To Be or Not To Be

"Do you know how to concentrate?" she asked me. I kept quiet. "I think you love to believe that you are concentrating!" "Is it my pride?" I asked her. "I don't know what it is. But I can tell you something!" she said, "One. You can do it. Much easily unlike others. Two. You don't do it." "Why do you think I dont? Or do you think I can?" I asked. "That is your problem!" she said, "While you do it you never think you can't. You are always overconfident. The consequence of which is you spoil it completely. You think you are concentrating. And you want others who watch you to believe just that. You take it casually. Later once you become sure you have fucked it up you come and ask for sympathy! I won't say it is because of your pride. Because that would be foolish. Pride happens after your first success and affects your second performance. You get affected each time. I am not also sure whether it is your overconfidence! That happens to those who overestimate their calibre. But you underperform! I think I know what could it be. You are casual! Just!" I didn't know what to say. After a long pause I managed to mumble "I am always alert! At least I think so." "Then you do it deliberately!" she said, "Don't frustrate me! I have said what I had to say. You know it well! You know what goes on inside you. I am poor at mathematics. So I fail to find any other reason behind it."

Our discussion ended like that. She left angrily. I could make out why she was angry. Because she couldn't convince me something that she wanted me to learn, know and remember and she couldn't be sure that I wouldn't end up doing the same thing in my next chance. She loved to see me perform. She believed in my ability.

At the back of my mind I knew what was wrong. I knew it precisely because I know myself. She was close when she said I did it deliberately. But it was not exactly that! I couldn't explain it to her. Because it can't be explained. First because no one would believe it. Secondly because it's outside the arena of logic. It can't be argued upon. The reason was I get divided into two different individuals each time during the performance. One of them tries to perform. Another one tries not to. Often the second one wins. This tug-of-war ends up dissipating much energy which also makes me weak!

I often wanted to tell her that I didn't love doing it. That was the reason. But I couldn't. She would be hurt if she knew that! She wanted me to deliver because she believed I had talent! However, owing to some very odd kind of a combination with which I had come, I always ended up having talent in something that I never loved to do.

Moments of Nothingness

Coming home is a great feeling! Specially when you have been out for a long time and haven’t met all those with whom you have grown up. Childhood is special. Although this realization comes once it ends! It’s desirable to loose oneself in the present when one is young. Time never leaves you alone to stand still and enjoy your moments forever.

I was thinking of writing something new as, finally, after a long gap of about a year, I have finally got some time for myself! Although funny and incomplete ideas keep coming I realize it’s better to leave them alone for the time being for aging, and hence, unfortunately, am left with no plot that can be put up as a story in a blog (barring one short story that I am going to put up in Symmetry shortly). The last year has been hectic. My dreams and ambition have taken me to a place where I was a complete misfit! I tried and tried and after all this time have made nominal progress, though, have managed to adapt to the place finally. For the whole of last year I had to forget all about myself, my moods and desires, and solely concentrate on work -- a lifestyle which was, in no way, familiar to me! Never before in my life have I worked this hard. And never before did I get so less results out. However, it is a refreshing break now that I am here. Although, I also carry the feeling of stopping suddenly. It appears as if the world has continued to speed past again leaving me immersed in my childhood dreams.

The time I spent here once now seems strange! I have always disliked my childhood. It was, from no angle, what I wanted to start my life with. But today, coming back, I don’t feel that desperate or frustrated anymore! I remember all sorts of things. Breaking window panes while playing cricket, cramming the nights before school exams, narrating my written pieces to my dad and grand-dad, smoking my first cigarrette… Within each of these memories I also carried the wounds of self-hatred. I wanted to run away. I wanted to be free. I knew I was not living a proper life and I prayed that my lifestyle, on which I otherwise had no control, wouldn’t affect what I wanted to become in future. I knew I wronged each day. And I was so sure that once I start my new life, those days of childhood would remain as the worst days of my life. Today I am free. And today I have come home. I realize why those days were and will be the most beautiful days of my life. I had somehow spent those days doing nothing! I don’t know if I should repent! Today, the very realization of the fact that I had once spent my time doing nothing gets me thinking. Is such a thing possible at all?

