Vertigo

You have a three thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. But you donot have the picture. You sometimes know what shapes fit where. Most of the times, you don't.
There is a certain appeal though. You are attracted to something so much. It feels just right. But you donot want it.

"What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
Milan Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being.

Is he then saying that one runs away from what one lusts after the most? That, if you love someone, it is a form of vertigo that whispers in your ear that you cannot belong?
Or, does Kundera refer to death? Death. In all its forms. Failure. Shame. Ridicule. Defeat. Mortality. The fear not of falling, but that of never being able to rise again.
A learned friend of mine said that a Buddhist saying might answer my questions. "He who has seen his own death has reached his peace "
But no, it hasn't. Sometimes knowing or understanding is just not good enough. It just is not good enough sometimes.

On the street

A beautiful evening falls, right after a small shower. The smell of rain on sun scorched earth. The trees and potted plants have had cool new hair do's from the Gardener and shiny tiny new leaves sprout. The promise of new life and happinesses and laughter and sunny days and flowers.
It makes you feel all smug and blink up occasionally at how the world suddenly seems just right.
You hear something on the street. Sounds like a baby wailing. It gets louder and kind of tugs at your heart. Maybe it is just a cat making noises.
You open the gate to take a peek. There is a little child on the road. About a year old. Blue coloured little tee shirt and orange coloured shorts. You see the child's small slipper-less feet, and he continues to wail loudly.
There also is a girl. Maybe seven years old. She is carrying a plastic bottle of water on her head. Must be atleast five kilos, you figure. And you can see the look in this girls eyes as she is holding up that huge bottle and looking at the child.
He continues to cry. She turns and walks on. This little child walks behind her, in its baby wobbly gait. The distance between them gets larger like the wails and it is almost tearing your heart. You want to pick up that small being and just comfort him.
The little girl is almost at the end of the street now, and finally, a saree clad woman comes running and picks him up.
They are too far away for you to hear. But you see. Baby in mommy's arms, three people without footwear walk away. Big bottle on little girl's head.
And you shut the gate. And go back to your book neatly laid on a coffee table, with a bookmark. A piece of china with your evening tea awaits you.

That afternoon

Memory from long ago.
You are a pig tailed little girl, biting into a Mango. Donot believe in spoons and knifes, and have icky sweet fruit as a part of your makeup scheme. You finish and stare deliriously happy at the seed. You skip behind your Grampa as he leads you to the backyard. You watch as he expertly digs into the brown Earth and help bury the seed. Make a mud pie to mark the spot.
Years roll by. It is a warm afternoon and you are reading a book, sipping tea beneath a Mango tree. There is warm sunshine dancing at your feet, an occasional yellow leaf drifts on the page.
Things are different now. You would trade all the mangoes in the world to talk to those friendly eyes once again. Giggle at stories about elephants.
You get back to your book, gulp down the tea. And then one brief moment, you look at the fence. There you see it. A little baby mongoose. Scurrying around below little purple flowers. You call out to it "Heyyyyy!". It stops. Turns around, looks at you with those little shiny eyes. Your brain grumbles that you don't have a camera, and it returns to wherever mongooses go on warm sunny afternoons.
You smile to yourself, the sun warming your shell, your blood warming you within.
This perhaps is what magical afternoons are made of.

Donkeys rock!

Once upon a time there lived an old mule. One fine day, this mule fell into a well. A farmer heard the mule praying or whatever it is that mules do when they fall into wells. After carefully considering the situation, the farmer decided that neither the mule nor the well were worth the trouble of saving.
So this farmer called some of his neighbours and decided that atleast the mule deserved a descent burial. So all of them hauled dirt and started dumping it into the well. Initially the mule was hysterical and brayed loudly and all over the place.
But the farmers wouldn't stop, bury they would. Then suddenly a thought struck the mule. As dirt landed on his back, he would shake it off and step up! This he did, blow after blow. " Shake it off, and step up! Shake it off, and step up!". He repeated this to himself so he would remember. And continued no matter how hard or painful it got. The old mule just kept right on.
It wasn't long before the old mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly over the wall of the well! What seemed like would bury him actually gave him new life. And boy, was the mule grateful.
Not giving in to self pity, bitterness or panic is a good idea. Sometimes, being an adamant old mule rocks!

Night

It is three fourths of a moon that parts through the deep blue skies tonight to look down at me. And give me one of his famous Mona Lisa smiles. Are you sad or happy, dear moon? Teach me how you smile that way, someday.
Then there is the quintessential mug of everynight-can't-sleep-without-you hot chocolate lying on the table. Its sweetness irritates me today. Its warmth almost appalling.
I have untied the drapes to my windows. And shut them. Maybe the moon will leave me alone now. I miss Elie Wiesel right now. Miss the way he said "Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
The streets are cold and there are dogs making a noise occasionally. There is orange light outside my window. There is a watchman who blows his whistle now and then.
There is so much.
Yet so little.

Dinner conversation

Dinner conversation with my Uncle and two brothers JD and JR when discussing Mango Souffle.
Uncle says "Do you know the origin of the word Souffle?"
I mutter something, nods from the rest.
"In French, Souffle means to blow up. "
JD triumphantly looks at JR, declaring " JR Souffles' money!"
Haaaahaaaa, Brother!

Life's lessons

Okay, question, I say to Morrie. His bony fingers hold his glasses across his chest, which rises and falls with each labored breath.
"What's the question?" he says.
Remember the Book of Job?
"From the Bible?"
Right. Job is a good man, but God makes him suffer. To test his faith.
"I remember."
Takes away everything he has, his house, his money, his family....
"His health."
Makes him sick.
"To test his faith."
Right. To test his faith. So, I'm wondering.....
"What are you wondering?"
What do you think about that?
Morrie coughs violently. His hands quiver as he drops them by his side.
"I think," he says, smiling, "God overdid it."
-Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie.

