Traveling to a place we’ve always wanted to explore is an enriching experience. A planned trip is a journey whose destination we surely know. But it brings me immense cognitive joy to think about the place I might end up at, knowing absolutely nothing prior to reaching there. Knowing that whichever place it would be, it will be different from where I really am, or maybe it would be the same place. But the curiosity and the thrill of travelling will make it worth it.

An unbridled lust, to explore different parts of the world, to meet new people, to learn to live, to fall in love with all of it, is now what has taken over my bucket list.

In the past twenty-one years, I must have traveled as many places as I could count on my fingertips. Therefore, I would not call myself a traveler and neither have I been a tourist in another country. But, it would be absurd of me to not have a list of places I would love to visit and explore. Therefore, I do have a quite vague list that I started making since when I was in 8th grade. Funnily it started off with Las Vegas, and to be precise the destination was supposed to be the Miami Space Club. I know, it sounds very outlandish for an 8th grader, but that’s how far-fetched our ideas used to be. The list goes on to experiencing drinking champagne in Venice and ends somewhere at going to watch the Northern lights, or visiting the Deception Island  in Antarctica. The list could go on and on, depending on the amount of obscure facts I could gather about a place.

There is something utterly romantic and heavenly about travelling, no, scratch that, travelling can’t be contained in a few lovely adjectives because it is mired in several different adjectives. When we travel, along with exploring myriads of paths and places, we also explore ourselves; our limitations, our strengths, our fears, our open-mindedness, our temperament. Travelling for me is indeed self-exploration in its truest sense.

I have dreamed, and I have imagined, of innumerable events taking place in a disjunctive world that holds no relation with reality. I have dreamed of walking in the streets, brushing past strangers, with a sense of belongingness. And at times, I have felt my heart beating out of my chest, and felt the rush of blood from falling deep into the ocean. And it’s all part of the adventure, of travelling to a different place, and therefore #TheBlindList, sounds tempting. It would be a glorious experience, to fall in love with the world, to experience everything to its extreme; all without knowing where you’re going to end up at. Moreover, it would be a life lesson in disguise, quite literally!

Even if I end up at the same place where I’m at, give me a few new directions which lead up to where I am, if perception is all I’ll gain, I’m happy with it. I’m the one who purports not to follow blindly, and I purport to be rebellious. Ironically, a blind destination will soothe my conscience and feed my rebellious nature, even though I’ll be following blindly, a path not known to me before.

A misadventure onto the barren land, onto a mysterious cobbled street, and a voyage into the uncharted seas- the blind list could entail only this vast expanse filled with adventure, filled only with what is unpredictable.

My eyes gleam, my head is full of dreams of such shades of skies which I’ve never witnessed before. I am walking upwards, defeating gravity. I’m floating on the land, flying over oceans, exploring possibilities and visiting places; where the air is a bit cooler, where the trees are a bit taller and where the dreams are much bigger.

The sea is spreading its wings before me,

The eyes, they cling to the skies,

The blue amalgamates to orange,

As the sun sets in paradise,

The air gets warmer,

As the fire emulates the stars of the night,

Back home the skies are formulating,

As I fall in love with the world tonight.

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Check out #TheBlindList campaign! :) And #SayYesToTheWorld!

The wings to my words-

Aurthohin-I

Dear shadow,

As I ruined the most important paper of my life, I thought about those three years and how everything led up to this exact moment. How I landed up here. Three years ago, if someone had told me that I’d be doing what I am doing now, I would have laughed my ass off. I wanted to change that, but redemption turned out to be axiomatically in the negative. 

I'm all the things I thought I'd never be. The good and the bad, both. And I know that I will never be what I'm not. I will never have that brazen feeling, the one which would make me dauntless. The landscape has changed, drastically. I'm the mis-toggled shirt, the rust tainted pure white paper.

This failure of mine, it will never cease to define me. Because it's all I had wanted to be. 

It feels so different, in every sense of the word.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I can’t shake this feeling of living in a perpetual nightmare. I’m still in denial, in utter disbelief. It’s crazy. I just cannot define this feeling. 

Tell me shadow, you love darkness. I loathe it. Yet, it follows me. Yet you follow me. Why?

But no matter how bad the nightmare is, I've learned that the trick is to never talk about it. I do this often, only because I just don’t know how to react to other people’s dilemmas. I’m empathetic but I don’t know how to empathize. And sympathy is nothing but pity offered by callow people.

“Oh”. What a pretentious expression. Tell them a sad story, teach them how to laugh.

