“And I am tired. Tired within. Not that I don’t want to prolong my fight, but I think I must call it a day now. I am not one, but many. There are many personas within me and one of them has now surely come to a screeching halt. Maybe it is an act of destiny or sheer coincidence, but I feel this cocoon I was in till now has to be left behind, majorly because it is suffocating.”

At all such instances in our lives, we must step back and stop rushing. For once. For a moment. Wait and think of what is is inhibiting your personal efforts – to fight, to emerge, to rise back? Are all those memories worth of your time and patience still? If the answer you receive from within is no, you sure do have your answer.

But if your heart and mind hints that all of that is still relevant – then accept it from within. Accept it that it is a part of you now. Accept it that it will be there forever. Accepting this will make you come at ease with facts. Once this happens, you will never need external support for the same. It will all come at a very easy effort. The fight within will cease to exist. It is this perennial fight that weakens you every day, every hour and every minute of your life. You don’t deserve that, I don’t deserve that, no one deserves that.

What is painful? To forget or to live with it? Well in my opinion, neither of these. It is the dilemma between the forgetting and the living that is painful. When you are on either sides, it is more of peace, it’s only in the middle grounds that the most painful arenas exists. The pain of dilemma and the excruciating pain of existence. When several of your personalities demand existence and other wish to just quit. Every human on this earth faces this turmoil between the different personalities within us. It’s akin to the tug of war – when the positives win you live on and when the pessimists win, you cease to exist.

Whatever be the reason to it, we all have the right to listen to what the chaos inside us means. What it wants to convey and then attend to each of them and make a conclusion out of the same. If not this, there will always exist a weird tension between the two parties within and that is going to tear you inside out. It’s okay to keep something or someone in your heart always. It really is not going to add an inch of pain to your heart- only if you are well settled with the thought of it. When nothing within you wants an easy exit.

“I feel light and okay with the fact that I have decided to ‘not’ call it a day. To ‘not’ cease to exist and ‘not’ burn within my own feelings all the time. It is definitely a tough go, but now I am ready to march on. Mostly because, I feel sorted now.”

It is always better to feel sorted. To feel light.

A heavy load of trauma and excruciating pain, well packed into a box of calmness and polished with the pride of the past.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

How much of silence is enough? Or bearable?

How much of it can you sustain? How long can you remain silent?

Silence is known as the antidote of chaos. It heals people, situations and complex processes. It can bring calmness to the most highly entropic systems. If carefully utilised, it can well be way dangerous than the most lethal weapon ever invented. Civilizations have come to a standstill because of silence. Ages have undergone transformation because of silence. “Words are mightier than the sword, but silence is mightier than both.” There can be no denial to the fact that silence is a weapon bestowed only on the mightiest. Not everyone can stay silent or “keep” the silence.

But too much of anything is hazardous. Silence too? How do you know if you’ve been silent for enough now? Long enough – for your dear ones to be puffed up? If Silence is a weapon, how do you know where “not to use it”?

A lot of it depends on how you savour your existence? You like it alone – in a team, a family or a person who seemingly fits okay with you. Are you a happy loner or a social fit? Silence for each of these will differ in a great way. The type of effect your silence creates on people is best judged only by you. At a particular point, “this is how I am” ceases to exist as the perfect excuse. You have to think beyond. To step ahead and think what is it that is on stake and how dear it is in the first place. You can let go of a few people, seldom friends, casual troopers, distant family members, but next?

Is giving up silence to save a precious link, too much to ask for?

“Why don’t you speak, I am asking this for the last time now”, She grumbled while she held his arms and was full with tears to the brim.

He stood there silent. Firm as a rock. The very virtues which made her fall for him, were reasons for their fall. She stepped back, hopeless of a reply-an explanation.

“I will miss you”, he said.

“Shut up! No! You’re not going to decide what you speak to me. If you have the right to silence, I have a right to peace too. I will not keep stepping upto you for every stern behaviour of yours.”

“I don’t know what to say”, he said while he turned back and moved to the balcony.

“You will never know what to say mister. You realise that silence is your weapon and you have bruised me more than anything else in this world. I wither day by day and all you have to say is that you have nothing to say?

Nothing to say even if we part?

Nothing to say even if I leave?

Nothing to say even if I genuinely care?

Nothing to say even if I refuse to turn a blind eye to your atrocities?

Nothing to say even if all we had for all these years is now ticking on only to end?

You are a muck. I will pray that you get to your senses soon.”

She left the house with a loud bang of the door behind.

Who’s right? Should he have spoken or should she have kept quiet? Where do we draw a line? Can this be explained?

