For people I have lost... and for people I would never want to loose...

Relationships can be so fragile! I can’t believe how dependant I am on my relationships. They give me something that nothing else in the world can. I love my people… well who doesn’t? but when I look back today and ask myself what is it that I remember the most and how do I see myself in future… the answer would be with my people. People I love the most! It’s almost unhealthy sometimes to what extent I can go to save a relationship. Ending up in realization that sometimes no amount of effort can change things or in fact get the changed things back to as they were before. Sometimes you loose friends and you have no idea why. I can’t help but mourn over such incidents. Wondering what went wrong. Wishing I would have just kept quiet or questioning my obsessive compulsion to be “honest”… why is it that everything has to reach a conclusion or given a name to? Why do we have to put some name tag on people and then we get peace. As if in a morgue with a dead name hanging to its owners big toe. No matter how angry or sad or agitated I get at times, I can’t deny the amount of happiness I got from my friends which make the little patches of tough times worth the pain.
Call me negative or whatever but a thought suddenly struck me today, this uncertainty that life comes with, what if I never get to tell my friends how much they mean to me? And the vital role they played in my life at different points of time. I can’t die without telling my friends that they are awesome! I might have hated them, loved them a little more than others, lied to them, cried because of them, blamed them for no reason but when I look at the picture as a whole, I see an amazing painting… varied colors coming together and making a masterpiece. And yes, this is the last time I will be using painting as an analogy...
There is no misunderstanding you can’t come over, no amount of discomfort you can’t ease out. Ya… life will go on even if we loose a few people. Seems like an affordable deal for that matter. But I refuse to believe we replace vacant spaces, we just create new keeping the empty ones bare and blank!
And ff course in a while I will come over this emotional lapse and find everything written above brainless and stupid. But before it happens I would like to say this to people I lost recently and people I would never want to loose, You matter!

And how at the end of the day you can’t resist the greed to try and make sense of things. How you thought things would turn out and they dint, how you seek approval which you shouldn’t have, how something hurt you which was senseless, the smiles, smirks, anger, neglect… and we obsessively try to make a balance sheet out of it, hoping that somehow it will all come together & magically turn sensible. Several times its not even “you” you are dealing with… the greed increases… you want it all to make sense to others… you Want them to call your expression ‘art’, like you for the reasons you like yourself, say things that sound good… and the senses on your body start exerting positivity… you don’t know why this feels so good… things don’t need to make sense anymore.. You are walking two feet above the ground… a thought knocks at t back of your head... “Just a second, wasn’t I trying to make sense… Did I? ” you relentlessly shut that disobedient thought out… I’m already feeling so good… I don’t need to! The process of growing up becomes faster… you imagine it’s because you shut down… you want to grow up even faster… want to know everything there is… and moreover want people to know you do! Dates on the calendar change in hasty speed… and you never realize when the line putting “you” apart from “others” looses its existence.

I just realized how everyday we wake up to “face” the day. As if we are going on to fight some war. We nag about the situation we are in and if we belong to one of the “refined” groups we try to rationalize everything. Finding reasons to know why we are what we are and how we can not be what we are and be what we never were but always wish we were. Huff! Exhausting even saying the words isn’t it? But this is what we do every day and night. I often wonder how much do we really own? How much we really know and how much can we really control? It seems safer to know as much as possible, gather most we can under our wings but to what extent is it going to change things? Are we forgetting to fly?
The emphasis of the Indian scriptures and philosophers on ‘detachment’ always puzzled me. How can everyone in the world turn into saints and legends with no desires? Or may be while we obsess over the apparent, we fail to read between the lines. The truth! Imagine your beloved bike broke. The mechanic declared that nothing could be done and suggested you to take it to a scrapping centre. How angered and devastated would you feel? You would forget all about how you toured around the whole city, the places it took you and all the happiness you accumulated over the years hit the nil sum, even adding a few minuses. Foolish isn’t it? The brilliance of the word “detachment” suddenly hit me. Every sorrow, disappointment and anxiety comes down to this very point. Fear of loosing makes it all worst. A mind free from all such fears can give you an immense feeling of a liberated self. And of course- happiness! Well… still wondering… lets see...

How do you deal with the superficialities around when you yourself are a part of it? I am really fed up of constantly trying to be something and I hardly notice it. There are really tiny gaps you get once in a day or weeks or may b months where you can just be yourself. I feel extremely claustrophobic when the distances between these gaps increase. I don’t want to make myself a subject constantly being examined under my own microscope. I don’t want to think twice before saying which movie I loved or hated. Don’t want to read the words again and again before putting something on my blog, don’t want to look into the mirror before I go out. It’s quite possible that this phase may last for a very brief period or there is a slim possibility for me to last in this complex jungle of social relationships.

