Winter is coming

The winter season is just around the corner. It is the time for the fortunate ones like you and me to open the box that contained the woolen clothes all through the summer, and revel in the smell of wool. It is time for those misty mornings, fog laden air and cool winds sending literal shivers down your spines. It is also, in many ways, time to embrace your vulnerabilities.

Not that summer is benevolent, but the fear of looming disaster and death seems more likely when you find everything around you either frozen or freezing. When life draws itself into a cocoon, when late mornings and not so late nights resemble deserted warships, you realize that you're vulnerable. You realize that all through the spring, summer, monsoon, and right up till autumn, you were free- in body, mind and spirit- but the moment you step out now, you're greeted with hostility. It is nature's way of reminding you of the springs, summers and autumns of your lives and telling you that there has to be a winter.

Winter shows you the mirror. It tells you that your hands that might have worked ceaselessly throughout the year, mending lives and breaking them, are capable of trembling themselves. Your lips that would have mended a broken heart or broken a soulful one are capable of roughening up. Your feet might have trodden all over the world but are capable of going numb. You don layers upon layers upon layers as if to cover yourself and your frailties, in a hope that the winds won't pierce you like an open dagger does. But, they do, and all of a sudden you realize that you're human and you can bear only so much, that the knell can sound anytime and if it does now, you're more than likely to give in.

Winter sets the clock, the clock against which we race, the clock that ticks, the clock that's beating out of time. But, to what end? To know that when the buzzer goes off, we'll be treated with something that we have no control over? To know that there's a force more powerful than the powers that we display to our inner selves? We might as well tread and not run, keeping in mind that we don't run over something that's just as alive as we are.

Winter is karma slapping you in the face to remind you that you're only mortal. Winter is eternal just like death and there are only so many winters in our lives. Every year, the clock is set, and every year you run against it. Chosen wisely whether you want to embrace something that's eternal and unforgiving, panting for breath, or shouldering arms. Because if you manage to come out to the other side, to see another winter, you're one hell of a lucky person.

Things that I'll have to be

How do you fight depression? At 2 AM, when the world is drunk on sleep- the most addictive yet pacifying drug of them all- I ask myself this question. The kid sleeping next to me doesn't have a worry in this world. He has an innately mundane routine, yet the most rewarding one that one can have. He has silly jokes to kid himself on, no real purpose to pursue, and most importantly, a day monotonous yet busy enough to reward him a proper night's sleep. He isn't depressed, but I am. Maybe I'll have to be mundane and monotonous enough to be fine.

The boys from my grad school are as carefree as ever. The world doesn't seem to have bothered them much. Chivalry and machismo surround them like moths surround lights. They just seem to have a magnetic connection. Smiles plastered along their faces resemble a childish grin on the reception of a toy. They're still young boys of five years back and not grown men of responsibilities- rough and rustic- sporting bright shades and even brighter eyes. They aren't depressed, but I am. Maybe, I just have to be a little old school tomboy to be fine.

The girl I loved doesn't matter much now. The years I wasted don't either, notwithstanding the knowledge of the prime that I missed. She's as indifferent as ever, busy making her own merry ways, making more acquaintances than friends. That's how she does it, I think- not carrying any burden at all; people coming in as fellow passengers with the luxury of leaving as and when desired; feelings too few to hurt, too restricted to matter, too selfish to give away. She isn't depressed, but I am. Maybe, I'll have to be a little selfish to be fine.

My parents are content- not necessarily happy, but content. Happy within their means would be the correct phrase- no fancy wishes, no extravagant spending, yet never short of anything. Mother doesn't remember a sorrow for too long, neither does she remember a smile. Errands, be it small or big, make up her day, home being a surreal respite, the kitchen- a hell within. For father, it is all about priorities- striking the proper balance, like a master administrator, between need and greed. Routine for him is as pious as God himself, and work makes the best nexus. They are cliched, just the way the world wants them to be. Maybe, I'll have to be cliched to be fine.

So, how do I fight depression? I become the world to do it. I become the tomboy who doesn't give a fuck, or a sixteen-year-old not really knowing how to give a fuck? I become a selfish girl, too selfish to be felt for, or the age old cliche of live and let live? By being any, or all of these, I become the world- the world that doesn't care, the world that doesn't ask these questions, the world that right now is too drunk on the life-altering drug, and that would spin mercilessly again to have some more of the same. Who's the depressed one now?

Photo courtesy- berlin-artparasites

The truth would set you free

At 23, KL Rahul is playing test cricket for India. At 22, Hardik Patel is leading a fuming agitation in Gujarat. By popular opinion, the former is involved in a nobler work, while the latter is splintering the already splintered. But the popular opinion is not the cause of concern here. The point that matters is that they are doing something of relative importance for themselves at such ripe young age.