There is no perfect answer to this. There cannot be. Only that it will keep breaking people, civilisations and homes. There is no antidote, there is no vaccine to this. Silence can strike and it will strike everyone.

Sush is a cute word and yes it is lethal.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Do you listen to people who advice you? What is that one factor that makes it easier to pay heed to the advice? Is it the person? The situation? The will? The innate desires? I don’t know. You probably won’t know it either.  It is very difficult to point out one specific thing.

“I am warning you, don’t be the third person. Your entry is going to make all the three of you cry at the end of the day. Take this as a warning and please don’t proceed”, it was the last thing she said before she hung up the call. I had never ever ignored her suggestions. She was a dear colleague and in the last 2 years had earned a huge respect in my view. But that day, it was a little different. I was not the only one who was choosing between preferences.

There are instances when you are standing at a beach, large waves swamping across the ocean, you understand the hazard and yet, all your mind wants is to go, take a plunge into the salty waters. All advices, all precautionary messages seem illogical. There is an inner provocation that tells you to go take a plunge. These are the feelings that explain you that it is not the 90% fatality rate that needs to be worried of, but the 10% of coming out safely. The mind and the heart becomes extremely optimistic. Everything you do, everything you think comes down to this one moment. All those who put their hearts before their mind, take a plunge. Some come out and rest others, rest in peace. All forms of intoxications, rash driving, and irresponsible lifestyle, we all know the fatality factors, but still take a chance. The reason is simple, these are all things that push your heart beyond your head.

“I will try my best not to”, I replied her and bid her good night.

“Ensure you don’t – I really don’t want you to be in a mess and put them in a mess too”, she said, repeating her warning.

“Hmm”

I put the phone back in my pocket and came out of the office.

“Want to walk to the shopping complex before the dinner?”

Don’t!

Don’t be!

Don’t be the!

Don’t be the third!

Don’t be the third person!

Words kept reverberating in my mind. It was as if, every part of my body was defying my will not to fall for this now. I knew the consequences, I knew what trouble this could cast on the 3 in question. But then, for a dream so luring, for a moment so strong, for a feeling so divine, I couldn’t stop myself.

“Yea sure, I will keep my things in the locker and join you guys!”, Was all I could speak.

My words spread smile on her face. It was as if, she waited for this. She walked back, re-affirming of the walk. I could see her going back. I stood there, seeing 3 worlds crumble to ashes. But all of it felt warm. Amazingly secure. A rush of adrenaline, like you feel on a fast racing bike. Or on the first date. I moved back to my room immediately to take a shower and rest for sometime before we went out.

“Did you guys talk again?”, She asked again.

“Umm, no!”

I lied. Because there was a wave coming towards me and all my heart wanted to do was to take a plunge in it.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

 “and 3 more packets of bread.”

I packed in the 3 bread packets in my bag and moved towards the bus stop. I hit the second turn to the bus stop, when I realised I had forgot my wallet there at the shop. Worried and petrified, I rushed back to the store. I reached the shop and asked the bakery owner if I had left a wallet here on the counter. He looked all over the shop but the wallet was no where to be found.

“Was it a brown wallet?” a staff suddenly asked when he saw the owner looking for a wallet.

“Yes, yes! Where is it? Do you know?”

“Umm, yes. One madam took it from here and rushed after you in the same direction. It looked to me as if she was here with you and hence none of us really bothered asking her anything.”

Damn!

Here I was. Morning time to office. And I had already lost my wallet. It had my office ID, my cards and everything of value to me that could get inside that wallet. I decided to go in the same direction and look for the lady. I went inside to ask for the appearance of the lady from the bakery staff.

“About your height and curly hair. She’s wearing a yellow dress. She must not have gone far. She was on foot.”

I ran outside the shop. As soon as I stepped out of the shop, I saw a woman, roughly in her late 20s walking briskly towards the shop. Wiping her sweat off her forehead and somehow managing the hair which by now had turned clumsy. I had seen this lady while I was paying at the counter. I stopped there and waited for her to come up to me.

“Oh, I am sorry. Your wallet! I mistook it to be mine and by the time I realised it was not mine, you were gone. I ran after you but people at the other cross told me you went towards the shop. I am extremely sorry.”

“Ah, thank god. No worries at all. But it is surprising you have a wallet like me.”

“And I have never seen a man carrying such a thick wallet, I am sorry but I saw the photographs in your wallet. I shouldn’t have.”

“Haha, no issues. Thanks for this. I owe you a coffee someday, if you don’t mind.”