I lived a hundred lives. To my parents I was a decent student always trying to improve on his exam marks. They loved me. To my mates with whom I played cricket, I used to be an under-hand leg-spinner who could bat a bit. I often ended up opening the innings. To my uncle I was a chess player, often a card player who could also gamble... He loved to play bridge an 29 and I often partnered him. Many loved to hear me singing. And Satadal Sir believed I had a real chance to become a painter! Not to mention that I started writing stories at a very early age. (And god knows what I am doing now with Physics!) In short I was a jack-of-all-trades. I never made out what I would grow up as. In fact I liked every thing! Unlike many, I never had fights. Very few disagreements either. People in the neighborhood loved me. And I enjoyed it. Today, now that I have been restricted to one or two arenas in life – now that I have started to work – I feel to have died in many zones in which I once lived! I have always been unable to decide which remains more painful: these days of having a direction but missing out on so many other things, or those days of living so many lives simultaneously and lacking a proper direction.

Many things have changed back here. Some of my friends have gone distant. They have grown a separate identity just like me! My grand-dad is older and leaner. My father has become quieter. The uncle with whom I used to play cards has married and has concentrated more on his business. As soon as I came home, I saw a twinkle in each of their eyes. They were so happy to see me! It gave me satisfaction. It’s a pleasure to know that there remain some who go on loving you no matter wherever you remain. They have aged and I have grown up too, but the bonds that once bound us still remain – unmodified with the interference of time. And there are some things that haven’t changed at all! My room remains just the same! The same sky I get to see out of my window, the same raindrops wet my bed when it rains today. The posters of my favorite cricketers are still there on my wall. The terrace is just the same! The orange sunrise that could be seen from it remains just the same!

Am I the same person? My attitude and lifestyle have changed significantly. My reactions have become more controlled. My words – more formal. I have learned to become socially correct. And I feel like having a separate life beyond all this. The life back at Bangalore, that makes me me! I don’t feel to restart the journey that I have left incomplete here one year back. I feel like continuing the one that I have started last year! I don’t feel those moments of nothingness anymore. Somehow those restless hours of hollow dreaming seems to be childish and meaningless now. Since I have come here, I have watched over ten movies. To kill time…

I don’t know if my disinterest or inability to relive those lazy moments of nothingness makes a difference to me! And I am still to find out whether this ignorance makes me happy or sad!

The Death of Love

Dreams are man-made. So are longings and expectations. Human heart is odd. Because it never stops expecting. That is how it loves. That is why it wants love. Love is nothing but a bond. And all bonds are hypo critic. As deformable as the water surface. Neither the two become one. Nor they stay separate! Still bonds form. Quite painfully. And in a funny way. And when they form they take away a lot of energy so as to subdue the state of both to a configuration supporting lesser vitality and higher satisfaction. Why this happens is a mystery! Or may be it's not. Bonds form to make individuals extract satisfaction. Assurance.
Love ends with the realization that the expectation of that assurance was false. And it is then the mind can come out and the heart can rest.

Sensitivity, when surrendered, might get accepted leading to the formation of a bond. Or it might get rejected – increasing the longing in the process. Sometimes it comes back to the owner; unchanged in form – without the amplification through acceptance or scratches of rejection. And sometimes it doesn't come back!
It neither gets accepted, nor rejected. It goes unnoticed by most. Un-understood by many. And unfelt by some. The soul of it wanders about forever. Wafting all across the span of this universe. Unexploited; untouched.
It's like trying to form a bond but realizing that it would never be possible! There is no sadness! Just a blank space in the scrabble of letters within the book of love that is written by many.

Society is strange! Because it's as hypo critic as a bond itself is. It expects from others as much as it expects from itself. When others can see but not feel, and understand that they can see but not feel, what mostly results is sympathy, not love. It is here where it goes hypo critic. It never accepts sympathy. But it always has the thing to offer. Smart people don't offer sympathy. But do they love?

