The Untrodden Path

He walks amidst the dusty storm: directionless. It's completely dark in the desert now. Every subsequent step is only heavier with his body and mind wanting to submit at every single inch. His parched lips, which will be happy at the touch of even the slightest trickle of sweat are chapped and are mumbling something; Something hard to decipher, for what can you say when your soul is too drained to voice out. Even before his brain can register, he falls on his knees with a thud. Unable to keep his eyes open and balance steadily on his knees he drops with his head half dug in the sand. Lying their motionless, inside and out, he thinks of what is and what could have been, although he has got no fair idea of either. An honest answer to all the choices in his life has always eluded him.

Under the long heavy breaths he can hear his heartbeat, slow and loud. He is aware of his increasing reaction time and decresing agility . He tries to open his eyes but then gives up. In these moments of stillness which feel like eternity, a strange sedated calm bestes his being: a solemn state where there are no wishes, an inert space where there are no positives or negatives, a co-ordinate where there are no rights and wrongs. He is at a strange composure and total acceptance of himself.

What circumvented him from being what he was now for whole of his life? Why had this Shangri-la inside had eluded him?
- Was it his own cowardice hidden behind confusion?
OR
- Was it so important to seek the approval of the so called society; Which is nothing but a bunch of lunatics determined to pull you down at every step and dedicated to enslave your free spirit.

May be it was an amalgam of both of these and some dross like fear and 'looking good'. But it didn't matter now. Oh, it shouldn't have mattered then.
He found it sad that how a child, carefree and freewheeler, losses the battle of his innocence, bit by bit at every step where his free spirit impinges with the suffocated sphere of society, until both coalesce and he becomes the society himself, unfortunately, lamentably.
He was amused at his naivety for what seemed obvious now was not even a considerable option then. Blinded by worldly desires, given to indulgences, overshadowed by fear, passion, jealously, greed, oh how could he fail to see the obvious!

Fleeting glimpses of past flash. The base of all the moments when he sees that he was completely, as they say, in-the-zone was freedom.
Freedom from fear and freedom to be; freedom so thorough, a freedom so free.

It's midnight. Suddenly he comes to present with a shudder owing to the cold in this merciless desert. A thin trail of saliva drips down from his mouth and none of the body parts respond to the signals from the mind. Inspite of his grave physical condition, his mind is immaculately peaceful and this serenity is visible on his face. There is no one to be and no where to reach. He experiences a freefall into an infinite tunnel of white light. The weightlessness experienced by his body is an understatement, for what he felt touches the realms of metaphysical and further deep.
A lullaby starts playing in his mind, the one his mother used to sing for him when he was child. He tries to hum to the tune until he falls asleep.

Next morning few travellers from across the border find a man on top of a dune. There is a thin layer of sand deposited on his torso, appears that the desert had blanketed him so that the child who had lost his path or may be found his destiny, may sleep unperturbed. The serenity and smile on corpse's face is uncanny. Roostam was at peace...finally...

a small break..

As we lay gasping for breath she got on top of me, wrapped her arms around my neck and rested her face on my right shoulder. Her hair was unkempt and tied
upwards but for those curly locks which she tucked behind her ears each time they came between the two lovers. They only made her look more beautiful, more
charming. My eyes were closed as I touched her. I felt her back and the waistline and her shoulders, the skin smooth and white as an ivory. I chuckled as I teased her, "Sooooo baby how was it.... what was your favourite moment today?”
"What is it with you? I mean…. you always ask the same question every time we get intimate", she retorted with an impish smile, pinching my arm.
We were close, really close. I could feel her breath on my skin, warm and still heavy; her heart pounding, every beat of which I felt on my chest and further
deep. Not an inch of air lay between us, nor did any past or future.
I kissed her neck, swiftly rolled over and before she knew we had swapped our positions.
I looked into her bright twinkling eyes, she held my gaze. We stayed like this I don’t know for how long. In her eyes I saw immense love and innocence.
I smiled and whispered in her ear, "Rachel, You know I LOVE YOU right..! I love you much more than I can ever say, much more than you will ever know".
"I love you just a pinch more than that", said the girl in my arms. She would always outwit me in words, and in her love.
"By the way, my lady, what makes you think that my 'favorite moment' question will go unanswered", I asked as I tickled her.
"It was when you slid your hands in my waist, caressing me with your nails and kissing me wildly. You know just when we had started", she answered
blushingly. I couldn't agree more. Strangely our favorite moments almost always twinned. I guess this is what the phoneys call chemistry; but the phoneys
can be right sometimes.
“Started what baby..?” I said toying.
She flushed with embarrassment and hugged me real tight, I reciprocated. If love is anything it has got to be this, I was basking in the glory of joy. There
are only a few moments in your life when you totally live in the present, moments which make you wish that everything just froze here and now, you wanna
live this moment forever. I was definitely a part of one then.

Now here I am, all by myself on a Friday evening sitting on my couch sipping ginger tea from my favorite royal blue mug, a pair we had bought together. It's
been seven years since I last saw Rachel or heard from her. Only if I knew I am never gonna see her again....

