Not For Winners.

Its not the O2 in the air thats keeping me alive. Its the lack of it.

Thats because I remembered one simple mantra of life.If life starts hitting out at you,hit back at life with as much strength you can gather.But try to make sure you land a harder punch than what you receive.Even if you don't succeed at the first shot,try landing more and more punches,till you start to enjoy the hitting.

Coz it starts with one thing.Your turnaround.Now it depends on us how we would choose to make that happen.It might start with a hand dipped in blood that oozed from our hearts.It might start from that cracking sound when you know your trust has been ripped apart,and you have been left to rot under the scorching sun,begging for alms.It is then that you realize that your faith has been compromised.That it has been sold at a much cheaper rate than what it was really worth.You look at your hands and they seem to have lost its colour,as if incapable of everything that they were ever capable of.

At that moment,if your blood doesn't boil, if you do not feel that zeal of turning around and hitting back at life with a much greater and more powerful force,then you haven't even started the race.You're still lying down.It might still be a cloudy sky above you,but the sun is bound to breathe fire one day.That is the high time when we need to take a call.

That is,whether to allow everything to remain as surreal as they are,or whether to stage a comeback and change the world around us.

For the power lies nowhere but within.

The clock ticks life away

It's so unreal

Didn't look out below

Watch the time go right out the window

Trying to hold on, but didn't even know

Wasted it all just to watch you go

I kept everything inside and even though I tried, it all fell apart

What it meant to me will eventually be a memory of a time when...

I tried so hard

And got so far

But in the end

It doesn't even matter

I had to fall

To lose it all

But in the end......

It doesn't even matter.

24 Hours.

Song? What song?


There aint no song.


Its just a dried up tree in the middle of a lonely desert thats waiting for no one.Every leaf that got rusted has been shed and disintegrated.

The life that once used to flow from the roots,climbing up the trunk and spreading through the branches doesn't show anymore.

The sun still shines,but the rays do not make the same impact.It has lost the golden colour,the gentle touch that used to fill up every single sense from within.Now it's just a huge ball of fire staring in the vast,lonely sky.

Somewhere,there is an ailing,languid bit of light thats going to get extinguished in another 24 hours.The light that was never meant to last.The realization of the final hour is weird,though.A strange solace is derived from the feeling.Nothing's left anymore.

The soul has finally been dismantled.

But the bench still stands straight through all these years and the conundrum that was useless.


Let it rest in peace.












My hands are tied
My body bruised
she's got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to lose.

The journey of life mesmerizes me with unxpected turns at every corner. I bump, I experience, and I move on. But few things stay over. The mind moves on,but it leaves a tiny bit behind.And that bit stays on with that period.That person.It never changes.Everything that was associated with that period reminds you of that person.

It could be an odour that you had smelled everyday when you felt someone breathing close to you.An odour that signalled the arrival of happy times.An odour you could die for.

It could be a song that had made you realize how special the time was.A song on which you might had danced together.A song that never bored you,and you would want to listen to that song for hours,never wanting it to end.

It could be a place you visited often.A place which made you believe there was peace on earth.A strange kind of peace which could let you close your eyes and forget the world.Nothing else would have mattered.

It could even be a place that you visited once and never again.A place which had seemed not so significant,until the time was long gone.

We fall in love.

Not because we want to,but because we cannot help. Love doesn't always meet a happy ending, but then thats not the purpose of loving someone. Love is to feel, to understand, to have faith, to trust, and never to expect. The touch of love is the touch of God. When we feel we're closest to Him,we know we're in love.

But when we fall out of love,there is a strange feeling working within. It is a feeling of getting abandoned. By God Himself. A fall from glory. We trudge on, in search of that magical feeling that we had once felt.

We search God.

But He is sometimes not so easy to find. Its a test, a period that we need to pass until He shows up again.

Ultimately, we don't find God.

He finds us.

"I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life."

A bit of angels

We are sufferers.

There's no doubt about that.Thats precisely why we have been sent down here.Its a constant endeavour on our part to create a world of our own where we can contibute the maximum amount of happiness that we can.Even that might seem to be the minimum,considering the enormous amounts of grief and sorrow engulfing us all the time.

