the exuberant Indian wedding is a possible treat for the likes of me. and i happened to enjoy one of those celebrations when i attended my cousin's wedding. the extravaganza and the lavish shower of blessings (pun intended) turn out to be a fortunate event for quite a few parties involved in the ceremony in different capacities. but keeping this factor apart, i was thrilled at all the involvement of the assorted colors that made the event a memorable one.
Colors aren’t always the best thing to happen! It is often their absence which holds more promises to me. Colors, with their exuberance and fulfillment, are more intoxicating than is the serene sense of being colorless. The tangles that colors often tie me in bring about hopes and expectations which I am often not capable to meet. The more spectral hues cause higher degrees of trauma to surround me in a state of clinching fear. It is a state of crisis I go through on knowing that the absence of colors is no where near. Getting routinely habitual hues can be disturbing to a stable mental state of thoughts.
Religiously being exposed to such luxury is instantly welcomed with open arms. But, only till that instant when you don’t lose your self to the comfort of not knowing yourself. Accepted in the initial stage, this unfamiliarity tends to be damaging with gradual effect. The only hopes that I then hold are the subtle recovery of my stability to support me enough to know myself further and better. And that is where the colorlessness seems more attractive than ever before!
We watch movies. And we see what the camera intends to show us. Other things remaining stable, it is sometimes the camera that provides the movement. So is the case with the human eye. When I chose to isolate myself from the plethora of activities happening around, from the mundane action that surrounds me each day, there was a mild discovery I made. Ironically, irrespective of their mildness, these discoveries make me feel stronger every time they happen to me.
Getting back to the discovery I was talking about: I used my eyes as the video camera. I saw the panning, tilting, dollying and trollying movements as I strolled across my house. I noticed that the objects around me were stable only till my eyes cooperated, any non cooperation on their part brought about a movement in the world around me. And the secret that hit me was: stability is a state of the human eye, which responds to any stimulus provided by the ‘thoughting’ of the human brain.
Then, must I always complain about the changing surroundings! The environment, thoughts, people, situations: they are often a part of the thoughts that stimulate my mind.
Colours...they surely can make life more beautiful! every colour urges an emotion in us...it is subdued and it may, with subtle degrees, determine our moods. Also, they have a varying effect according to the surroundings which highlight them. i have no real study of this topic though! this particular combination of colours stimulates certain gloomy emotions in me ispite of the stark highlights.
the next ones would be the people who accompanied me on this city trip. i clicked them in aciton, in their moods...and the result is right here.
After all these days of busy schedules I am back to update my blog. Still have nothing much I can talk about. Or must I say I don’t know where I need to begin. I can’t land on any one thought or any one incident that I would want to narrate to you. It is just a huge mess that it always is. So many thoughts, Ideas, beliefs and events! And after all these days I am just losing track of them all.
I get pissed ,if that is the right word, handling such a puddle. And I don’t get to know when it turns into a fear which is almost uninvited. I get to know about it only a minute before, and am not equipped enough to handle it efficiently on my own. Nor can any one else share it…because it is only me who can clear it up. A puzzle, maze, or whatever you may call it, I can be sure that I don’t want it. I already have a bunch of unaccepted crackpots around me who often get on my nerves; and my own mess over it, isn’t something that I would want at a time when I am supposed to work of those supposedly important issues of life.
I know I am confused, and I also know that no one has a solution to it; that is why I am here uttering this shit to you…just wanted it out before it swallowed me in;)
You know what matters the most to me? What those, who I be myself with, think about me. I have always been accustomed to people hating me. And I have rather got used to it. It is not me who can change their view, I have concluded. Because if I decide on doing that, I will no more be living a life I want for me. Dying in the race to please people I am sure to lose my mental peace.