Why we separated? Who is to be blamed? I don’t know. May be words we should have said, unsaid dialogues our hearts should have heard, emotions that went
unexpressed; may be all or none of it? Whatever it was, I knew soon after it didn't happen for good. I was never the same man again. I tried in vain to pull
myself up but I had no access to that part of my heart, I was devoid of those feelings and emotions. Soon I gave up, compromised and accepted myself. I guess
that's what phoneys call life and this time too they were right; unfortunately!

I think my cell phone is ringing, I hunt it down from under the sofa cushion.. "This number does not look familiar". I reluctantly decide to answer. Even
before I could say 'hello..!', she calls my name..
It is Rachel....

melancholy

forgive me for I wanted to hold on to you forever,
forgive me for I forgot love is freedom,
forgive me for not forgiving you,
forgive me, I can't forgive you still...!!

I vividly remember when I saw you last time,
and how much I wanted you to stay, though I'd never say.
Angel, you looked lovely that night, as you always did,
oh.. why did you go away.

The world will never know what I go thru' every moment,
all the turmoil inside kills me everyday,
but you are always in my mind my love,
and with every passing moment I so much wish you were here..

They tell me we are past and I must move on,
I helplessly want to believe them 'coz I know you are gone.
What I hate to believe is that our love wasn't true,
Please tell them everything is not the way it looks.

There are a zillion things that remind me of you everywhere I go,
The coffee shops, the malls, the book cafes, long stretched green roads.
The more I run the near I am drawn,
I am tired of living in this hopeless hope that I will get over you some day.

I know I have not been the Man of my word,
I have played dirty at times and let you down.
I might have shouted at you for no rime and reason,please forgive for that,
but girl, I loved you with all my heart and soul, like no one can ever love anyone.

You wouldn't come back even if I confessed how much I love you,
Things wouldn't change even if you knew about all the crazy things I still do.
Believe me I know it all, but I just can't stop loving you,
nor can you impose not to love you anymore.

dear, you were the most beautiful part of my life,
Ill always cherish the time we spent together,
I am glad we journeyed together hand in hand,
till we reached a crossroad and then you walked awayyyyy...

and I met life ....

Just a while back while reading the novel I knew I was fagged enough not to continue. I put on the alarm for 7 am, feel elated that tomorrow is Friday just a day away from weekend :-) [the happy sensation which I am sure I share with thousands of s/w professionals world wide]. It was a long day today, hectic work schedule, traffic jam on the way back home, the maid didn’t turn up, exhausted gas cylinder, a below average but expensive dinner at Lahori's (the restaurant), fight with my girl friend (a routinely affair though) and ....and yeah that’s all. but Who fuckin' cares, I am still happy. But is that really all, am I genuinely happy..?? chuck it dude...!!!! The answer to this is put on abeyance, like an umpteen number of times before, to be thought only when I would be free and fresh or better to say INDEFINITELY.

I open the door to my balcony, switch off the lights and jump onto my cozy bed. I close my eyes, some ergodic thoughts wander my mind and suddenly the question came back to me, hits me with some thrust...

R U REALLY HAPPY ...???? Thinking I would fall asleep soon, I tell myself (reluctantly though), that I am happy. Suddenly now my sleepy dreary eyes are wide open, I know no sleep. I wage an unsuccessful war against my impermanent insomniac condition, but all in vain. It's 0130 hrs and I lay wide awake, blank and absolved of all types of pain just like a new born. Just then I hear a knock on my balcony door, though my flat is on the 7th floor without any reverence I glance in that direction and w/o getting up I welcome that intangible entity in. I can feel some energy, source and form of which are indescribable, flowing around me. My body responds with horripilations, giving me pleasure. The voice asks me the same question I ward off all the time, but with such an authoritative yet mesmerizing voice that I am no longer able to evade or procrastinate the answer to;

"R U REALLY HAPPY....??"

"Yes ofcourse...!!!", I snapped. "I am well to do, earn reasonably good, afford a good luxurious life, eat good, love and is loved by my parents, got wonderful bunch of friends, have no inferiority complex whatsoever, very confident and so on....what more could one want in life."

"U SURE..??",the voice asks back.

I knew I wasn't. I confessed that I knew all this while that I had been lying to myself, only not acknowledging it. Probably wanted to believe in my own make belief world.

There is some void inside me which is inaccessible. I feel that emptiness all the time. When I am in a group laughing out loud, talking to my best pals, working in the office, hanging out in pubs or coffee shops, it just doesn't leave me. I feel it all the time.
I was retrospecting hard, desperately trying to find out that missing element.. I reflect on my routine:
~ get up at 7:30, follow up with the ablutions (the cold water bath still chills the hell out of me),
~ board the bus to office at 8 (waiting for bus at the stop seems to be history, it's the other way round now),
~ finish with the breakfast [of which porridge is an inseperable part, we call ourselves the dalia-gang; though it's quite contrary in attributes to the dalia gang in college ;-) ]
~ follow up with work, inbetween having 5-6 cups of tea is an unsaid custom which ofcourse I follow diligently.
The office hours finish soon, probably I realise so coz the work timings are such that we don't really have much time to kill time :-).
~ at 6:15 I am usually home. This is the time I have at my disposal, which I can expend to my luxury. I choose to read novel, spend some time listening to music (my iPOD is an inseperable part of my life), and for a change kill time in front of the idiot box.
~ before retiring to bed I spend about quater of an hour in calling up mom, and friends. I talk, I laugh, I share but... but still that emptiness.... something aint just right.

