'!

We usually find it so difficult to embrace change, as we know it, precisely for that reason. Because we don't know what we will chance upon. After all, no one likes being thrown out of their comfort zones, to be faced with a new idea of survival altogether. Even if you don't like what you have now, at least you know. And knowing can be a very very cozy feeling. And i say that inspite of myself. Inspite of my almost uncanny knack for newness. Familiarity can still be very comforting.

Hence we keep reverting to our habits. Good, bad, ugly...all of them. I've seen a lot of relationships hold through for a few years longer, before they actually crumpled to dust, simply because two people had become a habit to each other. Now that's not a bad thing as long as there are more reasons. However, when the habit is the only reason, that's when the alarm bells start sounding...and i have witnessed them wreck havoc in many a people's lives. Its mostly because you know what you are coming home to. Most not-so-happy marriages have stuck through because of the same warm-cozy familiarity. Even if you came home to the most insinuating fight, you still came back home as you had known it, when you left. People have stayed on with the same job, in the same city, in the same house for the very same reason, inspite of all odds! As much as i like newness and the thrills of not knowing that it brings as perks, i still can relate and somewhere perhaps crave that familiarity too. And have mostly held on to it, till it has gotten the better of me! And it mostly has...

Like a friend says, those of us who have chosen the open roads over the comforts of homemade waffles, hardly have the luxury of settling in.

Sometimes, when i sit back and think, i'm amazed at how much we put up with because its simply simpler that way. Than to acknowledge change; and worse still embrace it. As a child i remember i'd be surprised how my parents would complain about the potholes, yet take the same road to work everyday. The road not taken' was afterall, just that! We complain and yet grudgingly go back to what we know we will complain about. A bad job, a sour relationship, a leaking house, unkind friends, pot-holed roads, shitty governments, all of it. It took 35 years for India's once-upon-a-time most intelligent and politically active state to figure out that authority needed to change hands. Not that it did much good, but that's another story altogether! And with all the hullabo that we do about wanting a better life you'd have thought we'd know better. We are  perhaps the only of God's creations that resist change so badly. All other creatures of Nature, are far more in tune with the idea, that God's most intelligent creation inevitably strives to shove into the attic, behind closed doors, and then put heavier boulders against it...lest it come out!
Afterall, denial, has always been an intelligent concept!

I've put up with bitten-unshaped nails for as long as i can remember. Its only today that i put nail-paint back on again. Just so that i stop!