Looking Glass

                                  

“Thoughts come and disappear like waves in the ocean; one eager to take over the previous one. In this never-ending race of thoughts, the mind remains in a jumble of incomplete emotions and cognition.”

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I saw her peeping from the corner of the wall. She was a little girl with brown, curly hair and big, curious eyes. She must have heard the sound of my car and came running to check the latest arrival.

It was a warm breezy afternoon in a small, dusty town with a green cover around it. As it generally happens on warm afternoons, the town people were all inside their homes for their siesta after a rather elaborate lunch. I had to wait for them to finish their siesta to buy their famous blankets for my mother on her 70^th birthday.

I had to drive 150 kilometres to reach this place on a Sunday. I work 6 days a week and though the huge pay check more than makes up for it, I am always tired and sleep deprived. I have no social or personal life. Sunday is usually spent catching up some sleep or a few Sundays in a year, I visit my parents in the neighbouring town. I would have visited them more often but my mother’s cheerfulness and optimism irritated me. She was always in a deep sense of calm. She wasn’t always this way. She was a hustler. A fiercely competitive woman with eyes keenly set on her goals. She worked very hard and instilled competitiveness and hard work in her children too. She was very busy with her work but it wasn’t like she was a bad mother. In fact, she tried to over compensate her time away from us. She stretched herself far too much. She was always busy doing something when at home - either cooking something special for us, or growing new vegetables in the garden, or cleaning the house. She was like the busy river water. Being calm was not her thing.

This new carefree, joyous avatar of hers was beyond my comprehension. Not that I did not like it but it triggered me because that was how I wanted to be deep inside but was unable to be. May be she just made me feel incompetent in ways I have otherwise never felt in my so called successful life. If there is a skill that I am not good at, I work hard until I master it. But I wasn’t able to feel the joy and bliss that my mother seemed to be in and I just wanted to push my inability to do so in the dungeons of my mind. Hence, visits to them became increasingly infrequent.

I was reluctant to drive all this way for a blanket. I tried enticing her with all the other fancy things that I could buy for her birthday. But she was relentless. She wanted these blankets, which are not sold anywhere else but in this godforsaken town. She had once visited this place several years back to buy a blanket for her aunt who had wished for the same from her. Since then, she couldn’t stop talking of how wonderful the journey to getting these blankets was. But if they are so good, why don’t they sell their blankets elsewhere too. “You are not listening to me, my dear,” was her reply.

I sat on a stone bench in front of a small blue shop which had orange bougenvilla growing around the entrance. A jasmine tree grew next to it, spreading its sweet fragrance which the breeze was all too happy to carry around with it. The place was a living colourful dream with the houses painted in various strange yet beautiful patterns. Flowers of all different hues grew around these houses. For someone who came from a far off place of greys and browns, it took me a while to adjust to the barrage of colours I was suddenly exposed to. This, coupled with the heady fragrance of flowers and the warm afternoon breeze, was making me a little dizzy.

That’s when the little face appeared at the corner of the wall. We played peekaboo for a while before she finally trusted me to come from her place of hiding and chat with me. She threw a volley of questions at me. I could see that she liked to talk. From my name, age, address, my marital status to whether I have ever travelled to the moon and whether I knew that the trees have a secret language to talk to each other, she wanted to know it all.

Very soon we were talking about memories that I had long forgotten. About the first time I held my mother’s hand and walked to the school skipping with joy. About that one time when I saw the Milky Way for the first time when the power in the town went off. When I would hold the little red velvety insects on rainy afternoons on my way to the sports club. When I saw my first pet dog for the first time curled up inside a small carton.

The memories flowed incessantly. I felt like a bird on a tree branch chirping away to glory. If I am ever asked in my life whether I have experienced pure happiness, I know it would be this.

I am a workaholic. I have done nothing much in my life off late than work and get a fat pay check. I never even get to enjoy the money that I make. Of course, I live in a fancy apartment and drive a fancy car, eat good food and have someone to manage my house. But I don’t even enjoy these things anymore. The initial adrenaline rush I got from buying my house or driving my car has long gone. All days in my life look similar. It is difficult to tell one day from the other. It is work, eat, exercise and sleep in a never-ending cycle.

