Looking for Alaska

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What’s with this chaos of life? Have you ever wondered where it is all taking you? The running like a horse, the pretension of knowing it all, the fake waves of laughter, the fading connections, and working like a mule. And when you pause for breath, you always think, is it worthwhile? All of it, which somehow is taking you a bit away from your soul.

A world where people are throwing reality in your face telling you that all your dreams are an illusion. There is no parallel reality, unlike Murakami’s world, where there are always two truths, where everything becomes a bit bearable in the end. Things do work out in the end.

But here nothing works like it. You, unlike others, wander in the world, sometimes in your created one and sometimes in others. And while you are still hanging between here and there, life somehow keeps moving, without waiting for anyone, and thus time becomes the constant change of your life.

So which world do you reside in, to save a lonely self from suffering? What exactly is the truth? Your truth? Or is it even their a vestige of truth left in this chaotic world. The more people you meet, the more you move towards ennui. Your amorous intensity, bubbling to be engaged, but when you look around, there is no one who entirely utterly believes you.

With little insight of light, you try hard enough to resolve this never-ending conundrum. And with each piece of puzzle occupying its allocated space, you move towards hope from despair. With the change of time being the only constant in the changing world, you keep looking for Alaska.

The Red Gift

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There it was, in the open, lying, in front of his blue gate, on a golden box covered with a red silk cloth. A simple yellow stick note slipped under the box. The light from the full moon was making the box and its content glitter. All that was glittering wasn’t gold but was far more precious than everything he ever possessed.

He never knew there would come a day where something that he has chased for so long would be lying at his doorsteps, for his to keep, for a, forever. And now when it was so near, he was afraid to go near it. A surge of sudden fear uproared making him apprehensive, and he felt as if his mere touch would make it vanish away. The disquiet of the night led him to think that all that was happening wasn’t right. Somehow he was questioning himself again and again whether the bestowed gift wasn’t his to behold?

He knew that someone has given up everything to bring it up to him. Someone has crossed oceans and boundaries to serve it to him on a golden box. Someone has given up thyself, for thou were the Thee. The musings of his mind won’t settle down, and they were keeping him away from his long-cherished path.

The zephyr holding the fragrance of what lay in the wrapped cloth, tantalizing his senses, to look beyond his vision. His eyes fell on the stick note, with crabbed writing in red, saying,

“The gift is yours to behold, do what you think fitful.”

The words pierced his soul, subsiding every dilemma of his heart and mind. He sauntered towards the golden gift with the glistening eyes. With trepidation, he picked up the golden box, looking again at the scribbled words, touching them with his fingers and savoring them, giving delight to his soul. And then he unraveled the red cloth, holding the most precious gift of his lifetime, her HEART.

“In your light, I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”  ―  Rumi

Another Rant

Some people are so full of themselves that they deny all the wrongs they have done to others. They won’t accept all the pain and humiliations they have put others through. They still have the guts to say that it’s them who are the victim while all the time they were the real torturers. I never get how people can be so ignorant of the wrongs they do to people like you keep pushing someone to the fence and when that person starts bleeding and start revolting against you, you start behaving like as if it’s their fault that they didn’t see the fence all this time.

I am furious and upset right now, but I am not someone who yell or abuse or throw things at people. The only way I know is to write and vent out my anger here on my blog, which is one of the few places that belong to me. I don’ know whether all this writing will ever take me anywhere, but how can you be sure that it won’t take you to the places you always wanted to see. Life is tricky and unreliable, we all make shitty decisions, we all go through hell at times, but that’s, not the reason that you should make other person’s life a living hell. And the biggest crime is not accepting all the wrong’s you have done to that person. It’s like you knowingly put the knife in someone’s hand, and when they get cut you say, it’s you who was holding it, while the person was still tied to the rope you were holding.

But then every experience teaches you something, something about yourself. Sometimes it comes in the form of a bolt of lightning hitting your head where you get some realization, and you start seeing a different perspective of the situation. You start realizing that it’s not wrong to keep yourself at first in your priority list. It’s not a crime if you make some tough decisions to make yourself happy. Your happiness is important too, people might disagree on that, but let me assure you I have been someone who always tries to make others happy, but only a few like I count those people on my finger, have worked very hard to make me happy. The soul kind off happy, where if death comes to me at this very moment, I will die happy.

PS: If you are reading this, I am sorry for filling your Saturday with my rant. But I had to get it out of my system, and I hope you understand.

PPS: I hope you are having a beautiful weekend.

Just, Sometimes

Sometimes this world seems a strange place,
I go round and round in search of things,
Sometimes I find things that I never thought of looking for,
And other times I just keep digging, till my nails are filled with dirt and my clothes are soiled with mud.
Sometimes I think of people who left me,
Sometimes I think of those who stood by me,
Sometimes I feel empty and hollow inside,
Sometimes I feel so fulfilled that I burst up laughing with tears in my eyes.
Sometimes I look around to find a mirror, but everything seems like a mirage,
And I keep running towards it in despair and thirst for finding myself.
Sometimes I lose my essence in the crowd,
Not knowing where I belong.
Sometimes the craving for this belongingness takes me deep down in the well,
Sometimes I know too well that I no longer want to belong anywhere.
Sometimes I suddenly start missing people and places of past,
Sometimes I want to run away from all of it.
Sometimes I care so much that I will go out of my way to help everyone I meet,
Sometimes I turn up so cold that I don’t want to look at other people’s wounds.
Sometimes I am so, me that I wish that someone could know this real me, hidden inside layers and layers of expectations.
Sometimes I am so afar from myself, that I couldn’t see myself from my naked eyes, but this version is more loved.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that someone could hold me for a second when I can no longer hold myself.