The voice tells me that I am living the same day over and over again. Seldom is there any change in the monotony, day in and day out, over and over again. I am effortlessly wasting my life .

The voice asks me, "When was the last time I was a reason for a kid's smile, last time when I helped someone old, a walk in the rain, a state of no mind, a state conscious of no one, a state of being truly myself away from all the pretensions and expectations...."

By now I was slowly realizing the root of the problem. I acknowledged that the root lies nowhere but inside me.

It was I who chose to ignore my inner voice, it was I who blindly followed my life where ever it took me, now realizing that it should have been just the opposite.

I was smiling, because my ignorance seem to amuse me. How could I just go on with my life without knowing the purpose and assigning meaning to it? I appeared to me as if some clouds were shunting of the clear blue sky, as some mental blog had vapourised.

The voice told me that
"So often we loose our individuality to those who matter the least. We allow ourselves to be the football of other's opinions. Kicked left and right, over and over. The cost we pay is grave. The cost is death of a real OURSELVES.
We have long back forgotten to do the things which hold the key to real happiness, these of course can mean different things to different people. All we required to do was to sit back and take time to think what it meant for us.
Stuck in the cow web of busy schedules, we have limited our horizons of our thought process. The purpose of life is to have no purpose at all and simply pass our lifetime in eating, working, sleeping and committing some of the most horrendous immoral acts which we hate to confess even to ourselves.
We try to seek happiness expensive eating joints, coffee shops, magnanimous reveling malls without knowing the happiness we are seeking could lie in the nukkad dhaba and a 2 rupee cuttin chai :-)"

By now I was realizing that most of my life had been a phoney. I was thankful to the intangible entity that helped me reflect over my life tonite. I was overwhelmed with the feeling of joy and felicity.

I asked the voice who it was, the reply was, "..I am life, which you had abandoned long ago, waiting to be embraced and lived..."

Just then I heard the sound of the sparrows chirping, some light in my eyes which seem to disturb the tate-e-tate with my friend, LIFE. I got up and realised that I had been sleeping and all that conversation had been a dream, a ravishing dream, something which was much real than reality itself.....

ciao..
vikas

loosing innocence

I have recently moved to north, moved by a luring pay package but more importantly for Mamma and Papa.
I have left behind the most memorable part of my life, my love and my friends, friends is rather an understatement.

But as they say, all the good things must come to an end and then it's a tradeoff, a decision I myself had made.
Anyways, welcome to Delhi (or Noida for that matter....). A place marked by overcrowded buses, a place where people love to eat paan, chew tobacco big time (which I wonder why they prefer over smoke). Picking up fights on the roads seems to be there favorite pastime :-)

As obvious, I have been looking for an accommodation in and around Noida for quite some time now, one activity to which my weekends and couple of occasional weekdays are dedicated.
After days of unsuccessful hunt and encounter with few typical U.P. dalals aka a$$holes it wasn't late that I realized it was more by fluke than your search that u may get a good accommodation. Now I have extended my stay at company's guesthouse.

On Sunday evening, I decided to retire from the usual routine and thought of going to CP with hamare pyare Gupta ji. Meet Gupta ji, the perfect senti king and the take away husband package ;-). We have been friends for over 10 years now. I and Gupta ji have one thing in common, even the most serious or non sense stuff can tickle us to death.
Anyways, CP place did not match the standards of the image I had in my mind (coz I thought shopping meant CP for Delhites, and it was pretty humble place for that).
While we were having a casual stroll there laughing our way to glory I saw a scene which I haven't been able to evade from my mind.

A woman in rags, sat on the footpath begging, that is not to it, she had her naked girl child (I mean fully naked) lying in front of her. The kid must have been around 3-4. The woman had stone cold expressions. She was looking into one direction without blinking her eyes. The child lying in front of her was sleeping peacefully probably unaware of the atrocious murder of her innocence. The scene excruciated me.
How could it be, a mother living on alms thrown by people at her nude baby's body. I lost the power to react or comment. I tried to ward off the thoughts that kept coming to my mind periodically. It still haunts me.
Meanwhile I have some unanswered questions in my mind which I just can't seem to find an answer to...

~ What is the fault of that infant, and what could have caused that destitute lady to be an unpromising mother?
~ Why am I a part of such a system?
~ Why do not I do something about it, am I an unneeded overzealous emotional fool or a hypocrite?
~ The unconditional love I believed that could only exist b/w mother and the child was being murdered; I thought it could not have any exceptions.
~ Why the other people seemed to go unnoticed of the whole scene?
~ Will the turmoil inside me pacify over the time and I too will become cold to such experiences?

I will be more than glad to find answers to these some day, some fine day.

Hope my innocence does not loose the battle against the so called pragmatic life in a metro.....

Peace be with the innocent child and her impoverished mother.

Ciao.......
Vikas