Ever since my college has begun, there have been some random and some gradual changes in my life. With a year about to complete I have here, my lost and found list:
LOST:
Myself
My thoughts
My ego
My senses
My belief
My solitude
My peace
FOUND:
A college
An identity card
A bakery
Phase II
The driver in me
Sleepless nights
Aloofness
Chappals
Thumb ring
People follow this common practice of forgetting me. Just when I think I am not alone, I realize I have no one. Looking around reminds me of the failure that I try to forget each moment. Only to realize, that I may try evading from it but it is the life long reality that will possibly be the only constant.
My surroundings being evident of my inefficiencies and incapabilities, every day is a struggle to get over them; ignoring them for how long? I divert my mind off it only to end up one day in a catharsis when all of it strikes me hard. Hard enough to hurt me when I fall!
I am sick of counting my failures. Why don’t you help me get out of them instead of tying me back to all of it? All my attempts to get up are thwarted adding it as another of my failures. I can survive; I have to. Can you accept this fact before you render me useless?
two students were in a deep discussion for quite some time. they kept me glued to themselves for quite some time before i clicked this one.
this is a common sight in India, where inspite of the development that takes place...somethings remain unchanged. this is one of those things. we talk about providing electricity to the villages and we plan mega electricity projects, but we overlook the hazards and inconvenience that external wirings cause to the residents.WELCOME TO INDIA!
We, in India, may fast be adopting ourselves to the changing times, but for the lower class which constitutes a majority of our population, this means of transportation proves to be a feasible low cost transportation. It is no style statement; it is the reality in India.This is one of those days when you lament the absence of the soft instances that once were a part of your past. I initially got into the habit of missing it quintessentially daily, till I conditioned myself to get out of it and live in ‘the’ NOW. And in doing so, I further conditioned myself to believe that it was all temporary, that they revisited me regularly because I invited them to do so.
I had successfully convinced myself over this story till those cherishable moments seemed so close to me…and yet so far. You know what I mean…when you perceive that you want to relive that past, but in some way things have changed…and to an even larger extent-you realize-that it is you who has changed.
What is even harder to believe is that I can control all of it, but I choose not to, staying so-called oblivious to all that can possibly change. And all the ignorance to escape the fear of falling back to where I currently stand, stops me from acting.
this time i also chose a different shade than the contemporary black or sepia. i clicked this picture by pushing a friend behind the curtain...this was the result.
reflection...
i decided to limit the horizon of my pictures to two colours alone...i will let them be any two! to begin with...this was the first serius pair of ear wear i owned.
A click of the old monument that has now been developed as park for morning walkers and kids to play.
I met karan yesterday outside my college. He was lying on the mud where the two wheelers were parked. He was being brash with his younger brother. He got obsessed with the camera I was using and was curious to know how it functioned. Unfortunately for him, the battery was wearing off, and I couldn’t demonstrate its functioning to him. In his curiosity he made sure that nobody distributed their attention to his younger brother, golu.
He insisted that I go call his mother, Gita from my college who worked on the fourth floor of the building. The consistency of his questions forced me to ask him a few of them so that I wouldn’t have to wrack my brains into answering his unnecessary questions. After my round of questions he declared that he didn’t go to school. If his mother could, she would definitely send him to one. His dad worked at the construction site.
The conviction with which he answered my questions caused me streamline his situation, it didn’t seem as grave as it actually is. He had accepted it the way life had thrown circumstances at him; no regrets. And it did not matter to him if he didn’t have a playing ball that he could toss around. He had the water bottle that my friend had carelessly thrown away after finishing it off. And certainly, he was not jobless. Along with his brother he cleaned the dustbin at the X’s restaurant. And that was no waste that he dealt in. That was his storehouse of creativity.
Every time he took his turn cleaning the dustbin he carefully left his brother behind and emptied the contents on the ground to nurture his creativity. He sprawled around on the muddy ground to escape the heat. And he tied a rubber band on his forehead for some reason not comprehendable by me.
