Neatly Folded

" Perhaps you have reached the stage when life stops giving you and starts taking away " - Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull . Few, very few, have not been as lucky. There are those out there, like me, who have only learnt to let go. Whether we want to or not. To learn to love, only to lose - is a fate that I would not wish upon my worst enemies, even in my greatest rage. For that is a reality that I am still teaching myself to live with. There are those who believe this is an act of self-pity but believe me, after years of scornful speeches from well-wishers and watching them return in their own time to apologise for their insensitivity, I have learnt not to care. Those who try to understand might succeed but those that grow tired of only listening to my daily struggle to live a meaningful existence and more than welcome to walk out of the door - and they have. I will not wallow in the whole morbid recollection of all that I have lost this year, for the list continues

India's much too short autumn is breathing its last and the onslaught of the cold draught of wind stirs up an age-old foe, depression. I am not among the surprised ones this year. I have known all too well of the creeping hollowness that winters can bring. However, I must admit that I am surprised that instead of being on guard against the symptoms I have come to know very well. I find myself wielding a defiant shield against a recognised few. So here I am today, battling the horrors that make the ones I care about weak and try to help them overcome their fears and the only question that I face, like every other year, is.. What should I look forward to now? Do not misunderstand my anxiety for depression, let the insolence lie aside for a while. Sit, listen to me for once... for I have much to express. Life has been as exciting as I could have never possibly imagined. My understanding is so very limited that I simply give up in awe at the beauty of everything around me. It is tru

It's quite an unnatural feeling. I do not remember last feeling it. It is a fear. Prone to tragedies, I am quite used to the concept of death/passing over or whatever you may wish to call it. Hence, my fear of the dark is not for myself anymore. What can a spirit gain of hurting me? I do not fear death for I do not feel the urge to live. No, I am not depressed. I am just honest about the fact that I have realised that there is no major loss in my death. Hence, I see no reason to fear it. Or at least that's what I thought. Sidelining the issue a bit, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with Uppa. It was about why I hate calendars. I do hate them still. The date and time have their relevance but I am comfortable with a simple icon at the edge of a computer to remind me of it, instead of a full-fledged sheet with numbers and months printed on it. As someone who has seen a little too much of death in life, a calendar often turns out to be a bitter reminder of birthdays, a

I had happily passed the phase after the strange dream I had of a naked woman wrapped by a giant snake. Till a few minutes ago when a picture of the very vision I had, popped on the screen of my colleague (who sits next to me).. It was a page about Lilith. The true alter-ego of man and the woman God created before Eve. On reading some more, I understand that Lilith was way too explosive to sustain life on Earth and hence, she had to be destroyed. The tamer Eve took her place but Lilith, having been a resident of the Earth, left her traces behind. She had, in fact, borne Adam children.. a girl (I don't know why this sounds obvious) along with several various lesser forms of human (who were conveniently tagged as demon off-spring and their mother termed as a demoness) but since she was uncontrollable to Adam, she was banished. Adam and Eve continued their life on Earth. It is thus, a myth that all children were born of Adam and Eve alone... Lilith and her children prospered as well

I don't think I can ever stop talking about my bizarre and mostly non-existent sleeping habits. From not being able to sleep a wink for five days at a row and then collapsing into two continuous days of a world-weary slumber, to being groggy all the time despite having sufficient sleep. At times, I felt that life chose to put me to sleep in accordance to its plans but I don't think that is the case any longer, for my patterns do not make sense now. A new facet, a thought is developing in my sleep-induced mind. I need a dream. Like a mirage.. that will excite and prod me through a phase that I am going through. Like I always say, it is impossible to master the shades that life has to offer and that is exactly what makes life such a good teacher. There is nothing as unpredictable as life and as a true follower of the same, I understand the complicated soul that I seem to become in the eyes of those who choose not to believe. It is impossible for me to imagine myself content in li

It really isn't that hard to smile, I have realised. Yes, sometimes you really get tired of being in one state of mind for too long and then you erupt with all the anxieties and frustrations that you have been tossing away for 'later reference'. At such times, it is easy to spiral down the never-ending darkness and no matter how hard you try to find a foothold, there is no way that one finds an easy way to break the fall. As I age, I find it easier to become calmer and therefore, my spirals have become more violent. The sense of constantly tripping into the abyss from which I may or may not be able to crawl out takes a toll on my psyche. There are two ways of dealing with this now. I can give in to the sickening feeling that rises in my system after every storm or take charge and find brand new ways of combatting my own mind! As far as I go, I need to just remind myself that anger is pointless. The only person affected by my misery is me. The world I live in has no room for

