Thursday 31 December 2009

Goodbye Two Thousand and Nine

Here's to another year gone by. This year was swift and passed me by. Some parts of it were memorable- My last day of school, aging into an adult, my first day of college. Others are some I want to forget and as time carries on I'm quite certain I will.

Another year gone by implies parts of me gone by too. Wherein I changed, and maybe even attempted to grow up a little. School ended and I turned eighteen. Parts of me accepted the responsibility of being my own person. I accepted that even though a big part of me just wanted to remain a kid, I needed to grow up. Time calls for it and I guess you don't have a choice. But the thing is that even though it asks for maturity, I'm still that girl that in an empty house plays music and dances around, or stares at the sky hoping for rain, or keeps watching the flames of a fire and observes form.

I graduated. That day was one of mixed emotions. While it was sad of all of us going our own ways, it was also the end of false pretenses. Boards went by, and 4 months of freedom went by. The time that would never return. And for months after that we would sit around reminiscing about our school days like we graduated forever ago.

Today I received a phone call from a junior friend of mine and she was telling me about her plans and countdown for graduation, and it hit me that it's been a year almost. The running around for entrance tests, worrying how one was going to manage the design school criteria whilst being able to pass ones boards at a parental presentable aggregate and one acceptable to oneself.

January comes in. Cold winds blow and fog fills the Delhi skies. And the only thing I can dread come Monday morning is not the prospect of college work starting, but it's getting out of the bed every morning at 7 am and giving up that warm, warm bed.

Thinking of everything that 2009 was, I wonder how things will grow in 2010. I hate the way it sounds. And more than anything I hate saying it. But hopefully it won't irk me as much as these months run on by. I want to grow up a little more, understand some things that I couldn't. I've already had some realizations in these 9 days. I'm changing and I can feel it more than ever right now.

So here's a goodbye to an epic year. A year of experiences- ends and beginnings, a year of leave, a year of discovering a little more, a year of making 'adult' decisions, a year of deciding life futures, a year that seemed to linger on forever and yet flew by so fast I can't even remember that it happened sometimes.

And here's to 2010, a year to have more experiences that can mold and shape, a year that should bring everyone joy and happiness. A year to have enough events that when one sits down to reminisce on 31st December, 2010, so many things that give you a rush of excitement or so many thoughts that fight it out to be the prominant one in your mind.

And here's to life, may it carry on in full swing, unknowingly...
Goodbye 2009. Happy 2010.

Monday 9 November 2009

Run

Another day passed me by,
And time failed on me.
The moments I was unable to grasp,
Those that define and let me be.

Several seconds that ticked away,
And all I care was what was ahead.
I forgot the lost time,
All the words unread.

I lost myself in the anticipation,
Of tomorrows that haven't emerged.
I walked on by,
As the call of the next urged.

I'm stuck in fast forward,
Too pained to hit pause.
I'm running from the unseen,
Of myself and the flaws.

I'm unable to find the words,
To stop along the way and ask.
I look ahead and its uncertainty scares me,
Like life's become some disagreeable task.

Hold me and don't let me run away,
Those arms I seek.
One's that prevent this craziness,
In whose grasp I don't shriek.

I search for solace,
I beg for peace of mind.
And by some miracle I ask,
Just to slow down and rewind.

Sunday 16 August 2009

Today

Have you ever experienced that feeling of wanting to be a driving force, a cause for change but yet feeling crippled by your own emotions and contemplation of life and being. You try to be something that in your heart of hearts is your desire but at the same time you worry. You worry what the world might say and what might happen if you fail. You worry what happens next and you worry what happens after that. You don’t even bother to live in the present tense and jump to what’ll happen IF.

