To the Top

To what lengths are we willing to go to get to the top? To what cost?

Life is Funny [33]

These have been long overdue. But here goes:

For your entertainment, following are a few conversations with the wonderful people in my life... :-)  

Sam & Peter to a mutual friend after a sleepover:
Sam: You, my man, can really snore. One minute he is awake, the next minute it's like there are a bunch of motorcycles going by.
Peter: Oh, that explains all the motorcycles in my dream last night.
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Raaji: When was the last time you got this car washed? Never, right?
Kay: No, no... it rains every now and then.
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Three cups of tea. And how many shots?
-Komal
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U: We won the cricket match!
Raaji: Yes we did! It was close but we made it happen.
U: Yeah we tried our best to lose but somehow we managed to win.
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A dear friend leaves a voice-mail on my phone....
Hey, where are you? Pick up. Pick up! Pick up!! Pick up!!! Pick Up!!!! *Pause* Now that is not working, is it? Alright, call me back.
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How long do you have to keep it in?
-Milton, on taking the hot wings contest.
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Kay: Shh... you are loud, we are in the library.
Raaji: People get distracted when they can hear other people, I talk so fast, its like background noise.

A Sight of Love

I could fill pages, and pages with love - with stories, with poetry, with letters - love oozing out of all the words... love running towards the reader. I could sit down and give profound and unmistakable advise about it. People flocked towards me to pour their hearts out about loving, and not loving and wanting to love, as if I was their only hope, as if I had spent a lifetime in love.

Then there came a time when I stood face to face with my lover. All the poetry eluded me. My crafty words, and seductive vocabulary vanished just like that. My mouth dried up, palms became sweaty, conversation stuttered, while my heart threatened to jump out of my body once and for all.

I wasn't prepared for it. I didn't know that when you truly face love - when you are a lover - you fall apart like never before. Each thread of your veins, each element in your body breaks down one at a time, your bones come crumbling apart. Lovers are known to have heart attacks. Lovers cannot perform and drink endlessly through the night. They eat too little and keep devising plans to end their miserable existence. And that's not all. Everything else will fails. Whatever you have prepared for love - your dress, your dinner, your poetry... all just goes wrong. Nothing seems enough.

How is it that one moment life is in order, and you are content, perhaps a little pessimistic, but content. Things around you make some sense and then suddenly, without any warning or sign, the solid floor under your feet becomes quick-sand, your stomach fills with butterflies, you realize what it *really* means to be weak in the knees - that it's not just an expression but that you really *do* feel weak in the knees. Why is it that suddenly you find yourself in a world which is beautiful yet so uncertain? And all at just the sight of love.

Memoirs of a Broken Heart

Love is essentially a satanic version of hate. Love is a chameleon hiding under plain site. This little rascal always leaves you at a crossroad where it's path is marked with crosses at every corner for you to brace yourself for all the times you will be hung up on it. Your heart... your poor heart be nailed through, not once, not twice but probably through all eternity if you walk on this path. In love's penitentiary, there are no decisions, there are no punishments, there is just life in prison, with no parole.

Love's mood is like the wind. It never really stays. Love has this unique quality to break and mend all the same. Love is a lot of work. You have to paint its picture every single day or it starts to fade away.

I imagine you can't understand this abstract, sappy story of love. Sorrow has made me a poet. And a poet I shall be. But what would you know. What would you know of why the earth always turns towards the sun, why the moon always shines down on the earth, why the moths always flock towards the light even when it will bring them their death. How would you know why we always want to stay with the person who gives us love. How would you know that for some people, the sun just doesn't shine. Ever.

Over & Over

My days are numbered now. I know, because I count them everyday. And I wonder once this countdown and over and I am where I want to be or where I have to be, will I be happy, or will it make any difference at all in the state my  mind or my life.  We are too eager to run away. To run away from the routine, from the people who have become so mundane, from the traffic and the work and the late night TV shows. We believe that if somehow we were to go somewhere else or do something different, we might be able to make it all better. That perhaps some how we will find peace. Most of us change our lives so many times looking for that peace and happiness that we have lost track of the count. And somehow we still keep doing it over and over and over again.

Some relationships run its course. What was beautiful and attractive yesterday is only mundane and ordinary today.  Some emotions can't withstand time. That's why best friends turn into lost friends and lovers turn into exes. In this quest of finding our selves, we find that the more we look for ourselves, the more we find ourselves losing them.

Then one day, one ordinary random day, you wake up and you have to start all over again. For the umpteenth time.

Fairy Tales

As we grow older, fairy tales become just that - tales. Some stupid tales we believed in once. Some make-believe fantasies we were so fond of. The older we grow the far apart we seem to get from the princesses, the songs, and the happy endings.

The older we grow the less we think about them.  Because they are nothing but longings... longings of the things we dreamed of once. But it's not the same. We can't feel the same awe, the same curiosity, the same dreamy smiles. Rationality has somehow snatched every ounce of our innocence.  We have grown up.

Every now and then, I think about fairy tales and happy endings - if they will ever make sense to me. When I visit a gallery of fairly tales as this or come across a Cinderella or a Snow White, I am always reminded of what C.S. Lewis once wrote: Some day you will be old enough to  start reading fairy tales again.

Someday. 

Heart Breaks.

The heart doesn't break in a snap.  It doesn't fall and shatter on the ground; there is no cracking or ripping.  A heart breaks like a flower wilts - quietly and suddenly. 

I keep flowers on my desk. Roses, mostly. I like Roses.  They are cheerful and intense; I like that. Their soft petals tantalize my skin whenever I touch them,  and their colors brighten up the room. But then if I get too busy and don't pay them much mind... if I forget to water them one day, they start to look sad. The intense red is still there but they start to run low on vibrance.  I give them water. Some life comes back, the breathing becomes easier.  I know they'll last for another week or so. I haven't hurt them enough yet.

But sometimes, its just too late. One day I come into the room, and I see their necks down, even though their petals are still soft. Then no matter what I do, they never look up again. They keep wilting slowly - dying. It doesn't matter how many times I water them or give them plant food, they are finished now. I can only wait for them to die out completely and disappear... only to become a memory for some time, and then forgotten.

This is how a heart breaks.  

Sleep Tight

It is 3:23 a.m. and I am wide awake. It happens some times. I lose grip on the equilibrium of my life and I get a sleepless night here and there. It's quiet around me except the pitter-patter of the light rain on my window pane. The world has settled down, the human beings have calmed themselves for a few hours, and the nature is running it's course. It's amazing how everything is surrounded by an aura of tranquility as the night falls, as if this darkness bewitches us all, puts us under a spell, and we can't help but lie down and give into it. What a way of nature to make us all helpless in front of it. We keep making ourselves believe that we are in control of everything but we can't even fight sleep when it comes for us. We can't control our dreams, neither have we any say in our nightmares. It just is, and we are helpless against it. It's almost a scary thought if you really think about it - sleep.  Perhaps that's why I am awake. I am so scared to fall asleep. So scared to really let me take where it will.

Will I wake up again. Do I deserve to wake up again?