The journey-woman

As you drop your knapsack, like a battle weary soldier easing her of metal armour and weapons, and look at the dreamy destination you have toiled to reach which unfortunately doesn't look the way you expected it. Don't forget this destination whom you find short of expectations at least gave you a journey and made you richer by adding positives to the man and woman in you. Irrespective of destinations, love your journey, for there are no destinations, only journeys. Destinations are the shifting mirages. Reach one, and its latest variant teases you from a distance again, pulling you into an endless pursuit. With biggest uncertainty about its ending, life is naturally supposed to be a journey and its carrier simply a journey-woman. Had it been meant for destinations, the timing of its ending, death, won’t have been the most uncertain thing for each and every being alive out there.

Rabbit, try faking a lion for some time!

A bit of iron talk to test whether it stands or not in comparison to the butter soft approach to life. If living like an iron-masked alert soldier gives you sustained peace, well and good, you may carry on like a hard-fisted maniac. If you find something missing, you will automatically realize the significance of mellow posturing. So to start with the tough tasking.

Life is to be won by wearing the battle shields and arms of cold hard logic and point blank reasoning. You become a soldier. Keep your emotions and sensitivities safely cradled deep in your heart. Don’t wear them on your chest, otherwise some arrow will easily pierce you. So always be predatorily alert to the risks to your interests.

When life screws you up from many angles, and despite best of your efforts, and all the humanly possible tries, you find the situation unchanging, you can still fight for a change! The change in yourself, the carrier of all this unjustified shitty load! You can make yourself physically stronger. And forget about the psychological variants of strength. It is like a person suffering under 100 kg weight. And come whatever may, she cannot unburden herself of this load. What is the option left? It is just to get physically stronger so that it is possible to carry the load. I am talking of plain physical strength. Forget about all other hypothetical versions of strength. Simply believe that physical strength is the prelude to all other concepts of strength. So all you guys and girls, who are undeservedly carrying extra load in life, just sweat it out. Grow strong physically! Then you can even laugh at the weight on you!

But it should not be an alert soldier type all the way. You deserve our airy moments—little-little somersaults, froggy jumps over life's grounded roadblocks, tiny ballooned flights above the frictitious realities on the surface. But we must not forget we are terrestrial beings not the airy angels. So guys ensure that you land rightly on your feet after airy jaunts and not crash-land on you ass.

Hammering the nails into the box of destiny

God was hammering down nails into my wooden being to shape the box of my destiny. I but kept on crying with pain and cursed him for his mercilessness. My prayers egging Him on to toil more on my behalf and all this while I thought He was deaf. Making is a bit painful buddy, but believe every nail writes the script of many-many pleasant moments in future. Pain is never futile. It’s always a box in the making. And was construction ever devoid of pain, sweat, labour and suffering? These are just simply elements of ‘making’. Now I see the beautiful artwork of the box and come to realize why those nails were hammered. It was all meant to see me home. So love your struggles and sufferings buddies. That is when you actually get ‘made’ into something substantial. During the so called smooth phase when the life is safely on autopilot, you just trundle ahead carrying your old self cocooned in the make-believe sense of being happy and content. But in reality you hardly move ahead during this phase. The routine just plods you ahead like an impassive dummy. Be willing to accept your pain, suffering and struggle. It’s one of the best investments I know about. When you come out of the last dark hours of the night, believe me the sun shines resplendently like never before.

Love in the times of war

"But how deeply, painfully, irreparably had he wounded her and upset her life, and how restless and violent she was in her determination to re-shape her destiny and start afresh!" ___Boris Pasternak in Dr Zhivago

The smell is mildly pungent, of tobacco, of paper, soaked in the spirits of literature. Classics are classics. As I douse my hunger down the pages, a surprise awaits. A huge bonus which makes my day and turns me richer. A surprise gift. The story ends to live in your memory. But then there is a beginning once more. There are 43 pages of poetry, taking the last page of the book to the dreamy depths, to last forever. That's how Boris Pasternak surprises and gives a bonus to his readers in Dr Zhivago. 

Flower and snake caught in the single loop of memory

Some moments just get etched in your memory. Their empowering aesthetics or intimidating impulses can still tickle the senses even a decade later. Such moments define life, make it momentous. These moments stand as the real milestones notifying the flow of invisible, unstoppable stream of time. Such moments stand out in two ways: a) raising your hair, jolting your senses and giving scary Goosebumps; b) massaging your aesthetic senses in a way that you retain the touch almost throughout life. I can recall two such moments.

The first one occurred a decade back at the start of the winters in Delhi. As the metro's first ladies only coach eased its beautiful burden, I found myself walking down the stairs among a fragrant swarm of few dozen beautiful ladies. Colorful woolens…Deo and perfume...grace and beauty. Flowers. I felt like in a perfumery...like a guilty black-bee in a garden. It was really overpowering. I can still smell and see those moments as vividly as it happened a decade ago. Some moments just refuse to fade from your mind’s horizon. 

The second one still sees me swathed with swirling emotions of scared ecstasy, awe, plain fear and genuine appreciation. The moment stands erect almost a decade back on the highway of time. I saw two snakes mating..and not on tv guys..in real. Surrendered to slithery, coiled, hissing passion, their venomous stalking turned to submission. The kiss of death morphed into the kiss of love. Their fangs and poison took backseat. Horrified initially, my shaken self felt the coiled fluidity of those two slithery bodies forming love loops…shocking majesty…ecstatic! Those vivid images still crawl in my mind like it’s happening now itself.