Ashes or Gold

There is a fire inside
Why does it have to burn
the self and everything else?
Why can't it be the light
that gives courage to keep walking?
I don't understand
Why does it have to burn?

There is a fire inside
Why should it be angst
to rant through rhyme and song?
Why can't it be love
that warms countless chilled hearts?
I don't understand
Why should it be angst?

Ever felt love welling up inside. So much love that you start feeling compassion for even people who say nasty things to you. I was telling motu the other day that how it is so easy to love a child. One can just shower love on them, adore them and they never find it out of place. They are so matter of fact about it. But the same is not true for adults. No matter what the expectation for reciprocation comes in. And of course, it is not possible to show affection unless the person allows it. And also there is this whole thing about living a lie. It is so difficult to figure out if one is dealing with a real person. People seem to be caught up in role play. Ever known what it feels not to be part of the drama.

Birthday present and something else

They woke me up with cake in their hands and gleeful smiles on their faces. It took me a little time to come to senses and realise that my birthday had kicked in. I smiled back, cut the cake, and did not complain when some cake was smeared on my face. When we laid down in our beds to get back to sleep, one girl asked how was my birthday usually spent back home. I told her it is usually dinner with family and friends. Then I remembered and said, there is one more thing, it always rains on my birthday. When I woke up in the morning it was raining, just like it does in Mumbai. Not before my birthday and not since has it rained similarly here. Once the weather was worse but it did not rain the same. I went out to buy something and my trouser was drenched. At the most clothes become damp here in rain but never drenched.

I wanted to buy Totto-Chan for someone here. So I wrote to a book shop asking them if they had it in stock, and if not, would they order it for me. To my surprise I got a prompt reply, telling me they could, but it will take a couple of weeks, should they order it for me. I wrote back saying I don't have much time (no am not dying), I will be leaving the city by end of this month, so if it comes later it can be part of their collection. To my utter surprise again, the person wrote back saying they have ordered it and in case I can't pick it up they will stock it, cause just like I said they think it is a wonderful book and wished me luck for the future. In the world of updates, likes and being busy someone has actually communicated with me beyond the minimum needed.

Presents from the heavens and personal communication from a stranger. Chalo thodasa roomani ho jaye.

"Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having
minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster."

--From 'Totto-chan: the little girl at the window' by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

Being busy seems to have become something like being in love. How actually being in love is more about being in love with the idea of being in love. Similarly, more than being actually busy people seem to be busy cause they think they are busy.

Hope that was not confusing.

Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
Is this how each life begins
With the promise of new, unknown
To be broken each moment
When life is more than mere existence
A tiny speck of remembrance
Wonders if all this has been before
Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
The speck, it grows

It is ironical, what we call fiction is so real whether it is literature or cinema. The real as we know it is made so contrive, the real ends up being a farce. I happened to watch the movie 'P.S. I love you' day before yesterday. Chickflick is it? Anyway today morning the girl from the movie popped into my head. And I thought, this movie is nothing but an example of how by constantly living in fear we make our worst fears come true. Here is a woman living in fear of being left alone by the man in her life. Because she has seen her father leave her mother alone with two children to take care of. She cannot bring herself to have a child and there are several excuses set up as a boundary around her decision. Eventually her worst fear, of losing the man, is manifested and in such a fatalistic way. We are so afraid to live our life fully always afraid of something or the other. The funny thing is always standing at the periphery, never taking the plunge into the river of life, bound by our fears, yet we think we are qualified to tell others what to do with their lives. Let go.

give me some sunshine, give me some rain, give me another time, I wanna...

Put your guard down and bang they zero in on you. I didn't see it coming, settling in and then playing havoc with my system. i am talking of expectations, other peoples, that are conveniently passed on to you as something that belongs to you. Before i left Mumbai for my brief sojourn abroad every damn person, even the ones that don't bother to be social otherwise there is something in it for them had an advice for me. And the advice was, find yourself a guy there! Now, before some conclusions are made, let me clarify, finding a guy or to say it more appropriately to have a partner is definitely on the agenda. But it can't be 'the plan' not for me. Important things happen in life, they do, it is the mundane that needs planning. And to find a partner is not mundane. So here I was giving myself a hard time since last two days for being myself. For not going out there and finding a guy :). For being a disappointment, to others. And it did not help that it was raining here, it actually only drizzles. But when it does it becomes very cold and there is always breeze flowing (does breeze flow?) making you stay in to be warm. Two days of no sunshine and seeing hot guys (Oh the policemen here. and they dress in black. This is how men in black should look) I think took a toll on me. Actually it all began when I started reading this book which I have to analyse for my socio term paper. The disappointment I felt with the book got channelised to me without me even realising. I was like what's happening. Everything was fine until the last time I was out in sunshine and looking at hot policemen. And fortunately, all those unfulfilled expectations, of others, toppled out. They got washed down by the rain.


