Blogs
Sep 3 2009 - 5:28pm
Since form often constrains than liberates, I will ditch it for the time being and dispense encapsulated bits of substance to summarize the random clumps of thoughts simmering around me. It is indeed odd that after some 5500 kms of travel, I have wound up feeling the most amount of peace in a place where I have experienced little of it in all my life. It is easy to mistake consistency for routine, as both address degrees of deviations.
Balance: It is nice to feel like the air through which an exquisite music is being played. You are neither the artist, nor the listener. The music only passes through you, making you an incidental party to the whole transaction. You could argue that the music can't exist with you, since it can't be played or listened to without air. But that is irrelevant and we can always pretend to play music and hear it, if we do it in a mutually agreeable manner.
Children: I have always had a mixed bunch of feelings about them. Cannot quite make sure whether I like them enough or dislike them intensely. They are, though, much easier to deal with than grown ups, that is, until they start resembling us grown ups a lot more. They do have the gift of much simpler trust mechanisms and are more flexible on that front. No fears of the next big fall or the next big heartbreak. When they trust it is without the fear of the past. When they don't trust you, it is also without the fear of the past.
Rootedness: Never felt it. But I have always alternated between absolute paranoia of new places and a desperate urge to cling on to the freedom to be able to pack my bags and move out of anywhere on a whim. Ten-years of a career, fixed address for a passport, bank accounts - let go all of that just on a thoughtless thought. Just because it can be done. Now, though, there is no longer the urge to belong. I can pick between belonging anywhere - at home in the middle of a cold desert or here or anywhere else - or belonging nowhere. Between personal history, geography and nuances of the language either seriously means nothing.
Events: These are nothing but markers of the passage of time. They mark boundaries of a larger continuum, necessitated often by our need to mark, measure, compare, contrast, accept, deny, decline, embrace anything and everything out there. These are our hot air balloons in our attempt to give shape to the air that it holds. They are functional attempts, but their functionality is limited. When did you start loving? When did the pain subside? It must have been a great thrill when that happened. The continuum never demands measuring, only our nature does. It is hard to go against nature. But to experience nature best, you often have to go against nature.
The irony is even borderline galling. I'm sitting here, staring out of the window, which I've stared out of through my twenty-years here, and as it has often happened before I can see the rain drops fall and they fall. There is a liturgy being performed outside by nature - a mixture of the most lush of greens, pleasant bright sunshine, a lovely stiff breeze with a hint of the ocean and a passing shower. It is the same people, same place and yet I feel nothing like what I expected to feel. Makes you wonder what exactly is the importance of all that you've considered important till now.
On a plain, some fifteen-thousand feet above main sea level, I stepped out of my car, after days of hard driving. I honestly had no expectation of what I would find there. But what I did find was a familiarity - that we are seeing each other again. You could call it projection or you could call it looking inward, but you can't escape your inside by choosing distance as your medium. You'll always carry what you are looking to avoid within you. It could also be seen as a roundabout way of embracing what is inside by seeing it even so far away.
You can feel the stirrings. You could attribute it to something new and immediate. But no pebble is polished to its smoothness overnight. It takes time. It takes the magic of nature - for the winds to play its part, for water to run endlessly over and at times a human being to pick it up and throw it, out of turn, to where it is now. It is nothing special either. It happens to every pebble and every human. Just that very few humans choose to not be pebbles and accept and admit what happens - often even in all its tragic tidings.
Aug 29 2009 - 4:53pm
So, I wonder where am I at? Is this a dream? I can't seriously be here. And, by 'here', I don't mean leaving a trail of billowing dust on a plain that stretches from one corner of your vision to the other, in a place high up above. By 'here' I mean Delhi, the place that I've called home for about ten years now. I don't yearn to sleep in my bed that I otherwise yearn for every night. I don't seek familiarity in the surroundings that I have come back to. I could redo the last fourteen-days for a lifetime, minus the car, minus the cards, minus the cash. It is easy to imagine that it had a lot to do with the place. The place, while being magnificent, is just a part time player, a walk-on role, the seconds hand in a passage of time measured by the millennium.
