People we leave behind

Today, I deleted one of my former bffs from my phone book. Well, she was more than just a best friend, she was my confidante, my philosopher, guide etc. But the operative term here is 'former'. There was no sadness as I did it. There was some bitterness up until this point. But not anymore. No matter how horribly insanely pathetically screwed up things get, people you call your own would still be there at least to hear you, even if it be for the last time. And in turn, would most certainly be able to talk to you about what's bothering them. The day that doesn't happen anymore, they're not worth a second glance.

So yes, metaphorically, psychologically, stupidly, I've considered myself a person of few friends so far. That's been rendered even literally now. Strange how the more people you meet in life, the more your circle expands, the fewer people you discover are worth retaining. Maybe it is for the best. How many relationships can we do justice to at any given point of time? And I'm not talking about having a relationship with your audience at a public meeting sort of thing.

It's not worth regretting ones we've lost. This is where their part ends. Let's be more aware of our story now, shall we? And so the heroine takes charge of her not so praise worthy life style and makes teeny tiny changes, building upon them, as she goes ahead. Uphill it is, from here. But she knows she has herself to rely on, always, no matter what. 

The time gone by

What does one seek, when seeking an ideal partner? For me, from experience now, I can say it's someone who's as strong as me or stronger than me, emotionally, for one thing. In life, when you're with a person who's emotionally not as strong as you are, you end up becoming the stronger one who handles the situations. If the person is worth taking the trouble for, that is. If you come across a stronger person, you're thankful for their emotional stability and steadfastness and gratefully hold on to them. But when you meet your ally, in strength, you rejoice and derive strength and stability from each other. You support each other through all the thick of life (thins wouldn't be a problem anymore, eh?). You become each other's partner in crime, a true companion you can count on to be your friend always, guide, when you need one, philosopher when there are things you need to hear. A whole and complete companion, one you would not want to let go of for life, or death. 

This, in the Indian setting, (not necessarily always orthodox) is expected to happen over some 'kundlis' and busy body elders brain storming. And in a parallel universe, some of us expect and hope for this in the form of 'love'. What if you fail at it? What if you suck at identifying the needful and knowing when to say no. What if, you prolong for longer than necessary and discover that all you're left with is some memories, quite an amount of pain and you're stronger than before. What if your pain threshold for tolerance and your sense of balance in life has only been elevated, where do you go from here? 

Not before long, you realise, you've been travelling the wrong seas all this while and have lost too much time in discovering that. Time, is lost for ever. The experiences you've had have made you wiser. The persons you've met have made you more cautious and wary. Have all these made your quest in life that much harder? .. 

Who's to know!

Part IV

So she thought she had him all figured out, like the rest. Wasn't she by now accustomed to meeting a million of this kind every other day now. The moment someone showed who he or she was, the moment they let down their guard and got all plain and simple, as the poor things were, that was the moment she lost all human interest in them. A read book, an open page, a fallen leaf, a glass of water..These were simple things. Simple everyday things. These didn't need exertion on her part. But a novel, a memoir, a poem from the depths of being and understanding, a dried parched leaf with only traces of fiber showing there once was something there that resembled life, the ocean..These were more her. These were the things likely to hold her interest. What story does that fallen leaf tell you. What secrets of time does the ocean whisper. What did the author want you to see when she spelt out her emotions unabashedly for all to see. What mystery does your heart hold. What ability does your mind have, that your eyes shield so smartly, letting only flashes of brilliance escape occasionally, thinking that no one would've caught them anyway. It was that spark and that spark alone that kept her interest in people. The social niceties with all others were just an obligation. The social price one pays for being in a society. Not that she was mean to anyone, not that she meant harm. Neither was she prone to ridiculing someone nor shunning some old hag. She was the friend of all, foe of none, unless by your own making. She hated none, loved some. But in all these people, her kind, she found only few.

Crave as she might, wish as she might, her kind, she found, were but few. It needed a different bent of mind. A certain madness, if I may say so. A certain agility, a swiftness of mind only few can claim and a sparkling wit very few possess. This she craved and seldom found. And this, this young man, certainly promised naught. So off, she wrote him and bothered not, to dig deeper or search harder. He was, for that matter, a simple bloke. A common fellow with no sharp stroke, of mind or body or language or wit. And so she wrote him off, with good reason, she thought.

Too late..?

