Kochah

While browsing through various social causes on a community site, I came across one called “Kochah”. Kochah is one of the many projects by Farhad Darya; a US based singer and composer, born and brought up in Afghanistan. The project has been launched with an intention to draw the society as well as the governments’ attention, towards orphans and working street children of Afghanistan; who have always suffered. The objective is to reshape the destiny of vulnerable children of Afghanistan, especially the street and under age working ones; who have been a constant victim of more than two decades of war, social and cultural strife in Afghanistan.

The most noticeable thing about this cause is the picture used by its creator, which is of a young Afghani Muslim boy. The boy seems to be crying with his right hand pointing at someone, mouth open as if he is bawling, eyes red with tears and his soul deeply wounded; surrounded by a horde of people standing helplessly behind him. What deeply touched me about this picture is the child’s eye.

Eyes, I have always felt, narrate a story of their own. They have this unique ability to speak about what one is feeling. The intensity might be visible initially and ephemerally; the overall story still being obstinately exhibited. We might be melancholy, jubilant, irate, gloomy or even ecstatic at times; all being evident by close observation of ones eyes.

I could indeed sense a lot of sorrow and also despair in those eyes; which for that particular moment made me think what we have become. How ferociously brutal have we become, with the advancement of technology; which ideally should have been used for the protection as well as development of mankind; is worth pondering over. We need to reevaluate ourselves and actually empathise with these children; it’s perhaps then that we might understand the consequences of our wrong-doings. They not only loose their family or their house but also their youth, because of a war; and adolescence, I believe, is a beautiful phase of every individual’s life; once lost then nothing but a forlorn look is to be found. We need to restore the blissfulness in those eyes or else…. all is lost.

In search of an answer

Loneliness is a strange feeling. There are times when one might have all the material things at ones disposal and still might not be happy. There is this one thing missing which for some odd reason is of acute importance; and at that particular time perhaps the only possible solution for ones problem. Ever imagined why we need someone in our life to make us feel better. Why couldn’t we be self-sufficient and not need anyone.

It is extremely painful to get up every morning pretending in front of others and the mirror that one is absolutely fine. Going off to work smiling when all one wants to do is perhaps be in a pensive mood and not laugh at our boss’s fatuous joke or a colleagues frivolous gossip. Coming back home, hoping that one could get some rest; while all one gets is a horribly long night sans sleep. Life at that particular time becomes a strenuous exercise; not worth performing. Why are we foolish enough to think about a particular person’s well being when the person in question is hardly interested? Why do we even bother to care when the other person thinks that it’s smothering her? Why can’t we just forget about it, live our own life and not bother? Is it really tough to do so? Yes, initially it is, but there comes a time when this whole ordeal becomes excruciatingly arduous. When it becomes unbearably difficult to carry on and we get so fed up with the situation that all we want to do is snap out, somehow.

This is the precise moment when we need to put our foot down and crush this feeling inside. Kill it somehow and stop it from flourishing any further. Do we need a cold heart to do so? Yes we do. Do we need to be inexorable? Yes we do. Do we need to be emotionally unresponsive? Yes we do…. And so we shall; and so we will. There is more to life than just a relationship.

Love, is like magic. But magic is... just an illusion

Why is it so difficult for people to fall in love? Almost everyone, from a child to an adult has a ready definition of love; none digressing too far from one another. If I were to be asked about love, I would perhaps, enumerate thousand wonderful words in the praise of it. Well, there isn’t anyone who would forthrightly deny all the beautiful things said about this strong feeling. Yet, come to think of it, people find it extremely difficult to fall in love. Even if we do, then after a while it’s almost impossible to take the relationship forward. Of course there are quite some lucky souls amongst us who fall in love; and fortunately end up with that very person.

