Confessions of Grieving Soul

       I was born on 16^th September 1989 at around 00 hours on a full moon night in a remote village named Jehanabad in Bihar. I was the first born in the soon to be flooded with next generation kids in my mother’s family.

       Being the first kid, I was loved and adored by everyone. But all the love in the universe could not equal her love for me. She is the reason-I am what I am. I wish I could feel the things she felt when she first took me in her hands: the happiness of a newborn, the hope for a better future, the dreams of me growing up. Her conviction in me was unparalleled, probably even more than my own mother. She never let any stranger hold me or even stare at me, saying ‘nazar lag jayegi’, and protected me from every evil possible. She was always there for me, unlike me.

       As the years went by, she told me stories from faraway lands both told and untold: of wise kings, of evil witches, of haunting ghosts and somehow I would always feature in all of them. Those stories made me only wiser and stronger. Sometimes, I knew she was making them up-but I kept quiet, to humour her. I guess, I didn’t want her to know that I was growing up faster than she had expected and would soon loose me to the big bad world. She was probably right.

Passing time is the cruelest weapon of all times. It simply kills all the sweet memories you had with a person. You grow up and simply forget the things which mattered to you.Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach rightly said,” In youth we learn, in age we understand”.  I learned to love her when I was young, but could only feel the pain when she is no more.

       I wanted to talk to her, you know, I really did. But kept on postponing it, just because something important came up, atleast it felt important at that the moment. All I had to do was pick up the phone and call. Ironically, nothings important now. It was as if the entire universe was conspiring against me and didn’t want me to talk to her. Yes, I am just trying to satisfy the guilt in my own twisted way. Nothing matters now: I didn’t talk to her in the end.

        Maybe I was always waiting for that perfect moment to tell her how much she meant to me. Whenever she came in front of me, I would forget what I wanted to tell her. Now I know, there’s no such thing as the perfect moment, the minute you tell someone how much you love them, the moment becomes perfect in itself.

        Take a minute. Remember all those near and dear ones who once meant a lot to you. Pick up the damn phone. Call them up. Speak. Speak your hearts out. Speak till you are out of words about how much you love them. There’s a lot of people who deserve it, and you know it in your heart. Do it before it’s too late. Believe me when I say this, it’s the only way to tell them.

       My Grandma was probably the most beautiful thing that happened to me. May she find peace wherever she is, it’s a better place with the stars. I know they will take good care of her, better than any one of us could have possibly imagined. She left me and her miseries on 26^th June 2011 at 2310 hours.

Killing me Softly

I can’t breathe. I am dying, slowly but steadily. Or rather, choking - every single moment I think of surviving in this world full of bushwa and dogma. I was pure once, just like you were; from the time when we were born and until we became a little bit older, old enough to understand we have to survive in this world, not LIVE.

You and I, we had a smile, a smile that would melt the hearts of the most vicious beings on this planet.  A smile so divine, that even the gods plumed on its existence. Maybe, when my dad came home after an altercation with his boss, my smile gave him a reason to forget about his devils and jollied him up. Or maybe, just maybe when your mom was carrying you in the supermarket, a shoplifter changed his mind to steal just because he saw you smile when he was possessed by his demons. It might have happened or, it didn’t, but you get the point. Our innocence had the power to change the minds of the most persistent men in a fleeting second.

You and I, we had a walk, a funny one: the time when we wanted to LEARN TO WALK by hurting ourselves every now and then. We used to fall down again and again but, every time we fell, we rose to walk again with renewed vigour, without fail. There was joy in it. We took our time, walked at our own pace. Now we want to run, as fast we can. We are running to achieve something, that something which most of us haven’t figured out. But we sure are running to get it.

You and I, we had thoughts, the weirdest ones. The world was such a mystery to us, our thoughts were like the flowing river, ungoverned by anyone. We weren’t always wondering why the grass is green, why the sky is blue, why do people die, why do people cry and what not? We were curious enough, but didn’t kill ourselves to seek our answers. Curiosity is like a bucket of water, if you are curious just to the brim of the water-filled bucket you are sane, but if it overflows: you tend to lose it! Now, the only thoughts we have is how to survive. We think to make money, we think how to outdo our closest competitors, we think too much of failing before trying.