For most, it is an exhilaration. To reach someplace where only few have gone before. Where, to reach, takes more than a bit of the ordinary, in reaching there by yourself. For me, there was no exhilaration. There was only a mutual acknowledgement, of the existence of something that is far deeper in its emptiness. Of an understanding of the agelessness of time when seen in the light of the improbable. Of the ruthlessness of hope within, when there is no premise to support it without. If, in two weeks, it is possible to find yourself by losing yourself again. I have managed to do that and now faced with the eternal echo of 'quo vadis?' ringing inside me again.
Aug 12 2009 - 6:55am
It is a weird feeling to plan a trip where the only person I have to take into consideration is myself. After living on my own for close to ten years now, that is certainly an odd realization to come to terms with and it sounds quite improbable, but is both weird and true at the same time. The again, these are interesting times that I am living in and catching up with myself has become such a rare occurrence that it required something like this to be done.
In all the craziness the past 8-months brought along with it, one thing I've attempted to do is to cut off effort levels at the macro and micro perspective at about 90%. This has gone a significant way in helping to prevent massive flame outs, as it has happened before, but there is still considerable room for improvement and I am still very much a novice in the fine art of being kind and considerate to the self, at least half as much as I am with others.
It is often quite tricky to understand whether the escape from 'me-first' is others finding their relevance in you or if it is your own attempt to find your relevance in others. Maybe it is a bit of both. Maybe either is not exactly true, but the fact is that there is avoidance of such times, unlike the days to follow, and it is probably with a good reason. Disappointment, tepidness? I do not know. It is probably the fear of opening that door and finding an empty space in there.
Maybe it is the fear of severance of that final sinew to things considered important through a lifetime that lies beyond that door. Maybe it is the embrace of greater freedom that negates any return to what is familiar that lies beyond the door. Fact is, there is something beyond it and I am not entirely sure what I should feel about it. Guess we will find out soon enough.
Practicality makes me wonder - what is the big fuss about it? It is a journey I have made more than twice before. I know the turns, I know the places. I know what to do and what not to. I am fairly responsible, even bordering on the overcautious. It is the stuff that dreams are made of for many, which most don't choose to realize. So, why the cold feet? Why are gremlins being visualized where there are none in real? What makes me fear so many days alone with myself, when there is little in life that I actually fear?
Maybe it is the massive disorientation caused by about two months of being caged largely inside four walls, enslaved by the mundane and the routine. I should be more careful next time. In curbing dissent and enthusiasm it is easy to crush the sense of the self to an extent that it finds it hard to get on its feet again. Everything in life has a price tag attached to it and sometimes, in instances like these, it is a bit too expensive.
Jun 11 2009 - 11:30am
One aspect of working on your own is that brings out, in all its vivid glory, every conflict inside you. Starting with my early years of working in the industry in 2000, I had started what most people refer to as 'living it up,' partying, drinking a lot and going out more often than not every week. This continued on for years, till about two years ago when it stopped, just like that. Over time, I have consciously, and sometimes subconsciously, been reducing clutter in both my life and my living space. My rooms have few things that are kept in the open and I tend to give away or throw out more things now than to keep accumulating more.
The past six months has given all that another twist. Since I am not doing a regular job anymore, it becomes a crucial requirement that I cut down on expenses that don't derive much value for me. As a result I eat out very rarely, don't party anymore and have given up on a lot of frivolous expenses and habits. What is interesting is that while these changes were largely made when times were hard and every penny had to be saved, now that things are starting to look brighter, I don't feel the need or desire them. I know for a fact that I can have them if I want to, but I just don't seem to want them enough.
It was not that I started out wanting to edge more and more closer to a Spartan existence through this process. In fact, it is the opposite. I have always liked my occasional indulgences, from good food to fine clothing, and it was not without a bit of effort that the cutbacks were made. So, where exactly is the conflict? Well, in this case, the conflict is not really internal. It is largely external.
When you have a hard time being a part of the things the world around you loves to do with regularity, it becomes a bit of an issue. Societal norms demand it that you should please, or at least aim to please by being participatory and appreciative. When you have not much left by means of any desire to do any of that, it does become a problem. People do wind up taking you for being rude, snobbish or arrogant because of that. I am not saying that what people say and think should matter, but it is a conflict that is not really needed.
On the flip side, I have come to really like the space that I occupy now. I am not sure if it has a lot to do with turning 30, but I love my books, a bit of music and the ability to travel and drive around in some really lovely places. As a trade-off, being misconstrued is something I can live with (be it grudgingly) for being able to do that.