In the End..

One moment you’re here, one moment you’re not.

One moment you’re a living being, with your own set of problems, qualms, insecurities, qualities and fears, 

And one moment you’re just a pair of defunct organs wrapped inside cold, pale flesh trying its best to start decaying and turn into something inhumane.

Your entire life, which you built around you, formed and nurtured relationships, painstakingly accomplished your goals, suffered losses, shared happy moments and sad, went through joy, pain, love, laughter, arguments comes to nought.

As if there was no point at all.

One moment you’re talking, breathing, feeling, living and the next moment you’re lying on the floor, your lips gray and body soulless, oblivious, unaware, and inaccessible. Can you feel, then, the soft touch of the trembling hand stroking your forehead? Can you hear the murmurs of prayers around you? Can you feel the silent tears sliding down the weary cheeks of the people you loved? Could you hear her asking you to come back? Were you weeping with her, looking at her, from somewhere far off? Helpless and alone?

How can you just.. stop functioning? Just like that? As if you were nothing but a piece of machinery that cannot work anymore. What happens to you after you’re gone? Become an object that has to turn into nothingness? Your entire existence comes to an abrupt halt, and..and that’s it? And after you’re gone, are you still there somehow? Do you still linger? Do you still exist somewhere?

Or is there nothing else left except for old photos and memories? Nothing else but the thought of your face in its final moment, the peace and serenity on it, the way you were carried and flowers adorned the white cloth you wore. Did it matter, then, whatever you did in your lifetime? The things you achieved or the people you loved or lost? Or the lives you touched or the lives that will never be the same without you?

In the end, it all comes down to one thing. We all are born, we all have to live and we all have to die. We all have to become what we used to be: nothing. We all have to mingle with the earth and become nothing more than an added ingredient in its topsoil. Or is there something more to that? Maybe it is not the end; maybe it never is. 

Chee's morning text

"Squeaky ball bouncy ball bounces off the ledge,
I catch the squeaky ball and hug it against my chest :*"


I just HAD to write it somewhere and preserve it forever. Texts like these are the reason why I smile while solving statistical problems during exams.


I still can't believe he's a human being.

Endless Faith

As I sit here on my bed, fingers icy cold, nose red and frozen, and shivers running down my spine, I realize that the shivers may also also due to the Christmas carols that I recall every year during this time. The four purple and white candles, burning incessantly, fighting against the chilly breeze; the wax sliding down and forming eerie shapes on the floor; the expanse of red blazers and caps, mufflers, scarves and pompoms visible everywhere. 

The season of Advent begins four weeks before Christmas where everyone in school (actually only all the sisters and Catholics) would begin to wait for the arrival of Jesus and the eradication of evil from the world. Sister Lawrence, our Principal, would read out versus from the Bible, say long prayers and tell us stories about him. But it was always the carols that touched me the most.

There was so much of positivity in them. It's like they believe; they long and yearn for Jesus to come back to them. EVERY year. Or that some miracle will take place and all the pain and suffering will cease to exist in the world. Do we really have that kind of faith in anything anymore? Me? I have a lot of problems getting convinced by anything at all. Even if I do get convinced, the faith doesn’t come into the picture easily; which is quite ironical, because my name, quite blatantly means faith.

I don’t know if I believe in God. I still haven’t decided yet. And I would not like to get into that right now. I’ve had long discussions and debates with a lot of people, and the only conclusion I could draw was that it is a highly personal matter and you cannot question the beliefs of someone. I do not know if I want to believe in him. It’s not that I haven’t tried. But every time I think about it I feel that even this small part of me that does believe in him, believes because all her elders taught her to believe in an imaginary omnipotent being that lives somewhere in the sky and watches over us and will punish us if we do wrong.

It’s okay to tell that to a chid I suppose. But once he grows up, he has the right to choose what to believe in right?

Well I don’t know if this faith is going to get rekindled or is going to be put out forever, but I do appreciate the way people believe in something. Trust something blindly. The hope, the confidence, the conviction is really remarkable. Maybe this hope is what gets them through all the tough times. 

There was this dialogue in Catch 22 which really stuck with me. It goes like this:

“There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?” 

Gives you something to think about.

I want to write about school. A lot about school. Which I'm going to do in the next post. I miss school like I never thought was possible.