Amidst all the pain,we have been blessed by guardian angels.These angels are no superhumans.They have been sent down on earth,just like us,the only difference being that their purpose is to protect lesser mortals like us.To guide us.To show us the light,the right path to enlightment.

A mother is a blazing example of these darling angels.She has been protecting her children right from their birth,guiding them and showing us the light from the time when we didn't even know when to close our eyes.

But then,there are more of them apart from a mother.She can be a sister,a wife,a friend,or ewven a stranger.There's no sign that would let us know beforehand who they are.There's this instinct that tells us that we have come across one of them.It soothes our heart,and lets our soul cry like it has never cried before.We feel a different level of satisfaction when we talk to such people.All our pain,all our worries seem to vanish into thin air whenever we come across them.Their guiding light shows us the way to enlightment,and we feel blessed.And at peace with God.

I had come across one.

My initial reaction was:

How could a person be like this?

This person had the power to endure even the roughest storm with a smiling face. I used to ask her, "Don't you break down?". And she would reply with an ever smiling face "No one can change the course of destiny.Our duty is to welcome even our greatest fear with a smile on our face so that destiny might be forced to change its course."

And I would sit down to think,bewildered.It is impossible for someone to take people out of trouble when she is herself into a trouble thats several times severe than the ones she's trying to take others out from.But here she was,doing the most impossible task,with an everlasting smile,as always.

She seemed like a woman who was blessed by the Almighty Himself,to bless people on this earth.Anyone who seemed to have come even remotely close to her felt blesssed.I was one of them.After seeing her,I felt a confidence within me I had never felt before.All my worries seemed to vanish into thin air.

I felt blessed.

Today,when I look back at this world,I see them everywhere.Helping people and guiding them through difficult times,not bothered about any mess they themselves might be in.

I would then go up to them and ask,"Don't you feel tired?"

To that,they would reply,"Serve others and you would serve God."

With the most pleasant smile on a very beautiful face,as always.

Colours

In the midst of a seemingly harmless and casual conversation,I was asked all of a sudden: 'Are you happy?' by someone from whom I had never expected anything even remotely close to that.

And I sat wondering.

Why would I not be happy?

Whats wrong with someone being alone,all by himself?

Why is it always like love completing a person?Why should always love do that?What right does it have to do that?Does it have any competitors?If not then why?

Love is like a festival of colours.Its vibrant with energy,agog,ceremonious,and yes,like all other festivals,sometimes there is an ending to all that as well.

Obviously,when we fall in love,we do not anticipate that.Neither do we calculate.Love happens.Just like that.Even before we realize,we are already floating on Cloud 9.

And it feels like heaven.Period.

So when love left me,I wondered whether it was a dream from which I had just woken up;because the world seemed so unfamilar.I had started to loathe all the things that I had always loved.When love left,it took quite a few things along with it.

The peace of mind being the first and foremost.

What is the value of love,if it has to end this way,I asked myself.Why would then anyone contemplate something as serious as leaving one's country,which had been one's safe abode for years,and risk everything,just for the sake of love?

Maybe because love is life.Its a journey worth undertaking,even if the journey is uncalculated,preposterous,with unexpected turns at every corner.It is a divine feeling that fills us up from within,like the delicate sun rays of the morning that slowly starts peeping through our bedroom window and then slowly fills up the entire environment around us.

I have felt that,and I can still feel the divineness inside me.The person may not be around anymore,but the divineness stays on.It changes a person for the better.It makes one do things one would have never considered under normal circumstances.A thief may decide never to steal again,an unfortunate person who has lost everything may feel the urge to face his difficulties with a renewed vigour,and a girl may think of leaving her secured haven of two and a half decades in the wake of something thats only a couple of months old.

But love is a blessing only if is everlasting.I have even seen everlasting love going through some extremely rocky terrain,but eventually finding peace.But when it doesn't,it takes with it all.With everlasting love comes an everlasting trust,a confidence that one can brave even the roughest of storms,and be with one's partner for the rest of one's life.So when love leaves,it takes the trust, the belief,and the confidence along with it.Its then when we wish that love never happened;because I feel that the grief associated with the departure of love makes a much larger impact than the joy that love brings on its arrival.After a certain period,the journey ends,and the grief subsides;but the divineness lives on.Sometimes the journey becomes too painful to bear.All we need to do is focus towards the light at the end of tunnel,towards a divineness that is so glorious,so peaceful. 

