A Clean Slate

Questions from here and there..

varun — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:03:30 +0000

I have often wondered as to the purpose of this all. All as in everything that goes around us or everything that doesn’t. All as in our lives and how intricately and seamlessly they are connected with the lives of people around us. All as in the way we perceive the universe and the way universe perceives us. All as in our place, ordained or unordain, that we inherit, find or create for ourselves. The perceptions that we have, are these perceptions all that there is to this world? Will the world change if we move away from the place where we stand and view this world? And when we view the world do we actually view it as a whole, bad with the good, evil with the benevolent, ugly with the beautiful? Or is that we just look at one aspect, the aspect that serves us well and move on? And why is that we place so much emphasis on moving on? Why can’t we just stay for that’s what we are here for and no matter how much we move on, we will inevitably find ourselves where we once started for life has a way of going around in circles and it is only when something ends that we get to make a new beginning for ourselves, it is then we get to break out of the rut and make something new out for ourselves. And sometimes the only way to move ahead is by looking back and finding that fork in the road that we didn’t took, the chance that would have made all the difference and it is only then we would be able to live, not the way we are expected to, but the way the life is supposed to be lived.

Life isn’t all about answers, and that’s what I have learnt for sometimes knowing the right question is an answer in itself. Question everything around you, doubt, disbelieve, look and you will find. Sometimes you will be stopped, barricades erected, water cannons stopping your way. Just look around and you will find a way to sneak in and scratch the surface. And once you have done your part, just look back and see all that you could have done right and walk away. Learn, for to learn is to evolve and this is what life is about, not moving on but evolution.

Why I can’t Dance or Sing or Make you Laugh….

varun — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:52:38 +0000

2 left feet is what I have when it comes to dancing. Add to it a pair of frigid arms and an almost unrelentingly frozen waist and you have the making of your very own terminator or maybe not even that for a terminator might have done that robot dance. If I was some greek mythological hero then dancing for sure would have been my achilles heel. How did that great greek legend die, people would have asked about me and the answer would have been, oh they just put on black eyed peas and he happen to swing a leg or two. Not that it’s rocket-science-hard, put a step ahead another one back, an arm up and one down and do what with your waist what u do with a hollahoop around it and now do it repetitively, sequentially and there you are and this is were lies my death. The repetitiveness, sequence, doing it over and over again. I can manage it once but over and over again? You seriously got to be kidding me. And that’s why a minute or so on the dance floor and I end up looking like an idiot, not that it matters for the fatter that oprah winfrey girl dancing next to me is looking like a giant fool herself but then you just can’t help but adore people who are capable of doing what you yourself are incapable of. Adore or detest but anyways I just respect, sheer and unadulterated, people who can dance and sing and may be talk incessantly about anything and may be make other’s laugh as well. Not that I am not funny or I am a sadistic philistine who just can’t enjoy the nuances of life, it’s just when it comes to public exposure I just find my inards behaving like a about to be consummated bride, palpitating and blushing with shame. sometimes though I have managed to sing a few verses and most of the time I managed to sound like a demon excorcising godliness out of people.

So now I let my ipod be the only connection between me and the rhythm divine for any attempts on my part to strengthen that connection would simply tantamount to a profane desecration of something simple which even Taylor Swift could do. Some say alcohol loosens you up, makes you unabashed, and indeed I have seen people do exactly the same. Confess about their non-existent sex lives, imaginary girl friends or the allegedly hot girl they befriended over the Internet and who in the end turned out to be dude, cry about how hopelessly they have fallen in love with the girl next door who btw was really hot and that made me cry too, without alcohol though for I did turned her down once in my hey days of being a class heartthrob. But strangely alcohol never worked for me, instead of bringing my deranged side, it invariably, apart from making my head wobbly, puts me to sleep.

So no, no one ever got the better of me and may be what’s inside me keeps me away from people. The things that are bottled up, things which you say no longer matter but deep within you know they do, all the unfulfilled desires, dreams that are hiding within, maybe that’s what keeps us all from being who we really are.

In my case, a guy who would do just about anything to make you smile but won’t dance, sing or tell incidents from his life.