It so happens that most of the times people are dead-on about spotting the flaws in us. But the reason for our resistance or anger is something else. We are agitated at the fact that how can this person see an error in my behavior and can’t see that he does the same mistake? And also… more importantly, our realization that same is the case with us!

what are we running from....
what are we running towards.....
or are we just.... Running?

It’s ironic how false ideas of morality drag us down to a level where we forget the basics like honesty, compassion and fail to empathize with another person on a human level…

आज माझे डोळे जरा वेगळेच दिसताएत...

आरसा तर तोच आहे कदाचीत...

सोनेरी किनारीचा उभट गोल...

आरसा आणि ओळखीचा तसा काही संबंध नव्हेच म्हणा...

गुणधर्मच असतो आरश्याचा तो...

जवळ येताना साफ़ होत जाणारं चित्र...

पण अंतर अगदीच संपलं तर विस्कंटून जातं मात्र...

डोळ्यावर वारंवार पाणी मारलं हो...

पण पटंतच नाहिए ओळख...

काजळ लावायचं राहुन गेला असेल कदाचीत...

पण आठवणींच्या ज्योतीलगत निरंतर जळणारी काजळी होतीच की...

असो.... होतं म्हणे असं कधी कधी...

होतही असेल...

आकाशातले पक्षी नाही.. पण पायाखालंची जमिन बघुनंही

चालावं लागतच बरयाचदा...

चालायचंय...

ओळखीचं काय आहे... पटेल कधीतरी...

डोळे मिटल्यावर बहुदा...

नभातील तारयांचा प्रकाश
मनात सामावून घेतला...

दुर जरी असंला तरी
प्रत्येक तारा ओळखीचा वाटला...

बरंच काही निसटून गेलंय
तूटणारया तारयाप्रमाणे...

पण अजुनही आभाळ भरलय तारयांनी...
अजुनही उरलय खरे जिणे....

(Written in 2006)

नसलेलही वाटतं असल्यासारखं...
मनात खोलवर दाटल्यासारखं...
वाटांपल्याड लोटल्यासारखं...
शिस्तीबाहेरचं सगळं....

As a random discharge of instinct I checked the dictionary meaning of the word ‘Destiny’. It defined it as the ultimate agency that predetermines the course of events. While I closed the window and moved on to my next task, I couldn’t help but wonder is that so? And if it is, why do we always fail to realize its role unless in retrospect. Any form of fiction may it be movies or books, somehow represent a world of destined realities and moments of serendipity. And if we ideally assume that fiction is an offshoot of reality, why in reality, we always need a validation for our beliefs? There comes the question of belief without evidence. In today’s day and world the everyday insecurity has made us so desperate to find answers to questions, reasons for problems and evidences for beliefs that whatever fails to fit into our logical reasoning, we immediately eliminate. If logic and proof is this important then why is the concept of God still alive? Centuries have lived with it and billions and trillions in fact uncountable number of people have lived and died with the same belief. Were they wrong for believing so? Or is it that sometimes more than documented facts and captured truth, the indications of your very own senses feel so much real and close to your being.

A couple of days back I saw this film called ‘As good as it gets’ staring Jack Nicholson. As brilliantly good as it is, one of the dialogs in the film especially struck my mind. Greg Kinnear who is playing an Artist in the movie says to his portrait model, “When you look at someone long enough, you can see the humanity in them”. A beautiful ornamentation of words! But how much truth is there in it? Can you really see through a person?
This reminds me of a discussion I had with one of my friends who is an artist himself. He was talking about how an artist likes to observe people and over the period of time gains an expertise over noticing the nuances in the individuals walking around him. How a slightest change in the crease of your eye or an arch of your back represents who you are as a person. So isn’t it a possibility that whenever we talk about getting negative or positive vibes from people, we are secretly observing certain physical traits and making a judgment of which may be even we aren’t aware of while an expert is just aware of it!

Looking through the rock solid glass window

Bolted from inside… I struggle to find the keys

I am a part of their world but I can’t let them in…

They say, look at you… you are jumping with joy!

I say these are just my futile attempts to stay off the blazing ground

They say you are sleeping on the bed of roses…

I say, the bright red Colour is camouflaging the thorns

They say look at the stunning beauty around you and see our ever cheery faces...

I say, can I please close my eyes?

They say write something to please our mind, draw something to please our eyes, sing something to please our ears

I say, here is my life… choose whatever delights you

They say, hey you looser, don’t submit to what others think... You understand?

I get down on my knees, bow my head and say, yes I do.