Perspective

It was a usual lazy sunday afternoon. Half of which I had spent cribbing about trivialities like it being too sunny, too hot, too bright outside; tomorrow being a Monday requiring me to go back to mundane work again; and the other half was spent in picking between two really hard life choices - doing the laundry, cleaning the house, cooking versus napping and wasting time. As one would expect, laziness is mightier than all swords and hence, the latter choice always wins. Fast foward to 5 PM sunday evening. I wake up sullen & sourpuss because well for one, its only a few hours to the ever dreadful Monday now but also because no work got done and the house is a mess. In your head you go all dramatic about what a big piece of shit life is and how you don't like anything or anyone. You make mental notes of how endlessly your mom talks everytime you call her and yet complains about you not calling her enough. You think about what a pain 16 hour flights are to India and sometimes wish you didn't have to ever take them again. The sun outside is still blinding you. Did you really wait for summer so eagerly? Give me the winter anyday over this. Oh! But the snow! Don't you hate that too? Your mind wanders to that annoying colleague at work. Isn't she competitive to the edge of being a jerk? Who cares? You hate work anyways. But you love the gym at work, don't you? I wonder why I don't lose any weight. How much harder can I slog at the gym, really? Isn't it frustrating when you work out every single day of the week with passion and your weighing machine hasn't budged a number (not even the one after the decimal point) in five months? I am hungry. What do I cook for dinnner? I possibly can't eat out again. I miss India. Those guys have it so lucky. Most of my friends still never have to cook. And really if I had the luxury of a maid doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards, I would cook as much as Nigella Lawson. Why are the fuel prices going up again? Tickets are so expensive to everywhere. Can't believe I will be sulking at home yet another long weekend. Do I really love my boyfriend? I wonder what he adds to my experience of life. Do I even like men? How could I possibly tell if I liked women without ever dating one? After all, wasn't I conditioned to believe I am straight? I hate finance. Don't I? Didn't I always hate math, numbers, finance. How did I end up on wall street? I think it's the commute to Manhattan every day that makes it worse? Is it about time I moved to the city? That would mean no savings. Savings! What a joke. I don't have any savings even today. But can I really live in an 8X11 prison cell? with rats, possibly! All I need is a pet but is is such a responsibility. Plus, all day alone for the pet at home - inhumane, don't you think? As usual again, your mind is a jungle. A chaotic mess of contradictory and regressive thoughts whiplashing against each other, possibly bringing in a neurosis. You mindlessly reach out for your phone. One unread email - the screen says. It's from my accountant. It read - 

Hello Jiya,

Regret the silence from my end these past few weeks. We lost our daughter to an aggressive, hitherto unknown, strain of cancer last month. I am now getting back into work mode and will get back to you after updating pending work at my end. Regret any inconvenience it may have caused.

Regards,

Ankit Mehta 

Wham!! What were you just hit with. You have never met Ankit. He works remotely from his California office. You don't know who his daughter is. But you know she was young, probably your age. And you had once seen a smiling picture of Ankit with his daughter somewhere on social media. You do remember her eyes. Young, ambitious, full of life. Wanting to see so much, to do so much. Hoping to travel across the seven seas, hoping to to fall in love a few times. So many dreams. Suddenly, all the noise in my head is all gone. There's pin drop silence. My trembling fingers find the reply button on my phone. I stare at the screen blankly. I don't know how to say I am sorry for your loss to this father. I cannot say I feel his pain because in all honesty, I can't. So, through the tears & the silence, I sit there phone in hand not knowing what to type.

For what is love that hath no eyes

For what is love that hath no eyes
that hath not met, that deals in lies
Ye love that for convenience sake
thrives in lonely hours, on a secret lake

It hath no limbs, it hath no sight
Wist we all that love is blind! but this?
This has no eyes, this doth not see
And thus lives on, in monopoly

Thy voice so sweet upon me fell
For thee, I sin; For thee, I'd take hell
Thy voice that sounds like heaven bells
Avaunt! Wise men rue, what a dreadful knell

Love that claims of longest kisses
No lips have met, nor tongues intertwined
Many a heaving bosoms, forlorn and turned
Ah! But a hundred nights the sighs have chimed

And yet one more time the night crawls in
And yet one more time on our beds we lain
Our hollow shadows on the wall
Ah! Such disdain. Ah! Such disdain

For what is love that can not touch
Nor fill my mouth with a burning kiss
Sets my heart ablaze with passion doth
And in one swift strike, unwraps my soul aloft my heels

When I am gone...