For quite a while, the essence of life has been dawning upon me by way of little miracles that egged me on to celebrate the life that I was living. I sought nothing more than a reason to make sense of every day that I was gifted and found contentment in witnessing those little acts of God that few passers-by stopped to marvel at. Needless to say, the night had waded away as I set about living my life with all the dexterity of a peasant going about his business in his waking hours. Crash! Boom! The night descended yet again. I have often admired how quickly darkness descends after twilight as opposed to the almost reluctant daybreak, marred by a cover of dense clouds on some days... Days like this are the ones that make me feel as if they were not meant to happen! Despite having slept right through the weekend, I did not quite find the energy in me to engage myself in any useful activity this morning to I simply turned towards the wall of the room, seeking the comfort of a memory I had

It has indeed been quite a while since I posted the thoughts on my mind. It is easy, for those like me, to lose ourselves in the flow of events and find in us the courage to reconnect with what we are forced to leave behind. It is as painful as looking into the mirror, for I am no longer sure of what I am going to see. Yet, I know that it is important to return to any semblance of an identity. For me, returning to this blog is a reminder of who I was, who I am and what I capable of. There has been yet another loss. It is strangely stifled though, the pain. Perhaps it will reveal itself to me at a time when I might not be in a condition to handle it. In the series of events of my life, this seems very likely. Till then, I simply have to wait and perhaps, try to prepare myself for what I will face. Fir now, the physical agony is enough to dominate my mind. I am trying to deal a little differently with it this time. Keeping off the alcohol, despite the pain and though I do not have much o

It seems the universe has not found too many patient ears for some time. Relentless dreams and visions have started playing tricks on my sense of reality. My body demands longer hours of isolation, to sleep.. to wander in the world of the mind and soak in everything. I would not have been perturbed if the visions did not start, so blatantly, borrowing images from my mortal existence. I am trying to chronicle the flow of dreams so far and I hope it will help me make sense of them all. I am not sure of the time when I saw this dream, it could have been late on Saturday morning. It was part graphics or maybe just a burst of activity that I could not see through but what I saw very clearly was a floating lotus-shaped figure. I could recognise it instantly and yet I hesitated, even when it was closed I could feel that not was not a good sign. And then, it opened as if it's trance had been broken by my presence and that's when I recognised it fully. A third eye. An angry third eye! I

It has been quite a few months since my last room partner, Emma, bid me goodbye. A silent entity, I will remember her for her uncanny habit of finding her way into my bed soon after she knew that I had drifted into sleep and lie next to me causing my quilt to slide away towards her. It really pissed me off at times! Having to wake up again and again from my sound sleep to pull the quilt back on me, only to recede to my slumber and be woken yet again. I don't think it was just my imagination that I could hear Emma stifle a laugh. I just snort back in irritation and draw myself back into sleep. I often wondered about how Emma came to live with me. A peaceful childlike entity like her sharing space with a moody loudmouth like me. She must have had her own share of complains about me too. I never truly understood anything about her except that for some strange reason she felt protected around me. Perhaps because I didn't treat her like the other people she might have chanced upon.

There was nothing that could calm her down. Everything about her life was falling to pieces and she juggled multiple facets of her life, trying to restore some peace and order. But they just kept falling apart. She tried everything to keep herself calm, called up her friends, meditated and tried to read in whatever time she got to keep her mind from steering off course. "I don't know what's going on?" she said aloud to herself, flinging down her book. "Someone somewhere is really upset with me," she continued to the invisible audience, breaking down into tears. "My boss doesn't like me. My work is getting too hectic. My friends keep fighting and are very unhappy. I have no money left. I have nothing to look forward to," she complained. "There's tomorrow," said a familiar voice. The thought confused her but she found it strangely comforting. "Look outside," said the voice, "it is cold and dark and there seems no chan