Life is a colourful journey.But the colours are not to stay for ever.We lose them,only to find them back in some other form,on a different texture.

There is really no way to peace.

Peace is within us.

Have a very colourful holi,everyone.

Chasing Dreams

What are dreams made up of,I've always wondered.I guess they're made up of perfection,moulded out of nightmares.Nightmare that's life.Dreams give us hope,a renewed energy to fulfill unfinished business.We have often been chasing dreams."I'll make this dream come true", we've declared.But how often do we think-how nice now would that be?Whether its a good idea to chase dreams,don't ask me.I've been contemplating the whole thing myself.

Okay.How about the idea of leaving dreams alone?Don't chase them.Let dreams be dreams.Lets not try and turn them into reality.
The idea crossed my mind,not too long ago-for I realised,dreams are not as rosy as they seemed when we caught up with them.By the time we chase and are able to get hold of them,they have already turned into a bitter truth,and is no more the beautiful picture that was once drawn.It pains a lot to see dreams turn to reality and lose its fragrance along the way.Thats when we realize there's nothing left we can look forward to.The one thing that we dreamt was gone,whisked away by a misinterpreted nightmare known as reality.

We should have remembered: Truth is not the same as dreams.Truth is gory.Grotesque.Dreams chased lose their essence, out of which only truth remains.The bitter truth that we've always refused to accept.
After all,thats why we have dreams,don't we?

Renaissance

Winter time.
Its always been a favourite for me.
And its just not the weather.The cold winds bring me news of the years gone by.As I flip the pages,I can see a large water body and the surrounding greenery that was once so familiar.Right in front of my eyes.Heaven knows how we had once embraced that place with open arms.It was a place where we had shared every single phase of our life,for a little more than a decade.Endless butts thrown into the water,all consumed by her willingly, like a loving mother.Happy and carefree as we were,we wanted to eke out as much as we could.
While at high school,a popular restaurant in Esplanade was our popular hangout.The scanty money,the limited freedom,nothing seemed to be a hindrance to the spirit with which we used to come out of our shells.We always formed one single unit that shared every new experience that can ever come during adolescence.The first love,the first break up,the first smoke,the first booze,we knew everything about all that.
Then came the tuition bunks.Luckily,I had a car which I was destined to exploit to the fullest extent.All for the sake of the gang.One of the earliest ones was of an old man they called Deb.I somehow never got to know him personally,but could surely have spiced the tuition up a lot had I been there.But then,someone had to wait downstairs in the dark,behind the steering wheel,waiting for the rest of the gang to bunk-and-arrive.Due to the car,options and oppurtunities were endless.We could even zoom around the city without any specific destination in our minds.
Boudi'r Thek was a late discovery.It was probably the result of a rainy day,when we were reluctant to go out, and yet needed a few drags.Boudi'r thek provided just the thing.And the word spread.More and more members started to gather in and around the thek.It soon became yet another landmark in our memories.The best thing about this place was that it was dark.There was nothing good about it except us.But we managed to turn it into our safe haven whenever we needed to spend time or do something evil.
The year I couldn't find myself a decent college was a bliss,because I found more than one instead.The most prominent ones being South City Day,Presidency and Xaviers.From South City to the Lake,it was always a joywalk.And on the luckier days,from the Lake to lighthouse bar.The secret behind our absolute easiness to pull out such daring acts regularly,that too at the brink of our career,a time which is said to make or break a student,is that we never gave a damn to all those prophecies.We were happy warming ourselves under the winter sun amongst the vast greenery surrounding the beautiful lake.We felt like one with nature.The atmosphere around us suited our lifestyle:Carefree and boisterous.
Today,as I sit in this smokey room,all I can do is look out of the window and think of the days gone by.And it seems like ages.Ages have passed since we have visited the lake,smoked up a few butts,fallen in love for the first time.The energy and the excitement that we once had was unbelievable.Today there is none.No one to share this with.Maybe thats what life's made of.At least it has given me my share of good memories.And I am thankful for that.Those days marked the beginning of our lives as a single,incoherent unit.Maybe the end of it too.But that period was clearly Rennaisance.At least for us.It has made us what we've become today.

Cheers to life,everyone.