It's easy to mistake a serious demeanour for a serious mind. But not necessarily pardonable in a thinker. It's easy to lose oneself in the world we perceive and build walls of, around us. It's not necessarily the truth. What then is the truth? What we perceive is our truth. But how sharp our perception is, depends on how far we're willing to go for the truth.

Art is beautiful, cinema and theater sublime. Music is divine. But life...is a study. It can only be understood by experience. To think most of us (me included) are so blithely unaware of the lives around us. Of the causes, people and issues. It's easy to be swayed by the glossy section of the magazine / paper and read about the latest on Katrina and Ranbir's promotional relaionship, or talk about Angelina's pout. It's hard to take our attention off the gloss and shimmer and force ourselves to look at the people in Vaddithandra and their plight. It's hard to be concerned about some fishing village folk in Santabommali. It's so easy to forget that we ARE a part of all that's happening to them by not being involved and voicing our opinions. By not using our independent free mind to understand all of this, we're against them, by default, and pro - industrialisation at any cost. We see the majesty of a factory. We think man has achieved so much. We forget the lives at the grassroot and force our views of development on them by leaving them no choice. We believe we can decide better, what their lives should be and if they're worth anything and whether they need be included in the whole debate or not (it is after all, their land, their source of livelihood and their life). But these don't seem important. Not in the path of development.

And we're living in a democracy. An ineffective, inefficient democracy which a substitute to monarchy only in that the royalty has been replaced by the vested interests of conglomerates. And most of us are still only concerned about the ipad / tablet / xbox.. It's a pity our choices and lifestyles impact the livelihoods of others even whose existence needs to be forced into our awareness, let alone conscience.

Part III

Could these eyes really be eking out sincerity as she felt they did? No, she mustn't doubt it. She was seeing it. As plainly as she was seeing the din yonder. As plainly as the sun who was now completely gone, wiping all traces of his being there a little while ago, with him. She saw how surprisingly vulnerable he was willing to feel, in her presence. This was not something customary to him in front of the others. She never saw him at a loss for words, in rebuke to anyone who did the preliminary honour of hurling them at him. Or at anyone who gave a friendly nudge. Never, was he ever someone who showed, he could be dealt with easily. Never had his face ever betrayed, any pain or emotion he may have felt. But that was with everybody else. This was her. It is perhaps an honour, this sort of emotional nakedness. But why was she still wondering. She was still thinking rationally. She was doing her customary analysis, dissection of facts and trying furtively to reach a conclusion. But conclusions of this sort are seldom attained through a rational analysis. You shouldn't always think, if you need to get ahead in the emotional realm, she once heard someone say to her. The non-logic didn't appeal to her then, it couldn't appeal to her now. She stood still, expressing all these doubts in her mind through the solemn stillness of her face. He could perhaps read her mind. Perhaps. But he couldn't! Nobody ever did or could so far. Not accurately at least. And so they stood, facing each other; he watching her expectantly and she, looking at and beyond him at the same time, contemplating how to decipher the stirring of irrational ideas within her.

And then it struck her, like a bolt of lightning across the dark night sky studded with heavy, soggy clouds. It cut through the fog of the somber stillness brought about by the heaviness in the atmosphere. The sky that stood staring them now was of course calm. Then it finally hit her. In all this time that she knew him, as a friend, as one of the others, it hit her. She realised what it was that was nagging her. He was one of the compartmentalisers! He was a part of that tribe of them, who thought, that mind and feeling needn't be confused amongst. They were separate entities that needed no mixing. They were independent of the existence of each other. They needed not, the other, to survive. They both drew fuel from two separate reservoirs. They never needed to have anything to do with each other. That was what ALL of them felt! They all thought the same (she couldn't say 'felt' anymore, now, could she). "When you find a chick attractive, not you of course, you're one too, well, When you find a chick attractive, she's attractive. Dot. What's to think anymore?", said one of her friends once. But there lay her fundamental problem. She never felt someone was attractive that way. She never thought, oh that amazing height! Oh the stature! At least, not by themselves alone.

She never felt someone was purely attractive because he purely was. She needed an element of tenacity to think, the endangered commodity these days. She could not stand, that someone could just feel attracted to the person of someone based on the show they put up, of their body. That was what it was, a show. None knew what dressing like a gentleman was, anymore, or for that matter, a lady. They all seemed to wear shards and rags, they called clothes, and passed them off as if they were sacred. Disgusting! None bothered to put any element of elegance in their dressing. None had a sense of it anymore, anyway.