We all changed, for worse. Now we smile to please them. We run to outrun them. We speak what they want to hear. We sold our souls to our fiend’s long back, and the funny thing is we don’t even know it yet. Where and when did we lose the essence of just LIVING? More importantly, why did we lose the essence of just LIVING? Is it the never-ending quest for money? Is it the fame? Is it success? Oh no … wait, I forgot the most clichéd one, the pursuit of happiness! We all have our own twisted-principles and so called morality to identify the answer to that question. But come on, whom are we kidding, you and I both know the truth is far from being hidden. We have always known the brutal truth, deep inside, why we lost it-from the time we started surviving. We are bound in shackles of this self-made, ever-evolving, full of tenets concept called SOCIETY. We let them govern our smile, our thoughts, our walk, our love and even worse: our LIFE. When Spencer first coined the term,” Survival of the fittest!” and when Darwin later used it (Fifth edition of “On the Origin of Species”) synonymously to his own theories of Natural Selection, he probably meant it on the physical level, but I think we have taken it to all the other levels beyond it. Please don’t misunderstand me. Competition is important in a dystopian society like ours, almost mandatory. But not at the cost of losing all the little moments we have in life which actually when summed up means: LIVING A LIFE!

 Live a little. I tell you, you don’t have to die surviving. Fall a little. You don’t always have to be perfect. Cry a little. You are not unbreakable, just like them: they will understand. Wait a little. It’s not how fast you run that matters; it’s why you are running which makes sense! Take a moment for yourself. Re-evaluate your life. Rethink your actions. And I assure you, if you think long and hard enough, you will FIND what you are looking for, and that’s the day when you actually start LIVING YOUR LIFE, just like we used to when we were kids.

It’s easier said than done. I am trying hard, maybe just like you. But it’s the sense of realization that’s killing me softly. Maybe you are stronger than me. Maybe you had already figured it out. Maybe you are already there. But those of you, who are on the dingier side of the line, just like me, let’s keep trying until we cross it. I said what I wanted to, now you tell me…

* For all those who never wanted to grow up!

'True Love' or 'Slipping on the banana peel' ?

          I always knew I was great at writing, but nothing inspired me enough to start writing! Never thought that I would write my debut article about a girl at four in the morning...so just spare me your cheesy grin and allow me to Debate the age old topic: Does 'True Love' really exist?

          When I was in my 10^th standard, my English teacher brought up the topic of ‘True Love’ in one of her so called literature-enriching classes, as the part of her yearlong choking class discussion’s. People went crazy over the authenticity of its existence and the whole class was divided in two: “The people who thought they had already found their true love and would slit the throats of anyone in ‘cold blood’ who dared convince them otherwise” and “The people who thought that it didn’t exist and would do the same as their ruthless counterparts”. I was leading the latter ones. Of course, the decision of who won the debate is again – debatable: but I do have a blur memory of how it ended. Having heard the endless drivels and shenanigans from both the sides with utmost sincerity and amazingly elevated attention, the teacher concluded diplomatically, “You will never know whether you are in True love or you just slipped on the banana peel, it’s just that how it ends that matters”. Now to tell you the truth, it sure was deep, but on the other hand, “YOU DON’T SAY THAT KINDA SHIT TO A CLASS FULL OF TENDER MINDS….WHO KNOWS HOW IT WILL SCREW YOU GROWING UP!”

          Now that happened eons ago. I have had a series of meaningless relationships and a couple of flings, but nothing serious as such. I am in college and these are the best days of my life, or should I say, were the best days of my life. Nowadays, it’s just the ceiling fan and me on dark gloomy nights - in solitude. And yes, it’s because of a stupid GIRL. And yes again: she is STUPID.