She laughed and handed over her contact card. An interior designer by profession, she was located nearby at her office-cum-residence. We parted, with me promising her a coffee for the trouble she took to return the wallet to me. All throughout my way to the office, I could not avoid thinking of her. The yellow outfit, the curls and the bright shiny eyes. It was to me, as if I had seen a view so pleasant that in the moment I forgot that I had a wallet lost!

A week later, while returning from the same bakery, I happened to cross by the address she had mentioned. I saw a postbox outside the office. I wrote a chit, thanking her and putting me name and my email id at the undersign. Maybe, going and meeting her in person was a little weird. Maybe it would make things look obsolete and wrong. I returned home. I got a mail later that evening and the mail read,

“Hi!,

A warm greeting from the bread shop on the 4^th street.”

And it all begun at that very moment. 16 years hence, celebrating our 10^th anniversary of the wonderful married life, our cake read,

“…from the bread shop on the 4^th street”

(This is an extrapolation of a small tale shared by a colleague of mine, however the gist remains undisturbed.)

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“Are you guys there already?”

“Yea, where are you? We’re all waiting for you and prabhu to be here. Come on quick man!” one of my colleagues replied on the colleagues group.

I opened his contact privately and asked him, what the exact occasion was, so I could take a gift appropriately. He told me there was no need to another gift as they had already taken one on the behalf of the employees and I could simply make a contribution to that gift later on. Happy enough, I rushed to the venue and in the way picking up another colleague of mine.

As soon as I stepped inside the hall, I asked one of my colleagues of what the occasion was.

“It’s a marriage re-union 8 years after they parted for divorce. Isn’t that wonderful?”, she said.

Indeed. To find faith reinstated in someone you lost 8 years back is indeed a beautiful thing. Second chances are rare. Truthful second chances are even rarer. I don’t even know how it feels to have someone you parted long back. Must be weird. Might be happy, I don’t know. What if there was an option to call for a second chance with things you’ve been missing in the severest degrees? Would it be logical to come back into something after being aware that there exist something that had once pulled you back? Well, it might not be logical, but a few things do not required logic. They just need feelings of cohesion. That can bind people and feelings and past and future together.

It was not long back, when a day before we parted, hand in hand, I asked her,

“Do you think, we’ll ever meet or “want” to meet again?”

“What makes you think we will not?” She said.

Because somehow nothing tonight seems normal. The wind, the temperature, the moon, the birds everything is a little off than regular. There is a weird eerie feeling in the air and I possibly cannot help but notice all of it. This maybe be possibly a hint that things will never remain the same henceforth. She never replied if we will ever meet again and this too was queer. Nevertheless, we never did meet again.

Second chances are for the lucky ones. It is for those fellow humans who believed in their attachments more than they believed in destiny. Most of the other humans get stuck in the cobwebs of society, destiny and idiocracy and end their aspirations, which at one point of time seemed out bounds.

“I guess we should go and wish the couple now. Everyone is here. Let’s go!”

“Yea, sure.” I walked behind the group to the dais.

We went up and greeted the couple. They looked happy. Moreover they looked satisfied. Why won’t they? Ever seen a person looking for a lost key in the house for a week and then finding it back right in his office bag? The content feeling on the face and the relief that now things will “possibly be fine” makes that person jump with joy.

Have you ever got a second chance? What does it taste like? Can you hear it? Or touch it? Or feel it, the way you used to do before? Do things change after the first attempt or do they become even more intense?

I will never know. There is no chance. There is no Second chance.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

There are a few things outside the purview of judgement. You cannot judge them on the basis of worldly philosophies, they are abstract. You cannot make a verification, you cannot justify the intensity and cannot, for sure, shut it down at the behest of a pressure. Not quite eternal, but surely not earthly. Every single incident with such strings attached is a memorable one.

“Where have you reached now?” she asked.

It was 4 hours since I left her place. To come back? To keep her only in my memories, I don’t know! Every second, with the bus speeding, I was going away from her. A certain hunch in me told me we’re never going to me again. I was adamant to change what the hunch suggested. Why do inner hunches always have to be true? I will show that this one is going to turn false.

“Just crossing the state border, will reach Bengaluru by 10pm. Will text you when I do”, I made clear that I wasn’t comfortable talking to her at that moment. Every time she would write something, it would make me even weaker. I put the phone on flight mode and kept it back in the bag. I had never seen her so blank. This morning, I had planned to get ready by the time she would wake up, then meet her and leave. But to my surprise, while I walked to the terrace in the morning, she was already there.

This lady, clad in a thin shawl on a windy cool summer morning, was bereft of emotions today. Neither of wished to talk. I kept brushing, while she kept looking at me. I looked up and saw her watching me as if yearning for a solution – a solution to this what was then and what it would become later on. A few other friends also joined us the moment they realised it was time for me to leave.