Yes, I got hit by another emotional asteroid and decided to channelise the emotion into discovering something intelligible to the brain. Seems like Musicology provides just the answer I was getting at. There are, in fact, songs that can trigger depression and songs like this 'Hungarian Suicide Song' have been banned from the airwaves for their effect on the general psyche. You can find it as the 'Gloomy Sunday' song on Youtube, it has been covered by several artisted and I liked Portishead's version a lot. While on youtube also see "Ten Ways - Gloomy Sunday" for the interpretation of the song by a musicologist. Perhaps it is the dialect that does not let me connect with any of the 'international suicide chartbusters'. I didn't feel 'sucked in' by Radiohead's 'Creep' or Rihanna's 'Love the way you Lie' as much as I felt distraught by 'Koi Fariyaad' and 'Tum Bin'. I am sure I will find just the note

This is yet another of those bigger truths that simply floated into my mind during a late night conversation with my soul. I was thinking about some random occult practices that I haven't practiced in a while (not that I am a devout follower) when I it occurred to me that the concept of time, is a man-made one. God, doesn't understand or adhere to man's principle of time. Think about it, the day doesn't start or end at the same time. Time is not the constant, sunrise and sunset are. The seasons are not dependant on time, life and death are not dependant on time either. We, as humans, have devised time as a tool. This led me to the other question, why? Why do we need time? Well, how else would man have justified his other great concoction, reality. Time is a measure for reality. If a person dies, we are in a state of shock. We call it an untimely death or worse, "Their time was up." Really? As someone who strongly believes that every human being on the face of

I believe that once you have immersed yourself in the cosmic energy and have managed to develop, even for a short while, a connect with the higher source then it continues to speak to you through your subconscious. For instance, I have never been able to understand how it is that the realisation of all bigger truths have occurred to me between 1.30 am and 2.30 am when I am sitting on my bed with my blanket or quilt wrapped around me and always, through a conversation with myself. Before you start laughing, I have been talking aloud to myself since childhood and find it greatly therapeutic. Even before I read about the ill-effects of oversleeping in a copy of the Manusmriti, I had known that some of my most bizzare dreams have been well after waking hours. Normally when I fall into the habit of sleeping only after daybreak these dreams/nightmares find their way into my sleep-ridden mind and wake me up with a start in the early hours of the afternoon. Today's nightmare was no differe

Today's revelation came in the form of a Google search. Driven by some visions that have been plaguing my mind and the impact of a horror movie that I recently saw and have not been able to steer clear of, I searched for a solution. Page after morbid page, finally led me to a site on Past Life Regression. Not a new concept to me, I have somehow always turned my back on the possibility of the core issue being beyond my current birth. There has been ample turbulence in this lifetime to keep me overworked. Another reason that stopped me from considering Past Life Regression is the complete absence of any pattern to guide me towards the same. Generally, there is a fixed formula like repeated nightmares, visions of people who one has never met and yet feeling strongly connected to, inexplicable fears including fear of death or of any elements that leave a trail to the past life incidents. A visit to previous life experiences can help bring more meaning to life and heal the wounds that t

After the turbulence reached a crescendo in my mind last evening, I decided to take matters back into my hand. There has been loss, yes, but there has been more than fair share of happiness too. At a complete loss of direction, I sat down in my bed, wrapped myself around me and prayed, like never before, for peace. After nearly 30 minutes of washing away the pain in tears, I felt a sense of relief. I picked up the phone to call th two people who had suffered the brunt of my madness and reassured them of my calm. Then, the lights went out. Startled back into reality, I heard the sound of the winds gushing in the room from every side of my closed room. When I made my way up the staircase to the terrace, I saw the first rain of the year, on my mother's birthday. As someone who has always associated the rain with The Divine Mother's spirit, it was such a blessing. It felt so hugely cathartic to be in Her presence. The rain washed away my tears and cleared me of all my misery. As I

This has to be the end of the line humour for anyone who bothers to read. Last evening, a friend and I sat down to listen to the new version of Eminem's Love the Way you Lie. It was just a flicker of emotion on her face but I sensed it immediately. The memory of being through a violent kind of passion and with the very sense of it I realised yet another thing. The ugly beast inside me was smirking... I sensed how strongly I had repressed it's powerful claw and now, I realised I had failed and that it had found a broken piece of mirror to flow back into the reflection. It took me three hours of non-stop prayers to find any semblance of peace this morning. The Satan as anyone who has been his prey knows, knows the best time to strike and like every year, these past seven years, today has always been the weakest day for me. And so, I looked up the internet to see the root of the evil and I realised that yes, there are numerous accounts of songs/tracks that I can bring under the

