Hopes and Fears

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is. Love & its duty, sorrow & its truth. In the end that's all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn.” 

It was nine years ago that I first went to boarding school. It was the first time that I was left amidst strangers, left to build some trust and comfort amidst the sudden queerness. During those first few days, I remember wondering what I had done to deserve the different sort of schooling and upbringing that I was being subjected to. I remember wondering why I couldn't have continued to be one of those kids who could just get home and watch TV and study whenever they feel like and sleep in their own rooms on their own beds. The reasons were clear, but somehow they didn't seem reason enough back then.

In that new place, it was the mutual search for these answers and comfort and trust that brought me close to people I had just met and begun to know. Probably, nothing binds people closer like empathy does.

Nine years hence, I have realized that the same doubt-and-empathy theory is put to application in every situation of our lives every day, connecting us to the people that we tend to call friends (more so, for the lack of a better word). Sometimes, I think it’s rather sadistic to presume that relationships work that way. Perhaps, they just begin that way and last for different reasons later on, while others end for the lack of one.

I don’t know where I am heading with this piece of writing. But on days like today, which are often, when I am by myself in my room with technology fulfilling my need for company, I begin to understand the importance of things. Of small conversations with people we don’t know too well; of letters that we don’t read often and again, but don’t throw away anyway; of those fights that happened ‘cause we cared too much; of those versions of ourselves that we have now outgrown enough to be embarrassed of; and of those little things that get us through the blues.

No matter what people say about being practical and not expecting in this tough world, I think I am glad I still continue to feel emotions that make me weep sometimes.

After all , "that's how we keep this crazy place together - with the heart..."

Into the Wild

“I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong... but to feel strong."

Photograph by Norman Parkinson, 1971

There is something about coming home. Every time that I am here, no matter after how long or for how long, this place lets me breathe, makes me feel many more emotions. My mom says it’s the lack of activity, but I think not running against the clock for once transforms me into something more alive and real.

Now that I have the time, I look back at the last two months that sprinted past in a blur. From being terribly delighted to breaking down in sorrow, from meeting the nicest of people to the realization that some were done playing their roles in my life: I would say I experienced a slice of Life in the last two months and how. However, as I write this, I feel tad bit proud, tad bit happy for having survived through all of it.

It’s optimistic how we start every chapter of our life believing that everything is possible. We believe that distances can be dealt with; we believe that some conversations can be made forever, and we believe that it’s all going to last. But as we begin to end one chapter and start another, we face reality; console ourselves, sigh and try to move on. Except, we rarely ever learn.

Hope. We human beings never cease to hope. But perhaps that’s what keeps us going.

Well, this is why we all need to get away once in a while. We ought to remind ourselves that people do live for hundred odd years and these blues at twenty are not so bad after all.

Amidst the cold rains, mountains and forests, I am going to try and do just that.

 "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

 There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

 There is society, where none intrudes,

 By the deep sea, and music in its roar;

 I love not man the less, but Nature more... "

- Lord Byron

SAY

Having lived twenty years of my life (almost half of it in vain), today I wonder what turning fifty would be like! I wonder if I’ll still hope for a silly birth day surprise. I wonder if I’ll still have friends who would stay up and wish me at midnight. I wonder if things like that would even hold importance anymore. I wonder if I would have put a huge check on my Things-to-do-before-i-turn-50-list. But more than everything I wonder if my family would still be around to call and check on me and ask me if I'm doing all right.

It’s my Mommy dearest’s 50^th birth day today and as I take my own time to let the fact sink in, I must have thought of her a million times. I have missed years of my life being miles away from her. Years of my life missing out on all the things we love doing together; the little things that she continues to remember and how she mentions them every time we meet ; how she prepares every meal, plans all of her days according to me when I am around. 

Nostalgia makes me wish I had things some other way.

It’s probably the exhausted me talking here, but I wish we told people how much they meant to us more often. It’s weird how we always consider the most important of stuff understood until the need arises to express and explicate.

As for me, I'll once again let words do the talking. 

Monkey Business

After changing half a dozen schools and moving across cities, the potent yet fragile nature of friendship is something that I have come to familiarize myself with. By now, I believe that it’s likely to spend a year with someone and be best friends with them for the next many years. It’s likely to stumble upon someone who gets you like your childhood friend never did. And it’s completely likely to care for someone irrespective of how crazy they might be.

Well, this post is about a friend that I know for two years now. Being a fellow proud north eastern, I was a little sure my heart would sway her way the very first time that she introduced herself. She was so tiny and yet so confident. Little did I know that she would turn out to be the monkey person who’d torture me to death with her lame-ness. I kid. She cracks the funniest of PJs and she cracks them darn well.

In the last two years, she has been the worst kind of influence on me. We have discovered infinite restaurants and coffee shops, shopped to being broke and drank to insanity together. I wonder how richer, thinner and saner I would have been if not for her.  Sigh.

Well, I wrote this not ‘cause she turns 20 in another four days; not because she had once told me how much she would love for someone to dedicate a blog post to her; not because she took me to the best momo and brownie place in town; not even because she is extremely adorable and has cared for me like no one does. I wrote this because if I said this to her face, she would just laugh and call me gay and I wanted to save the embarrassment for another day. 

So, this was about the mad little woman that I know, and even though she loves Akon and Justin Bieber, I could never do without her.

For our love of dogs.

Hope a little

Andy: You need it so you don't forget...Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.

-          The Shawshank Redemption

Times when I am blue and lost, it’s stumbling upon quotes like these that temporarily erase the creases from my forehead. The thought that somebody could have really said something so beautiful to someone makes me want to weep. Yes, movies are deceiving like that yet, we all love them.

Back from an unexpectedly lovely and pleasant weekend away from the city, I remained love drunk for an entire day before waking up to the realization that the good times were over. Yes, the bitter sweet feelings are back and they are making me speculate at the fragility of emotions that we experience time and again. I ask myself if it was time we stopped caring; if happiness can ever be shared. I wonder if anything is ever worth it.

And I wonder even though I know that if not for these sensitivities, I would cease to be me anymore.

Confused and all at sea, it’s now that I wish my life was a movie and there was a screenplay writer who knew exactly which character to introduce and what dialogue to insert and play next.

If so, I would have probably heard Andy saying, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”         

An affair to Remember

Brew me a cup for a winter's night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I'll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair.
~Minna Thomas Antrim

Yes, it’s that time of the year when most of us could spend all day snuggled under a warm blanket with a good book/movie; when soaking in the warm afternoons is a comfortable luxury; and when old fuzzy memories are a constant company. Being the winter lover that I am, the slightest tinge of chill on my skin in this not-hot-for-a-change city Mumbai (thank god for that!), sometimes gets me all elated. I might be tucked under the blanket with a sore throat and slight temperature right now, but I wouldn’t trade this wonderful weather for anything. People say winters make you lazy. I say, more than lazy, it makes you all affectionate and warm. Metaphorically, it turns people into living heaters. Yes, it does. Think it over.

Every morning as I spend fifty odd minutes in the vivacious train, wrapping myself against the bitter cold, I voyage into a slumber that makes me reverie of the times when my eight year old self sat glued beside the huge lit fire for warmth. Those were the days when winter was about sweet potatoes and roasted corn on the cob. The adventures of school, when we often headed thirty kilometers hill wards against the strong winds for a bowl of hot noodles and cup of coffee, give me the thrill even today.

And so, by the time the train halts and disturbs my musings, I know that there is now warmth blanketed to my cold morning.

the view outside my window.

You know Deborah Kerr was right when she said, “winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.”