A First, and One of the Bests

Well.
Yeah, this blog post begins with a "well..." It's about that feeling, you know THAT feeling - that intangibility that's called love, but which I'm going to call "like". I have no idea what "love" is and, somehow, using that word makes me feel even more vulnerable than what this intimate piece of writing anyway makes me feel.
It's that feeling when you like someone. When you really, really like someone.
Like a lot of other posts in my blog documenting "firsts", this is a first for me too. The honesty with which I have this feeling, and the intensity, and a liberating uplifting strength that I'm able to derive from it - whatever be the decision of the object of my "like" - is my first.
This first experience has had an effect on me that I did not quite anticipate. I find myself reading up literature on subjects related to "liking someone" as they show up in my social media newsfeed when all I would have done earlier was ignore and scroll over. It's surprising to me but also a bit beautiful how I find myself relating to thoughts expressed by noted people from various walks of life on that feeling - "like".
There's this one particular piece of literature I came across that resonates most closely with what I feel. It's a letter from John Steinbeck to his son trying to pick apart and put together what "love" is and what to do when you have such feelings for another. I find that my feelings of "like" are inspiring me to be a better person, they're bringing about this "outpouring of everything good in you", as Steinbeck put it. And I figure that's partly because I want to "live up" to the excellence in character portrayed by the person I like. Steinbeck advised his son to "try to live up to it" - to his son's feelings of affection for the person he adored.
This is coming from a recognition of another person as "unique and valuable" and makes you want to respect that person and their choices and decisions. I love how Steinbeck's letter to his son so eloquently expresses what takes me a lot of courage to put down in this post. And I have to laugh at this polarity - writing down so openly, more than I have ever dared before - halting, hesitating with shyness but also wanting to shout out from the rooftops and letting the world know! I know that this "like" is almost releasing in me "strength and courage" and I hope a lot of "goodness" and "wisdom" too as Steinbeck described happens with a love that's not focused around self-interest or self-importance.
I am entitled to my feelings and likes and dislikes and so is the person I like - and I respect that. Neither of our feelings become any less "valuable" or "good" - they are ours, they belong to each of us and so are valid. Steinbeck told his son that "it sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another - but that does not make your feeling any less valuable". And neither does it discredit the object of your affection if they have a "like" that's different from yours and is not you.
Brain Pickings described this Steinbeck letter as reflecting "tenderness, optimism, timelessness and sagacity" that come when you like someone in ways that uplift you and make you want to be a better person. Echoing those sentiments, I think I'll close out this post with what the father had to say to his lovestruck son on what to do about such feelings - "glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it...And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens..."

Of Glorious Sunsets, Gorgeous Evenings and Big Dreams

The road you walk curves gently, bringing into view a soft orange glow far away at the horizon that peeks through clumps of shaded dark-green foliage in the foreground. As you move closer, you discern branches of delicately-strung Cottonwood leaves hanging down ever so gracefully to meet the horizon's ground plane. The leaves quiver lightly with  gusts of wind blowing every now and then. Their tips catch the faint sunset's brilliant peach-coloured radiance. Walking on, the drooping branches and gold-drenched leaves, dancing in the wind, lead your eye to a small grassy mound in the distance. A mellow setting sun emerges behind the hillock, bathing clouds around and ground below in glimmering gold-yellow dust.
You walk along, soaking in the iridescent evening. This is the road. The road leading you, steadily, to your dreams.

"The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you've ever been. The one constant in our life is change." - Dan Gilbert

Throwback Tuesday - The Start of a Life's Pursuit

The roads are choc-a-block and we’re crawling our way through the illogically confused body of buses, cars, trucks, auto rickshaws, motorcycles and bicycles occupying the road sprinkled with a good number of pedestrians trying to cross through the spaces in between all these. Well, it’s hardly an unusual aspect of travelling in Hyderabad that I need to write about. Commuting in Hyderabad is no less than a Herculean task, and if you think, “oh, a little patience will surely get me through the traffic to my destination”, hold on! Did I mention the heat radiated from the black tar roads, the exhaust of vehicles, the smoke filled air and the sun beating down on you will make you feel like you’re being cooked in an oven and leave you with no remembrance of your destination? In fact, it has quite the effect of turning commuters into warriors who are only determined to fight their way out of this obstacle-laden course.

          It’s a big surprise, when, just a turn into a small lane off the main road and a small driving distance later I emerge onto this seemingly endless tract of muddy land with patches of green every here and there, rocks of all shapes and sizes jutting out of the land at various heights meeting a sapphire blue sky in the distance.

          The group is assembled and all ready for the “rock walk.” We make our way through a “kuchha road”, wild greens bordering us on either side. I can see a large number of millipedes on the ground. And termite hills. There are the ubiquitous ants too, so many that it almost makes you discount their presence. Now we walk over almost flat rock surfaces, now we climb over a few higher ones even as we brush our way through the nettle branches.  The “walk” is a long and a little arduous but I can see the exhilaration on every group member’s face. We’re surrounded by an impressively beautiful panorama being revealed by every step we take. There’s been a cool breeze blowing all the while. It’s sweet and uplifting and energizing.