Whenever we think that we might want to fall in love, we, the so-called “homo sapiens” try and rationalise. We want to speculate the current gains and the future losses that might arise from the relationship. I wouldn’t say that being rationale is not good; but to the last thread of it, wherein there is practically no scope for trial; this truly does amaze me. One thing that we perhaps do not realise is that we as an individual are extremely short-sighted; irrespective of us being endowed with greater brain power, as compared to our predecessors. All our assumptions are based on our past happenings or at the max on the things that we hear from people around us. We always ask others what they can give; but never do we try and think what we can give in return for so many things that we want. Compromise is another big question. “Why the hell should I compromise on the things that I want to do.” Never really thinking; that perhaps the other person might also be compromising on a lot of things to make me happy. Compatibility is something that we so rightly want and that too from ‘our’ perspective. The best part is that whenever we come across someone who thinks alike, we are the first to point out that, “Man, you only think about yourself.”

Phew, so much of analysis; and yet we can’t understand that all it takes, is to follow our intuition. We simply need to lower our guards and for one instance get into the flow of things. Yes, we might fall and get hurt in the process; but if we do succeed then there’s nothing like it. We need to believe that some things are meant to happen even if they appear seemingly pointless. But this I guess, is too much to ask for; because sorry to say, we do not work so. Loving someone is definitely not the most important criteria as there are other things that have to be thought about, which are momentous and of grave importance. So what if there is a lot of reason that the other person can see. Well, I don’t see any compatibility; and that’s all that matters because I think rationally. I have analysed everything and I think that there is no scope for us; so what’s the point in trying. On the other hand, the fool all so smitten perennially tries to show how much he loves; fighting a loosing battle.
Ah! Alas, he has lost; it’s the win of head over heart and all he can say is…
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”

Her that I love, I wish to be free - even from me

"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
It is the feeling of love that Tennyson so fondly talks about in the paragraph from his poem “In Memoriam”; the feeling of endless joy and immense sorrow, both being juxtaposed. Love, the biggest paradox to have ever existed.

All of us have been in love at some point of time in our life; and god, isn’t it wonderful. You know you are in love when you can very minutely separate the beautiful colours from the thread of life. Get up every morning brimming with exuberance; thinking how to make the most of day or rather every moment in one’s life. It feels as though the clock has stopped ticking and one could indeed analyse the beauty in all of nature’s offerings, at ease. The voice inside telling us to see how beautiful a day is, so forget about tomorrow – carpe diem.

Love to me, means giving incessantly; and so I have done whenever I’ve loved. I couldn’t help but give in to this strong and overwhelming emotion, every time. But time and again I have been made to feel, made to realise that is it actually worth it. People asking, “are non-ending tears worth all the smiles and laughter in the past?”; friends saying things like, “is it really worth all that one has to go through?” I have always believed so; and god knows I had reason to do so. Reason which has become quite apparent with time; and with acute self-analysation. It’s nothing but my weakness inside….God, that anemic feeling, which I so fucking hate. I hate it because I don’t see anyone who is worth putting in so much of effort for; anyone who is worth this affection and any god damn person who really deserves it. We as an individual are meant to handle everything all by ourselves; be diplomatic about everything and think, like a fox. Think cunningly and measure every step that we take. Life, sadly has taught me that emotions make people weak. I have felt a “snap” inside of me; a certain point which tells me that it’s time to let go. Time to move forward, not look back and just fuck-it; maybe it was meant to be so.

It is time to set free, the person I am so madly in love with. I do feel elevated but I also feel sorry for the cause that I had believed in. God only knows how much I had loved that person and I couldn’t help but set her free; as this is what she wanted and how can I not give her what she wants. Like all my loved ones she is mine now, forever.

Mumbai - The city of Dreams

Like Delhi, Mumbai is another place that I have visited on and off for various activities. But unlike Delhi, I have had some cherished moments and some disastrous ones at this bindaas place. Moments which have quite often made me speculate whether I would want to live here for sometime and get into the rat race; the so called struggle for survival.

The weirdest thing which I have always felt at Mumbai is that one could sense, that the city itself breathes. There is so much life and certainly so much exuberance that one couldn’t help but think that this place has to have something. For almost an year I had been thinking about this whole idea of moving to Mumbai; getting out into the open far far away from my comfortable and cozy three bedroom flat in Delhi. The idea of starting off all over again at a new place has almost always excited me; but at the same time there's also a risk of this drastic step being completely disastrous. So many thoughts popping into my head all at the same time; completely new set of people, new localities, lots of risks, et cetera et cetera….Hell, we get just one shot at taking a plunge and when we don’t we keep wondering our whole god-damn life as to why we didn’t do it when we had the chance. So here I am with all my bags packed and a months leave on me, to find a job in the city of dreams. Hoping, that I might get to relive my dreams; the ones that I have certainly foreseen.