Fading Memories

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I recently read A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk. While I was reading the book, a strange feeling struck me hard inside my gut. I always boast about having an excellent memory, especially of people and places which hold special meaning to me. But it hit me that however good I may be, there will come a time that the memories I hold so dearly inside my heart right now will fade if I no longer share it with the person with whom I made those memories.

How do I reach this point, I will elaborate it now with the story of the book.
Mevlut is the protagonist of the novel, he is a boza seller(a Turkish drink), and he falls in love with a girl whom he met at his cousin’s wedding. The only thing that struck him hard about the girl was her big deep beautiful black eyes. He starts writing love letters to this girl and keep writing to her for the next three years during his military period. One day he realizes that if he wants to marry this girl he needs to elope with her, so he makes a plan with his cousin for this elopement. The idea is to pick up the girl from the garden at night and then walk towards some distance where his cousin has parked his van. He holds the girl’s hand and walks towards the parked car without seeing her face. And when he sees the face inside the vehicle, it hits him that she is not the same girl to whom he has been writing the letters. Now that they have made the mistake of running together, he accepts fate and marries the girl. And when he meets the girl Samiha( to whom he has fallen in love), in his marriage reception, he didn’t even recognize her.

Is this true that time makes us forget all the people whom we have lost to fate and destiny? Is it true that one day I will not recognize the person who meant so many things to me at some point in time? And suddenly I had this thought in my mind, which I wrote on my Instagram page too.

“I have a fear that I will lose the tiny threads of my memories someday, like I will not able to recall some people who mattered to me at some point of time, I will forget the moments I have spent with them, the small talks we had or their faces, I have started losing some of them already. I fear I will lose more of it if I don’t store it somewhere. Hence I feel the need to write about all those trivial things that matter to me, the memories that impacted me as a person. Do you ever fear losing people or moments from your memory?”

Some people replied saying that they too have this fear of losing fragments of themselves. Hence they also write memoirs or write fiction to hold parts or pieces of their memories of people, who have long gone from their life but left them as a changed person. I feel a bit relieved now that there are people like me who hold their memories as close as me and they too store them in their words in open or in secret diaries or journals. And may be I am also fading or have faded from the memories of the people for whom I meant something at some point of time. Then I wrote these last lines for them.

“There will come a day, where you will need to clear the dust from your memories in order to catch the fading fragments of me.”

Short Book Review 50

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My Thoughts

Thought of the day

Random Thoughts

AT NIGHT

When the darkness lurks around you, wearing its black satin cloak.
Don’t avoid it, don’t ignore it, instead talk to it.
As I do, on the lonely nights when I am afraid of its entry into my white world.

I timidly take steps towards it, offer it a seat, sometimes, only sometimes, I do suggest it a cup of black tea/coffee.
Not because I have to but because I like to calm it down before I start talking about us.As I know our conversation is going to be a long one.
I don’t want it to be snoozing out when I am speaking about my concerns.

While I am thinking all of this, I hear a tap on my window, and I check the giant clock on my wall. It is few minutes late then our appointed time.
I get up and open the window, it jumps in, yes that’s the way it like’s to enter, through the window column.

Before I could ask it to sit down, it bounces on my spread sofa cum bed.
I offer it the cup of black tea, that I have already prepared, this time I want it to like me, hence the black tea, not the coffee.

Holding the teacups, we share a momentarily gaze as if challenging each other to break the awkward silence.
It takes a long sip and pretends to notice the changes in my room from the last visit.
I certainly know that trick, I clear my throat as if I plan to speak but then it looks up and smile.

Ahh…A quizzical smile, sucking up all my thoughts and all that else in my mind.
I force a smile too and try again to concentrate and recollect my thoughts so that I can tell it what I expect it to do.

I am trying hard to recall every single thread that was in my mind before that smile fell upon my face.
While I am still cracking my knuckles, it walks towards the kitchen slab.
Put’s down the teacup in the basin and comes down again to where it belonged, anticipating my next move.

I have lost track of time, and I feel like those blank pages in my diary which I need to fill with my thoughts.
And then a warm hand touches my palm, and my reverie gets broken.
I look up in those dark round black eyes, and they look back in my dark brown ones as if sending some message through rays.

We keep that eye contact for few minutes, but then it removes its hand from my sweating grasp and stands up.
It moves towards the window sill, I too stand up and walk behind it.

It looks down, below the grille, its pitch dark down there.I wait for it to say something but then I remember, few of my lost thoughts.
While I am collecting them to form a sentence, it turns back and looks at me.

This time we both smile simultaneously and I open my mouth to say something…..
But before I could, thud…. it jumps off into the darkness of the alley. I murmur GOODBYE till I see you again.