Life is short. And all goals are without any meaning. Rivers come back to their genesis – once they empty into the ocean – through rain, completing the full circle. What is to be enjoyed and learned from is the journey and not the destination! Do bonds stop or deviate a person from extracting lessons from this journey?

Love can't be forced. If a person has expectations in his heart he is bound to love. It is because extracting lessons from a bond itself is, at times, equally enjoyable as learning from a lone journey. It's shorter. And more effective. But at the end of everything what count are the lessons. Neither the journey, nor the bonds.
To kill one's sensitivity fully is inhuman and perhaps not morally possible. But if, with the desire of forming a bond, one lifts off the bar to his sensitivity so that, pushing out of the cage of the heart and escaping in this free world, it spreads across air and wafts about in all dimensions – without getting understood, felt or touched... what results, more often, is a bond with oneself! Lessons are then learned via the medium of meditation.

It's not about becoming a narcissist. It's all about becoming passive. When the river gets nourished by raindrops off its own water it becomes perennial and independent. Eternal. Infinity contains itself in a circle. In the sense that one can trace it over and over again without feeling the need to come out. All circles bear the Infinite regardless of their sizes. This marks that they are all equal and one.
Nirvana might result out of love. But it can also be attained through the death of love. Hypocrisy must be avoided at any cost. The Infinite doesn't thrive in a self that is vitiated off its own fragrance!

Singing You, Maaya

Often when I sit alone in the dark, I try and hum a song. Being blank in my mind and silent at heart, I find that the only option the starlit night leaves me with for expressing myself to myself. Crickets chirp and the night breeze whistles past my ear. And the song doesn’t come out! Tunes overlap and words get disarrayed. The more I concentrate the more lost I become! The amateur tunes emanate – sometimes from my ribs – and waft through the air… they waft away and away from me in all dimensions of space. As though they are carrying away parts of myself that will never be coming back!

Life and death – both – stimulate me. And the channel between the two, which I often get trapped in, excites me as well! I feel like being all lost among the twists of Space and the hidden pockets of Time! Identity is also relative. I happen to be so insignificant! This world is just but another planet in this entire reign of stars and my inability is so petty! The Universe is huge. And has voids so great in it that something once leaving you might never return – even if you run after it all your life. You go on chasing and it goes on running away. And one day when you die and stop running you see it still running away! That is how I always lose myself when I sing. My heart goes on pumping new rhythms everyday. The pulsating rhythms generate tunes of several frequencies. It never tires. Just like the songs that never tire running away!

It’s not that I don’t know how to smile and live! But I find myself quite unworthy of it. This is no sadism. Neither masochism. This is an attempt to see what is there to be seen: The Truth! This is no indifference. Neither is it repentance. Just acceptance. The night air becomes a thick blanket, wrapping me all up and absorbing gently what I have to offer: my songs! The sky, the air, the earth – whose damp scent could be got from a distance after a late night drizzle – gives me company. I don’t find them sympathizing! Nor empathizing. They just welcome my presence silently. Drops of silence whisper secrets, the codes that have made up this Matrix! The feeling is great! As if to be a part of the elite league that drives this Universe. I sing! And the stillborn tunes diffuse into the surroundings and reach the limits of the night sky – where stars reside, where fairies weave magic into stardust! Sometimes to the moon! And it appears they have carried me with them. I feel the sparkles! But then I suddenly realize it’s all a dream I am dreaming; and that, in reality, I am in my room, sitting by the side of the window, all lonely, crying… and trying to sing the song!