Lately, I’ve been compelled to question everything. A wrong moment in time seemed to outline every choice I’ve ever made in my life, and made me look back;  to all the wrong friends, wrong acquaintances, wrong place, wrong path, wrong university, wrong school, wrong talk, wrong class, wrong questions, wrong conversations-every connection. 

I’ve learnt to sketch all that was wrong for me since the beginning of time. Perception. Indulgence. Lessons.

I try to think about all the extremely wonderful people who’ve been in my life, or could be in my life, but are not. And never will be. 

But I’ve learnt some things.

 I'm going to be proud of my goals, no matter the result. I will say NO- to stupid hangouts, stupid conversations, outright invasion of privacy, people who try to bring me down, deflating opinions of people about me. I'm going to stay away from all of this. 

Ultimately all that makes you unhappy, all the people who make you unhappy, everything that screams unhappiness is meaningless. It does not define you. It does not define me. It’s a black space. Aurthohin.

I’m starting over, again. What do you think shadow? Wait, don’t answer. I’m leaving you; and everyone else, and everything else, of you, with you.

Not yours,

Light

_________________________________________________________________________________

Almost(II)

I am almost in love, 

In a perpetual flux,

I am the antagonist,

Of a subtle love story gone haphazard,

Like music without sound,

And words without meaning,

Here there is no end, 

And no beginning,

Open circuited,

Infinite resistance,

No obligation for deliverance,

And no hope for acceptance,

We're robotic souls, following the lines,

Of a crooked path that is hard to find.

Moving along,

As we're supposed to,

I'm arranging fragments, of you and me,

Close to the flame,

Burning embers of truth,

So, ashes to ashes and dust to dust,

We leave as we came,

Playing our parts in this vile game,

I've played mine,

As I was supposed to,

I'm the almost lover,

The forever antagonist,

I have my good intentions,

But I’m burdened with its perils.

Mornings as they were.

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’ 

The year was 2015. University had just started and I had to get used to waking up in the morning by myself. I remember how difficult the exercise of waking up on my own turned out to be. So my mother would wake me up nonetheless, calling me up at 6 am in the morning and jolting me out of my sleep. And then we would end up talking for a while, which always robbed me off of the luxury to wear my eye liner in the morning.

Pretty soon, I figured that it was more work this way than trying to do it on my own. If something can be done just right by one person, why bother another?

So evidently I had to get used to waking up on my own.

View from my room window.

Gradually I got used to waking up by myself, to this serene view outside my window. And I did it happily, day after day; also making sure that I woke my roommate up too. On my way to the mess, I’d greet people and marvel at how in the morning, people were a little more open; maybe because they had a whole day to sort out in front of them. It seemed as if people really knew you in the mornings, and there were no secrets. These were the times when the corny old phrases suddenly made sense.

So markedly, I almost never missed a class. Suddenly, mornings became the sole reason for my happiness. A chance to dress up and get ready for classes, a chance to reach the university early and meet my friends, a chance to drink Chai before the class begun, a chance to laugh and share scandalous stories of the night before, with my friends who did not stay at the hostel. It was all this and more. I loved mornings. Mornings were a start of something new. Mornings invigorated me. 

Mornings soon started holding a significant and tangible value in my life. Even under the afternoon sun, everything lay buoyantly still for me, like a summer scene from a Van Gogh painting. And hence, these mornings were extremely productive and valuable, if not the best.  Of course, some mornings I preferred to stay in bed. As it'd rain cats and dogs, I would pull up the covers and stay in bed a little while longer. 

I still remember when I marked mornings as if they were an occasion, a festival of some sorts. It was when I set my alarm clock to this song, 

Morning comes slow today,

Memories push through from yesterday.

It was also during the week when I was set to attend the Poets of the Fall concert. I was ecstatic. A week before flying to Bangalore, this song had become a huge part of my mornings. This song was picked on a whim, but it has given me a lot to remember. 

It's the little things,
Little things,
Little things,
That make the world.

Holds true, to this day, thanks to that time of my life.

Featured here. :)

Unintended.

"What if I'd left the conversation mid-sentence that day, what if I hadn't disclosed my feelings? Would I still be who I am? Or will your judgment of me be clouded by my "vulnerability" and just that?"

She wanted to think of words that would make a difference, words that were sufficient to make a change, to make her feel invigorated, to make her feel more of anything that was less. 

 She broke the glass wall,

He flinched as she rubbed her hands against the glass, 

The haziness disappeared, the breathing stopped.

The bleeding starts,

Because somewhere she reached where she didn't intend to reach, 

A place which brought upon a dissatisfaction not known before, 

To feelings unraveled and feelings heightened,

Another universe unimagined. 

A place where all powers of understanding diminished into a tiny speck of dust,

All images blurred, no negotiation, no compromise,

But the truth which only hurt. 