To be able to pull off what they have at such an age would have required skills. Skills not just of temperament and determination, but also the ones less spoken of. Skills such as believing in your inner voice, acting at the right time irrespective of what others want you to do, and maybe revolting and rebelling at the right time for your own good. Who knows where they would have been had they not practiced these practices at the right time and place. All of us in our early twenties need to learn something from them.

The end result doesn't matter, it is what you do that does. Hardik has drawn flak from the common populace but the fact that matters is that he has led a revolution successfully. To be able to lead so many people, be it by a constructive purpose or by a blatant disregard for the existing structures of the system, is no easy thing to pull off. The critics who say that such agitation spurs tension and inter-caste violence must ask themselves that why did it happen in the first place. If the public knew the repercussions of such a conglomeration, why did they unite in the first place?

Barack Obama, on his last visit to India, had said that India would prosper as long as it is not splintered along religious lines. He should have added communal lines as well. To collect the collective anger that had been building up for years and channelize it into a mass movement takes courage, and, however bad his intentions may seem to us, Hardik was successful in overcoming all the obstacles that he would have faced. Do you think that none among his peers would have opposed to the idea of a reservation led agitation? Do you think that the castes that proclaim reservation to be their birthright would have easily let another one compete for the same thrones as they do? Yet, the Patidars are well on their way to maybe defining another chapter in the history.

The pertinent question that I want to address through this is that you don't necessarily need to stick to the cliches to be successful. And by not sticking to them, you don't only open the doors of entrepreneurship as has been the popular belief, especially with college dropouts. Rather, anything that you feel is correct, irrespective of whether it conforms to the standard accepted procedures or not, is indeed correct. Whether it's dropping out of college to start your own venture or doing the same to lead an agitation. Both are equally justified.

There are no truths in this world, only perceptions. What you perceive as the truth is the truth for you, irrespective of what the world feels. Adolf Hitler felt that Nazism was the truth, and he had the courage to stand up for it, and look what he did. He might be a sinister being for the world, but for himself, he was a saint, because he followed the truth- his truth. And Patel, though not viewed as someone synonymous to Hitler, is by and large, an outlaw, but only for the world. Because for himself, he's a saint.

The crux being that you need to define your world and not the other way around. This is again a cliched phrase but there is a hidden meaning. Different people define their world's differently. So the definition of Einstein, Steve Jobs, or Kalam for that matter is as justifiable as that of the ISIS. What has mattered in the long run is their ability to impose that definition with all their capacity. If only the saintly part of Jesus and the good were true, there would have been no wars, no evil, no poverty, no discrimination. That fact that these are recurring parts of the world is a testament to the other side of the coin. Time and again, these two sides fight against each other seldom realizing that they are the part of the same coin. Only one of them can taste glory at a time while the other has to bite the dust.

Somebody, please?

Will somebody please?
Will someone please talk to me?
I've been weighed down,
By deeds I wish I could explain
To the world that they weren't my fault
Will somebody please talk to me?

The world only witnesses the brave,
And condescends the timid.
Why is timidity such a bane?
Is it not often gifted by pain?
I've become timid and I wish
I had someone to explain!
Will somebody please talk to me?

The night isn't just time
It's a pathway, a storyline,
A graveyard, a cold storage.
Where things just lay
As barren as they are
As naked as they are,
Frozen in time, buried within layers,
Waiting for darkness to set them free.
Will someone lie down next to me?
And spend the night for free?
Will somebody please talk to me?

I'm not a person with many shades
And thus invisible to the world that's grey.
But I deserve my happy days,
Which the world often takes away.
They say it's you, and not the world,
But that's a fecal lie,
For the ship doesn't drown on its own,
Unless dismayed by the tides.
They ask to pursue happiness,
I ask, why?
Why doesn't it come naturally?
Like the rains from the sky?

I have sundry wishes,
To write the story of my life;
And make sure it's a good one.
To dictate terms, once in a while,
To fuel my ego, but drown my pride,
To hear my name resound through the aisle.
To spend without constraints,
To compete and defeat big names.
Strong biceps and a broad chest;
To lie peacefully on her naked breasts.
Will someone please talk me out of it?
And convince me that not everything is there to be had.
Will someone please talk me out of talking to people?
Oh, the irony!
Will somebody please talk to me?

Why does a writer write?

Why does a writer write? I have been pondering over this question for quite some time now. Does he write because he wants to or does he write because he has to? Do you know what happens when you choke on a piece of bread? When it gets stuck in the throat? You drink water to gulp it in or you try to spit it out. Either way, you try to get rid of what chokes you. And you feel relieved when you do. A writer is the one who has to do both of these things, because none of them, whether alone or collectively can bring him relief. He needs to gulp it in and spit it out; gulp it in and spit it out; and the cycle continues. The cycle continues so that he can keep the choking at bay. He still chokes, every day, but just tries to keep it at bay so that it doesn’t kill him.