But sitting there with that child took me deep down to experience the joys that I had forgotten existed. Those corners which were untouched since decades were now being unraveled one by one and, for once, the control freak in me was happy to be led. I was in the middle of the ocean being caressed by soft waves. The cool water slowly seeping inside me and I became the ocean and the ocean became me. I could experience my existence in its entirety. The boundaries between me and the rest of the world were being dissolved.

That’s when I saw something remarkable happen. Patterns of all colours started to emerge and fly away from my heart. I saw closely and I saw grey sadness, red anger, green jealousy, purple pride drifting away from me towards the houses and getting stuck on them as patterns on their roofs and walls. This explained all their fantastic colourful motifs. 

Painting by Anirudh Sravan Pulipaka

I looked at her in disbelief but she smiled a knowing smile. This was clearly not her first time seeing this. Was it all a beautiful dream? Perhaps it was. Or maybe I am finally awake. Who knows? I think life is lived right where reality and dreams merge.

The little girl got down from my lap and ran away towards these floating patterns laughing gleefully. I looked at her with unbridled joy until she disappeared. I don’t know for how long I sat there and I might have fallen asleep too when I heard the sound of the shop door opening. Inside was a man who smiled at me and showed me the blankets. They looked nothing different from the ordinary blankets that can be bought from anywhere. I smiled and got one for my mother.

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“The mind sits still, like a deep ocean on a velvety night. The moon shines bright on the water, illuminating the calm waters which glow from deep inside. The gentle movement of the surface an indication of life and all the wonders it carries.”

Finding my Moorings

The skies decided to pour their heart out that night. They need venting too. I sat in my balcony looking at raindrops sieving through the leaves of the giant mango tree that stood in front of my house. Some frustrated driver was honking relentlessly somewhere while someone else was in the mood for some Chopin that night. A distant memory was remolding itself in a corner of my heart. Some memories have a strange way of appearing. Before they come, their arrival is announced by a distinct stirring up of the heart strings which leaves you unsettled but also looking forward in anticipation to that which is going to arrive. I await the arrival of that which will come with a sense of foreboding as well as propitiousness. And it trickled in like the raindrops falling through the leaves of the mango tree slowly welling me with profundity of emotions that are ever so required for a parched soul. 

It was another night like this though in a different space and time dimension. Everything looks the same though nothing is the same. I know the people in it but how realities have changed since. How the essence of one's being undergoes a metamorphosis of the kind that could never have been anticipated by the wildest of minds. The Kafkaesqueness of it baffles the mind. Delving into reasons seems all too redundant now. The reality of this having happened is what remains. Although things look the same overtly but hidden from the view is a distortion that only sensitive hearts can see. A forlorn gust shakes my bearings. I look for anchor everywhere around me. What can I hold on to in order to keep myself steadfast on the ground beneath me? Nothing seems strong enough for that. Just then a small hand creeps in. I hold on to it with all my might. I have found my anchor in this tiny little hand with its tiny little fingers wrapped around me secure and tight. I get welled up again. This time with gratitude and happiness unbound.

The Last Words!

He had planned to slither down the rainbow, which is his usual ride. However, the Sun, who suddenly realized that he was more tired than ever, decided to put his quilt over his head and entered into his slumber. Lightning is not an easy mode of transportation as it ends up leaving you burnt and bruised. What option did he have now but to hang on tightly to the rain-rods and follow them down. They are not as bad as lightning as they don't leave you burnt and bruised, except that you must not wear clothes that bleed else you will end up looking like a rainbow fish. Also, you never know where the rain-rods decide to land. They might land on a beautifully mowed lawn, inside a volcanic crater, or on a hot tin roof. You have to work a bit on your geography and decide on which rain rod to board. He had worn all white today which was unlike him as he always liked to dress up in green or red. But wearing white would save him from a colourful embarrassment and also would suit the solemnness of the occasion for which this sojourn was being undertaken. 