The trip to Vridavan has left me deeply disturbed. When asked to offer prayers to ensure that my parents would find a place in heaven after their demise, I had no response to give. The priest urged me to name my parents along with the name of the God and assured me that their mortal life would be long and full of joys brought by me and if I returned for three years to the temple and offered the same prayers I could assure them a place at the Lord's feet after their journey on the Earth was over. I flinched. Making money of another's weakness isn't a new phenomenon to anyone living in our times. But the void that I struggle to live with every day suddenly takes over my life completely. I had barely recovered when I found myself in Mathura, egged on by the head priest to swing the jhoola of BalGopal and be blessed, in return, with children of my own. I flinched again. The gaping holes of life loomed so hugely before me, threatening to drag me right back into the folds of blac

I was startled to receive an invitation to participate in Egypt's national uprising against their government led by President Hosni Mubarak. What could I, an Indian, do about the issue while sitting at my desk in New Delhi while people continued to bleed to death in Cairo demanding food, a right to better health, jobs and an overall upliftment from poverty? I tried but I simply could get my thoughts in place to get along with my day as if nothing had happened. I started reading up about the situation in Cairo and Suez and as the images began to show me the face of rebellion, I knew that there had to be something, someway to connect. I write this post on my blog as a beginning, to register my voice along with a million others against violence of any form in any part of the planet. The story of Egypt is not the first I feel deeply connected to right now, I will not forget the riots of Jammu and Kashmir last year. While the rest of the country was basking in the joys of football,

I have a deep fascination for incomplete stories. There's no way of knowing what kind of twists and turns are yet to be seen in the tale and whether the end will a part of someone's reality or will it remain a figment of our imagination. The reason why I have such a deep fascination for incomplete stories is because I can't stand them. I need to know how it ended and will leave no stone unturned to find out. That's exactly how it happened last evening as I sat down to write about an incomplete chapter in my life and how it often comes back to haunt me with an agony, that cannot possibly be put down in words. Not only is that chapter ridden with the deepest sense of guilt it is also one that is difficult to tell. So after an hour and a half for searching the right words last evening and matching them to my sentiment and writing down a decent post about that incomplete chapter I decided to put it to print. Viola! The website crashed. No matter how much I tried, there was

Lost (as always) by the window seat on the bus ride to office, I felt a little tug on my shoulder. Kids!! There's always those days when a screeching child is being fiddled over by the mother who is making a more sincere effort towards making it all look very appealing to the irritated fellow passengers than calming the apple of her eye. My flow of anguish was met by a pair of solemn eyes next to me belonging to a little girl no more than six years of age who muttered a very quiet 'Sorry' under her breath as she looked away. Her mother seemed unwell and had taken the only remaining vacant seat in the bus and her father stood protectively beside her. The little girl looked tired but knew better than asking for some space to sit down next to her mother. She had found a little space to squeeze into between her mother's knees and was trying very hard not to express her discomfit. It was not hard to see that she had learnt to adjust her requirements to the needs of those aro

I'm not exactly the kind who prefers the bland taste of reality. The unimaginable paradigms of the unknown, the unexplored when blended into day-to-day life are a much more relevant palate. I am glad also to assure you here that I am not into living with hallucinations, have no imaginary friends (barring the visiting presence of spirits who for some reason truly enjoy my kitchen shelf, but they are neither friends nor are they imaginary) and maintain a clear divide between fact and fiction. I prefer saturating my soul every once in a while in the glory of a setting sun or in the eyes of a tired bird, perched to rest. That's my reality. And so, when I ended up at the stairs leading to the Taj Mahal... I felt at peace. The Taj Mahal is perhaps the best example of my idea of sanity (or insanity). A mausoleum built in pure white marble as a reflection of Noor Jehan's beauty built after her death (when he could have just told her how lovely she looked instead of having her bear

Like every other year, papa's birthday went off nearly unnoticed giving me no scope for celebrating his spirit or spending a relaxed five minutes to recollect the times we spent together. As they say, it's never too late to make amends. So here I am taking a lazy stroll down memory lane to bring back a little bit of his Princess in me. It was the summer of 1990 and my entire family, along with some other family who had tied up to join in the weekend plan at the seaside at Chandipur. The sound of the waves was all I needed to hear. Having never been the sort to hang out with my brother or his friends or partake in any of my mother's incoherent discussions about pains all over here and there, I instantly held out my arms to my dad. It always made him smile. Come to think of it, he actually spent most of his time observing me. It intrigued him that though I spent all my time either hugging him while he was talking to someone or sitting across him when he played a musical instr

