Love

Dear Love, I cannot seem to find the words to express my complicated emotions to you. My heart is full with a heady mixture of surprise, joy and sadness…I had given up on Love all together, not out of cynicism, but over-idealism…perhaps they are one and the same. After what had transpired in my life, I decided that Love was best left alone, untainted by the boundaries of human emotions…on many nights I stayed awake, imagining that face in the dark…that face which I thought would look upon me through my days to come, would smile next to me in the mornings, weep in sweet remembrances in the twilight and beam with inexplicable contentment at night…the more I tried to shut the face off, the more it penetrated my consciousness…until I began to shiver and wonder if this ghastly ordeal would last forever… It was not like I was always in the depths of heartbreak…I still relished the occasional tasty meal, I still enjoyed the odd movie or two I watched…but embedded in the depths of my mind, a lingering fear always mingled with a leaden-sadness…the fear of loving again, the fear of letting go again, the fear of feeling again…in the middle of a busy morning, I would suddenly be assaulted by a happy memory from the past…and the silent joy which threatened to creep up on me was always suppressed by the wrench of reality… I decided to harden my heart…to not try too hard to figure things out…to live life in the manner of the mundane, of the routine, to relinquish thoughts of emotional investment…to re-invent myself through a journey inwards…to realise the permanence of impermanence, the absolute truth in the temporality of all things…to view everything as a cold, detached observer would, through the clinical lens of a micro-scope… And then I met you…and the interaction baffled me…and I realised that those desires which I had felt I had burnt long back, had resurrected themselves from the ashes of the past…and I felt them leaping like flames, urging me to rekindle within me the capacity to feel, the capacity to love…when I first grappled with loss, I felt that Love itself had died…but now I realised that Love never dies…it is invincible, and it expands forever, way beyond our restricted understanding of the intensity of its Being…and that it reposes within us, seemingly dormant, waiting to erupt, oh the volcano of love, the eternal magma of emotion, which swirls around the depths of the collective consciousness of life. How did I re-discover Love through you? Was it the gush of warmth which flushed its way through me, every time we held hands? The absolute surrender of an unforgettable kiss? The relief surging through the veins, following the melting tension of a resolved argument? The immersion of our souls into one another, offering windows to explore mutual mind-scapes…feeling a certain way about you, which I can only and always feel about only you? Thank you dearest, because you have reassured me that Love holds the capacity to outlive human relationships, and has great resolve to let people swim in its waters.

Clasped

As I lay clasped in his embrace, the warmth from his body engulfing mine with unparalleled comfort, I looked into the eyes which revealed a tender, sensitive soul…a steely exterior, grown stronger with the onslaught of life’s multi-hued experiences…the stronger the framework of steel, the more soft the protected thoughts within…and emotions suddenly coursed through my veins, as though an unknown dam had broken without any perceptible reason. I loved this boy beyond the bounds of thought, so much so that every word which fell from his lips went straight to various corners of my heart…every emotion was heightened beyond comprehension…immense joy, immense sadness, immense relief, immense satisfaction, immense amusement…and I felt like merging myself with him on levels beyond the mere physical…and I wished to transcend time and space in my modes of union with him…the present moment ensured that we were entwined with one another…with the volatile world spinning on its axis around us…while all we cared about was the mutual affection which bound our breaths together...the future, laden with uncertain possibilities, lay ignored for the time being, as we swirled the taste of living in the moment around the tips of our tongues…but the past…ah, the past was beyond our reach…for every former tear shed, for every illness battled in solitude, for every beat of a saddened heart…which he had experienced on his own…I was unable to reach out to that realm gone by, to put my arms around him and lend him a consoling shoulder, a reassuring hand, to nurse him gently through bouts of sickness, to kiss him to sleep after a night of bewildered self-questioning and to stroke his head for no particular reason… to rejoice in the rain with his little joys and sorrows…which accompany the half-illusory, half-real successes and failures which play hide and seek with our lives…but all I could do was long in wistfulness, from the helplessness of the Present, which fettered me and restricted my access to bygone hours…

The Theatre of the Mundane

Change is engulfing us within its inextricable embrace, weaving together a tapestry of transition, with the threads of time...memories are spinning through the loom and creating new ones with each passing minute...over the past few days the pages of the social networks I subscribe to have been inundated with photographs capturing this change...old friends I used to play with are now new mothers, new lovers, expectant professionals and beautiful other halves of couples...change has caught me in its grip as well, and transformed my life from that of a lonely dreamer to a dreamy partner to a tender soul...and the revelation of partnership, of union has lived up to its rich legacy of Literary musing... I have often heard, read and been reminded that a marriage is but a domestic partnership, a way to adjust with the ways of another within the confined space of home...akin to alliances with room-mates...and some have shared with me that it is anything but romantic...but I do beg to differ as I am of the conviction that romance is not estranged from reality, rather it is sewn into its very fabric with adroit stitches... I fervently feel, (and this is my subjective insight), that the true romantic can squeeze out romance from a near empty toothpaste tube...Romance is not restricted to the pages of fantastically imagined novels or verses of carefully-thought out poetry...I believe that it spreads its wings beyond such realms and soars over it all, by diving headlong into the Theatre of the Everyday...and none of its enigmatic charm is lost even when it is infused within that which we commonly perceive as mundane or boring... With a dash of imagination and an ounce of creativity, the Theatre of Routine can be shipped from the realm of the Monotonous to the realm of the Sublime...stealing a mischief-laden glance while standing in winding grocery queues, a whispered secret while scrubbing dishes clean, the thought of reveling in clean, fragrant clothes while mixing the detergent, musing on the happy possibilities offered by a swept and scrubbed floor (such as sprawling a mat and having an indoor picnic) the inviting allure of a freshly made bed, the infinite potential of a bowl of just-peeled vegetables, the gleaming beckons of newly purchased pots and pans, the wrinkles of memory amidst the folds of crumpled linen, the charm of frugality amidst the uncertainty of humble beginnings, the varying degrees of struggle encountered by young, bewildered couples...how can any of this not be stammeringly romantic? Love blossoms in arenas where the Theatre of the Mundane is premised on a script which is lettered by promises of a shared togetherness, of an assuring sense of routine in a world laden with chaos, of the charm of adventure lurking in each kitchen cupboard (often in the form of insects :), of rest reposing in the thought of a shared, longed for midnight pillow... That is not to say that a holiday from routine is not welcome, that the reel of romance cannot play in distant, mysterious lands, but there is something romantic about the thought of having to return to the clasp of the time-table, if only to break its schedule at times...