“Can you not take the evening bus?” she asked softly as she stood near me.

“And then?”

“Stay till evening or maybe leave tomorrow morning?” she continued.

“Today, tomorrow or the day after, it’s going to happen. Let’s be strong and face it”, Unaware of what was to dawn on me, that I would be the one who would be weak on his toes for a long time.

We bid bye in the most unusual form ever. Just a side hug. I greeted other friends better. Something stopped me from looking at her face for long. Maybe that was meant to be. The last meet was planned to be short and brief, who knows! A long farewell meet would have caused problems for both of us.

It was close to 5 hours now and I was racing away from her. I could see her name everywhere – on shops, on buses. I could hear the song we both loved on traveller’s ringtones and in my head. It felt as if there was a hurricane in my mind where all that we accumulated in those few days was churning in the eye of the hurricane.

I reached my place some hours later. Kept my luggage and lied down on the couch. Took out the phone and put off the flight mode.

28 messages from her. The whole day.

“I could see your name everywhere – on shops, on buses, on newspapers and on the internet. Isn’t it strange?”

I did not get a reply for the next 3 hours. Waiting for the text, I slept. At around 3 am, I felt a buzz on my chest.

“This name will not go off from your life, not easily nor by an effort, it is meant to stay.”

It did stay indeed. Without a purpose, like the smell of a rose petal plucked off the flower and put between two pages. For years it will have the smell and when the smell dies, it will leave a mark.

And the mark, will never die.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Hot dry desert. Yellow ochre earth that mixes with the saffron horizon with and merged with the similar sky. Smell of bullets and gunpowder all around. Distant sounds of shelling and intermittent LMG’s (Light weight Machine Guns). I can see a small tent like structure some 100 meters away, but crawling through the sand isn’t easy. I still make an attempt and limp through. But the severed limb gives no respite. I turn back to see if I was the only one left around and all I could see were bodies of my brethren, who just a few hours back were marching stealthily with me towards this arid area where the sand mines hit us.

There is a silent buzz in my ear, a deafening one though. The blast was loud and it sent us flying off in air. I was at the rear end of the formation so I fell backwards, but could limp all the way to this point now. If I had to survive and be able to send a message back to my base-camp, I had to survive and make it quick. I began limping towards the tent ensuring I keep out of sight of the enemy radars.

I already feel the weight of an inactive limb and the heat of the sand, so close has already taken its toll on my reflexes. I somehow reach the tent. An old tatter, probably one of our base-camps some 20-30 years back – covered enough to hide me safely, so I could report back. It is surprising how my body pushed so much, after being torn by the blast. I try to establish a connection with the base-camp, when my eyes slowly start loading down, feeling heavier with every passing second. A gush of cool air on my face and everything tough, now turns to calmness.

I wake up and the first thing I see is the fan and feel the cool air on my sweaty face. I look at the watch and it’s 6:34 am. I try to move my legs and take a gush of relief when I realize that it was all a dream. But the sense of safety when it felt like I reached the refuge is still hovering around my head.

Sense of safety or the sense of refuge is a beautiful thing. It is akin to a glass of water to a thirsty throat. However tough a situation is, a shelter or a refuge brings enormous amount of inspiration and calmness to an individual. I put on my headphones and sleep back again. This is my tent in this desert of life.

When I am hit by disparity and hopelessness, I take refuge in this. Music provides me the much needed respite. It is like building your own tent for a brief period and then reporting back to your senses that you’re doing okay and will be back soon from this issue. It is in these times, people need refuges. For me it is this, for someone else it can be totally different.

How do you generate that sense of refuge?

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Sure about that “One”?

Who is that one person, who will be around you for the whole of your life? In all your happiness, all your sorrow, without conditions and without any expectations? With you, whenever you fall, whenever you rise by your endeavour. Not demanding one thing, simply be there with you all the time. It’s a unique possession to yourself and there is no greed or payback involved. Who is that one person? Can you figure it out? Are they around you right now? Or away from you? Or within you?

Within you? Is that a chance? Whom am I talking about? You! Yourself!

Yes, you are the one who will always be by your side. In darkness and light, in joy and plight, you will always be there for yourself, even when you don’t wish to be. So, why do we run after herds of people the whole of our lives? What if, we have everything it needs to be a wellwisher? Why not invest emotionally in our own self?

Do the things that you would do to people who care for you. Take them out for a date. Play them their favourite music. Watch their favourite plays together. Accompany them to their favourite club’s game. Make them feel observed. That you are watching them. That you value the importance of “the one”. Its easier to ignore someone’s presence, until they are gone. You will miss yourself, ones that charm to love and be with yourself is gone.

