The Twenty First Birth.

"Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone...."

Reality checks are painful for me. If they weren't, I would've checked how long ago it was that I stopped writing.My hazy memory places it to around two years back.I could probably tell you why. A faulty internet connection, leading on to loss of habit, unwillingness to make an effort and finally and painfully, a loss of motivation. Along the way I was even convinced I'd run out of topics to write on. And for sometime, I had. Then after a log period of guilt-laced hibernation, random observations would come to me, observations that would normally have a found coherent form at the end of the day in another blog-post. But now nothing. I'd forgotten to write, as far as such things can be forgotten.

I could tell you a million things about these two years. About how it feels to be sucked in a quagmire of frustrated ambitions, hopelessness and eventually, a shattering loss of self-worth.A loss that was not so much of self-worth, as the perception of it . I could also tell you about looking into the future, only to be able to see, more clearly than ever, a future of ruins even more desolate than the present I've been living in.

A couple of years, spent so ruthlessly driven by cruel circumstances that, harking back to the song I quoted at the beginning of this post,

' Now the face that I see in my mirror
More and more is a stranger to me
More and more I can see there's a danger
In becoming what I never thought I'd be '

You cannot be wholly responsible for what you are, and I've been tossed and turned ruthlessly till I can scarcely compare myself to the Child I once was. Brishti'r bhejar bhoy hoi na, by becoming evil you no longer suffer evil, and by becoming insensitive you no longer feel the sharp pains that once threatened to bleed you out. But even then, there cannot be a loss of the awareness of the past, and the loss felt, though camouflaged, is deep.

But then, somewhere in the course of writing my now almost forgotten blog I learnt, from an infinitely more talented person, that whining never helps, and true to my thirst of bettering myself, I kept it to a minimum there as I hope to do here.

You see I'm merely building up to the renewal of my writing phase, a prologue of sorts trying to fill in a gaping hole in what I initially meant to be my chronicle more than anything else. I feel compelled to start anew, afresh, continuing my chronicle in another  private domain, my readers( if any ;) ) chosen by me. And hence, The Twenty First Birth.

I send up a prayer, hoping that this is more lasting effort than the last, a chronicle that continues, as I reach the end of the first of the innumerable efforts I must make, building a sense of worth.

(Lyrics courtsey John Denver.)

The World's Tragedy.

Hush!

I go about in search of love: and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things: foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to cats and dogs and pet birds because they come and ask for it.

It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. All the love in the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy! shy! shy!


Candida: George Bernard Shaw.

The 101st. :)

So, this year round, I missed the birthday of my own blog. And realised it 3 months later.

Well, at least it doesn't complain.Also, I hit a century of posts, but this I realised only when I read a co-blogger's 100th post.

Now that we are done with the trivial chronicles, let's move on to things of greater significance. In August, some two years ago, I decided to start a blog- the name of which propped up almost instantaneously in my mind- Chronicling Lyfe. Because that was what I had meant it to be- essentially a chronicle, capturing slices of experiences and thought that would otherwise have just been lost- perhaps it will be lost anyways, as no expression can ever communicate emotion, but I was determined to make an attempt.
Then I dreamt up the 'Y' in the word 'Life'. Majorly to communicate that it was a personal chronicle.And I was fine with it. But the thing about being in a state of.........developing maturity shall we say? is that every perception is always in a state of flux. And the 'Y' in my 'life' has, for quite some time now begun irking me.
I look at it and it disturbs me. Perhaps its the anglophile in me. Perhaps it just has something to do with my obsession for order. If you don't like something about anything- change it. An infinitely better option than cribbing. So, I'm changing the spelling.

Yes, I am conforming.




11:23 pm

The Ugly Truth.

We are all civilized people. Which essentially means that we are all savages except for the few trappings of refinements that recorded existence has thrust upon us- Clothes would be an example. Bathrooms another.Hypocrisies both of them.

The truth is, dear Readers( yes, I still dare to use the s), that Hypocrisy, for lack of a better word, is good.

Without it we'd be too ugly.