Catharsis

varun — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:55:22 +0000

I am staring at this computer screen, the blinking cursor, waiting for that bolt of inspiration to strike me. Not that there isn’t anything to write, the country is in shambles, Kashmir stand-off, common wealth games fiasco and may be when you think about all this, another thousand or so things that seem to be going awry but then politics, socialistic non-socialistic happenings, travails of a common men, never actually went through the thick skull of mine. So yes, having excluded almost everything that keeps the bread and butter coming for a common journalist and so called, self acclaimed socialists, I am still trying to delve deeper through certain realms of my mind and find at least a coherent thread, a yarn to pull on and stitch a nocturnal cardigan or a scarf or at least a pair of gloves.

If ever we were to write down everything that we thought about then for sure each one of us would have, other than a really tired left or right hand, a never ending book that would stretch through, covering, bring to front, all the dimensions of our consciousness and maybe then we could find ourselves in a place where we would know as to what is exactly going on with our lives. All the things, emotions, feelings that we suppress, putting forward a façade, a semblance of happiness, the smile that we play on our lips making other believe that all is well in our lives, believing rather playing the ideals that were never ours to begin with, if only we could put it all into words then we would find the truth that we have so successfully corralled ourselves from. And I say write because all of us too caught up in this quest for individuality that we have all begin to look so much alike. I say write because somewhere deep down we all are trying to fit a particular stereotype and the world is ever so often coming up with never definitions. We are all a product of conflicting notions and we too caught up in suppressing one over the other that often end up losing something or some part that could have made our lives worthwhile. I talked about the yarn and yes, at each point in our lives there are a thousand paths that fork themselves and what lies ahead is akin to what lies with us, it’s not the end but rather the beginnings which define the way things are and we end up losing so much to discomfiture that we feel in letting go and holding hands with what’s about to come. If only we could write, all that is going on in our head, if only we would document as a notion slays another one with its objectivity then maybe we would now as to why we are in where we are right now. And to what point you may ask, well I would say life’s too long and it’s always possible to change the path you are on. Just branch off ever so slightly, take a step, walk over the edge and before you know all that’s around you has changed.

Let go off whatever you are holding onto, shrug off your smocks, whatever falls down let it fall for what you need will always find a way to stay with you and whatever is that you lose will always come back to you in some other form. Life is too short and our relationships much shorter, so whatever is that you wanted do, say, feel or make someone else feel, do it, say it now because you never know what your words or your action may set in motion. And if tomorrow it all doesn’t work out, like I said shrug off your smock and move on and maybe you would end up in a place better than you actually were.

Everything in life comes down to the relationships that we built and memories we create and if only we could take the hurt out of the bad relationship then maybe we could remember each other through all those good memories we shared. Because when you are sitting in your bed, staring at an unyielding cursor, with a part of your mind trying to curb all that it wants to relive, it gets a lot easier if we could just let ourselves be lost, chasing one thread after another, reliving one memory after another, finding a cathartic release from the government that doesn’t function, a paradise that would always be a paradise because you couldn’t think about it without first thinking about the Kalashnikov’s and the games that seem to have raped the city which you so much loved.

The Lost Desert

varun — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:33:05 +0000

Rajasthan, it’s beautiful. Well any place with a couple of trees and a grassland stretching for anything more than a yard or two looks beautiful in monsoon but still there is a thing about deserts and the rains and the way they both blend together in an inexplicable way to make even the most protean of sights breathtakingly gorgeous. And yes I did felt cheated when the ever stretching lush greens met my expectant sights that have waited for almost an eternity to feast on those arid and dry wasteland that have become synonymous with this part of my country. And there wasn’t a stretch left untouched, it was all green. Fields, mountains, flats, lake side and for crying out loud there were trees growing atop a palace. Like someone with his water canon went on and spray painted this country side in an ever variegated ever stretching shade of green. And it looked beautiful, beyond word, so gorgeous that even a philistine would have stopped in his steps to admire, so spell binding that even a heart as broken as mine felt newer buds of hope, love and happiness surfacing through these thousand layers of deceit, betrayal and dereliction. I stood there staring at those mountains that looked not so formidable under that green onslaught, so unlike their arid or snow capped counterparts, and I wondered as to what ails this human heart, as to what wounds do we carry inside of us, as to how irrevocably are we actually broken inside and when a desert wasteland could so easily transform itself, can’t we give up on the all the hurt inside and accept this suffering to be of our very own making and let our tears glue this world back together. And yes I thought of all this and more in an instant and this brings me from my self-absorbed excursions back to the beautiful Rajasthan.