And yay! Christmas is around the corner. Santa is busy packing the gifts! Are you being a good kid? :)

Beautiful mess

You know your life is messed up when:

1. You best friend with whom you used to spend every free hour talking about the most inane and inconsequential things, has become one of the friends who sometimes drops by for an occasional visit to catch up.

2. Your other best friend with who you really bonded over with in the past couple of months, is leaving town in another fifteen days. And she has a job. And she’ll be rich. And she’ll be in Delhi :|

3. The song that has been running in your head all day is “Ooh la la”. And you're singing it with a lot of gusto (The horror!)

4. Compared to older times when you used to read 3-4 books in a week, now you take more than two weeks to finish an 800 page long book, thanks to your ever decreasing attention span.

5. You try to solve the GK section of a mock test paper for an oncoming exam and you score an 8 on 40.

6. Your dreams continue to get more and more peculiar. And not in the funny way. In the creepy way.

7. You procrastinate so much, that you can even manage to procrastinate procrastination.

8. Your bestest best friend lives miles away and you hate life because you can’t see him every living moment of every day.

9. It’s awkward when you go through your entire phone book and you feel like there’s no one who’d understand.

10. You sometimes feel so lost and confused that even writing doesn’t help. Nor does sleeping or music or talking.

You know life isn’t that bad after all, when:

1. That best friend is still going to be there even if you don’t study together or share midnight snacks and she’s still going to laugh her guts out every time you tell her that when you look at peahens you feel sad, because they look incomplete.

2. The other best friend will always be a call or ping away and she’ll repeatedly tell you that you have long legs (though she has the shiny ones) and that you look good in anything you wear.

3. Sometimes singing and dancing to lame songs can be one of the most fun things to do. Also watching English movies dubbed in Hindi :D

(I once saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in Hindi and boy, was it a riot.

“Harry pe tampishaachon ne shikanja kass liya hai!”) :D

4. Books are never going to run away. Time will. Time to devour all the books you’ve always wanted to read.

5. You know you suck at GK. Do something about it or just suck it up!

6. Sometimes after the dreams are almost forgotten, you can just laugh about them and say “Yeah well, you guys are just dreams y’know."

7. Maybe you can try to start thinking about procrastinating less. After you finish writing this post, maybe?

8. Your bestest best friend (Chee) will love you no matter what, and send you edited pictures of you that will make you look all pretty. Like this one:

Nice, no?

And will have the funniest things to say like “I’ll talk to you later. I’m going to open this book and do things to it now.”

And you will never have sane pictures together:

9. Actually if you think about it there will always be that one pestering, but somehow sweet and mostly harmless guy who will send you his kid pictures to cheer you up. And they WILL be intolerably cute. 

Seriously, no one is allowed to look this cute man!

And there will always be that guy who tries to be the wise one and he'll give you all sorts of gyaan when you go on one of your “I don’t understand why this happens to me” rants. And he’ll tell you that he thinks you’re wonderful and whacky and blah blah till you grin like a chimp.

10. Sometimes you also know that it’s okay to feel lost and confused. It’s okay to feel let down and downtrodden.  And that feeling will eventually go away

In addition, chocolate always helps! So do good-hair and cute-face days!

Also, check out this pic of Chee’s cousin’s baby girl, Sarayu:

Why can't I eat her?!

Isn’t she the cutest baby you’ve ever seen on the entire planet? Seriously, sometimes I feel I may be a baby-cannibal.

Okay, time to study and time to beat procrastination in the shins!

Off I go!

*“Chu na na chu na na, chu na na chu na na, ab main javaan ho gayi”*

DAMN.

The Times They are A-Changin'

I was listening to The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel last night, when a friend happened to call me up. He asked me what I was up to and I told him. And he goes, “Ugh, Simon and Garfunkel are so GAY! What’s wrong with your music taste? You need to listen to some REAL music.”

I was so furious that I couldn’t utter a word. REAL music?! REAL MUSIC!?! What does he even MEAN by real music? What does he even KNOW about real music? First of all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Second, Simon and Garkunkel are not Simon and Garfunkel for no reason, you know. And if he thinks that those meaningless dhik-chiki-dhik-dhik beats spread across various patterns of minutes, which is enough to give you a nice headache is REAL music, and the beautiful lyrics, the velvety voices, the soulful tunes of Simon and Garfunkel is not real music, then thank you very much, I prefer to listen to all the unreal music in the world.