That is hazardous. That must never happen. The power to be with your own self should not diminish at any cost. It is primordial to a happy existence. There is no bargain with this. You have to be the one who keeps yourself happy and content in the first place. In other words, yo are the first aid to your pains. Don’t shy out to help yourself. Move ahead and offer help. Even if you reject to accept help and wish to just plunge into a spiral of darkness, never to come out. Still, behold yourself. Take that hand that came out to help you from within.

Because, the day you know and learn how to help yourself in all these skimmy and shroud conditions, there will no longer be disappointment in life. Surely there will be moments and things which will pull you down, but there will be that one person who will always be there for you- rock solid and alert!

You must love “the one”! For it is no one, but “YOU” yourself!

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

In such times of global crisis, staying fit mentally is another big challenge. With scores of jobs and colleges shutdown and opportunities being hit in every part of life, it is everyone’s duty to keep up the morale of people around us. Very soon, we will be out of this and even sooner, running back to life in great pace.
I have always kept my blog open to guestposts from fellow readers and writers and today, I am publishing a post here by my dear friend, Saisree. A school friend and a close confidant of my life, Saisree has lived every moment of her life with an inspiring awe and smile. She is one of those humans who will smile even in the worst times, because that is what she’s used to. Here is a note from Saisree to all those who are going to graduate in 2020 (me too!)

A Word to 2020 Batch

“Failure is a stepping stone to success”. 

A well-versed saying that all are aware of. They say these sayings are written or said by the great achievers. But I want to change that today. It can be said by the people who go through this, too. Failure has always been my lucky charm for my motivation, inspiration and has never stopped me from marching towards success. It has always been at my back to cheer me and lead me to the way, which I admire today. My story might not be the greatest but I still relish the fact that I did not break down to all the nasty things my life has thrown at me. 

I am a simple girl who came from a “so-called-middle-class-family” and as every middle-class-girl, I dreamt of achieving something big and to be an independent girl. I was always taught by my parents that education is the most important factor in life and this teaching has stayed with me forever. I was once an aspirant of BITS-PILANI. Alas! life threw its first game towards me. My uncle, who was very close to me passed away due to an accident. I was stuck in the middle and could not make it to the examination hall. Then, the only way I had to attend was the EAMCET exam, an entrance exam for engineering and medicine by the Andhra Pradesh government. I scored well and somehow I managed a government seat. Though not satisfying, I finally completed my graduation in Information Technology (IT) in 2014.

As all might not be aware that in 2014, Andhra and Telangana states got separated, life threw another big struggle. Since my college was in Andhra Pradesh, all the students from Andhra had faced recession as all the IT Industries were in Hyderabad, Telangana. We weren’t offered any jobs. Somewhere from education to job, I had to struggle again to get a job. Due to family pressure I had to work as a consultant in TATA STEEL, Jamshedpur for just 8k per month. For a dreamer like me, this job was like a kick to reality. But fact to be told, those 2 years, in my first job, had taught me many things as to how to survive in your life as well as in your job. 

With the experience of 2 years, I decided to go forward and apply for other companies and converted a job at all the positions I applied to. My happiness knew no bounds. Considering all the parameters and as per my convenience I joined a company at Visakhapatnam and now 6 years hence, I am working for a big firm, GE.  

Surely, I have faced a lot of problems but then I have gained strength to cope up with all the failures that life can throw on me. I had two ways to go. Either sit and sulk that life was unfair to me, or, just buck up, face the reality and fight for what I dreamt of. I kept thinking of why even was I working for 8k bucks while I can have a luxury life, working in one of the top companies somewhere around the globe and lead the life just the way I wanted. I surely had thought about it and wasted 1 year thinking about it before joining my first company. But that 1 year did teach me this isn’t what I am supposed to do. I was made for much bigger achievements than just sulking at home. 

I have recovered from the situation and so have the other students of the 2014 batch from Andhra Pradesh. Life wasn’t too smooth but we had gained many experiences and our mindsets changed and no other batch might have faced the situation which we had faced. We faced big struggles but also the strength to fight it. We started appreciating life, we started appreciating failures and then success was the best trophy we could ever present to ourselves and our loved ones. 