And the only place which lies ahead of this place is so far away,

It's the place where you feel nothing any more.

No love, no shame

No hurt, no pain

No loss, no gain.
Reborn,

Unavoidable and uncontrollable urges ooze out,

Brewing of new blood beneath a vaunting smile,

Creation of magic from unassuming romantic notions,

Burning bridges,

Scattering pieces,

Clearing out,

Unmentionable conversations of grim old fairy-tales,

Seeking out the unsaid emotions,

Decorating them with astringent words,

Reaching out, crawling back in,

Unsaid.Unintended.Untold.

Just like rain

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

The sight of trees swaying in the wind from my bedroom window had me rivet to the bed in the afternoon languor. It’s the sight I love the most, and also the moments leading up to it. Moments where the sun would sequester itself behind the clouds and the sky would turn gray. Some would say that a sky bereft of colour is inauspicious, that dark clouds gathering around in the sky is a sign of bad weather. But it’s moments like these, which I really love.

You must be really romantic, they’d say.

I’d shake my head at such banal and hackneyed analogy.

Romantic notions is what I thrive on, I’d tell them.

So it goes. I step out into the dark to have my own love affair. Much awaited. The intoxicating smell of the potential rain hanged around in the air. I lift my head up to breathe it in, and as soon as I did that, two big rain drops fell upon my lips; a watery kiss, an airy love affair. Not strange at all.

There’s something about rain and monsoons- apart from the mud, the traffic, the mess and the insects creeping out of their hiding places-which is plainly romantic. There’s no sugar coating it. The intoxicating smell of rain, the capricious weather, the fascination, the ferocity, all of it had me genuflecting. Albeit the definition of the word romantic is very simple, it says-

Romantic (adj.): conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.

Therefore my feelings and yearning is same, it is love, and a much wider range of feelings that need to be placated by something other than rain itself. It’s such an absurd concept, of something as cold as rain relating to something as warm as love. Opposites attract, which is a scientific fact but it relates only to objects. Is it true when it comes to feelings as well? Is it what pulls people towards unrequited love? Like the rain. It’s something that you could have; it’s something that you long for. As if rain were a limbo, and the next thing you know, you’ve landed someplace where you could feel the warmth in your heart.

Books and coffee on a rainy day give me as much warmth. I’m just saying. Maybe the warmth that objects and humans render is different. It’s something I’ve never paid heed to.

Now won’t you follow me?

It’s raining.

You don’t like it?

No. I hate the rain.

Why?

It’s ephemeral, I hate that. Too much of it makes me sick. Just like short lived romances. I hate it.

And I ran into him in a cafe on a day just like this. Call it serendipity, call it chance. But these things happen often, so often that we take them for granted. I least expected it though, that is why it seemed surreal, out of the blue. You know, too good to be true and all? It’s too cliché, too mainstream. It’s predictable. Sometimes I’m taken aback, even when this kind of thing happens often with me. I just shrug it off. When it comes to chance, you can’t have expectations. It’s just an aphorism.

“You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it.”

We thrive on such twisted feelings and things that entangle our emotions, spreading like a colour. And then you have its fifty rendered shades. No, not the fifty shades of gray. Or is it?

Rain- fifty shades of gray. How uncanny.

Some people grow out of it, while some of us are too passionate.

When we stepped out of the cafe that day, it was drizzling. The trees were swaying, the moon was shinning and the air was cool. He was conscious, just because it was so romantic. I could feel the warmth radiating from him.

Then it started raining. And we just stood there in the rain, side by side. In the distance, a couple kissed as rain poured down in torrents. It was just like how they show it in the movies. I pondered over the idea of kissing in the rain, it fazed me. I don’t think I can handle such strong urges or emotions. I’ve always wanted something subtle, something as diaphanous and as transparent as the falling rain; and yet, something unbreakable.

But then again, you can’t predict such things. Maybe nobody really knows what they want until they have it. The world is funny. Maybe these two people were just lost in the moment, or maybe not. Maybe they were head over heels in love with each other, or maybe not. Maybe it was just an ostentatious display of love, aka, public display of affection. It had to be.

And I, I could almost touch him. I could almost contain the rain. But it slipped through my fingers every time. Maybe you can’t have something like the rain. Maybe it is just a postulate of love.

I caught him looking at me. He looked away. I smiled. Almost like the benign rain, I thought. And maybe this was our public display of affection.

 picture credits: google.

The right time, the right place.

