An Ingenuous Paean.

The moonlight was flowing all over me,
The morning sun was too bright,
So bright that it blinded me,
From the life I’m going to have.

I had written my life down,
On a crumpled paper just like this,
And believed that a crumpled paper,
Can never be perfect again…

But as I breathed the new air,
And again greeted the moonlight,
I understood something more,
Which I never realized before.

Moonlight shines there all the time,
The light not enough to figure out,
The words I once wrote,
And If the paper is crumpled…

Moonlight then goes away leaving me into darkness,
Among the million twinkling stars,
But it does come back always,
Washing away the lighted stars.

And I hope the way I always do,
That this night never ends,
As this moonlight,
Means everything to me.

Its my savior,
Its my world.
Its my love,
And…

Its you.

The moonlight was flowing all over me,
The morning sun was too bright,
So bright that it blinded me,
From the life I’m going to have.

I had written my life down,
On a crumpled paper just like this,
And believed that a crumpled paper,
Can never be perfect again…

But as I breathed the new air,
And again greeted the moonlight,
I understood something more,
Which I never realized before.

Moonlight shines there all the time,
The light not enough to figure out,
The words I once wrote,
And If the paper is crumpled…

Moonlight then goes away leaving me into darkness,
Among the million twinkling stars,
But it does come back always,
Washing away the lighted stars.

And I hope the way I always do,
That this night never ends,
Cuz this moonlight,
Means everything to me.

Its my saviour,
Its my world.
Its my love,
And…

Its you.

Half Empty.

On a day like this,
I wondered about the world.
So much to make of it,
And so much to ignore…

As I embarked upon this journey,
I made some sense out of it,
Only to reach a dead end,
A dead end which welcomed me back.

It was all very tiring,
With sweat running down my spine,
So I chose to sleep,
A sleep which awakens me,

I reached a wall,
Million bricks there were,
Which had stood the test of time,
A showcase of labor.

The curiosity within,
Urged me to climb it,
And I failed again and again,
And I screamed again and again…

The hope was still alive,
‘Someone on the other side may hear me’
I waited a lifetime it seemed,
But no reply came.

Maybe the wall is supposed to stop,
Travelers like me,
Maybe I should face it with honor,
Or should I break down and cry?

Questions were asked enough,
It was time to act.
So I turned back and walked home,
But no tear did I let fall down.

And this is where I woke up,
To find myself home,
Couldn’t recall whether it was a dream,
Or did it actually happen??

This is the story so far,
Trying, I am,
To recall everything,
But all that come back are questions.

I was flipping a coin as I wrote all this,
Wondering what to write next.
When suddenly a distant thought,
Was brought to me by the winds.

It was just there in my mind,
Stopping the world around me for a moment,
Neither could I make anything of it,
Nor could I dismiss it.

But at this moment,
The coin slipped through my fingers,
And came down to the earth,
And made me stuck with my thought.

I didn’t bother to pick it up,
And see which side was up,
Because,
I was rich enough…

One-on-One.

"Even though a belief we have might not be that useful , or makes our lives out right miserable , it can be hard to give up a belief because then we have to give up being right."

It was one of those days when life’s unfairness and anomalies just catches up with you in a flash. It might happen in such an ironic situation that you can almost hear the Gods laughing from above. What does one do then? Well, most of the time I have found out that the solution to this aberration results from an equally bizarre setting. We only have one part to play: to let the inhibitions out and free ourselves, our minds, and go out for a walk in nature’s park. As prophetically said, by someone “nature will take its due course in time”.

So here I was, walking on the street one fine evening, wondering about so many things at once that my brain felt like it was overflowing with this flood of ideas, notions, judgements and implications. It was becoming impossible for me to find a way out of this mental pandemonium of emotions. In between all this came a moment when I shunted almost all thoughts from my mind rather unconsciously and started thinking about my old computer back in my room. I have become just like it, not able to process so much information. I was overloading and about to crash big time. The only difference is that my computer would not feel bad if it hung up and had to restart again – it would know what all steps to take to get back on track.

I turned left and entered a relatively quiet neighborhood. At least the surroundings were now in resonance with what I wanted my mental state to be.
So now, with the example of my old computer already in the foundation of my train of thought, I gave the boot command: “let’s just list down the problems and questions and classify them into different classes. That always works. Nothing gets left out and there a reasonable order and clarity of thought. Just like Linux.”

So, what is the ‘root’ cause over here? The answer shot back: “my sense of having turned into a failure. All my efforts have been failures and nothing else, for at least the past 3 years now.”

Well, that seems fair enough. I mini-congratulated myself for finally coming out with this revelation and stopped short when I realized how ironic it was.

The time had finally come to have a one-on-one with myself. Pure logical reasoning and analysis, I won’t cut myself some slack and allow myself to escape the judgments this time. It has to be necessary for getting a solution, a long term solution.

Let’s go back 3 years from now. I had worked really hard (though I had no idea what I was working towards, but it didn’t matter at all. That was one of the first big lessons I learned in life – ignorance can be bliss, and can sometimes lead you to a road to success, a nice little surprise if you ask me, but certainly doesn’t say well about self-realization.) Now I was in college, without doubt the best time of my life. It seemed as if I had everything I needed in life. Utopian freedom: freedom of money, expenditure, choosing friends, when to sleep, when to study, when to go out, when to party. I had finally completed the race on foot with flying colors, and now I was in the driver’s seat, with full control and freedom, so that I may never have to run so hard again.

There was just one problem. I had forgotten that sooner or later ill run out of gas. Then what?

