In Happiness and Sorrow

First time I met them was the day I was hurt. I had put my fingers into the drawer and shut it.

Second time I met them was the day I went to school the first time.

Third time I met them was the day I gave my lunch to a poor lady with a kid.

Fourth time I met them was when dad wasn’t home.

Then on, there have been so many meetings. Some sweet, some hard, some choking and some really sad. But they have always been the same. They seem to be so light within but take so much weight of me. I don’t really wish to meet them but I can’t help having them when they come. And after they have gone, I take a deep breath and i feel light.

Now I don’t meet them that often. They feel I have grown up and changed. My emotions don’t overpower me and I am insensitive now.  But the thing is I have stopped meeting them myself. I feel I have had enough and until unless I am too heavy inside I would not call upon them. I know they’ll be with me forever, as long as I breathe. And I know when I will need them. I know there are so many dark moments to face. Don’t want to mention them but try guessing from the fact that I am the elder son of my parents and there is a moment when it pains the most being the eldest son. I am sure I’ll need them that day. They’ll be with me even after that day.  They might just turn out to be the salt in my food.

The most wonderful thing about them is their sheer presence and meaning and purpose. They are never explained nor is their existence questioned. It’s beyond imagination how they can be instrumental in shaping your emotions both joy and sad.  They are God’s creation, a magic in itself and indispensable in life. If you have never met them, never experienced them, never felt them, you pinch yourself and check if you are alive.  Am sure you won’t pinch.  At times, you wish you get into situations where you happily long for them to be in front of your eyes. At times, you want them to disappear from someone else’s eyes and vanish into thin air. And at times you desperately want them to come to you, relax you and go away before their memories haunt you in solitude.

Crocodiles fake them, onions bring them, rains hide them and Clapton writes about them. . . .

They come in drops, heavy at the bottom.  They come in streams, dry at one end.  They come in pairs with a trail that creates an invisible scar. They are not controlled, they are involuntary.

And today I stand a foot away from the bed of my ailing grandpa and stare into his emotionless eyes and as if his eyes just pulled ‘them’ out of my big moist eyes, there they flow uninhibited, unfazed and unattended to.

My "tears" they are. Tears of grief and of desperation, of disbelief and heartbreak. They come cascading down in pairs from every edge of my eyes through the contours of my face in a stochastic pattern like two asymptotes on the curve of my lifeless face.

They stop after they have washed my eyes of all the sorrows to give me a sight, a clear one to think beyond the cause, beyond congested boundaries of misery and helplessness. My sleeve soaks them up and my eyes are dry again but the blemish that’s on my heart is not one to soak or vanish. But, yes.  Tears do lighten them and all that is left is a memory of those tears, those cries and those minutes of breathlessness. 

And you breathe in some air, smile faintly with lips joint together and wait for them to come and touch you again. 

I THINK. . .

Life isn’t particularly short.  I mean, you get to live for countless hours and minutes and seconds. Well, if you feel seconds are too small an entity to be counted upon then you should better think of “moments” which I feel are even shorter but then don’t you say “your happiest moment in life”, “your moment of glory” and all that.  So we do actually have a lot of time in our hands and when you are reading this you actually are letting by the seconds from the bag of your life.  But then, don’t think of this as a time waste because the greatest enlightenments, the weirdest thoughts, the mind bending arguments and useful realisations, all strike up in a moment of nothingness.  

Sitting alone by the side of my window and feeling the light on one cheek and keeping the other in dark and just letting the darkness and light within myself to fight amongst themselves sometimes puts me into a mode of peace and sublime satisfaction. Between drizzles, during power cuts, during moments of loneliness, during silenced afternoons and haunted nights, during wasted evenings and tiresome post dinner sessions (oh please, do not interpret the lines like the ones in those Hindi movies, that said ‘Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai’ or ‘mein aur meri tanhai’ blah blah . .), I have often had sweet encounters with my thought process that finally made me write this. I don’t count these ornamented moments to be a waste of precious moments but rather it makes me happy that someday I was mad enough to think about these. 

I think. . . 

1. The numerous fairness creams being sold in the market are the worst instances of racism. 
   
2. The only way to ban smoking is cease the sale of cigarettes.  Banning it in public places is just ridiculous and government’s own way of saying, rather shouting that  “we care for your health as long as you are in the public’s eyes, so please find secluded locations and don’t be spotted smoking”
   
3. STAR WARS was nothing but George Lucas showing off SFX effects. 
   
4. Love doesn’t make you blind.  You were blind.  That is why you fell in love.  Well, if it opens your eyes or not is a different issue. 
   
5. God is the most misused word.  Bomb blasts, extortions, riots, wars all just in the name of God or may be gods. (I don’t think I should capitalise ‘G’ in God because he isn’t one, there are so many)
   
6. Sorry is the most over exaggerated word.  It has lost its importance since time immemorial. I mean, you use the same word when you accidentally nudge someone and when you have really hurt someone with your miscalculated words. It’s like using the same bar of soap for cleansing your face and doing the after-work.  It’ll clean no doubt but err. . . 
   
7. Saying that yourself is a cool person is the most uncool thing to do.  I still don’t have an idea, since when this word has been used for living beings?
   
8. Sachin is the God (I will capitalise G here.  There can be just one Sachin Tendulkar) of cricket.  But, he could not have been one had he played for any other country.  I don’t blame him nor do I blame India.  But yes, we are a bunch of maniacs who are driven by cricket, the sensex and the Bollywood.  India is great. 
   
9. Police in India scares a normal people more than a culprit.  
   
10. Foreign tourists being harassed is the best justification of the tagline “Incredible India”
    
11. Man is too immature to handle something so advanced like the brain. God’s biggest mistake was to give each one a different brain. Else, there would have been peace. 
    
12. Natural disasters and man made holocausts are not that bad.  They are the most effective ways of uniting people. 
    
13. I am the worst pig to have forcibly made you read twelve stupid thoughts of mine.  But you have time people. You can do something less stupid now.  Life isn’t that short, you know.