Our influences in life are derived from various sources. They cause motivation and a thought process. Sometimes that influence becomes so strong it loses its position and turns into an imitation. A movie might stimulate a thought or a feeling to change, or to modify but at the same time it may be a cause for worldly modification to be a cheap mock of a great set. Does that imply that our influences should not be considered by the mind and heart? Or does it imply that the purpose of life is to be just a mere photocopy of some ‘item’ that thirty others are trying to be?

It matters at what point you draw the line. It matters what your definition of the line is. Our thought process and what we get from those thoughts is a very important part of who we are. What our thoughts consider to be frivolous and what important and what our mind considers to be a frivolous thought or an important one.

Our lives are each so drastically different. I’m not going into the whole ‘Oh each individual is unique and beautifully different in their own way’ cliché. I’m facing the hard realities of the world for just a moment. The harsh ones that I hide from every so often out of fear and the ones that just seem to pass me by. We are all different- our upbringing, the privileges we have or don’t, where we live, what we’re exposed to- all that. Each tiny detail of out lives, every millisecond, it matters. It shapes us to be the people we become. It gives us a sense of the person we want to be. And most importantly it helps us decide if being the person we WANT to be is worth all the trouble it takes to defy norms.

Are we all pretentious? Or do we somehow just mold into these people. Bitching, fighting, a sensation of impending doom lingering over our heads versus the happiness, joy and bubbly feeling of dancing cause the sun is out suddenly or laughing in the rain. Where do we lie? What is our purpose? And why can’t we just stop and think for five minutes without being called a ‘pensive’ or ‘philosophical’ type.

And as we wake every morning to a world full of stereotypes and opinions, we not only struggle to wonder if the ones in our minds, ones that we create for ourselves are right, but at the same time hope that the ones we form in other peoples minds satisfy our perceptions of ourselves.
For just a minute if we stop speculation about the what can be and the what will happen and just look at what is, we can be forced to realize so many truths. Sometimes we need just the basic facts to live, but there are those days when you want to know what happened to you, because when you woke up that morning, something was off.

I don’t want to live my life as a ‘Made in China’ fake. Nor do I want to be the imitation of anyone- good quality or bad. I am my own person and I choose that to be my way of life. I just hope I have the strength to live through it. I’m not concerned with the promises I’ve made to people, the only guilt I feel is with promises I made to myself. I am my own fate and I need to embrace that.

I am scared. Scared of what will happen to me if I fail or if I don’t have the courage to last out my dreams. I’m not brave, I know. I run from reality, I hide from the truth. I want change and yet it really just throws me off balance. Today I try. I try with all my energy and with all my faith in me. I try to do what I want and live without wondering what happens next. I am me today, to hell with tomorrow.

I know I can’t do it alone. But I want to do it independently. I need the hands to hold me up, but I need the hands to let go when the time to jump comes. I need the voices to scream to push but I need them to stop when it comes. I need the world to fight me cause without it it’s just too easy and I want to learn from the difficulties. I want to be.

What do you want?!

Saturday 1 August 2009

Rewind and Freeze

E.E Cummings once wrote, 'To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means fighting the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting....'

As that quote echoes in my head suddenly with this adaptation I'm being forced to make, I'm trying to hold onto my content. This change that I'm forced to make with the entering of new elements, new people and a new atmosphere. The change that is making me let go of a part of me that I have known for so long, the departure of people and the loss of the security a building once held with its face of familiarity. Those halls that we cribbed about for what seemed like the longest time about, all those dreams we had about breaking free of them, all seem to be in another lifetime.

I've been looking for the inspiration to write for a while now. There was this unsettling feeling inside that was just dying to find the right words to convey something. With so much going on in my head and my heart, and of course the never ending battle between the two its hard to listen to the echo of your soul. I don't know how I suddenly find myself being able to say things. Maybe its the being an adult, maybe its the fact that I know that there are people out there who I love who care, maybe its the pre-college nervousness jitters, maybe its the feeling of wishing to go to school again or maybe its just one of those days.