And so it happened. I was totally unprepared and like a lot of other people, started looking for a solution once I was in trouble. Till here, it had just been a care-free ride, with worries about the world and the future thrown to the winds.

This was the point where I learnt the second greatest lesson of life: the future doesn’t need to be thoroughly planned, and it will only fail if you do that. What needs to be done it to have general sense of direction and knowing which path to take, the rest can be taken care of as you move forward. Also, you should always have enough honesty to take your share of blame for the s*** you have gotten into, so that you know what you don’t have to repeat. Otherwise we are just left wondering as to why the same awful things keep happening to us.

I was pretty happy with how my thoughts were flowing now. I didn’t realize how much I had walked. Apparently I had reached the city railway station! It had been quite some time since I had been on a railway station, so I decided to make a visit. I had always enjoyed observing people when they are in a hurry.

The station was as usual bustling with energy and commotion. I took a steaming cup of tea from the nearby stall and sat on an empty bench, which I was pretty surprised to find at this time of the evening.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, “Running out of gas and being on the right track.”
My last 1 year has been the time where I have swallowed this reality in a number of different flavors. All of them have been quite bitter.

I pressed the pause button on my thoughts and took a generous sip of the tea. It tasted like heaven! If only life was as simple this, where you don’t have to strive so hard to see results and realize your true emotions.

But then these last 3 years have not been my cup of tea. Ha! I gave a short philosopher’s laugh and reverted to my ‘Train of thought’.

If there was graph that you could draw , to capture my state of positivity about life and what it hold for me , you would see that this is the time when it dipped to a all new low. I felt like I had let myself down pretty badly. It was time to get back on track.

“Getting back on track”. Well, it’s a term some people live by, while some just spend their whole life trying to achieve. It seems as if their whole life has been a long, never ending run on a train platform, always trying to catch that last train home…… wherever home is.Then there are some people who believe in shortcuts: they are always looking to catch that early flight out of their misery. And fly straight into the heavens of success.

You might ask, where do all those people already sitting in their seats and are ‘on track’ figure in this scenario? Well, my answer is this: they just don’t care. Most of them are so comfortable settled on their seats that they don’t see the need to do anything. The train will take them to their destination as planned. They just have to enjoy the scenery outside. People will keep boarding and deboarding this train, but they have a one way ticket to their destination. The key here is this: Till when will you keep sitting and ride on this track? Are you sure the point where you get off is the last stop, the ultimate destination called ‘Success as I see it’? Well, that’s the risk they will have to take.

As the train in front of me started pulling of the platform, an old man crept up to the bench and sat beside me. He started setting himself up quite comfortable, occupying around 75% of the bench, leaving me furtively battling for space. It was clear that he was waiting for the night train, which leaves him with around 5 hours to kill.

I sat motionless for some time, trying to gather my thoughts again. But it seemed like I had reached another dead end. Fifty minutes of thinking had got me this far only. And in retrospect, it now seemed like a waste of time. I can’t say with certainty that I figured out things about which I had no idea before.

I recently read somewhere that human mind unconsciously classifies and keeps track of all your life problems and concerns – big or small. That’s what gives us the resulting ‘stress’. It’s just that most people shy away from evoking this unconscious mind and always remain in that morbid state of non-reflection. What I just did was not completely futile; it was merely an act of self realization, minus the solutions.

What are solutions anyway? Should one believe that with all our worldly problems, their solutions also lie within us? Or do we always require reasoning; reckoning our present situation?

It was certainly getting darker now. The innumerable platform lights started to turn on sequentially, as expected.
Is it just me or is this world sometimes way too confusing? Viktor Frankl once said that “Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”It seems like there are these infinite parameters, all depending upon the choices I make, that will ultimately decide my fate. It must be wonderful to outsource these ‘choices’ to god, and believe in something called destiny. Sounds really stress-free and naïve at the same time.

And with choices, comes the bundled package of regret.

Regret……what really curbs it – making our own choices or just flowing in the stream of life? Sometimes I regret the regret I showed, which only made be unnecessarily sad about the past, at a time when I had much more than I used to have.

What am I doing right now? Is it not, another exercise in regret? Thinking about the failure I have been? Isn’t this whole discussion, paradoxically, an endeavor which takes me away from the solution, making me focus on the wrong choices I made again and again? I’m repeating my biggest mistake while contemplating how to not make the same.

Future is, and will always remain the unmolded clay, that empty canvas that it is. Cluttering it up with the dark colors of yesterday will only reduce our capacity to paint a spectacular picture of tomorrow. Maybe I have just been too hard on myself, falling into the trap of competitiveness, which governs most of us in this modern society. Competitiveness is good, but it can be detrimental when one competes with everyone else except oneself. Fulfillment of our own personal goals and dreams should take paramount place in our natural priorities. How many times do we find ourselves living on other’s expectations and judgements, to the point where their opinions decide when we are happy or sad, satisfied or not, and proud or embarrassed? I believe society should bring out the best in all of us, but certainly not through this path. There has to be an inner boundary which one should make themselves, defining their inner world: one’s moral code, goals, dreams, and aspirations , little things that makes one happy , people one loves despite what others think of them , and most importantly ,’Success , as I see it’.

My cup of tea was over. I heaved an involuntary sigh of relief and got up. I suddenly felt an urge to return home.
The old man beside me was dozing peacefully, but my movements woke him up. He observed the empty space I had created on the bench and welcomed it with a faint smile. Then, before anyone else could sit next to him, he stretched himself nicely on the bench and closed his eyes again. The night train would be arriving pretty soon now.