Some evenings, I just sit on my couch, book in hand, looking out of the window. Not reading, just staring blankly into the vastness. I wonder if I was gone, would you miss me? Every morning I wake up and I call you. I talk to you throughout the day in between tasks that demand my attention. We talk about our day, about past incidents, about future aspirations. Sometimes we talk about sundry things - the weather, football, other people. We talk & talk. We talk a lot. Sometimes, amidst the madness of our really busy days, one of us messages the other - "I miss you". I wonder what it really means. I think the simplest explanation is - I miss talking to you? What does that make me? Am I my words, am I my voice? What if tomorrow morning I woke up like Nakata? No recollection of anything, no words. Not knowing what to say or how to talk? But I woke up next to you and you never left my side again. Would you still miss me?

Sometimes I think we try too hard. Too hard to be liked, to be loved, to be wanted, to be missed, to not be forgotten. Why do we want to be remembered? Wouldn't it be nice if I was gone today and tomorrow you wouldn't remember me? Why do I want to be remembered? When I am gone, would I know I am still remembered?

I know I am replacable. I know I am not special. That you see everything in me, but it's in parts. And part by part, I am replacable. That if I am gone suddenly, without notice, without warning - you will be surprised but tomorrow will be just another day. The same day without the talk. May be you will miss the sound of my laughter on the phone, may be no one will ask you if you had lunch. May be a week will pass. But you will have lunch everyday without anyone asking if you did. You will still cross the road. Then slowly, or not so slowly, may be fastly, you will forget. The sound of my laughter, the sound of my voice, my talk, me. I will be a distant name on the far far horizon. But I was more. I was more than my words. I was more than my voice. I was more. But you and I never got to know.

Thinking "In" Loud

This morning, I woke up to the most beautiful version of Ed Sheeran's - Thinking out Loud. It lasted all of four minutes and thirty three seconds and despite being a very sleepy me, the entire length of the song, "my eyes smiled from my cheek". I am in love with this song. I practically breathe music. So, it's quite natural for me to be in love with certain songs from time to time. And I always seem to find something new to be addicted to, to replace the older one. But this one has managed to stick. For months. Every day. Multiple times a day. On repeat. Putting me to sleep every night, waking me up gently every morning, keeping me company on long solo drives into sunsets. Makes me wonder - “darling, will I be loving you 'til we're 70?"

Love is a beautiful, beautiful thing. In any capacity and any form, I believe there isn't a feeling more unadulterated than love. The human mind confuses it with a myriad of other emotions & feelings sometimes and then love doesn't seem like what it should be - pure & unconditional, honest & forgiving, passionate & all encompassing.

You may wonder if love is after all such a thing of beauty, more often than not why do we find ourselves all hurt & broken afterwards? Or worse, sometimes in it? There is a simple one word answer to that - expectations. Over the years, society has conditioned our mind to believe certain things and expect certain things with different kinds of love. We love our children today, coz they are "our" children, we are "supposed" to love them but sadly, also because we expect them to take care of us when we are weak & old. We love our parents coz we owe our life on earth to them but also because we know no matter how badly we screw up & how badly we treat them, they'll always be on our side, even when that is the wrong side. We love our husbands & wives because they are our safety net coz no matter how dull or boring we become tomorrow they'll still stick around. We love our brothers, wishfully thinking even years later when they are married & smitten by their gorgeous wives, we will still be the most important woman in their lives. We love our lovers coz they love us back, coz they make us feel good about ourselves, and most importantly coz they bring us hope of a dream like tomorrow. I am not undermining any of these relationships or emotions, but until you have allowed yourself to fall recklessly, madly, unconditionally in love you have not experienced this higher form of love that I am talking about here. Love that makes your eyes light up like a million stars, love that makes your heart swell. They talk about "how people fall in love in mysterious ways, Maybe just the touch of a hand" but have you ever been in love that touches you deep inside without ever touching? Love that makes you rich, so rich without ever giving? Love that makes "your mouth still remember the taste of the love" without ever kissing? That kind of love is rare, almost an oddity. But it is truly worth experiencing, I can tell you that. When you will be able to love without naming, without expectations and without holding back, you will experience life in a whole new way. Find a person or a thing you can love like that. But like I said, feeling this love is rare. Finding it, even more rare. If you ever find it, hold it with both hands and make sure it doesn't slip away. I hope you find it at least once in your lifetime. If you are lucky, may be you will find this kind of love more than once. And when all else fails, get a dog. 