Now, the same situation has come for all the students of batch 2020. And this time, the struggle isn’t for one state but for the entire world. Now you have to fight for your survival. You need not to lose hope and sulk at home thinking life has been unfair to you. But then just try working harder for your success. Choose even a small path and believe me you can get to achieve your dreams and also start savoring your success and your experiences. Life has just started for you and believe me it has planned unexpected shit to come on your way, but you need to cross every oddity and reach your goal. Others might have gained their success pretty soon or, in future, your juniors might be much more successful than you, but the situations you faced, the roller coaster ride you have been, they didn’t have. They did not taste the real pleasure of life as you have. They can’t enjoy the little happiness you will get through the journey and they can’t savor success as you will. I would say you are the lucky ones to have graduated this year as you are prepared from the start for all the evil deeds life can throw on you and on the long run you will start analyzing and dealing with situations when the real problems come your way. 

All the best and give life and career a good and a happening start with a positive note.

A note by,
B. Saisree.

Edited by,
Rantzaada.

A rainy winter. A month and a half ago.

14 degree Celsius.

I was inside my bed. It was raining heavily and it was around 11 in the morning. I tried to cover up the quilt on me, especially my face, because I could feel the chill on my face. When I pulled it over, a minute later it made me even more uncomfortable. Days when you want something warm to be close to you. Not the hot blower warm, but warm like a human touch. Warm like a mother’s lap or the palm of someone dear. Palms are weirdly comfortable. I am not sure of how many males will find this statement consistent with their personalities, but indeed human palms are very comfortable when you bury your cheeks onto them.

They are cozy, soft and often adjusted as per the reflexes generated by your level of comfort by the person. It is simple way to caress someone and display sense of love, trust and togetherness.

“Is it not done yet?”, She asked.

“No! and there is no way I am going to complete it by this night. I am in such a fix.”

“shhhh…!” and she kept her hand in my hair as I put my head down in despair.

I gave away a sigh and let looked at her. She moved her hand from the hair to my cheeks and as she moved her hand to my face, my eyes – they closed comfortably. The warmth of the palm was beyond explanation. It felt like she took away all my gruesome worries through her touch. I held her hand and requested her to keep it there. Nothing in the world feels like that. I opened my eyes and could see her looking at me, conveying in a way to push me up. To let me know, it wouldn’t be all bad at the end of the day and that she was sure, I would make it.

Fast forward today, I kept my palm on my cheeks, trying to recreate the same magic she once did, but of no use. I wanted to sleep again, but it was uncomfortably cold.

Suddenly, something struck me. I opened her Instagram profile and checked her timeline for a photograph where her palm could be visible. I got one such photograph, took a screenshot and panned in to zoom the photograph to a real scale palm and then kept it on my cheek. Damn, it felt warm (possibly because of the warm display of the phone). But it felt like her palms.

Looks like I fooled myself into sleep. But well, who doesn’t. Its not forbidden to fool yourself into comfort, is it?

After all, warm palms are always comfortable, aren’t they?

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“How much do you have?”

“20”

“I got 35, come on we can have 2!”, I was excited we had enough cash for a couple of plates of masala dosa at 25 per plate. Those were days when we would store those 2 rupee coins that we got every week for Jhalmudhi and multiple weeks collection could help us afford a plate of masala dosa. This was at high school. I used to care for every rupee saved back then.

Gradually, with passing  time, we came to college. Our budgets increased and so did the needs. Now 25/50 rupee was not a big deal but larger requirements like arranging for a gift for your special one or throwing a party at your birthday which would be 10x times higher than the budget you have “accounted for” to your parents. You tell them the party cost 1500, while actually it crossed  6000+. So how do you arrange for money. You arrange for interest-less loans from your friends and then return them the money as and when time allows you to. So, saving some amount everymonth, you could arrange for some good amount like 7k or 8k for your whims and expenses. I cared to save 100/200/500s and not the 10’s and 20’s then.

You save when you have constraints. 

Now, after having a satisfactory job with satisfactory earning, we still want to save, not the 100s/200s though. We want to save the 1000s/5000s and the 10000s. I remember not usually getting tensed if someday I got something worth 200-300 even if I had not planned for it.

As your budget increases, so does your savings denomination. 

While financial budgeting is critical, Life on the other hand, is no less. When you are in a lower budget, the savings denomination decreases and so on. When you are in deep down situation, in a dark valley, and things turn indecent, it is these savings that act like the little streams of water in the valley. They are the biggest respites in such times of crisis.
So, go ahead. Spend your life judiciously. Live your life. Enjoy the present and secure the future.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

12:41 am

“You did not realise but all I did for all these years, was to cheat you. All those lofty talks, all the cozy days, all those meals and dinner I cooked- all were nothing but pieces of bait to keep you hanging on. I knew it wouldn’t be logical to ask you to stay back with me, but incidentally all of these things helped me. Flattering girls like you isn’t a tough thing. Just a little moon, nocturnal talks, flowers, care and a little of head massage – and there you go. I know this well and let me tell you, this isn’t the first time I am doing this. I surely couldn’t tell you all of this on your face and hence I am writing this text to you. It wasn’t a lovebound fellow with you all this while, just a frustrated lustbound fellow. I hope you recover of this fiasco soon. Take care. Bye.”

