A memory which still remains vivid inside my heart

I've been told that I walk with an expression on my face which expresses precisely nothing and I couldn’t agree more. I wear an expression on my face which only accentuates my inner void, hiding my lucid flow of thoughts. I tend to cut through the razor sharp gaze of people with grace, something that I’d honed for myself, over the past few years. I choose to roam the most loneliest and scenic roads where the trees usually catch my undivided attention, as I am deluged by the beauty of things which live without words. Fearlessly existing, growing, in a world full of preconceived notions where wisdom is just fidelity on paper.

I have found a companion in nature and I have bared my all to it. I could be whoever I wanted to be in its presence. Also, in a way it was my solitude which became my companion in the vast presence of nature. It sounds utterly imbecile, right? I guess it is. But it’s only then did I realise, how small I really am, just existing as a mere collection of paradoxes in the transience of life. It was the realization which only invigorated me and however trivial and alone I had ever felt in a room full of people, nature always made me feel like a queen who was worthy of its every leaf and every drop of rain, so I connected to its unspoken words and drifted away from those who couldn’t understand it. Partly because I was of the ‘nature’ people didn’t understand, so how would they understand the nature? They couldn’t understand the silence but were confident in their convictions about what I do and what I am. Even though I did meet a few people along the way, people who surprised me, so I tried connecting with them. I took a few steps into their world before I let them come into mine, shared a thought or two, let the minds collide carelessly. But then I always found myself taking two steps back into my own cosy void. I guess I am too scared, too scared of something so ephemeral, unlike my own conscientiousness and nature. 

Home

I grew up in a small house, in the middle of a market brimming with people and set in a street surrounded by other age old houses and flats. The ground floor is isolated except the corner of it is occupied by a shrine, whereas the first floor is occupied by my Uncle, Aunt and their two kids. And a terrace full of memories, where the rays of the moon would always seem to reach profoundly, makes a well roof for the house.  

I visit the house for the first time in a very long time, climb up the stairs with an ache in my bones, afraid of what my eyes will perceive and feel the fear creep in my veins which I thought only lived in some remote part of my brain. Held on to the railing for my dear life, only to be reminded of the time I slipped on them. The fear and trepidation kept growing upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to the door. The same door which was banged uncountable times now stands more ragged as ever.

Surprisingly, as I enter the door, It was not the terror which crept upon me but the dawn of a more exciting hope which engulfed me and I began to watch with a strange interest, myself. I saw myself playing in the hallway, screaming, crying and laughing, picking myself up from the ground and brushing off the dust from my frock, the same frock worn every third day, torn and stitched and torn again. I would move from one place to the other, picking up one thing and dropping the other. And as adventurous as I believed myself to be, I'd climb up the terrace in search for treasures. I'd always find a pebble or a paper and sometimes if I was lucky, I'd find a kite. At times I’d bring my tricycle and ride it. 

The further I step inside the house, the further I connect with myself. The emotions I seemed to have forgotten were now bared to a place where I first felt them. I felt love, for the ones who carried me when I was hurt. I felt hatred, for the ones who scared me at night. I felt jealousy, of the ones who were loved more than me. I felt hurt, when I lost a loved one. I felt anger, of a murder done in the park in front of the house. I felt scared, of the witches who ran in the streets at night. I felt anguish, when we had to leave it. And I knew what nostalgia was when I came back to it again. 

I came back to it again for the sole purpose of recollecting the pieces I’d left there, pieces of me. I came back for the memories. Now if someday that house turns to rubble or is washed away by the rains, I'd still be overwhelmed with the same emotions because nothing can wash away the intangibility of it. I'd know when I stand there, that this is the place where I have known courage, hurt and betrayal. This is the place where I have been nurtured, a land I have been rooted to. This is my place, my memory. This is my home.

What my teenage soul would say to me now

“Laugh a little quietly.” My irrefutable father would say to me and my cousin as we would frolic in the backseat of the car, laughing, looking at each other's faces. We were seven and everything was funny to us back then, the way our parents talked, the way people walked with their stern faces and suitcases in hand, the way the wind blew the hair in our faces and the times while playing cricket, I would always lose the ball by hitting it far off into the nowhere lands of our neighbors. Well, not so funny to the brothers playing with us but still.