I'm overcome with a sensation of something I've never felt before. I think a part of me is just laughing at some stupidity from the week before but I know the bigger part of me is happier to be that stupid and then laugh over it. I know that I'm not going to stumble so much in life, at least I'll try not to. I can feel myself growing up a little, trying to accept the next stage of life but at the same time I'm not ready to let go of the past yet.

I understand that life has its stages and there are all these lessons that are to be learnt through each of these transactions. But I'm stuck in this fight of letting life explain and defying everything in the worldly ways. I do want to hear and see what life has for me ahead of this path, but I don't want to see it in this manner. I want to be comfortable in my skin. I want the smell of the air to be familiar and the way I feel when I walk into grey buildings to be the same as it was till five months ago.

I accept that with time comes change. I accept that people walk in and out of your life. I accept that you have to give life an opportunity to work out. I even accept that being the pessimist that I am now won't get me anywhere. But I ask for simply one thing. Just to be comfortable in my heart. My mind is constantly telling me to be brace, suit up for what's ahead and I listen. My heart hears this and agrees. It tells me that I can't shut everything in my present surroundings and I must learn. But my hands tremble in the fear, the fear I haven't felt for years now. That new-ness, its far too new and far too fast.

I guess the bigger part of me is just reminiscent. Stuck in rewind while the remote tries to hit fast forward. I don't like the unfamiliarity, the sense of being lost, in more ways than one. I don't like scrolling though my phone book realizing that two of the people I want to dial aren't here. I don't like the feeling of knowing that I can't talk to my person at my will and fancy. I don't like the sensation of knowing one more will join that list in 20 days. I don't want to have to think about these things. But I'm forced to. I'm holding on. And it's probably cause I miss half my family.

Through all the battles I've faced within myself this is one I'm being forced to fight alone.

I guess in a long complicated way I'm just saying I miss you guys. I miss everything. I miss us.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Growing Up

So its a Wednesday evening and I'm happily perched on the sofa, watching 'She's All That' for what I can only imagine is the tenth time. Finally a fun chick-flick re-run. The story of an American high school, social cliques et all. But I'm not intrigued by the movie, I'm lost in the depths of my mind.

It rained today. Like poured after a long time. I've found that I have this connect with the rain. It changes my mind and head and all that lies within the realms of these two. It inspires me to be something more, to want to achieve greater things. That fabulous smell of rain that tingles your senses in a completely different fashion. With a smell that I'm still finding a match for. Maybe Kenzo will make a perfume that smells like it, like he did with 'Holi'.

So here my head is at this different plane. I want to write, and suddenly the urge is overwhelming. I've been wanting to write for a while now, but I've been out seeking inspiration. well not technically 'out', but mentally finding something that tingles the senses, that asks for more. For my head has been dull and dying off for a while. And I need to find the urge to 'do'.

Maybe it was being showered with cement on the way home from the mall by Metro construction workers or just smelling that smell again. Maybe it was the running around to 4 different malls just to find a phone for my cousin brother or just actually physically getting out of the house for a change.

The last few days have had some discovering in them. I've learnt things I shouldn't have and things that were right in front of me but that my senses were oblivious to. Learning something and feeling something. I think I feel the tension of growing up. And I'm learning about the difference between 'growing up' and 'growing old', that difference that my mother constantly reminds me about.

A sensation of independence, a sense of being out there in the real world, and yet I feel protected from some form of insanity and evil that lingers beyond the threshold of my adolescence. I always wanted to grow up, faster. Go out more, defy my parents, be a rebellious teenage girl. How wrong I was about what I wanted.

Now that I'm at thins point where I need to grow up a bit more, I don't want it. I want to be that small girl with a fountain ponytail propped on my head, fat pink cheeks and wrapped up in a blanket in my mother's arms, smiling for the photograph my father is clicking. And now I can't ask to live that again.