He's one of THEM, who doesn't know how to distinguish between that base popular sentiment based on shoddy imagery and that, which emanated from a true sense of deep understanding, respect, desire and oneness with the other. He does not know me! He thinks he does, he doesn't.

How easily she'd written him off!..

Part II

There was a certain genuineness of appeal in those eyes she was now looking into. They lacked the ferocity of passion that was so often mistaken for a mature sense of warmth. They lacked that childish glee, similar to having discovered a new candy store round the corner. They lacked the deception, which many unfortunately fall for. They had nothing but sincerity; Sincerity born from the deepest crevices of emotional being that is humanly possible. It was this she saw in his eyes. It was this that made her pause to think, instead of garrulously writing off what he just said. True, she wasn’t given to admitting her mind, or as some may say, her heart, in this fashion. But, this wasn’t some everyday random happening now, was it. This, surprisingly, was something else.

Nothing, ever starts in the now that people think it does in. there is always a history, a past, a background, some grounding to everything that happens. Some have tagged it karma. So why then, should this moment they both share be only in the now. It is not.

//No individual’s life is like any other’s and no one’s experiences can be compared to any other’s. Even if we brought two identical individuals passing through similar situations in life and attempted a comparison, we would fail, miserably or otherwise. I’ll explain why; perspectives. No two people may look at a situation in the exact same way – the colour co-ordinations, settings, dream sequences et al. and that is the beauty of uniqueness, of individuality. And perhaps that, is the reason why, even after all these years of evolution and so many centuries of emotions, we can still read more stories on them. //

It Begins..

She stood by the railing that was on the top most floor of the building on the hill overlooking the panorama below. She stood gently sipping her drink as the wind played around with her hair, tossing it in different directions. The wind felt good. It had a slow, comforting rumble, unlike the ferocity of the gusts of wind that came sometimes. It was the evening, just before it begins to turn completely dark. There was still some light. The Sun had just gone down leaving orange traces where he had last been. The clouds around had taken a similar hue. There were no visible birds in the sky to disrupt the peace of the moment. There was only the distant murmur from behind, behind where all the action was happening. Oh yes, there was a lot of action happening there, but none of which concerned her. Anything could have been going on there, for all she cared, but she didn’t. She was basking in the peace and calm of that moment, quietly, gently sipping her drink. Nothing seemed to bother her, right at this very moment. No one seemed to bother about her either, right now. All, except this one guy. He walked up to her so quietly, that she barely noticed him coming. “Enjoying the moment all by yourself?” he asked. She was shaken from her tranquility, but she didn’t seem disappointed with the company. Perhaps she didn’t seek it, this particular one; she wasn’t averse to it either. She gently smiled at her new companion but said nothing. That was her way, she barely spoke sometimes and at times, it was hard to get her to stop. This was one of those quiter moments. “What a day it has been”, he said. “It’s been one long, tiring day. And the guys aren’t stopping at anything for fun”. The week had but just ended and he was referring to the weekend revelry that was in progress behind them, where the entire din was. “Yes, the week has been strenuous. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about showing up at work tomorrow”. He was contemplating the pros and cons and wondering whether or not to do it, for the millionth time. This is it, he thought to himself. If I don’t pop the question now, I never will and then what if I never can? This thought scared him. It took him a lot of introspection and guts to get to this point, this point where he stood now, ready to blurt out. After what seemed like ages, or could’ve otherwise been just a few minutes in human time, he cleared his throat, drawing her attention. “I wanted to talk to you about something” he said. She turned in response and said, “Yea?”. “I don’t think I want to contain this within myself anymore. I love you. And honestly, I don’t see why you wouldn’t already be in love with me either”. This was amusing, the way he put it. But it was after all what she had in her mind all this while too, except she did not come to the moment of realization where she could articulate it. She felt as much, as hard, as deep and as strongly for him as he had for her. She wasn’t adept at emotional communication, that’s all. She stared back at him, with those distant, hazy eyes of her. It could’ve been eons ago, that he popped this question.

But it was. It was all those eons ago. It wasn’t customary for women of royal breeding such as hers to freely and unabashedly express emotion. It showed vulnerability. But it felt like a million firecrackers were bursting within her, all gushing out as fiercely as the waterfall, flowing in all might right below the portico they now stood on as they spoke. The attendants were all a reasonable distance away, but on this fateful day, luckily, they were far away not to over hear this particular conversation.