Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Ashes

"Im leaving on a jet plane ... dont knw when il be back again..Oh
babe..I hate to go......"

May be my umpteenth listen to this song...still i feel the same as i
had felt the first time ever when i heard this song.....A fathomless
feeling...far and unkempt..no matter how much u try..u just cant get
over this feeling...the feeling of missing!
and i leave it to that...coz the substance of missing is too hard to
categorize...

I have heard my late grandma saying she missed the old
banyan tree of her first home, my uncle missing his old broadset
radio, my friend missing her boyfriend....and many more to miss.I too miss to share these songs with someone...miss to share my closet
anymore with my kid friend...miss to play hide and seek with my
brothers....miss so much with so many people...I miss all thats not
mine and all that wont be mine!

I might sound selfish..but deep down inside u will realise that even you
are a part of this bluff game..when u listen to an old song...when u write something for the first
time..when u see something that uv never seen before...or just when u
sit silent...u miss all those with whome you want to share all these
moments..even in a crowded room, u just might feel 'god, why isnt she
here'...
I feel..I miss and then I cry....and today if Iv accepted the void in me...i realise that unlike every
secong 'girl' i dont miss a 'boyfriend'..rather i miss a companion just
'my kind'....I dont miss branded stuff, cd's and coffee shops....I
miss my school library....On speeding cars .. i dont miss to pull
brakes, but what i do miss is to drive ahead with a friend, on a long
road, with John Denver playing...just as it was 2 years back!
and by all these im no philosopher or an old school girl...I am what exactly you are...cause a patient thought will make u believe that all that uv been thinkin that ur missing are not the ones actually you do...
if its words that u think u miss...then trust me its the spaces between them that ur actually missing!

Incomprehensible? .. yes i can be...cause even i took 2 complete years to find what do i exactly miss! or rather what do people call void? and what id found is that.. what id never imagined!
If it was my old life that i missed...i was wrong....its just that the absence of those people in my present life is what i missed!



I woke up today morning and after 8 years i heard mom in the kitchen...as past 8 years she walked to her work before i used to wake..and if someday she used to be on leave it used to be my turn to walk before...You might not feel what i felt...as you might have never known to wake up alone...munch a peice of something cold and insignificant....wash, pack
and run all that when u were 14 and officially living in a home full of people...

Letme tell u...no matter how much u reason and how much u get into the understanding mode..u feel 'damn..why isnt there anybody to feed me
somethin better'....but then u walk off..as u know "if ur mom's working
she is working for u" and if not that then theres nothin better you can cook for urself.

As i said its too large to categorize....but each day..while u drive...u work...listen...eat...walk..or sleep u do feel a void...for something or somebody thats relative....but at the end uv got nothing
better to do than just ignore and work on...as iv been doing till date....and if by chance u dont feel the space...just halt and thank God for ur amongst the few..who are blessed to be complete..
for the rest of us...the world is still incomplete!

Find your 'missing link' before it vanishes into the ashes of time!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Wanderer!

And I close my eyes….walking back to the boulevard of broken mirrors. “And yet again” some one says. “Few lines on life?” and I say “no, this time I’m writing not about life but things which are beyond one’s life”
On Sundays my dad prefers not to drive, and since we don’t have a driver it’s usually me who drives him to his destination, to the trust of which he is a member. I finish of my work till he gets over with his. Someday we drive back home over a coffee at local cafés, on other’s if nothing, some jalebi’s are for sure in my kitty. Usually I wait if he happens to take long with his, but this time I preferred a drive towards the old township where I spent my first few years, towards the reminiscence of my childhood.