We constantly are never satisfied with what we have, where we are in life and all that. I remember this anecdote in the book 'Three Men In A Boat' by Jerome. K Jerome. The author sees this phenomenon. It's true. People are never satisfied. Is the richest man happy? Is the most beautiful person happy?

There come a time, as I have learnt, the time when you accept what you have and you thrive for what you want. You make the best of it. You 'grow up' to be the person that you want to be. You 'grow up' to know that there's more to life than satisfaction. You 'grow up' to be happy. And then you are at this place where nothing needs to get better than the way it is.

Be happy. And shine. Because you know you can. And you know that happiness actually just lies deep deep down in a person, it about finding it and tapping into it. Nothing more.....

Tuesday 2 June 2009

The Slow Road To Insanity

So the last two months have been probably the most useless and unproductive months of my life. Why you may ask? Well I finished my Board exams (the Indian Board's version of finals) at the end of March and since then I have been absolutely free. Getting up at 10:30 am every morning as opposed to 7:15 am during school days and the likes of the 2 am/3 am alarms during the studying for finals phase. Sleeping at 1 am after watching the idiot box or something equally unqualified as opposed to studying. Now all this freedom seems fun then why am I complaining?!

Everybody, adults actually, tell you these are the few months of your life, those before college commences, where you have nothing to do. I am constantly reminded how I'll never get this time back or ever be this free in my life again. Told over and over again about the work load of college, especially design college and then jobs, and responsibilities, et all. And they thought I was in a hurry to grow up!

So these two beautiful months of April and May, in the gorgeously hideous summer heat of New Delhi have been really just a marvel. Over the last few months I have gathered some perspective, gained some self-insight and grown up a little more. Those being the positives. Otherwise these sixty two days have been pure hell. I'll acknowledge the initial thrill and plans that were made, meeting friends and all that but now I feel like I'm on this fabulous ride at an amusement park that suddenly reached the top and stopped and now its basically creeping down slowly. I'm convinced a snail would out run it by a mile or two.

I am slowly losing my capability to talk. I just don't feel the need, I don't even know what to say any more! The sheer frustration of having NOTHING to do could drive one insane- as it is slowly doing to me. I feel that I am losing brain function. I'm not joking, my mom could vouch for that one. Especially given what happened last Sunday, when I randomly started screaming and shouting. I think mentally she was both worried about my mental well-being as well as the fact that if I continued the high pitched yelping, the neighbours would wonder what in the world was going on.

Another sign of my brain going..for lack of better word, wonky is the fact that for the last two nights I have been dreaming in French. Well that could be normal, provided I knew any French beyond the simple 'oui's and the 'bonjours'. I'd like to think its my subconscious mind. That part that remembers all the French from my days as a three year old in Phenom Phen, Cambodia attending L'École Française and yapping away in pure French not by choice but by the simple fact that I didn't know any other language. Some of my friends thought that this 'phenomenon' was quite appealing while I simply thought that I was slowly losing my mind.

The fact is that I am bored beyond any one's wildest dreams. I sit all day either being consumed by the television or in front of the computer, watching trashy chick-flicks or hoping that by some miracle I'll get a notification on Facebook. Sometimes I even stare at my MSN Messenger list wishing that people would come online, especially when talking to the weird robotic things has become duller that usual. On a daily basis, I put up with someone's incessant arguing just because honestly I have nothing better to do. Making plans to go to the zoo, which by the way you guys has nothing I'm told. These plans get made and changed and modified and finally 9 out of 10 times, cancelled.

Now all that has been said, being purely factual has resulted in giving me something to do. Which is probably why this damn post is so long. And frankly, I could go on blabbing away, it's quite a gift with me I'm told. however I shall stop my ranting here so that you can go enjoy your existence because frankly, I'd like to believe that you have better things to do. So now I am going to go indulge into one of my many fascinating recreational activities and lose a few more brain cells. Or maybe they just become comatose or sleep because they have nothing to do.

This is me, signing off. Go enjoy your life, while I try to get one for myself!