I mean, I sincerely feel you need a lot of depth to appreciate music like this. He even disliked Yes. HOW can you dislike something like that? How can you dislike ‘The Dangling Conversation’ and 'And You And I’ and ‘Scarborough Fair?!’ I mean I listen to all this and I feel like drifting off into space in another place and time.

Okay I need to relax. I’m just livid because I love them too much. Moving on to nicer things, the weather is perfect. Just perfect. It’s the right amount of cold and the right amount of sunny. I have to go through another ten painful days of appalling, creepy crawly, nightmare inducing exams and then I’ll get a juicy stack of a glorious ten days of holidays, spending the most stupendous time with my most favourite people in the universe. Ever. And after this, I’ll have just ONE more semester to go. One. The final one! And people, pwease pray for my exam on the 18th. I am jittery  petrified! *teeth clattering* :O 

All in all, I have this warm glow somewhere inside me. It’s basically because of a singular powerful, um, reason. It’s like a little yellow sun burning inside of me, somewhere in my heart, keeping me warm and protecting me from all the cold outside. (Jeez, was that cheesy or what!) I have a very strong feeling everything is going to be just fine in the end. It is all going to work out. It has to. And if it doesn't, it won't be the end. I’m finally coming to terms with my past. The hurt is gradually receding into a vague indifference. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but it’s happening. It is, it finally, finally is!!


Oh run away time, skip away, hop like a bunny! Hop! Hop! Hop!  


And the others, check out this timeless piece of awesomeness:

"Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind,

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,

Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,

With all the memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow."

-Bob Dylan

Tangled up in blue!

I’m starting to love Bob Dylan. And The Smiths, Muse and Nirvana.

I don’t like being alone in an empty house. Which, um, happens every day. Then I try to do things to keep myself busy so that I won’t start to sulk for stupid reasons. So I tried to moonwalk gracefully on Billie Jean a while back. And invented funny steps while dancing to Jailhouse Rock. Invigorating!

Really, everyone should try it. Just be stupid. Be crazy. Make yourself laugh. Let yourself go. Do those steps which make your hair fly and make you feel all pretty and glamorous. Pout, blow kisses into the mirror, catwalk, play an imaginary guitar, sing into an invisible mic, try to look sophisticated. Try. You need it during stressful times during exams.

I read a lot of blogs of people in their early twenties. Man, ALL of us sound the same! Stress, uncertain future, studies, friendship, doubts, misunderstandings. It was like I was reading my own thoughts expressed in different words. It was uncanny! It makes me smile to think that there are so many out there like me who fuss over little things, get cranky and confused and depressed over piddling issues. And then I read about QLC (Yes En, it does sound cool :D) in En’s blog. Makes sense. Makes total sense.

I’m extremely sleepy but I’m just whiling away time because I’ve to go over to my friend’s place in some time to study for tomorrow’s exam :/ Statistics. God, these exams will be the death of me. They’re making me corrode inside. I can feel it. 

Volcano

What do you call wrath of the highest order possible? Burning, scalding, fuming, boiling, erupting, fury? Volcanic teeth-gritting, violent, uncontrolled, heart-burning, explosive, mad, murderous, Kolaveri rage?

Resentment so intense that all the disgusting, ghastly, horrifying, terrible swear words of all the languages in the entire world combined cannot substantiate? Hatred, so deep, so dark, so sinister, so red with extreme loathing and repugnance and detestation that every bone and every RBC in your body screams murder. Anger that would put all the angry birds to shame. Anger that bubbles over and makes you shake and scream and cry and wish the world’s greatest miseries may befall the appalling creature. Anger backed by an abysmal, atrocious, mind numblingly excruciating history. A staggeringly painful past. Inhuman. Unspeakable. Inexcusable.

What do you call that feeling? More importantly, what do you do when you feel like this? I feel so angry like I will explode like a volcano. The only good thing about the entire situation is, I’m glad that for the first time ever, anger is all I feel towards him. Pure, unadulterated, burning, scalding, fuming, boiling, erupting, fury. And beyond.