I feel You inside me and myself inside that You again. And the recurring equation tunnels fathoms in my heart, to stretch to infinity, as I try and look deeper into myself! I see ourselves getting smaller and smaller. Diminishing in intensity… perhaps to be reduced to a speck before we could get assimilated into Nature forever! Because we are always like this together, I don’t feel the tears I cry! The tunes surround me. Just as they become a part of me. And then, when they go away, it feels that I have become a part of them – still lingering at my present, mortal existence…

I have always wished to be a star! So that I can sing afresh. So that I can sing correctly! I want to be the song itself! So that I can proclaim the power to sing myself! And thus… to sing You, Maaya! I want to sing You, Maaya! That’s what I have always wanted to. And that’s what I have always done! At least in my dreams…

The Red of Her Roses

It was raining. And thick clouds surrounded the fields. Far away, the horizon could be seen – where the overhanging gray seemed to touch the bare, barren lands. There were no sounds. Neither a being was in sight. Was just that humid silence. Was just that cold breeze that kept blowing lightly from time to time trying to freshen things up temporarily before they damped away again to get assimilated into that black hollow through which no lights passed, from which no echo returned. The breeze carried the drizzle with it!

The only bright things in that silent solitude were being laid down upon the grave now. They were a bunch of roses. Fresh, giving off a pleasant scent that didn’t die down in the surrounding air in spite of the indifferent, still grayness of its vicinity, but instead, effortlessly diffused into the voids of the air and pores of mud around and filled the entire space with a spirit of rejuvenation; a never dying promise to bring dead back to life!

The gust of wind brought in the drizzle to moisten the man’s face. He wore a black hat that covered all of his forehead and part of his eyes. His coat, trousers – even his boots, that carried mud along wherever they went, were black! He bended down to put the roses over that grave and then stood up again.

The absence of much light and the drizzle that frequently wetted his face made it uncertain of whether he was crying. But he didn’t move. He stood there still and silent and watched the roses as they got bathed on mud. He was looking at the leaf that said the grave carried the body of a five-year-old girl, buried. She was supposed to have decomposed by now. Her fingers, eyes, lips were supposed to be lost in the wombs of Mother Earth, her hair was thought to be disseminated into the pores of ground, tangled up in the dead roots of those numerous plants that have tried to grow from the spot but couldn’t.

The man was sure that the girl, in spite of being lost in the fragments of earth, was still able to feel the roses that he carried to her grave every month. He stood there and watched the rain beat down the petals, mixing them with mud. His heart beat out sounds that he couldn’t hear himself. The ultra low frequencies penetrated the ground and woke up the girl who had been asleep for the past month.


The place never saw a sunny day. It always rained in that part of the world. There were a thousand graves around – spaced throughout the fields. None of them touched light. None of them got relieved of that silent, hovering melody resulting out of the eerie solitude. There were flowers and gifts scattered all around almost on every grave. And the sight stretched on to infinity in all directions. The incessant rain mostly washed the objects away. What remained was decomposed over time. Dead smelled the flowers and played with the gifts. Communication that is hindered is desired often in love – be it even between the living and the dead! Relationships that thrive on love are eternal! Nothing ends; nothing begins!

The man slowly turned round and started walking. He disappeared down the horizon to leave behind the roses… and the drizzle. The breeze carried the scent to distant places…


After she became aware of her father’s absence, she slowly oozed out of her grave – the pink frock still on her small, beautifully shaped body, the red ribbon still tied round her hair – happily smiling. The roses were so dear to her! She held them tight to her bosom and she smelled their fresh fragrance… She cried. And her tears became pearl and climbed up the lonely road to heaven through that still air, later to be brought down as rain. She cried because her heart yearned for something she couldn’t grasp, something beyond her reach. She cried because she knew that she would never know whether she would ever get free, whether she would be growing up and dying a second death one day, whether she would lose her evergreen beauty, of which she was quite jealous, that always seemed like a precious possession to her.

She spoke to the clouds, the breeze and the fields. She asked them if they were dead! They didn’t reply. And she asked the roses then… Their red appealed to her and she wanted to play! She wanted to run around the fields and fly kites and watch birds.
She felt lonely! And the whimsical Earth held on to Her obstinacy to not to change any of the Rules that made her run this world.

And then, before she went in the grave to rest quietly... closing her eyes, she cried again. She cried this time because she knew that one day the roses would stop coming to her grave as her father would be dying and taking a place close to her. While she cried silently, she went on wondering if anybody would remain alive then, on this planet, to bring her and her father a bunch of roses!