It was a meeting called to address the concerns raised by the council after the sudden disappearance of the Cheshire Elephant. He had named himself this after the famous cat from his favourite book that he would read every night. That was also the only book he had read, hence was his favourite. It wasn't for nothing that he had given himself this name. He could actually appear and disappear at will. He would mischievously enter houses and send its selected inmates on long philosophical journeys which he himself never really understood. Despite his acts of wilful disappearance, never once was he absent from the meetings of the council. In fact, he was one of the most boisterous and animated participants. First to come and last to leave! He would entertain, annoy, exasperate the members, and also, eat most of the food (the rest of which was eaten by the obese dormouse who would gleefully snore away his lungs spreading his crazy dreams in the air while the rest tried to make sense in that cacophony). Now that he was no longer appearing in the meeting the rest of the members finally got to eat the food (which wasn't that great after all and they were happy that they hadn't missed much during all those years). The council decided that the disappearance of the Cheshire Elephant was a matter of concern and a meeting should be called to formally worry about it and minutes of the meeting be taken as a proof of their concern and be shown to the elephant on the event of his return, if at all.

So, the little leprechaun dressed in his whites landed on top of a tired bird who agreed to take him to the venue of the meeting after the leprechaun agreed to stop humming Wagner's "The Wedding March" in his shrill, out of tune voice. The bird had a discerning taste and was a connoisseur of fine music and in no way could see a leprechaun murder his favourite composer (the bird had German ancestry too and therefore was a bit partial towards the German composer). The meeting was to take place in its usual venue, inside the trunk of General Sherman. Everybody, except the elephant of course, was there. As always, the leprechaun was the last one to arrive. When he entered he saw the members engaged in an animated discussion. Everyone had their own theory about the disappearance of the elephant. Some believed that he had gone on a trip to the moon. Some believed that his vanishing vapors got sucked in by a vacuum cleaner. Nobody was listening to anybody and those entrusted with writing the minutes decided to write only about their own theories. 

As about the leprechaun; he couldn't care less! He never liked the elephant in any case. He found his boisterousness a little too obnoxious. He had come to the meeting only because non-attendance of such meetings was a serious offence for which severe punishments were awarded. Last time when the unicorn failed to attend one of the meetings on account of a tender stomach, he was turned into a living myth i.e.though he existed in reality, people assumed him to be a myth! Just as the leprechaun sat in one corner of the room looking at the motley group in front of him, he felt a tingling sensation on the thumb of his left foot. He looked and it was an ant who was causing this tickle. This ant sure looked different from other ants. The bored leprechaun looked closely in a bid to entertain himself by mocking this weird looking ant when he realized that it wasn't an ant at all! It was the Cheshire Elephant! Cheshire Elephant was now the size of an ant! The leprechaun decided to trample him with his boots but just then the elephant vanished. The sly little thing could still play his vanishing act! So, the elephant was always there just that nobody noticed him as now he was the size of an ant. The thought of letting the council members know of the truth never occurred to the leprechaun. He looked outside the window but nothing interesting seemed to be happening outside either. He leaned against the window and fell asleep. He was soon woken up by a high pitched voice in his left ear. He turned around and there was the elephant again sitting on the window sill. He was trying to say something but with his body, his voice lost its heaviness too. Now all he could manage was a squeal. He was squealing with all his might as the leprechaun with an acute vision could clearly see. The leprechaun knew there was no point trying to hit the elephant as he had quick reflexes. So he decided to lend him an ear as he was already bored and thought that the elephant might have something interesting to tell. The elephant was now sitting on his shoulder. At first, all that the leprechaun could hear was high pitched jibber jabber. But after a while it started making some sense.