I was thirteen and would visit my grandmother quite a lot of times in a year. It was my happy place. A place where you could clearly see the stars at night, hear the birds chirping at dawn, the wolves howling at night and watch as the emulating fireflies flutter up towards the sky, to compete with the stars.

I was fourteen, needless to say, I loved exploring. Me and my cousins would run off into the fields, watch the scarecrows scare the crows away, watch the people bathe in the cold water that came directly from the wells then curiously enter the well house to stare down the dark abyss and take a step back, just in case.

“Smile, Laugh more. Go out” My father says to me now.

Over the years a lot has happened and a lot has changed. I've been blessed with the gift of a wonderful life but overwhelmed with it at the same time. I've always narrowly tried to keep up with its fast pace, stumbling my way into its new challenges every now and then. And I wonder, what would that little girl say to me now?

She would say:

When you’re a teenager, a lot of people would call you a rebel if you told them that you love to travel and explore. They’d ask you to grow the fuck up, to stop playing with water, to stop laughing too hard, to stop running and start walking lightly on the ground.

They’ll throw words like ‘Indecent’, ‘Immoral’ and ‘Invincible’ at you. What a shame they’d say. When you’re fifteen, you’ll have problems you won’t be able to share and things you won’t be able to say because of how the society perceives it. 

And Reading books is a waste of time and playing guitar is just a hobby. Keep that in mind.

They’ll throw a big word called ‘career’ at you. And for some time you’ll juggle with it, not knowing what to do with it, but eventually you’ll be able to handle it. There will be a lot of people to help you through it with IQ tests, Aptitude tests, Creative ability tests and all, what’ll then generate a list of careers you could go for.

There’ll be times when you’ll fail. Fail your parents. Get rejected by the colleges. Fail an exam. And you’ll cry but you’ll get over it, eventually.

So, you hang on.

What I would say to my teenage soul now

I would ask my teenage soul to laugh as loudly as possible, to think as wisely as possible. If you make mistakes, do not be disheartened and do not drown in a pool of guilt of what could have been and how differently you could've approached the problems because there is only so much damage you can manage to control when you’re small and your hands reach out only as far as to those few people who are willing to take it. Do not abstain from life when you’re let down by it. Discover what your talents are, what your obsessions are, what drives you and what brings you down. There's no amount of IQ tests out there which could tell you what you feel in your heart about a subject, how your fingers stumble upon all the right words that you need to write for your history paper or how prodigiously you figured out all the notes played in the song you just heard.

Don’t beat yourself up, there’s someone out there whose happiness depends on your happiness. Do not wish to have known the person special to you when you needed them the most and how things would have been different if they were there. Be thankful that you know them and how they've made things better and different for you. Remember, wishful thinking is alluring but it’s also a stairway which knows no end and when you’re tired, it’s already a long way from the bottom to reach back to the realities of your life: the present.

Be passionate about what you do, don’t let the need to beat others override your passion to actually be better at it than you were yesterday. Change takes time but it happens as it is not an event but a process. You have to allow yourself to witness the process and not be embarrassed by it, and when someone else changes, for good or for bad, be willing to accept it. But take your time. Speak up, your discernment matters. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. But if it does, you've invited other peoples universes to collide with yours. You might spark a fire for a new discussion, you might learn something you've never known and believe me there is no end to the knowledge that you could gain by simply communicating with the mind of the intellect.

Open your heart and mind to new possibilities every day, good or bad. Seek the path to growth by welcoming new adventures, new relationships and places. Let go of any expectations you or anyone else have of you. Develop your powers of concentration, empathy and humility. Your time is too precious for you to indulge in meaningless activities where your mind doesn't grow and life becomes stagnant, your time is too precious to give it to someone. So, choose wisely.

And I probably can’t stress enough on how vital it is to read and to read right. Reading books is not a waste of time but a better fuel to the brain than most people choose to use. Reading might be for escapism but it does not mean you’re actually escaping from your life because you’re not happy about it; you’re escaping because you’re here and there’s a whole Universe out there waiting to be explored. You read because that is the only place where you can’t argue with someone to do things your way or have things done their way. The characters will die, fall in love with wrong people and you won’t be able to do anything about it (kind of like real life). There is something shattering and overwhelming about the restrictions of a story, to know the tragedy, to find yourself connecting with a stranger that it feels like you've known them all your life but you’ll never meet them, to find solace in their words. So, read. And read right.