Saturday 30 May 2009

Do You Think You Can Find It?

The sun shines brightly on the rim on the glass laying in front of her. A sudden flash and her attention is drawn into the image that is reflected. A projection of the same physical being that the matter in her body dictates her to be and yet so completely opposite. Her clothes are the same, but not worn in the same fashion. The style she shows off is something completely different than that of our 'heroine'. Any movement she makes is replicated by her duplicate.
As she moves further to the mirror she starts noticing the differences. The image's eyes seem sharper with a sense of illumination. They look as though they have a power- something like seeing through the darkness. The rims around the reflection's mouth seem more worn out. Strong smile lines. Her face carries a confidence and a fire that by the look cannot be defied. She is drawn to the image that lies ahead of her. She wants this to be her reflection, and although it is, it feels alien. She wants to be the person staring at her from the other side. That person resides inside her, and today she sees it struggling to come out and find it's place in the world...

You know every morning we look into mirrors. While brushing our teeth, combing our hair, checking our make-up, straightening out our clothes, and more. But we fail to truly notice the person that lies in this magnificent spectrum. We look but never see, we fail to see what is being shown to us. This is us, but a different version. The version we know we are but somehow cannot be. A larger part of our personality remains lost, sometimes suppressed by thoughts of what society will think, the ''fitting in'' phenomenon or something so stupid as copying the behaviour of another. And then there is that rare breed of humans that genuinely doesn't suffer at all.

I wake up every morning and notice myself in the mirror while I brush my teeth. Today was seemingly different. I discovered a bit more about myself. And now I feel differently. I feel... so different and yet so completely the same. And today, after a long long time, I smiled to myself for no apparent reason.

Life, I wait. I wait and I take everything you have to offer. The good and the bad, the happy and the sad. I am a better person for what you do to me. And I accept the fate you give me from here on out. I never believed in making my own fate, I never felt I was incapable of accepting what came my way. I am who I am for a reason.

And she looked into the mirror, feeling a transference. And smiled....

Monday 25 May 2009

Writer's Block

You know that feeling when you want to write so badly, because it's such an important part of you, but you can't. There are too many thoughts in your mind, and yet your head feels so empty. At that moment we suffer from this delusional disease the world has started calling 'Writer's Block'.

What is this infamous problem that at some point in any creative's life has dominated the mind. Another stereotypical disease that must be the cause for the inability to get a hold on brain function. I somehow think that we don't suffer from a block at all.

In my mind, there are a thousand thoughts racing around hoping that they will be the primary for even a millionth of a millisecond. I am not a genius, constantly planning and craving knowledge of the functionality of things. Neither am I a blind person, completely closed to the world that exists around me. So when I can see and think enough to satisfy the thirst of writing in my being, how can I at any point be suffering from a 'block'?

I'll admit the fascination of creating a blog has in my head triggered of the need to write. The only thing is that despite the fact that to someone reading this, it might seem like a whole bunch of utter rubbish, it is basically my head spilling its mind out. Truth be told, I've already written three half baked posts and deleted them. And each time my train of thoughts gets disrupted, by phone calls from friends who can't come up with display names for YouTube accounts, by my grandmother who lives downstairs and by simply another thought in my head.

So my inability to keep up with my own thoughts and pen them down before they vanish, leading to the blank page without words is what I am faced with. Am I suffering? Writer's block? Or too many thoughts? We can't keep track with our own thoughts and the world claims their blocked.

I'm restless, I'm on a high, I'm lost. And by feeling all these things, I'm simply letting the words flow out of my head through my fingers as they clit-clat the keyboard. I am a writer, but I never suffer from a block, I simply suffer from the inability to grasp my own mind. Does that make me a fool? Or am I now defying another worldy thing that an average teen is supposed to? Or did I just make no sense? That is an opinion I'll leave to you. But in my world, from now on forth, block cease to exist!