But what is it that he chokes on? What is it that kills him? It is the same thing that kills all of us- Pain. Except for the fact that some choose to live with it and others try to evade it by surrendering themselves to the pursuit of happiness. But I question, why are they pursuing it? Why do they need to pursue it? Is it not something that naturally comes to them, like breathing? Like there is a class that pursues happiness, there is a class that befriends pain. They are writers. The thing that chokes them in the throat is pain, some of which, they gulp in, the rest, they spit out. Writers don’t write because they want to or because they have to. They write because they need to live; they need to survive.

They aren’t some benevolent magicians meant to save the world through their works. They are humans, who are just as fallible as the rest and are trying only to save themselves. They do not necessarily need to be polite, humble and generous people who are meant to be empathetic towards others. They can be rude, arrogant, angry creatures trying to battle these issues within themselves; or maybe these issues are what propel them to write. Maybe their inability to maintain calm in the state of chaos and loss thus incurred and the pain thus suffered is what they want to write about. They want to write down what they couldn’t speak and also what they did and why they did so. Why did the past creep in then and made them who they are? Why and how have they been moulded into someone they never were?

These are the questions that they can either choose to gulp down and store in some corner of their hearts as pain’s indifferent token, or spit the answers out on a blank canvas with such intensity and ferocity that matches the magnitude of the glitch in their throats. They keep the bug from troubling them for as long as the time that the bug takes to replenish itself, for the world feeds it a lot of fodder. It is the reason why a writer observes the dog limping, the child crying, the old man’s eyes, and a common man’s cries. He observes the world around him and feels sad. He finds that the others are no different. He finds that others are there, right in the eye of the storm; and he finds that they have no means to fight back. They are there as if they have been destined to be there. It makes him sadder.

But why does he write then? Does it help him? Or does it help them? Does it change the world? I don’t know. But what it surely does is that it changes him. The fits of the former self do come back to haunt him, but more or less he comes out reformed; not perfect, but reformed. He sees the bitterness around, and realizes that a moment of kindness even if that goes against his comforts and even if it doesn’t bring him any sort of relief, can do wonders. They feel good for the person, but they feel numb within. It is a strange kind of feeling that perhaps they themselves cannot explain. A writer doesn’t know what he wants when he writes, he doesn’t know how would it help him, or how would it help the world. He just writes; plain and simple. He is a wanderer, roaming around, observing the world, carrying another one within him, and trying to bring the two at par. All of this for what, he doesn’t know!

The Quiet Man

I want to be the quiet man
The quiet man,
Behind the extraordinary lady that you are
I want to be that quiet man.

I want to lay back and watch
As you wreck havoc
By the mere stroke of your pen
Or a blazing thought.
Through which you wreck havoc,
The much needed one,
To break the monotiny
To give us something to feed on.

And as you get tired,
And need someone to fall back on,
I want to be there to hold on,
Silently watching,
Like the quietness of the dawn.
I want to be that quiet man.

You and I,
We're so different,
You're a raging hurricane,
Ready to take the world on,
And I'm a pensive observer,
Trying to decipher the world,
Sitting in a lawn.

But there is a lull before every storm,
During which it gathers strength,
I want to be that lull,
I want to be that quiet man.

You'd go to places,
For travelling fills your soul,
Enriches your eyes,
Mystifies your soul.
I want to follow you- quietly,
Without a word,
And watch you utter magic,
Through your eyes
And when they look for another pair- to share
I want to be there.
I want to be that quiet man.

You have seen paradise
And you have seen ghosts
Of your past and present
That you silently bore
But every once in a while
When tides recede from the shore
And they tend to take you away
I want to firmly hold your hand
I want to be that quiet man.

You'd climb ladders
You'd move mountains
You'd steal the limelight
All by yourself.
But every once in a while
When you wish to disappear,
And hibernate
I want to be the blanket you wear
I want to be that quiet man.

When you finally reach the pinnacle
The summit, the vantage point
When the voyage you're borne for concludes,
I want to stand amongst the onlookers
And quietly revel the moment,
I want to be the common man
I want to be that quiet man.

I want to tell your tale to the world
Of your unfathomable beauty
Of your unquenchable desire
Of your unending pain
I want to pen them down, and show to the world,
That you're indeed a hurricane.
That colossal back, that strand of hair,
The mole on your cheek and the one beneath your chin,
I want to kiss you there
And everywhere else akin;
And take you home for this life.

They would know you, but not me
For they know the person and not the shadow,
I want to live within your shadows
I just want to be the quiet man.