My father is a government employee, and we spent our early days at the township where he was allotted one of many quarters. A simple two bedroom built up and a shabby porch ‘where our old jalopy used to stay’ was all that we managed with. Neither desired nor required any bit of extra space beyond what we had. Since television wasn’t that big when I was four and with all the more internet being in its nascent stage, most of the colony kids used to spent their post school hours hanging on to the cricket grounds and to each others backyards collecting peaches and mango’s. Sunday Maggie parties, picnics on two wheelers ‘with a bunch of wooden sticks somehow being managed to be tied around the stepney’, cake making and hogging sessions, cycle races around the fence were few of our monthly rituals. One’s birthday party was worth a year awaited! We didn’t have much and we neither craved for, because we all had equal shares. Maybe that’s what we did. We lived equal lives. Nobody bothered to purchase anything that they did not see at their neighbor’s place. More so, nobody had anything worth a showpiece! And there was my first lesson ...”To be happy, money is the least you’ll ever need”

As I drive onto the other side, I see a shattered window, grills already being stolen, a yellowed piece of land that once stood to be a small garden and a half tethered porch, all at a place that used to be my home. “19/A” was all that I could see being repainted in black; rest all seemed to be brutally shaken. I drove a bit farther to my friends place and I see the huge mango tree where we, along with our brothers and sisters used to collect half groomed mango’s... now, it gives nothing but a spooky feeling. Though I won’t say collecting mangos was the thing that taught us to be friends but it taught us something beyond friendship a feeling called togetherness. We used to burn our backs in the scorching heat of April summer, bending on to the grounds in search of the unripe ones and a day’s collection went to the owner’s dining table. Cleaned, washed and eaten later on. No one stole, no one fought. As all knew there’s nothing in them that will differentiate there share. They were equals beyond sex, height, shape and size; they all were children and a true companion to one another, and nothing beyond that. I learnt my second lesson “We don’t need friends, we need true companionship…we bond not to friendship, but we bond to togetherness and to the sense of security”

Today when I see my sister lamenting for her childhood friend, who unknowingly went missing into this big bad world and who also happened to be my childhood big brother, I don’t see friendship and emotions; I just see the innocent longing for togetherness, where one does not think twice to speak her heart out. A desire for that another world where rule one ‘still’ stands to be no pretension, where we belonged together as a team and where we all knew that our team has a broader definition, far from religious bondages it stood for those who desired to be together through thick and thin.
I drove alongside to our play ground, one more of my pal’s place whose main door was stolen and through which I could see the remains of her then living room, to my kinder garten bus stop and simply to the old roads...as I drive in to these half asleep yesteryears, I see each shattered room glowing bright into a different life that I was a part of. “All wanderers aren’t lost”, I fondly remember Tolkein as I take to be one myself. All these bricks stood past 14 years when I was there. No matter how bad they look, these broken windows teach me my last lesson “blood isn’t a necessary requirement for bonding, a past, barren grounds, broken wall’s and a little bit of faith is enough to let one feel the living bond all over again”

On holi day’s iv seen my uncles watering others from roof tops and hogging on to sweets, “durga pujo’s” were something which is inexplicable through words…from howling on to football and cricket world cups at 2 in the night to crying over lost children till the morning light. I’ve seen it all and now after all that I’ve grown to be, I can feel them more. When I drive back leaving my born connections, I take leave from things which I’ll remember all through the coming years… things which will mean beyond my whole life.

I never wished to be there where I was when I was a day old, my old life was a gift from God. Today as I wish a million things ‘almost all being fulfilled’… now that I have more than 2 of everything…. Now, that I no more need to collect mangos. I realize that I had the best gift when I was born and at the end of all’s, I’ll cherish this gift as the gift of my life!

Care is non quantifiable. And if you can, then it’s the least you have ever received.
Its what I learned from everybody, I say everybody as I wasn’t bought up just by my parents, I’m a part of many living souls…some, who no longer come to me with vanilla candies and some who still quiz me fondly with tricky math questions. It wasn’t a lesson, for me, it was an elixir to living….sometimes as deep and intense as an abyss… most of the times an unknown comfort. Even for the dead, I feel remembrance is care. And for the living…It’s what you feel right now!

P.s. some of it is factual. Most of it real….with love and respect for all of them who were a part of it!