Perspectivising

As my eyes were meandering down my posts, words which repeatedly leapt out at me included 'perspective,' 'consciousness,' and this idea of the 'bigger picture.' So looking inwards, I wish to ask the silent corners of this same consciousness why I seem to be preoccupied with such thoughts...

A Season for Slowness

This is a season for slowness...in a world inundated with the rigours of multi-tasking and the incredible expectation of performing exceptionally well in all tasks all at once being heaped upon our shoulders, there is reason for one to consciously decelerate and put pressure on our brakes to stall the hurtling vehicles which we have become.

Let us seek a season to pause, in full consciousness, to breathe in and out, in full awareness of the complex processes of respiration which we take for granted, to observe the vitality of each sensory perception, to let ourselves be still, to stall, to shed off the cloak of accumulated stress, to discard the garb of externalities, and gladly recoil inwards for a while...in the hope that this physical detachment will lead to a mental cleansing and renewal...

Let us allow ideas to flow from one mind to the next, like a gently meandering river, not flooding, but seeping soothingly through the mind-scape, in a manner which is softly pleasing, and not stentorian...

Let us allow this river to ripple over the pebbles of thought which are embedded in our minds, like the rocks which adorn the river bed...and let the river cool and calm our thoughts, dissolve our prejudices and amplify our awareness through a calming ablution...

Let its waters spread like chamomile, lulling th pain, numbing the disappointments, not merely a temporary closure, but a sustained sense of ease, a calm which dawns slowly but gradually spreads its myriad rays across our hearts, stirring our depths about the possibilities of delving into broader perspectives, perhaps enabling us to fit the jigsaw of the bigger picture together

Rambles

The days flee by me without a hint of a pause...well, that is not entirely true...in spite of the myriad events building up like blocks of lego around my life, constructing this walled-phase of my existence, I do find lulls which punctuate the onslaught of storms...and I feel as though I am caught in a strange state...one where the inertia of motion and the inertia associated with the realm of the static, coil around one another, like two particularly compatible snakes...no, not snakes, for the sake of a happier word, of streamers...
For not only are things going on at a break-neck speed around me, so are they occuring within me...thoughts keep competing with one another for shoulder space in my mind...the trials and tribulations of Everyday, the little joys which surpass the little sadnesses, the little wonders, like the lilt of a sudden twilight breeze which eclipse the little disappointments which will soon be renounced to the Kingdom Of All Things Forgotten, just as the reasons why one feels unreasonably upset will soon be banished to the Kingdom Where All Things Pale, in the light of the Bigger Picture, through the Realm of Heightened Perspective...
The other day I called one of my best friends on her day of inception...and the sound of her voice, travelling across telephonic waves (??) from across all those miles and miles, the assurance of her 'hello, DIYA,' the smile I imagined dancing at the corners of her mouth, the quiet belief we have in each other's companionship, all those rich yet silent memories we share carefully in the treasure box of our friendship...all served to unleash some latent emotion which had been hiding its face in my heart for a while...and I foundit hard to continue the conversation with her, through my veil of very badly timed tears...

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The roads rustle by...

At the start of each New Year, I feel like everything is about to start anew...sometimes this feeling amazes me...after all, though Time is a continuous and fluid entity, human perception of it is conveniently compartmentalised, compressed into neat and comprehensible units, to organise the chaos of existence into maneagable bits...and even though the ushering in of the New Year is one which simply involves the Earth completing its daily rotation, another cycle of the sun and moon coordinating with the hemispheres, Life feels like it has been wrung out of the washing machine, dried and starched, the new emerging from the old, and ironed for use...so if I continue using the analogy of the beginning of the year as a neatly washed and ironed garment, each new experience adds its own crease...not to rumple it up into a state of disarray, but to signify the fact that the garment is being used, being worn, that life is being lived, to the brim to fulfil its infinite potential...so at the end of the year, the more crumpled the garment is, the happier one should be, as it indicates a life laden with events, activity and meaning...sometimes there is delight in disorder...as long as the creases on the garment do not necessarily cause creases between our eyebrows ...hopefully.