12:47 am

The last 3 sentences took him more than 3 minutes to type. To cook and confess is one thing, to end that conversation is another thing.

“I hope you recover of this fiasco soon.

Take care.

Bye.”

An assurance of grim possibilities. 3 minutes. 3 lines and all he could write were 3 lines of the inner compassion that he wanted to hide in all the lines above. Why would someone do it? Why would you reveal it this way? Is this the truth? What’s true – the last 3 lines or everything else?

“You have to give me a reason why you did this. This wasn’t a drunk text Mohit, you owe an explanation to this! You could’ve simply moved back! This was rude. Not just you, she will not be able to trust anyone else now. Why did you do this?” I asked him.

He kept quiet. Just a nod. Answers? NO!

“What??” I pushed him again for an answer. He lay there, face snubbed into his palms.

“I don’t know what I did”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Do you even realize what you’ve done? Can you pull that text back?”

He kept mum. I kept trying for an hour to make him speak, but failed. His silence turned to gloom which later turned into tears from his eyes and gradual sobbing, but he won’t speak. I left for office. Even an early morning push couldn’t help me get through his inner mind. I left his apartment and was barely into my office schedule, that I received a text.

“There was no other way”, the text read.

“We had to part. She wasn’t eager to. Our staying together would’ve shattered her pieces of future. I thought maybe this way, I could make her hate me so much that she would just refuse to talk. I got her reply as  soon as you left.”

“What did she reply?”, I replied.

“Thanks! You finally made me cry on your terms. I will never be able to believe anyone anymore.”

This is what her message read. She cried finally for what he wrote. I had never even seen her wet eyed. We would joke around her for the same. But this idiot friend of mine, finally did this.

“Promise me on thing?”, He asked.

“Go on..” I said.

“We will never discuss this. Not today, not ever.”

“…., ok”, I replied back.

That day, I saw a friend commit a grave mistake. I am not at all sure, if that was okay. Maybe he realized that it was the only way he could have made her move away. Or maybe something else. He asked me not to talk about this ever. I stayed with him for the next 3 months before I went on for my post-graduation. Its 4 years since this happened. I lost a good friend that day. He almost died. What is left of him – is a son, a brother, an employee, a niece, an uncle, everything but him. What about her? But I am sure she would have, sooner or later, realized that all he said would have been a great madeup story. We all know what Mohit is. I wish he comes back to what he was 4 years back.

Lie is a tool. A two edged tool. It is sharp and fatal. We may form an impression about someone with the lie they speak up. But there is a background story behind every lie. Behind every construct. Some stories we might know. Some we might understand. Some we might know, but never understand.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Usual. 11 pm. I sit to type. As I lean forward, a drop of sweat, channeling across the troughs of my face, drops on the keypad. Thankfully, it dropped on the keys and not between them. Mid April, midnight, sweat! What does that mean?

Summers.

This is not just the coming back of a season, but each season and its features bring back a whole lot of memories along with them. For different people, different weathers can mean different expressions. With every passing season, the feelings and emotions attached with it changes. Some summers meant school vacations, while some summers hint at the troublesome marketing surveys you had to make at your internship. Some summers will bring back memories from your grandparents place while some will bring back memories from your fresh new sessions at school.

We usually do not care much of this, but most seasons have their own distinct effect on our senses. The view of the things around you, the smell of the environment, the things you hear, the kind of food you taste, every season comes with a set of their own distinct features. Summers for me is moist, over-sweating nights and hot, dry days. Well, this is so generic and might relate to each and everyone in my climate zone.

But beyond the general virtues of the season, they have some personal attributes. Things which are only concerned with you, akin to your passwords and your titles. Your secrets, your moods, the people around you and so many other things. I put my focus back on the keyboard and resumed typing.

“Why don’t you sit near the windows, wouldn’t you feel a little better? I really haven’t seen someone sweating the way you do!”

Heard this so many times, unaware that this little thing in between would become a part of a package of memories that will last forever. Although I can relate extreme sweating to so many years in my life, but the packages that lead will always be the ones that displayed extreme dynamism. Most summers had been vacations since childhood, but off late few turned into a film where every day had a different sequence, a different story, different characters and different leads. What began with solitude ended with solitude, but vast differences between the two.