Once upon a time there was a prince and that prince ordered to be built from the state funds, two of the most exquisite palaces. One with a thousand windows, euphemistically named The Palace of Air, with each window covered with multi hued multi colored glasses, so much so that the filtering sunlight and more importantly the moon light, rendered everything so ephemerally, so colorfully, in the shades of, red, green, blue and orange. And in the second palace was erected a room of thousand mirrors, each cut in so many different shapes, and all put together to form so many shapes and of so many sizes.

Now each generation interprets history in its own way, so what follows next may not have a semblance of truth to it but this is exactly what I would have done had I been the prince and yes, I would make for a lousy monarch for people like are for too busy thinking about things that have nothing to do with this world or the next.

So our prince had two of the most exquisite palaces and what exactly our prince did with them? Well what exactly would you do, if not make lie down with your beloved somewhere along those thousand windows, in the filtering variegated moon light, turning a shade different from the other, making love in that colorful, ever-changing moonlight. Or would you rather watch your reflection as you lie down underneath a canopy of thousand murals, watch your reflection as it breaks down into a thousand pieces and becomes a part of all those peacocks and elephants that form an almost infinite mural. Imagine waking up each morning to the sight of the majestic Aravalli’s as they perforate through those clouds. Could a sight be more spectacular than this, I wonder.

There was something which I learnt standing at the windows where our apocryphal prince would have once stood and that was the realization that how every trivial experience in our life stretches along into making what we are. If for just a moment we could stop ourselves from labeling whatever is that we are experiencing, then maybe we could someday become a trifle of what we actually are capable of becoming. The best thing about this life is the fact that you are alive, rest all will fall into place once you start living your experiences out.

Lonely is the Night

varun — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:02:23 +0000

Yesterday you slept like a baby

Believing in the dreams of your life

But today it’s all over

And sleep isn’t going to be your mistress tonight.

Tonight the stars shine the brightest

Tonight this world seems to be in a hurry to move on

But you lie in your bed watching with the ceiling fan

As the movie of your life plays on and on.

Yesterday you scripted your own destiny

But today a different story unfolds

And you stand on the sidelines

And watch yourself play

As someone else calls the shots.

The Porn Star

varun — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:04:10 +0000

A gleaming highway and a lonely cab

foot on the accelerator but you can’t outrun

this lonely life….

A lighted cigarette and hands on the steering wheel

smoke curls upwards to join

the orgy in the back seat….

The camera zooms in and she screams with delight

all plastic faces, all plastic smiles…

Her forty minutes are now over

and I drive through the woods

to reach her house in suburbs…

She asks for a cigratte and our fingers touch

so spent like a buring candle

so cold, like the grasp of death…

A cottage looms large and a kid gushes out

arms outstretched and hugs are exchanged

“Where is my toy?” the kids screams

“Ask your dad” she says

with a finger pointing at me……..

things which relationship can never teach…

varun — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:20:09 +0000

There are many things that a relationship can teach you, too many things to be precise. Each day, each moment simply opens up your eyes to something new, a new realization, a new feeling, a newer perspective, a newer life. But then a relationship isn’t a school for life isn’t a school for we all have made same mistakes over and over again for we all have fallen in love and fallen for the same words. Had life been a school we would never have been in love for to love means to unlearn, to love means to let go and to live means to live and not to sit back and analyze and look behind every move and to speak with an intend. Life isn’t something which an academician can teach you for life lies beyond what we can see, life is everywhere, in an empty room, in an empty space for everything in life has a place, everything has it’s time for sometimes even the best of us, the most garrulous of us, the most outgoing of us, seek that reticence, seek that solitude, seek those darkened rooms and closed doors.