I am writing this because it's my last year as a teenager and I am allowed a little nostalgia.

I am writing this to my past self yet at the same time starting over with my present self as I find myself culpable for not having known better. I know I am contradicting myself when i say to her, not to drown in the guilt of what could have been but I am not drowning, no, not yet. I am learning to swim, finding serenity in my sins.

This is an ode to my future self. I am starting over, I am starting right now. I am reading again, learning the big words to scare the demons away.

(P.S Guitar is not just a hobby, so play it till your fingers bleed.)

She does know

What is it like to be in love with him? She asked

It’s like being connected to a future which is only possible if the present were not present. Possible only if reality separated itself from what is real; from the present. And one of the many inevitable facts of life is learning that past, present and future are inseparable. The present merely stands on the hopes of the future and exists on the learning’s of the past: the atonements, failures you overcame and achievements you made. Past is the one that you’re drawn to every millisecond, and if you’re lucky, it’s only the good and the bad which reminds you of it and looking back on it, you're met with a thousand different ways you could've ended something or begun something beautiful. 

But coming back to the question, it’s a song which never knows its ending.

It’s the fingers trembling over the guitar when you first start learning it. In the beginning, the chord is strummed harder than you intentionally want to strum it and every note is held tightly until your fingers start to hurt, your hand is stiff, the plectrum is held tightly, you’re struggling and there is only noise to be heard. When you’re not a beginner anymore, the chord is strummed softly and you can hear every note and it sounds beautiful. Your right hand loosens up, it becomes acclimatized to the plectrum and your left hand becomes acclimatized to the fret board.

But why am I comparing Love to learning the Guitar? Because it is so much similar to it, as in the beginning, you’re not sure how to handle it; you’re not even sure about what it is, so you wear your heart on your sleeve. You’re afraid if you don’t hold onto it tightly, the feeling could go away and you might lose all the desire. But when things start getting clearer and you know what it is, you hold onto it faintly, otherwise, you might destroy it (Broken strings, anyone?).

It’s constantly searching the eyes, looking for some kind of revelation. And you stay submerged in them for a while, but the answers never surface the eyes.

It’s like living in a country you don’t know the language of. It’s that eloquent word which you never use in a conversation, because you never get the opportunity.

It’s as if you’ve been given your favourite book to read for one and the last time. So you read between the lines, you hang on to every word and memorize your favourite quotes and before finishing it, you take your time. You take all the time you need. And when you do finish it, you know for a fact that you can’t ever read it again or touch it again. All you have of it is all you’ll ever have of it. The words engraved in your skin, the smell of it at the tip of your nose, the texture of it felt at your fingertips, you have whatever you could take from it but you’ll never have the real thing.

What’s felt in the heart can’t be fathomed into words really. Only if I could somehow show how I feel, you know, like trap my every sensation and every glance I steal in the direction of it, a place where the butterflies like to flutter their wings to.

Like the air, I can only feel it. I can’t touch it.

It’s the dark fervour of a stormy night; it’s the colourful and ceremonious validation of the flowers during spring time.

It’s affection on Monday, confusion on Tuesday, love on Wednesday, hatred on Thursday, hope on Friday, love on Saturday, and confusion on Sunday all over again. It is all or nothing; really, it is a hundred different feelings on Tuesday and emptiness on Thursday. But I know it’s not going anywhere because the feelings keep coming back to me like a Boomerang, felt harder than it did the last time it hit me.

But people fall in love with people they can’t have, all the time. She said

I know.

Voyage

I must travel,

travel on the untrodden snow

stopping to make snow angels,

for I am gloomy.

I must travel,

travel to those western islands

whose names I know,

but know nothing else of them.

 

I must see all the flowers there are

-Erythrina, balsam, touch-me-not and jasmine

blooming on the roadside

I haven't been to.

I am aching to travel,

to breathe in its pure serene,

I am aching for the sweet air of Alaska,

and for the swim into the Baltic sea.

I must travel,

for I am exhausted.

If I dont travel,

I am afraid i'll go mad

And if I do,

I won’t be there for the wild sunrise in milan,

to see the magnificent scenery of St. Lucia

or to see the Murano glass of Murano

I dream of travelling, on open roads

when the moon is high

and the sun is low

where I often lie awake on the silent shore.