I did manage to get a job in the first few days itself; and a great one indeed. Also, not to forget the various activities that I had indulged into, like roamed the plush streets of town; sat at the tumultuous Café Mondegar, with various cartoons on the wall narrating a tale of their own; listened to some great music at Toto’s Garage, with pals; walked down the beautiful promenade at Bandstand; traveled in the bustling local train, with profusely sweating people and yet I believe that there is more to come. I have been in Mumbai for over a month now and to be honest I feel that I haven’t seen a fraction of what the place is actually about. Right now, I couldn’t help but remember a paragraph from this poem I had once read –

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep”

So here I am moving on and at the same time waiting for more to come at this unprecedented place called Mumbai – The City of Dreams.

How tedious is a guilty conscience!

All of us have a certain Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inside us. We live with these two sides, which are like two faces of a coin; one thriving on the existence of another. Come to think of it perhaps our bad deeds, in a way, make us a good man. There are times when we take sinful pleasure in our devilish act, which for that particular moment gives us an endless feeling of joy; leading to a strong sense of guilt that brews inside. It is this feeling of guilt that makes us think the other way round for a split-second; and that's when we realise that we should perhaps be repenting by doing some good.

Some of us start our life in a very sane way, weighing every action of ours and thinking about the rights and wrongs. We feel proud doing so and somewhere deep down inside believe that all this good that I am doing will open doors for more good things to come into my life. We wake up from our slumber one beautiful morning to find ourselves stranded in the middle of nowhere, with a feeling of remorse inside. The question that confronts us at that particular time is why, why me? Of all the people in the world, why me? I was so god damn right, I was so goddamn true to myself and everything was happening the way it should have been happening. What about all the faith one had…. Faith in me, faith in us and most of all faith in god. One strong current and all is lost. It’s then that we realise how fast we had been running; and how in the heat of it we had completely forgotten to look back and see where the rest of the world was. We look around to see that all is lost somewhere way behind; feels like holding a handful of sand. One moment my hands were full the second there's nothing. Now comes a phase when we form a shell around us and promise to not move out of it and come what may we will not let anybody get close to us. We protect ourselves more than anything; like a wounded rabbit hiding inside its burrow, afraid of coming out. We say that enough of giving let’s start taking for a change. Let us take what we can and move on in life; trying to justify all our wrong-doings by our skepticism; convincing oneself that not long ago something like that has happened to me, so why not do the same and see what it feels like. The devil inside working at its best, making us believe that all our actions are consequential; completely based on what has happened to us in the past. We think so perhaps because somewhere inside we desperately want to avenge all that has happened to us. Marching ahead; breaking rules, breaking hearts and breaking people. People who really care; who perhaps want nothing but our happiness. We keep over-looking, turning corners and at the same time moving forward. Then something comes back to us from the past, which makes us think for a while and stop our so-called progress towards ones own destruction. We again turn around to gage what’s happenings in our life and we see that its deja vu....God, aren't we there at the same point thinking about the same why, but with a different perspective this time. Now this time round its why did I do something as stupid; and the best part is that life as usual doesn't give you a second chance at turning things around. It is a strong sense of guilt that develops inside of us then.

This feeling of guilt becomes our skin over our naked body, which we can’t take off; like an inherent part of the whole system. We keep living; thinking that there would be a day when we would get to repent for what we have done and would perhaps get to apologise for one's wrongdoings, but life as usual never gives a second chance.

At times I meet people who tell me to forget about the past and look towards the future to come. I wonder then why is it that I am not able to forget something which had happened way back in time? I remember reading somewhere that the life of a Libran comprises of balancing his good deeds over his bad ones. Is that why I try to strike a perfect balance between the good and the bad or is it just another myth that I believe in. The answer to yet another simple but important question evades me, as usual.