I have my regrets and apologies that I have to offer each day. I wish and keep doing so and I never get tired. I accept things as they are and always anticipate that they will get better the next day; but I never stop wishing. I never wait a minute in life to thank god for what I already have. I look at those who are worse off than me, sympathize, and move on, never gratifying the life that I have. I don’t see the need to, because I take everything for granted. I have a whole lot of friends but I keep wishing that I have more, I get a good news and I keep hoping that the next time it will be even better; stability and stagnancy don’t influence my life, because I believe in simply moving on.
And at the core of my heart I even know that I have been the least successful in moving on. I don’t know what holds me back; neither do I know what is it that never lets me to be stagnant.
‘There is no golden past, yet we ultimately seek it.’
I read these lines in the description of the song ‘leaving home’ by Indian Ocean. I don’t know what it means, I have to confess. The reason I have quoted them here is because I find them riveting. When I first read it I thought I knew what it was talking about, but on reading them again, I realized that I needed more time to comprehend the writer’s intend behind it.
It’s not just about a ‘golden’ past; so do I think. It specifically IS the past. No matter how traumatic, grandiose or ordinary it is; it is a part of us and what we are. It is the chisel that has carved us, and since it was involved in the carving activity it definitely was carried out with prudence and skill. I know that I have always been the perpetrator of my life. All that I have done…my misgivings in the past, my expectations and my indignations; have not always been justified but they have enabled me to measure my thought process in ordinal terms.
How can I not look back on my past when that is the only permanent? No matter how humble and deterred the beginning was its result can’t be all that bad. Retrospectively, I desperately would seek my future; presently I know not what to seek. It is not in the memories, the sweet poison of belongingness; it is in the accustomed habits that I bear.
I watched ‘Delhi 6’ today and I must say, rakeysh omprakash mehra has done a good job with it. Though, I notice that the editor rating for this movie hasn’t been really appreciable. Here again, I must confess that I am not here with a movie review. Just seems like I have been watching quite a few movies lately, which have started evoking my thought process.
Dealing with the subtle nature of the Indian race, (I also realize that this theme is getting repetitive if I retrospect my blog) this movie clears some dooming facts about the very traits of this race. Some dialogues seem ominous and refer to the core of the issue. Mentioning them (not quoting) there is one that says that we Indians are forced to fill our empty stomachs with love because we don’t have money. Doesn’t that so well explain the addiction that foreigners sometimes tend to have with our country? I had always been in two minds about the fact that my vision of this country (that being of a developed nation) would rob this country of its very essence…its faith and religion.
There is certain blindness in the way we Indians tend to believe in religion. And that is what makes its people different from that of other nations. There are certain parts of the country where people, celebrate the festivals of all religions keeping aside their innate differences in religion. But at the same times it is this very cause; religion, that is causing people to wreak havoc in the society.
With such ease we declare the most sensible to be insane…just because they do not fit into the idea of our ‘so called’ society. When our attempts to accept the ones who dare to be different satiates we start condemning them for their sensibility.
We can either accept India with all its faults; which can at times get ethically rhetoric; or we can decide to work on the faults to get rid of them. Though we might lose parts of the real India in that process but we have to lose something in the deal.
I always tend to get stuck while predicting the fate of the Indian democracy. In fact I wonder if the word ‘democracy’ rightfully describes the state of the Indian politics. Forget politics…I get confused while attempting to decipher the minds of the Indian people. Hanging somewhere between cultural and developing, they don’t know what class do they appropriately live up to. They aspire for the luxuries of both the categories without sacrificing the minimal requirement for them.
Unable to choose any one and unwilling to muster the two, the fate of the Indian politics is turning into a greater muck with each passing day. Disheveled with this state of paranoia and unable to interpret the consequences of the ‘evolution’ we Indians choose the best way out…extremism. At first opposing it and gradually adapting to the extremist policy we tend to believe that this is the best way to fight the change. What we refuse to understand is that we do not have to ‘fight’ the change; instead we have to ‘accept’ it!