Late in the night, I was sitting at my computer yet again (yes, production woes continue)when I see an ex-colleague online. We start having a mundane conversation and he asks me somewhere towards the end, "What is love? How is one supposed to feel when they are in love?" I couldn't give him an answer in complete honesty (he wasn't interested anyways) but I went back to re-feeling, if there is any such possibility, the feeling of being in love. The first time I actually felt love as a woman was on my first Valentine's Day with my husband. Since we spent most of our waking hours together, we had a pretty clear understanding of what we liked or disliked. Despite it being almost a year later, it was difficult to surprise each other. And yet, when he walked in through the door of the flat I used to live it, cake in one hand, flowers in another and a shy, reluctant smile on his face to let me know how bothersome the whole ordeal had been... I felt very special. He sat d

It has always been particularly difficult for me to witness a heartbreak. To see the shimmer of a hopeful eye fade away into a visible silence and a cold, seething hatred filling the vacuum that it leaves behind isn't the best sights in the world and yet, I have it all too often, mostly in the mirror. Last evening as I settled down for a warm conversation with a dear friend and her boyfriend, the tension was too obvious to miss. I was aware of the issues that the couple faced and had always found comfort in the fact that they were still at an age where confusion was only guidance they had. I had become too hopeful that they would find a way to overcome their differences, that happiness would prevail and yet... sitting on the floor of the smoking zone of the posh pub, reality slapped the two of us hard across our faces. It was over. My friend took it with her usual courageous attitude. She put on her reluctant smile and spoke at lengths of looking at life with more than an ounce of

Some days are just not meant to be for real! After two days of relentless moaning and groaning from my team members on the occasion of production time for the magazine (it's the time of the month when the contents of the magazine are finely checked and the designed into a page and put into press after final proof reading - read lots and lots and lots of re-reading of the same text) turns out that I am sitting uselessly at the helm of a computer that I am supposed to be operating to complete my work with ABSOLUTELY nothing to do! As it turns out that my very well-read colleagues have not completed their work on time and now I must endure their delays and their constant moanings about how their husbands are calling them and what they could make for lunch and how being married changes the entire outlook towards work. Well, being the only unmarried member of the team, it was only too easy for me to finish my work on time and now I should cover up for lost time by doing work that was or

I cannot help but think how much has changed within and without me. Before you object, I would like to clarify that I do not mean that I am in any way averse to changes. Change has been my constant companion these past few years and though I have not realised the full intensity of it all, change has been there when I barely understood the very concept of it. Sitting outside with a solitary cigarette dangling at the edge of my lip watching the kites glide on a strong current of wind that scattered cirrus clouds all over an orange evening sky, shutting out even the sun, I cannot not think of where I am headed. I have a decent job, one that I enjoy. I have many friends, who spoil and comfort me at the same time. I have someone to go home to, a recent change in my overtly active social life so far. And yet, all the above have been in constant change. I have changed my job, I have had new friends and I have, of course, had someone to go back to in the past too. So, in a way, nothing much ha

For weeks before I got into my current relationship I could see the universe weave its magic all around me. But I guess that has happened before each of my relationships so I am more afraid of the scars that appear after the magic fades away that enjoying it's spell with a spring in my step. Having burnt too many pieces of my sensitive heart a little too many times already, the reluctance in accepting this wonderful gift from life is understandable. Considering all human beings are complex, at least that's what most of us want to believe, the aftereffects of falling in love too soon or too often worsen the loneliness that follows the realisation that it was not meant to be. Like a leper's arm that despite being inflicted with the disease and rotting bit by bit with every passing day, loneliness has found deep roots in my being and refuses to celebrate the slightest hint of companionship. I differ from those who call it a compulsive depression disorder, it is not. It is mere

There comes a time when rhyming lines and waiting for the poetry to flow through the pen comes to an untimely end.. or so it seems to me at this phase of life. Life, indeed, is kind to me and has bestowed several priceless moments upon me. As I start a new blog, which I hope to be more regular to update than my previous blogs, I am overwhelmed by the canvass that lies ahead of merging time and space through words. It's that feeling of starting afresh which leads to a race of adrenaline and hoping for miracles. I just hope that people who chance upon this blog should, if not relate or understand, rejoice in the many wonders that I have come to summarise in one word, Life.