Real to me

Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses: he has no sight, no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste- nothing. There's no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world. And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence. The question is then asked: Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head? If so, where does it come from? How does he get it?
Robert Pirsig, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.
A very scary, slightly sour, and yet deep thought.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume would have said that the eighteen year old will have no thought whatsoever and therefore imply that knowledge is exclusively derived from the senses. So does that mean the moon is not there when no one is looking? That a tree falling in a forest makes no noise if there is nobody around, not a soul, to percieve it?
Quantum Physics defines reality as that which is in the presence of observation. In other words, no observation implies no reality. No people implies no moon.
Yet again, that does not seem a convincing answer. In Osho Rajneesh’s book called the Psychology of the Esoteric, Osho believes that the western mind is a scientific one and the Eastern a philosophic. Thus, in stark comparision to the concept of Quantum Reality, lies Vedantic reality which says reality consists of ideas and perceptions. Dreams seem real when we are asleep, but we later realize that it is all in the mind.
What causes dreams when we are asleep can cause the same when awake too.
We simply donot know what is real. There doesn’t seem to be a constant we can compare anything with. Reality as you know it, just might be an illusion.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe

Conversation

A couple of days ago, I was sitting in the plush cafeteria of an MNC with a friend. He looked at me a couple of times as I sat there, sinking in my chair, staring hard at the table. Then the dude asked me why I was so lost, to which he got to see a brilliant display of my teeth.
Could I have told you, dear friend, that I was thinking right then of Palestine, of the Orange March in Ireland, terrorism in Jammu, the peace process in Israel and all those millions of little children living as refugees across the world? They do not even have human rights, you know. And they are hungry. And we were considering Souffle. And elephants in the Savanna are getting grilled to extinction, literally. And the poachers throw their ears away. And you know, the world has it share of grief and things need to be thought over.
And I am thinking. Either that, or I just enjoy my company too much.

For you

The world was closing like the shutters of a camera and there was darkness one was getting used to, world turning the colour of honey and then browner and bleaker and things that fell apart began drifting away leaving a piece of bitter carbon behind who would sink deep into the Earth wondering where the end was and how it looked, with tears that did not dry yet. And then you came. And made the living fine. Like sun scorched Earth that needs moisture. The ground beneath my feet is soft again, the Earth inviting and cuddling between my toes. Thankyou.

Reality check

I'm not in denial. I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept.
Calvin & Hobbes.
A recent C & H strip I read got me thinking big time.
Do you think Tigers go to the same heaven that people go to? I mean, in heaven, everyone is supposed to be happy, right? But then people wouldn't be happy if they were always in danger of being eaten by Tigers! On the other hand, heaven wouldn't be very nice without tigers, either.Maybe Tigers don't eat people in heaven. But then, Tigers wouldn't be happy.
God almighty, go easy on loading us with these questions, will ya?!

The monk

On a hill in the Far East, the winds howl and ice gathers on cold mornings on rocks outside the walls of a monastery. This monastery was like any another in many ways: the maroon and yellow robed monks, some pupils and some teachers each submitting himself entirely to the Buddha.
In this monastery, lived this monk. He was a pupil who was given the task of weaving. So everyday, this monk said his daily prayers and then sat down to weave.
On many occasions he would wonder why all he was given was yellow yarn. All day and for many hours into the night, he would weave the yellow yarn, till one day he could take it no more.
He decided to question. He explained how he felt about the yellow yarn and told his teacher that he did not want to do this job anymore.
The teacher gently smiled at him and asked if he was sure, to which he gets an affirmative reply.
“Come with me”, and the monk followed.
The teacher led him into a room and told him, “ I will show you that which you have been weaving all along”, and with this pointed at a painting of the Buddha. An intricate work of art which overflowed with a sense of peace. And the Buddha had the glow of a halo around him, in yellow.
The reason I was reminded of this story is because sometimes many of are swept by this overwhelming feeling of being lost in a huge tide. Like a bird flying in a blue sky without the little compass in its head. This huge feeling of being incapable of saying nothing other than ' I dunno'.
And as we cry and laugh and get netteled and overwhelmed and feel lost and insignificant, there just might be a plan for all of us. An invisible painting we trace stroke by stroke.

A void

You fall into the emptiness of another dark day. The blue all around caressing you. A song from yesterday reminding you of sunsets. Of times that never were. Of happinesses as you knew it. Of inconsequential touches and thoughts by a vast ocean, heaviness gripping you like a painful spasm. A creeper growing on you, sapping all the life away.
The song comes back and touches your wet cheek. You hold out your arms once more and pull it closer like neither ever left.

Being

You open the door and a vague chill hits you. He is there. Lying at your doorstep. You wonder when he came. You walk the few notches upto him. Look down. He is there, lying in all his doggie bliss. You put your knees to the cold cement floor and continue to stare at the life it holds. Reach out for his head, wonder what he dreams of. Run your hand all over his face, touch his wet breathing nose. You try a silly thing you are capable of. You try to shake his hand when he is trying to dream. Take his paw in your hands. He dosent get up and bite your head like you might have if you were him.
Ah, he loves you.
You lie next to him. On a cold cement floor in flimsy bed clothes. He always listens. Reflects when you are morose, fills you with mad unprecedented thank you for being alive happiness when you are happy. Rubbing his doggy skin, you thought train halts. Your mind comes along to take a picture. To know you is to know warmth and being and life and togetherness. I love you.
You lie there, like that, for a while. And then get up. You have to leave him for now. To go on with life. Or something like it.