To the world,

I love you, yes, but I can love you only when I love myself for who I am and not for who you want me to be. I disappoint you, I make you proud, I fulfill your ambitions or I don't, I fit in or not, well I don't care. This is me and this is what is.

Love
FM

Walter said it

Watched Band Baaja Baraat again today. This time on TV. Enjoyed it just like the first time. Some movies just get the ensemble that goes into making a movie right. It couldn't have revolved around a more loved topic than what else but weddings. Somehow for a long time I have been eluding The Wise One. My elusion wasn't to last for long. Recently I happened to attend a get-together with my ex-colleagues from my first job. Towards the end I was sitting by myself and enjoying the ice-cream when my state of solitary bliss was interrupted by a friends' husband. He asked me if I got married or if am still single. I told him I am (still) single. To which he asked, "No boyfriend" (neither). I told him I am single in every sense. Friends' husband, "Arey get settled yaar. Celebrate karne ka mauka do." I couldn't help laughing and said, "Settled toh already hoon, par celebrate karne ka mauka bhi doongi. Don't worry." At my reassurance I was allowed to go back to the ice-cream induced blissful state. It's funny how being settled is associated with marriage. Why the assumption that if one is not married one is unsettled. I look around and see scores of unsettled married people. What about them? Its like every person is an amorous nomad, who at some point has to be tied down to some person and bingo! the person is settled. I have never been able to buy into this meaning of 'settled'.

I see it the way the character Walter sees it in the movie 'Sleepless in Seattle'. When finally Annie tells him that she couldn't possibly marry him, he says, "I don't want to be someone that you or anybody else settles for. Marriage is hard enough without such low expectations. Isn't it?" Followed by a very cliched retort by Annie, "Walter, I don't deserve you". Once again Walter gets to rise above the caricatured portrayal of his character in the movie by saying, "No, I wouldn't put it that way." For me Walter ended up being the protagonist in the movie. Yes, the lead characters meet and may be all the talk of destiny and such may come true for them or not, a movie doesn't allow one to know the entire story. One is to make assumptions based on how a movie ends. Whatever the course of stories for a Walter it will always end on a truer note.

The other day there was a report in one of the news papers that children (up to six years of age) these days greet each other with a kiss on the lips. An educational institute has decided to take this up as a serious issue . I will come to the school later, before that, the headline was quite interesting for its intended sensationalism. It uses the phrase 'locking lips' to describe the act of affection between these children. Parents and any adult (sensible of course) who happen to see children of kindergarten age on a regular basis must have at some point seen a child greet another by kissing on the lips. Who in their wildest imagination can describe it as 'locking lips'?

The school in question plans to do a workshop with parents to teach them how to alter this behavioural pattern in children. Not surprising that they find it questionable as one teacher put it as "an unusual adult-like behaviour". To alter this behaviour pattern they will be sitting down 4 & 5 year olds and somehow without alarming them explain to them why their behaviour is inappropriate. It will be interesting to see how this will be done without explaining the adult perspective to the children. What the children are displaying is not adult-like behaviour but child-like behaviour which is uninhibited by adult perverseness. It never ceases to amaze me how adults who were once children seem to lose the ability to look at and understand things from a child's perspective. It is not the children but the adult (teachers, parents, educators) perception that needs to change.

It reminds me of possibility of shameful punishment that teachers in my school used to threaten us with. To make us maintain discipline in the class they would give us a warning that if anyone was found talking, in case of a girl she would be made to sit between 2 boys and vice versa in case of a boy. I could never understand what was the big deal in sitting with boys. We studied and played together. What was the harm in sitting together? That was then. Educators now have to realise that children are changing. Children of now start making eye contact, indentifying/recognising people and generally taking in the world around them moments after they are born. They are smarter, mature and evolved much more than expected at their age. They are manifestation of evolution in human consciousness. Who knows, this workshop might just about turn out to be a learning experience for the educators in child-like behaviour.

Midnight's whatever

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. --Bill Vaughan


The pragmatist gets a good night's sleep and wakes up the next morning, the first day of the new year, fresh and happy. --Yours Truly