Awakenings

It was a regular exam day. I, as usual, was running late and was hurriedly revising my formulae during the last ten minutes while frantically searching for my socks and looking for my hair band.  Mom barged in my room and asked whether I had breakfast. I blabbered irritably,”No mom! I don’t have time.” She was in my room ten seconds later with a plateful of gobhi ke parathe and a glass of milk. I whined, “Moooooooooom, I’m studying.” She just said “Am I asking you to do anything? Just chew!” In 5 minutes, she fed me the most appropriate mouthfuls of hot, yummy parathas with chutney and butter; breakfast was done and off I went to college.

I finished my exam early and as I let a guy sitting next to me copy my answer, I just thought about that wonderful, loving gesture. How selfless it was! And how I just took it for granted. How I just hurried out without so much as saying a thank you or giving her a hug. Breakfast is ready every day, clothes are washed and ironed, the scooty is refilled and cleaned. Everything is so easy, right? 

These are still bigger things. Recently a movie made me think about how we take everything in life for granted. The beautiful mornings, the birds, the flowers, the moon, the breeze. We’re all too busy to take notice of such things. I read in a book that if you’re sitting in front of a lake and you don’t notice the rippling water, the patterns of light in it, the soft touch of the grass you’re sitting on, the gentle bend of the branches of the trees, then boy, you’ve got problems.

The movie that I saw was Awakenings. First thing, it was based on a true story, and I knew before even watching it, that I was going to like it. It was a story about a nervous, self-conscious and a kind doctor, played by Robin Williams, who comes across a drug that could cure patients who have been in a coma for over decades. It showed how he actually made a man, Robert DeNiro, who was practically just a vegetable, come to life after thirty years and how he adjusted to his new world. It was heartening to watch the lifeless patients awaken and experience the simple joys of living again. Robin Williams has convincingly played the part of the doctor while Rober DeNiro was simply astounding. Plus, he has the warmest, most amazing smile anyone could have. 

We don’t ever think about these things. What if we didn’t have limbs? What if we had a debilitating disease? What if we were crippled for the rest of our lives? What if we can never walk or run or see again? It’s like how the boy’s mother says in the movie, “When I gave birth to a healthy baby, I never asked God why was I so lucky to be blessed with such a beautiful baby. But when I got to know he has a disease I screamed over and over asking why he had to do this to my son?” 

Instead of being thankful for what we have, we’re always upset because of something we don’t have. A broken relationship, a past incident, a big fight, misunderstanding with friends. If you think about it, problems are relative. Fine, we all have 'em. Pfff big deal. When I'm feeling low, I talk to someone depressed and it makes me feel so much better! The thought that everyone goes through shit. It's okay. Laugh it off! Have fun with them! Use swear words and cuss all you like! It’s your thinking that makes all the difference. (Oh and never, ever forget to listen to some great music)

But we still find it easier to crib about our problems. Basic human nature. I do it all the time. But I also make a point to count my blessings, feel grateful for what I have and just feel lucky. Life is too short, I’ve realized, to cry over what’s already happened. And we only get one life, and we should make the best of it. ONE life! Can you believe it? And after that, you’re just gone. Before we die, our life flashes in front of our eyes, we need to make sure we like what we see, right?

I read this somewhere, ‘If you start taking things too seriously, just remember that we all are talking monkeys flying on an organic spaceship through space” :)

P.S. I’ve been continuously and increasingly experiencing enormous and gigantic spurts for Chee. The ones that break through the ceiling and make the stars wet. I love being silly with him and listen to his stories of how his stomach wall gets eroded. I love his retarded high pitched laughter and how he calls me a bird. I love planning about having a plant called ‘Melancholia’ which will grow on our tears and we will cut onions and think of dead puppies in order to sustain it. I love how he sends me text messages which make me want to jump off my roof with mad joy.  I love how he scolds me and asks me to study.

Which reminds me, I have an exam tomorrow and I haven’t started studying and I haven’t slept all night. But I just had a delightful midnight snack of cheese sandwiches, potato wafers and coffee.  Boy. Life’s good! :D

P.P.S. I’ve been thinking whether obsessing over one person can be a good thing. Probably not. Oh well, too late.