I don’t know a thing about anything, let alone life but the only thing that I know is to love and to love with every corner and space from within. To love and to become love, to demand and to become the demand, to fly and to become the wings, to paint the town red and to become the color, to be and to become what I am. Love is what I sought in solitude for love is where you rediscover yourself; love is my solitude where I become what I am and if love takes away your identity then let it for it’s our identities which are standing between us and love. Let me be nothing, let me be a whim, let me be the air, let me be the cloud, let me be the raindrop, one like every other, every other like one, quenching the expecting earth and becoming the earth itself. And that is why we never have loved and that is why our hearts are so full yet so empty because we are not what love wanted us to be, we are a name followed by everything that we are not, we are not love.

There are many things that a relationship can teach you but mine didn’t taught me anything for I am just a stupidly in love person for practicality is something which I always have left behind; practicality and fear for if love can’t set you free than it isn’t love. And I am vulnerable, and I am weak for there isn’t a space, the emptiness left inside of me that love didn’t uncover. And I stand uncovered, unsheathed like a neonatal now, reborn, reclaimed, rejuvenated, and waiting like this expecting earth to unite with my beloved and to become the beloved itself.

And if there is something which I did learn is about love and the way it lies in every nook and corner for love isn’t about spending your lives together rather love is about infusing your togetherness with life. And life doesn’t lie in preciseness, life isn’t about brevity for life is in details, life is in speck which we often end up missing, tossing or replacing, waiting for that big moment we end up missing everything that lies in between, forgetting that it’s these in betweens where our life exists.

The Scream Within

varun — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:17:59 +0000

The stage is set but the floor is still wet

For the eyes have flowed all of last night

And now the only sparkle that lies

Lies within the inferno of burning dreams

Hearts that once were ablaze with the desires of a tomorrow

Now seek solace in the castles of smoke and haze

“Where are you?” shouts someone from inside

But these doors have been closed for long

And whatever name where written once

Have long since lost in dust

Like the names written on the windshields instead of hearts

I look for your marks somewhere in this desert world

To walk away from the ways you would have walked

To be united but in my own solitude

Where the sound of my voice is not killed

By the cacophony of your objectivity

Where it still rains, red, black, blue and white of my dreams

And the six strings still strum the music of some other world.

The Cruse of The Crisis

varun — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:43:36 +0000

If I was to ever come with a list of things which I said but shouldn’t have said, well lists are girly so I am not actually ever going to come up with one and seriously I never could understand people obsession with them. My dad is like the forbearer of all list-makers like with him everything has to be listed and well planned out. Shopping list, to do list, not to do list, people to meet list, people not to meet list, places to be list, trains to catch list, routes to take during peak hours list, routes to avoid during peak hours list and over and above the packing list. Well keeping aside the intentional exaggeration, why something’s need to be so damn organized, why for once we simply can’t forget say a toothbrush or a pair of socks or a pair boxers while going on a journey, why can’t we for once forget to pick up ketch up from our latest excursion to the departmental store and why for once can’t we forget the keys and leave certain doors locked? Why we have to be perfect, why do we have to jot down everything and stick all those teeny tiny post-its everywhere and for crying out loud God, the almighty, gave us brain, with storage capacity that could even put a thousand Time Capsules to shame, so why can’t we for once remember things without actually making a note of them? Well my girlfriend who actually thinks of me to be a person, now that’s a debatable issue for I have been directly or indirectly been called a Dog like a zillion times but anyways she thinks of me to be a person, wow I just can’t over the sound of it, she actually thinks of me to be person and not a jerk though I kind of know that it must have taken nothing short of an herculean effort from her. But again all these overly exaggerated digressions apart she did think of me to be a person whose memory could even challenge that of rocks though these weren’t her exact words for not everyone is not blessed with the eloquence and verbosity to put what all that is in their hearts or mind or wherever into words but still this is what she must have meant when she asked me a cure for of her forgetfulness.