Matloon Mizaj

Meri rooh, teri rooh
Meri baat, teri baat
Tere lavzon se mukkamal ki jaati thi,
mere honton se nikli hui har adhoori baat
Meri nabz, teri nabz
Meri saans, teri saans
Sirf kahaaniyon mein suna karte the hum,
aisa hote huye dekha hai aaj pehli baar
Mera aks, tera aks
Mera waqt, tera waqt
Badi shiddaton se ishq kiya karte the,
ki ho buland in gehraiyon se apna pyaar
Mere sawaal, tere sawaal
Mere jawaab, tere jawaab
Badi maasoomiyat se kiye jaate the,
bade jazbe se dhoonde jaate the jawabdehi ke auzaar
Mera dard, tera dard
Meri maat, teri maat
Shikast pasandi ka yeh kaarobaar hai sab,
teri haar mein kahin chhuppi hai meri bhi haar

Why I Can't Wish 'Mother's Day' To My Mom This Year

Firstly, thanks Womanatics for making a blog post out of this. I wouldn't have thought of converting my facebook status into a blog post. Here's the link -

http://www.womanatics.com/2014/05/true-story-why-i-cant-wish-mothers-day.html

Every Mother's Day I put up a status just like you all saying just how lucky and fortunate I am to have mom in my life, how she is the single best thing that ever happened to me and how I want to make her feel so very special today. Every year, just like a million other lucky sons and daughters, I wait eagerly for this second Sunday of May. This year, however, I have been dreading this day. A part of me is secretly wishing, mummy doesn't login to Facebook at all today. That somehow in her Sunday chores, the day just whizzes by and she fails to notice. Alas! That won't happen. Thanks to our invasive media, social and otherwise, the countless advertisements would take care that nobody, absolutely nobody gets past today without noticing it's Mother's Day. And yet again with some teeny weeny hope, I pray, she fails to notice. For this Mother's Day is my mother's first without her mom. And no matter how much love her kids, her husband, her dad and her brothers shower upon her, it will never add up to what she misses - today and everyday! 

A mom's love can never be replaced and the emptiness it leaves in your heart when she leaves is there to stay. I can hardly imagine what its like to wake up one day and know your mom is gone. Forever. I know it's the eternal truth but I don't want to imagine. And I hate to say it to you all, but this truth of life is universal. My truth here is no different from yours. And though Mother's Day definitely isn't the day to prepare yourself to brace this, but it certainly is the da to hug her just a little tighter, smile for her just a little brighter and say those three words rarely said to a mom anymore these days - 'I love you mom'. I love you very very much, mummy. 

And this is what I want to say to you -- all these years you have been a hell of a mom to me, but it's my turn now. I know I can never match up to Dida (grandma), but I try everyday. Everyday, I wake up and I try to be your mom. And though I will never quite get there, I hope it's making a difference. 

I am not scared anymore that you may wake up and notice it's Mother's Day. Infact, I hope now you wake up and login to Facebook first. I know tears will roll down your cheeks as you read this message, but I also know they will land on a beautiful smile - Happy Mother's Day!

Dil ki zubaan

befizool, bewajah,

behisaab, har jagah

humne poocha hai kai baar

kyun aati hai bin bulaye?

tune keh diya tha, ek baar

phir awaaz na dena

magar kambhakht teri yaad

ye peecha hi chodhe na

abhi bhi aati hai jo shaam

wo dhalti hai tere naam

abhi bhi raat ke sannato mein

tera ehsaas gunjta hai

hum dil se kehte hain

uska afsos kya karna?

wo jo kabhi tha hi na tera

us par har roz kyun marna?

dil badtameez hai mera

wapas jawaab deta hai

tu duniya ke kaydon mein jee

dil ki zubaan tere bas ki ab nahi