          However, the best parts of our “walk” are the mammoth boulders we keep encountering. They’re millions of years old and absolutely magnificent. I can’t help being in awe of them because they inspire a feeling of regality. Here is an overwhelmingly beautiful form of Nature which makes us sit up and truly admire her beauty. Curious, because an odd indoor plant or a smattering of trees in the cityscape hardly evoke any feelings. As a few members of the group are pointing out, some of the rocks are perched one on top of the other in precarious looking formations yet they are perfectly balanced, and what’s more they’ve stood like that for thousands of years.

          Walking, climbing, gushing about the landscape together, we are just making our way over a narrow strip of what looks like a bund wall when we see a swatch of pale blue on the ground in the distance. It’s a lake! It almost seems like some secret lake being revealed to us ecstatic bunch of “rock walkers” lapping up every ounce of nature we’re encountering. I wonder at the serenity of the place - there are a few locals by the shore washing their clothes, four buffaloes lounging in the cool water and some children happily flying kites - and the whole scene is tranquil and the quietude induces a soothing calmness of the mind. After a while of resting amidst the rocks and the greenery and a bit of sketching and painting by some members, we start to make our way back. The sky has turned a darker shade of blue and the clouds are now glowing orange. We assemble back at our designated meeting point exchanging notes and talking. There are beads of sweat on most of the group members’ foreheads. Everyone’s breathing harder - the kind that always accompanies strenuous physical activity. Only, in a strange way the fast breath is cleansing and invigorating. Keats’s “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” is running through my mind. I can hardly wait for our next “rock walk” now.

The Stuff Sukoon's Made Of

"Bhains ... bachda jani." On trusting and being careful in whom you place your trust.

"Aankh se hasrat, daant se mazaa,
Yeh do na ho toh aakhir khazaa."

"Khamoshi teri ae dilruba kuch aur kehti hai,
Fizaa kuch aur kehti hai, Hawaa kuch aur kehti hai."

"Aaye jawaani, jaaye jawaani,
Jaakar phir na aaye jawaani."

"Guzre zamaane yaad na aa,
Ek soch si hain jeene kya hoga zindagi mein,
Yunhi kategi shaayad hasrat mein bebasi."

"Shukar ... ka kar, ladgayi kismat teri,
Yek be ek pari ko hui ulfat teri."

"Maa-Baap se rakh dosti, Maa-Baap phir milte kahaan? Biwi mile Bacchhe mile, Maa-Baap phir milte kahaan?
Maa-Baap se rakh dosti, Maa-Baap phir milte kahaan? Bhai mile, Bahan mile, Maa-Baap phir milte kahaan?"

This is my time.

You glance out of the window and gaze upon the swathe of smoky grey-blue snow laying almost evenly flat on the ground and stretching out as far as the eye can see. It's as cool-grey and steel-blue as the night sky is a cloudy white. There's something bewitching about the scene - a charm that wants to draw you out and onto the path you see your life chalking itself out on the clean snow-laden slate. Snow and Sky together radiate a soft, gentle whiteness. The colours cool your mind. The now-lit, now-in-shadow patches of the ever so slightly undulating snow sheaf  glitter like a blanket woven of tiny gemstones even as it inspires crystal-like clarity in your thoughts.
The night is young. It has come into its own now as Twilight ended. It seems to rejoice in its newness and its alluring naïveté - unapologetically.
And it will change, it knows, to a darker, older Night as time goes by. But this time - this Now, belongs to it. And so does mine.
This is my time. The time of my life. And I will have it.

Making more pictures with words...

That first visit home - when those little things you know so well are reassuringly the same yet Change reveals itself subtly in your surroundings; when the mannerisms of your old life seem to come alive from deep recesses of your memory; when you intuitively find your way in a place whose memory's been dulled by Time and Absence; when you're finally amidst the sights, sounds and smells you've yearned for; when you can't wait to excitedly embrace the place that left you with beautiful memories, the stuff that you know, or hope, will make many more; when you feel like you've never been away as you easily slip back into the old routine - Yes, a 'first' experience of that first visit home. A smorgasbord of emotions!

December 13, 2011

Lazy Sundays, spicy Indian food, nostalgic and delightful conversations with family over cups of steaming chai and reminiscing time with Dad. A bittersweet Indian vacation.

December 18, 2011

The cool night breeze, that I've known so well, sweeps through the window and across my face stirring up a melange of memories and emotions. Sigh, this trip is turning out harder than what I'd prepared myself for.

December 19, 2011

‎'Hazar rpm pakad ke chalna padta samjho' says the man at the table beside mine in characteristic Deccani Urdu even as I unapologetically eavesdrop while savouring my crisp, hot dosa and listening to 'Aaja piya' s strains over the restaurant's speakers. I love life right now!

December 20, 2011

A beautiful mellow sunset bathes the trees along the road in a golden-yellow light and bounces off the glass facades of the buildings across the street scattering more gold and yellow shimmer in the atmosphere setting the tone for a great evening. An evening spent wandering the tiny, lively lanes of General Bazar lined with shops that explode with wild, loud colours and glitter with festive lights, spreading buoyant cheer as you take in the sights and sounds and try to capture the holiday scene for ever and a day.

December 28, 2011