If only I could have told her how cursed the people like me are for we are the ones who can’t forget, who can’t move on, who can’t let go and we are the people whom the time chose as custodians, remembering and never forgetting even the slightest of transgressions or slips of tongue or insolence. And yes right now I really want to forget, close my eyes and go to sleep for I can’t fight her memories which seem to running, rummaging and melting in every corner of my mind. I want to forget the sad truth that she isn’t with me right now and I want to forget myself for that’s the only way I could ever bring myself to not miss her and really I want to forget the rain that’s beating against my window sill. And I am sitting here in this room, watching Optimus Prime battling it out against the Decepticons and really right now I feel like Optimus Prime or at least I feel like the way he would have felt when Megatron went onto pierce his heart and in this battle of mine, the Megatron is called the Crisis.

It took Sam Witwicky, a journey back and forth to the Transformers heaven before he could bring Optimus back to life but as far as my life goes it would take exactly 11 days for the curse of the Crisis to lift and till then I just wish to be a teeny tiny transformer who sitting on her table top or may be lying in her purse would at least get to feel the touch of her hand and smell her intoxicating fragrance and listen to her mellifluous voice as she chatter her way around the whole day.

Things She Taught Me….

varun — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:46:26 +0000

Relationships are all about learning, each day that we spend day together unravels a series of realizations, things which we realize about ourselves and emotions- justifiable and unjustifiable, reasonable and unreasonable- which we never thought we were capable of and it’s not just about her or me, it’s about us. What we say, what we feel, what we realize when we look deep inside ourselves that makes us know about each other, about the indelible bond that we share, about us. What I was, what I will be, I don’t know but what I become when I am with her, is all that matters to me and sometimes I can’t help but be proud of the perfect love which she gave to me. And I know in this world where nothing is what it seems like, it is this belief and pride of mine that will make this union a beautiful one because nothing could ever be beautiful if you don’t think of it to be.

Every day, each moment, I learn, I feel something new. I used to believe once in the unconditional love and all the stupid notions which a lot of stupid people have preached but now I just know human love could never be unconditional. But yes I do have a hope that maybe someday when both of us would have fulfilled most of each other’s desires then maybe we will end up loving each other just for the sake of loving for this love is what that has redeemed both of us. And I learned that love isn’t in the roses or blooms that you may buy for each other, love lies in those moments when you went out of the way and begged to the florist to give you an extra rose bud, love lies in the moments when she has to come up with an incomprehensible story just so she could keep the flowers in her living room, love lies in that one smile that she gave me and love lies in that underlying happiness that I knew she felt but never showed. Love lies in those distance that we walked, love lies in those moments when we held each other’s hand, love lies in the steps she took despite of herself just to please me, love lies in tears which my words often bring to her eyes, love lies in the longing which often fills our heart and love lies everywhere in each gap and in each of our breath.

I learnt to understand though she would beg to differ but then when you have lived your entire life for yourself; it often gets difficult to see a point other than the one that you are making. And yes now I can say I have grown for now I know how to live my life for someone else and even though money can never buy love but every now and then it could be spend to make the people you love happy. It’s not the gifts that you buy for flowers and chocolates and stuff can never last forever for when your flowers have all crumbled down and roses have become a part of some book even then your love will bloom. But yes, once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to do things that would end up taking her breath away like a kiss on a rainy day, underneath the blue sky, on a wide open road for kisses such as these would always linger even when your lips have parted and you are no longer with each other. And it’s not for her to let her guard down and feel carefree but it’s you who have to provide her with this feeling, it’s you who have to take her mind, heart and soul away, it’s you who have to possess for hearts beat a lot better when they are possessed.

And I learnt nothing could ever beat the feel of cool breeze on your skin on a rainy day and nothing could beat eating corn while sitting breathtakingly close on a moving bike and nothing could beat the feel of holding that corn so that she have her bite and nothing could beat the feel which you get when she all of a sudden ends up telling you about some long forgotten liaison and all you want to do is to stab yourself to death with the very same corn and then you close your eyes and all you can see is her face and all you can smell is her sweet fragrance and then past simply seems irrelevant for you know it’s not the past but rather the moment which matters and besides no one can stab themselves to death with a corn.

And that is not all I have learnt but yeah now I do know, the best moments are not the one which you plan for, best moments are the ones which happen by themselves, best moments are the ones where you just go with the flow, best moments are the one where you stop in the middle of the street and pluck flowers, best moments are the ones when you slip an innocent and childish flower ring into her finger.