The elephant told him about a "Point of Existence", a dot-sized black hole that had all the answers relating to existence inside it. He had found it on a hill that appeared from out of nowhere in the middle of the oceans when he was travelling in a boat. He tried entering the "Point of Existence" to see what was inside it. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not enter the hole. This was bizarre as there was no hole through which he could not enter. Night after night he returned to the same place and tried to enter the "Point of Existence" but failed. Then one night he sent a young woman to a voyage into the sea and his boat (which had a mind of its own) took her to the hill which harbored the "Point of Existence". It was this loud, filthy mouthed girl who made him realize why he wasn't able to enter the "Point of Existence". He should stop trying to enter it! The harder he tried, the more difficult it would be to enter inside it. "You have to wait for the"Point of Existence" to let you inside", the Elephant said. There was no space for heavy Rationality inside. One had to shed away the cloak of logic. It took him a long time to do that and he felt naked and small initially. However, when the process was complete, things around him made much more sense! The elephant spent several days together, looking at the "Point of Existence". He had started to detach from his surroundings and an automatic movement towards the "Point of Existence" had begun. Before he knew, he was sitting right in front of it. After spending a good amount of time there (he could not tell how much as time had lost its meaning), he saw the entrance was now big enough for him to enter. He knew the call had come! He entered inside and felt lighter than ever before. Never before had he been at so much ease with himself. However, he wasn't happy or ecstatic at finally achieving what he had been waiting for so long. A certain calmness devoid of any emotion or thought pervaded him. Thoughts came from a not-thinking state of mind.

The leprechaun listened to all that with a stupor that was unknown to him. The Elephant finally vanished. The leprechaun sat there for a very long after the meeting ended. A few tried to speak to him but to no avail. Why did the Elephant choose him, of all the people, to tell his story? They were never great friends. In fact, he detested the Elephant! Love for hate? A random coincidence? After an indefinable time, he got up and started walking. "Everybody has their own unique 'Point of Existence', and it is for us to look for it" were the last words of the Elephant.

Wrecking Ball Lyrics HD - Miley Cyrus

I guess she got it right this time!!

Endless Flight

From the far away wilderness I hear the blue dove cry

Passing through the filters of a busy city

Where cars honk at wayward pedestrians

And the weekend merrymaking becomes a little too raucous 

It reaches my ears while I stare at the hunter in the sky

In her melancholic voice she sings songs of bereavement

Of being lost in the endless labyrinth of gloom 

Of the river losing herself just before she could meet the sea

Of the cool breeze turning away its face 

giving way to hot suffocating winds that scalded her face

Of the air pregnant with dark wordless silent

Of the heavy sticky fluid choking the insides
Of waiting for a meeting that shall never happen

Though she sings to herself, our hearts beat in harmony

Till my heart turns into hers

I turn into the blue dove and sit on the oak branch

The mistletoe grows under my feet with berries all over

I expand my newly found wings even as I hear the cooing from branches around

I pause for a moment and only see clockwork birds around

I give in to my newly found wings and take my endless flight 

Les Miserables - Samantha Barks - On My Own (lyrics) (Full Verison)

नकली हँसी

वो सर्द अस्थिर कदमों की  आहट
आकर रुकी मेरी चौखट पर
आयें हैं फिर ये कदम मेरी चौखट पर
इन सूखी आँखों में नमी बरसाने

धूल से सने शीशों से बहार झाँका
तो धुँधली सी तस्वीर सामने आई
बंद मुट्ठी से शीशे में थोड़ी जगह बनाई
खड़ा था वही चेहरा बुझी सी मुस्कान लिए
चेहरे में कुछ मायूसी और कुछ थकान लिए

जो कभी ऊंची उड़ान भरते थे
उन पंखों में जंग लिए खड़ा वो चेहरा
पंखों ने शायद अब उड़ना छोड़ दिया है
अब तो यादों ने भी साथ छोड़ दिया
नशे में चूर उन खोई  सी आँखों का

बर्फीली रूह की साँसों से
अब सब अकड़ने सा लगा है
मेरे एहसास भी अब जम से गए हैं
आसूं भी कबके थम से गए हैं

नहीं इंतज़ार मुझे अब उस दस्तक का
नहीं इंतज़ार उन अस्थिर बोझिल क़दमों का
जो अब बस कुछ जिंदा यादों तक सिमट गए हैं
अब मेरे  चौखट में भी जगह नहीं रह गयी

देख रही हूँ जाते हुए उन डगमगाते क़दमों को
कुछ  उबल सा रहा है सीने में
कुछ गर्माहट सी महसूस हुई गालों पे
शायद आखिरी बार नम हुई हैं ये आँखें
शायद आखिरी बार आई है अहसासों  की आँधी
शायद आखिरी बार सोचा उस असोच को
शायद आखिरी बार…