We talk about a progressive society, but when that progressiveness becomes hard to accept we condemn it calling it uncultured. We first need to decide what we want and even more…are we ready for the change we want? If not, then let us not maim the thought of change in the name of culture, religion, faith and all those ideologies that we have long given up. Let us first strengthen our belief in what we do and then act, without giving it second thoughts to it. Let us have the mettle desire to be progressive in true terms.
I watched ‘dev d’ today. And I really think that this movie is a mere piece of shit (pardon my language though). It’s got nothing apart from addiction (let it be of alcohol, drugs or sex!)Now, I am not here with a movie review. I am here to talk about the more practical aspect of it all. And that is that there are actually men similar to the ‘dev’ (in the movie) in the real world aspect. I am not talking about similarities in regards to the passion part. But the lack of guts to love…that is precisely how I interpret their actions.
Having live examples right around me I find it difficult not to release my frustration at them, so I decided to write and speak it all out and be good to them. Looking at such people around me, I am amazed that they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. They blame their fate on the people around them, and also those not around them…they blame it on the world with the exception of themselves! And all the philosophy that can help them seems to permeate through their thin brains. Nothing good seems to settle there. It’s only the rot thoughts that have a strong grip on their little brains. Even if you try changing yourselves for them…all they see is their own effort; all the others around them never seem to make any effort.
Seeing such specimen around for a while has already made me skeptical about their present. I dare not think of their future. I wonder; when will they understand that life and fate are all in our hands. No one, other than us has any control on it what so ever!
I tread on my daily path today just like each day in the past six months. This journey leads me to my college. Not a place I am really fond of, but one that has made me adapt to the changes that have occurred lately in my not-so-long life. Whatever it is, however it is, it has made me accept life as it came to me. But this is not really what I am here to discuss so let me not catch up the wrong path.
I caught my college bus like each other day, and as always I didn’t speak much to the people around me. Instead, this time, instead of playing with my thoughts I chose to free lance my environment and microcosm to which I always belonged but never gratified.
And this time I realized that I had more lessons to learn from the people around me than ever were taught. Values as dedication, sincerity, selflessness, beliefs, acceptance of reality summoned me in a manner I never had thought!
I saw the austerity in happiness of a little child on walking with his grand father; The love in the company of a younger sibling; the freedom of a man in his daily mundane tasks. I witnessed the religious morning offerings of an old man on the corner of the road; the unspoken helplessness of a man wearing a shirt that pronounced freedom of speech, actions and thoughts even as he stood on a dirty road corner reading a newspaper that announced the sufferings inflicted in the name of religion.
I always valued my thoughts galore. But on witnessing a society more thoughtful, valued and content than me… I learnt to look beyond. Significantly or insignificantly, the journey of those around you is their own, but you always tend to be a part of the non dynamic chapters of their lives.
I proudly watched the defense forces parade past my lane as I stood on a parked scooter a few yards away from the marching forces. I reinvented the lax necessity of witnessing a parade being a citizen of this republic.
Before today I had watched a live parade but I cannot trace the number of years that have passed since then. As I climbed on the scooter and watched the smartly dressed young men and women pass by I realized how ludicrously I had missed showering the accolade on the young patriots.
My eyes kept shifting from the performers to the audience. How each one struggled to get a glimpse of the march past was appalling. It was at that moment that I felt envious of the young marchers… I thought of the pride they could boast of being a part of the parade as people crowded around just for a glimpse of them…they were the people in whose hands we Indians had placed our faith. I wished I could be a part of that march past and be on the receiving end of the admiration.
On a greater shift of focus I was overwhelmed to see that people actually climbed up terraces and hoardings to be testimony to the parade. Irrespective of their age, faith, belief, they were all huddled up to experience the march of the republic. Kids sitting on strong shoulders, ladies ascended on walls, young boys packing themselves on trees and even sadhus making their way through the crowd with Indian flags hadn’t been a common sight for me before.
I realized that all this while I had under estimated the real
PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN.