Hypocrisy makes a mother utter in sheer, genuine, disbelief- "my son couldn't have done that" where two and a half decades of upbringing would have surely told her something else. Or , at the most innocent level, it is hypocrisy that makes you  tell that girl she is so definitely not looking fat. ( See the word looking?) We are not as ignorant as we would want ourselves to believe. But the next time, dig deep- if you have the guts enough to be found out.Or tell me that you can look into the eyes of a terminally ill patient and not reassure them that it would all be okay. Hell, even the harsher judgment on yourself than you would have passed on others was hypocrisy. But even more than the individual, hypocrisy is what the society needs- it was one thing to have broken rules in school and quite another to have flaunted it shamelessly- the latter is what revolutions- good and bad, are born of. The thing about truth is that it may hurt too good at times, but you wouldn't want a world of it. Few of us are worth a damn to anyone. Imagine a world where you knew that. Or, imagine a world where satyameva jayate was a lie.


And speaking of truth, there is another thing about it- Truth is arrogant. It is a proclamation of how what we think is more important than what others feel, which, at the end of the day is really not worth it.




I am a hypocrite. And this post is an excersise in my hypocrisy. It's just that as a breather, I seem to keep seeking beauty.

Because I think that I deserve some of it. We all do.

13.11.2010 ( Sat) 11:45pm

The Pidhi.

At another routine day back after the Pujas in the library today, I was staring off into nothingness, looking back at my research of over two years now, mentally restructuring and simultaneously trying to come up with a world-stopping theory, when I realised that for quite some time now I had been looking out of the window at the astrologer sitting on the pavement, complete with his parrot.

Now I had never quite shared the disdain that quite a few of my peers have for him- overt or covert.Rather, I quite like him. His bread is as much an honest living as any one else's. And it is a hard living. Imagine trying to make perfect strangers believe in obscure, inscrutable forces and unfelt energies in the fragmented, disillusioned and marketed world we live in today.

And as I looked at him again, I realised that but for his very, very benign looks,he could have been a terrifying figure.Would I really want to have his well-trained parrot choose a card for me and me come to know of an insipid or perhaps even painful future? Have the knowledge of the yet-to-come shadow my small beautiful moments? Even if the knowledge comes with the assurance of remedy, really, who in their right minds would want it? Because what really, really worries me is the question of whether we have the power to shape our own futures. Of course, over time I have come to understand that unless we look at it theologically, our answers to this would be directly dependent on the measure of success achieved.

But, again as I saw a man sit down on the pidhi  beside the parrot, I reflected that there is, after all a very fine line between foolishness and bravery, and till I manage to find the courage  to  make my way towards the now occupied pidhi, I remain sitting on a fence.

(Posted at 11:28 pm)

No Poetry Is Poetry Enough.

What I concieve is poetry, what I write is a poem and between them falls a shadow so dark that it seems enough to plunge one into cynicism; A shadow so large that you seem to never reach its edges.

Forever Young.

Today I subjected myself to a reality check. My last post had been on May 9.I have been putting off writing posts for so long I had now begun gliding over all thoughts of blogs - mine or otherwise. Not an unusual phenomenon when something piles up. But back breaking work now finally at a respite I must dive back into the multi-dimensional life that is more usual.

And I was in for a surprise- seems like it wasn't only me who had been putting off stuff. Most of the regular blogs I read( which aren't very many by the way) have litteler than usual posts. And always because of extra workload. And though it feels nice to be included, that is not the point of  my post.

The point of my post is the one advantage of Windows over DOS that was revolutionary : Multitasking.
Many a summer ago I moved from laziness to work. Then came the transition from mere work to hard-work. Then from hard-work to the point where no more work was possible. At this point dawned the realisation that efficiency must be stepped up. Now comes multi tasking.

So in a sense, there are really no reasons for the gaping holes in my blog calendar. Only excuses which seem to sound more and more like cribbing each time you go over it.

Inspiration does not die : Ever. It only gets clouded over by fogs of our own making. And till the time you have the strength to keep clearing those fogs, till then, you remain young and un-disillusioned.


P.S: Out of practice, I took the liberty of coining a couple of words- I am no poet, so forgive me. :)