            It all started seven months ago. I was at a stationary shop in my college waiting to buy a pen. That’s a pretty rare incident for a guy like me- to be buying pens, but you will have to buy the story, that’s all I have to offer.

           Suddenly out of nowhere, a kind-of pretty girl enters the shop with her entourage with an attitude as if she owned the place. Now, it’s not that I hadn't seen more beautiful girls than her or something, but I just had a moment with her which was going to define the series of illogical steps I was going to take in the next few days. We exchanged a glance, more like a look, or it was pretty much a glance I guess: but that was it. It was all that took to freeze time for me. I felt as if I went from a handsome stud to a retard in just a few nanoseconds- the time period of the glance. I stood there like a  cow gaping with eyes wide open as if I had just seen, or rather, committed a heinous crime.

            It was as if fate had decided to mess with my otherwise logically functioning head and 'Cupid' had taken personal care to intensify the effects. Now this was not normal, must say paranormal or quasi-normal (I am not sure if that’s a word but come on give me a break, and it’s four in the morning). I had seen a girl, she probably saw me, read PROBABLY SAW ME, and I was completely smitten by her presence. I didn’t even know her name. I just had her face, frozen in my memory for a long time to come. The first thing I tried was to find her name. It’s not difficult to get hold of a name when you have lots of girls as your friends in college. Her name was Sumedha( I tried Google translator to know the meaning of her name, but I guess it wasn’t that interested in helping me…after all a man in love is all by himself. Oh wait….did I just say the L-word out loud. It sounded a lot less cheesy in my head than on paper.)

          Was this even love? This feeling of constant goofiness, non-sensical chatter in my head about wanting to know her more and more…was somehow killing me mentally. Now I knew, I wasn’t that tough as I always thought I was. This pretty-faced maiden had taken all my cognitive skills and equaled them to a tropical chimp and the best part is I allowed it to happen knowingly. I am still not sure if that’s the best or the worst part, yet.

           Now I would rather want to skip the part about how I got her phone number and how I started talking to her, initially. This is a debate about TRUE LOVE, not FLIRT 101, so let’s just leave it at that, okay. But It was amazing, the feeling that she was going to call me or I was going to call her, that feeling. We used to find the stupidest topics to talk about, the ones I usually wouldn’t bother to give a thought in this life or the next. I was completely bowled over by her way of talking, the sound of her smile, the silly little syllables she used( Some of you morons will get what I am talking about…and you better wipe out that imbecile grin off your face, because you will be pretty disappointed with what came next.)

          Now we had been talking on phone for about three weeks, and hadn’t met once, not once. So like a nice gentleman, I popped the question (No, not that question you dummies), “Can we meet tomorrow at that coffee shop round the corner?” There was an awkward silence for a moment, but it sure did feel like eternity; Einstein’s relativity had proved itself time and again. And then the reply,” I don’t know you that well!” Whoa…where was this coming from. I felt like a complete jackass for a moment: having lost half the sensory skills when I had fallen in love and the other half when I realized it wasn’t love at all, I pulled myself together and said some final parting words to this lady and we have never talked since then.

It’s been six long months, but I still can’t forget this girl. Now I really don’t know what happened to me in that long one month. I don’t know whether, it was true love or I had just slipped on the banana peel! Was she the one, THE ONE for me? Did I do everything right which I could have possibly done or I screwed it up in the end? Did I just lose the only true love of my life? Should I had been more patient and less egoistical; would I have her by my side by now? I personally feel the “What if?” questions most excruciating than the rest of them. What if, I had missed her by a couple of minutes on the first time in the stationary shop, would I ever experience that feeling again with someone else? What if she had said yes to meet me, would life be a lot different an experience than it is now? There are millions of unanswered questions with even more nonchalant chatter in my head right now, when I am writing this article, but the only question that matters is, “ Was it meant to be, or not?” And frankly speaking I don’t have a black and white answer to it.

Or is it really the end that matters? Should I wait for an end, if there is a one… or just let it go! Only  dicey TIME will tell I guess…

*In sweet memory of all those who have loved and lost!