She thought about it a lot, she wanted to let go of the exigent demands of her heart. She wanted nothing more than for it to lie still, for it to not complain. She listened to her head, and her dreams were sandpapered away, slowly, and then all at once. Not even a speck of dust settled. Everything was reduced to nothing more than a disillusioned reality. Life in its pristine form some would say, perfectly imperfect, as it should be. Maybe this is what makes life so interesting, where you’re just inches away from the precipice and all it takes is just one step, a wrong turn, an inadvertent swerve.

These incessant ramblings of her heart and the illusory gaiety with she led most part of her life, proved to be antithetical.

The juxtaposition of wanting to set roots and being free baffled her. It baffled her, to follow set guidelines, to reach somewhere and sacrifice all your life for an unwarranted achievement. It baffled her, to finally reach somewhere, only to start planning out the next big thing, the next big vacation. The destination mania is nothing less than a chronic illness, which is one of the many human obscure tendencies. It’s monomaniacal to think of life as progressive. But day after day, she’s jostling, thriving on a PDF of fifty pages to be tested on a mere two marker question. She’s swirling, like a frail paper on a stormy afternoon, wanting to get stuck somewhere where she’s free(as oxymoronic as it may seem); only to be swirled away again, not on whim, but by force. Not the driving force, surely. 

And drifting within confined spaces is rarely ever fun, you see the same people who talk about the same things. It’s draining, all the lollygagging that you get enveloped in sometimes. And she doesn’t want to be dowsed with flimflam all the time. It makes everything shrouded; like a mountain is by clouds. Therefore she’s caught in a pattern, her life’s modus operandi.

She can’t help wondering how the mind is free to travel to numerous places but still at the end of the day, your heart is pumping blood in the same body, to which the place is immaterial and the experiences, impersonal.  So she perorates in her mind – what if we could stay at the same place and in the same time, and still feel that we’ve learned something worthwhile?

She just wants to put things in their right places, wherever it feels that they’re a little off. Whatever that right place and time is, it has to be undecided. Nothing grand, is all she wants it to be. Embrace it, some would say. She just wants to be her own hero, knowing that only rarely the ground beneath her would be firm.

Flummoxed, aren’t you? She’d say.

With love, daughter. (Unapologetically cliché)

You cuddled me and cheered me up. You told me that it's all right, again and again. In your arms, I felt the warmth of your love. I felt safe, as you caressed me. When I cried, you wiped my tears and you cried with me. You spent sleepless nights during my sickness and bad days. You're the method to my madness, the reason why I am so brave. You always managed to sense the desperation beneath my cajolery. You're the reason why I've taken several steps towards events where I knew I was surely to get hurt. Yet, you asked me to take a chance. And you were the only one who did, so I did, I got hurt, but I learnt to lift myself up. You never let me be the burnt child who dreaded the fire. You helped me gain ground. You're a Good Samaritan, you forgive so easily. You extol the person who has hurt you, and it's beyond my realms of understanding how you manage to do that. 

You must have been trying to prepare me for different situations that might present themselves to me in future, and I was benighted at times. Because I could never comprehend what shape they might take in future, and this is where I was really a child to you.

And the times I have turned my face away from yours might be innumerable. A hundred little conflicts, fights and wishes that entailed being born far away from you now seem evil on my part, because it was always you who consoled me. Oh, how I always thought that you picked me to pieces and projected your aspirations on mine. But it's not your fault. Everybody in this world is allowed to have expectations. I do too. And yet you supported me no matter what. 

Your beliefs were never my beliefs, I evolved and changed and yet you accepted me for all that I am. I never believed in your God- his infinite knowledge, his love, his existence-it’s always a big joke to me. Yet we understood each other and existed on the same ground, happily. Our subtle perceptions and abstruse philosophies learnt to intermingle, and it’s still a work in progress. I can only imagine somebody to love me unconditionally, like you have. When did it matter if it were an obligation or not?

But I know now that I'm not a child anymore; I can't crawl back into your arms whenever I feel scared. I can't cry to you every time things went haywire because the number is uncountable. I can't discuss with you the interminable fights I fight with myself. I can't bother you with callow stories of all the whippersnappers I'd to deal with in my life. You don't tell me anymore that I'm too young for love because I'm too old to not know. You don't ask me where I'm headed, because I'm too old to not figure out the directions to a place that's far away from home. You don't ask me whom I'm talking to (not until you see a smile on my face!). 

You know exactly how much pain I can tolerate as I say I can't be hurt. 

And you know one thing best, mother - to mollycoddle me. 

Oh don't I hate being so cliché? 

But take this as a spiritual epiphany. I've always wanted to be myself. And these are my very genuine feelings. Here's to you, before these words get lost in a cobweb at the back of my mind and I'm too dazed to make sense of it all, before I use up all the words to cook up stories that hold no face value, here's to you.