Summer means heat. Heat expands matter. Particles move further away from each other. People too. Summers have days that keep you in and nights that make you flush out. The reason summers are romantic, because you stay out at nights. Skies are mostly clear and that makes everything visible clearly in the night sky. One’s bondage with the moon and the stars increases in the summers. From sleeping on the terrace to the late night gossips with people in open areas or on benches, not just helps in oozing out some summer heat from the mind, but also creates ever lasting memories.

Summers bring people closer, in the sense that when the world is out, ie, during the day, people stay inside spaces, fearing to go out. More chances of conversations and better interactions. Nights and evenings are warmer and hence people flock out again. People see the sky, they see people and they feel the wind on better evenings and nights. Winds bring people closer. Winds takes away all the vices between two humans and then all they are left with is feelings – pure, salient and everlasting.

Not that I will want the summer to stay, because even rains and the winters are important, but the summers are surely a memorable phase.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

I see a dream. Myself on the shore walking towards the sea. I can hear people speaking behind me. Much noise. But it was calm towards the sea. Silence. Only the waves and me. Nothing else. As I keep walking towards the sea, there are a few people who are calling me. Probably stopping me. But I am quite into the waves now. Their voices now seem distant. They will not come till the point I have come, because it’s dangerous. I am knee deep in waves. The new waves hit me to my chest. I’m used to things hitting upon my chest. But this doesn’t break me. It’s making me feel lighter with every hit of the wave.

I keep walking in. I can now feel the same below my feet vanish as they rush away as I keep a step ahead. I stop for a moment. I want to look back and see who all care. But if someone really did, they would’ve come right upto me and grab me by my hands and pull me back. Nevertheless, I must keep walking. The force of the waves makes standing still difficult here. You cannot stand in knee Deep Ocean. You must walk. When everything around is moving, you must walk else you will be toppled over by another force. So I keep walking.

The water level increased to my hip and I could feel the incoming waves hit my chin now. The weightlessness was obvious and I could hear only faint noises of humankind now. Humans are not the only thing alive on this earth, I realise. Far inside the ocean, life which is known to us ceases and all that exists is plain blank horizon. Blue below and blue above. You realise how it’s not white that the colour of peace, its actually blue. How white is overrated. There is nothing white. It is utopia. It is the false dream we give to paint our blemishes with white so they look dreamy. My feet now lose contact with the bed below and I begin to float.

I am now not standing tall in water. No one should. We don’t stand tall in the lap of our mothers or the loved ones. When people love you and care for you, you melt, you flex. I was melting too. It felt as if the ocean had engulfed me and my thoughts and suddenly the foreground and the background both vanished. It’s all me and the ocean. I was in the ocean and the ocean within me. We are all the same. The moment we disconnect ourselves from this two sided relationship, we perish. When it’s only you and the ocean, the waters don’t taste salty. They taste just like water.

I start gulping the sea water. I should ideally keep my head out to be able to see and breathe in air. The air? The polluted air? The air that was so choking, I nearly choked on it every night. Those inhalers? Remember, they had to help me breath, even if this air was present. This cannot and shall not be the reason and the elixir of my life. I choose to stay in the waters. Within the waters. Between the waters. Below the waters. Because water gives you flexibility. It doesn’t make you feel blank and noisy. Water engulfs all your senses. You see water, you touch water, you smell water, you can taste water and you can breathe water.

Breathe? Water? No, usually we don’t! But this is not usual. This is different. I choose to keep in and breathe the water. The water goes through the nasal duct and I feel an eerie calmness in the whole setup. Its becoming silent and quiet. I open my eyes, to see misty blue waters ahead of me and the waters become darker as I see below. My head seems to be falling backwards. I experience weightlessness. Probably because I wasn’t ever trained for swimming. This is the first time. But it is good. Definitely better than walking on the ground – alone. In the hot scorching summers.

This is a dream.

Or is it?

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Did you misjudge?

What went wrong?

Did you already not know it won’t work out?

Did you not enjoy the times enough to have good memories later on?

Why do you have to be all frowned up once this happened?

People ask questions. They will ask questions. It’s easy to witness the game from outside. Anyone can put forth 10000 permutations and combinations of the different scenarios that could have come up or will come up. But it surely does not work that way. Does it? We are habituated to the belief that our pain is the worst. The situation can never go as grim as it went with me. We always tend to believe the worst happened with us. This feeling is universal. But to jump on the other side on the spectrum and say, you should not be feeling things when you knew it would happen in the first place – is stupid.

Do we not know that seasons will change – but we still crib when the summers become uncomfortable? Do we not know that our friends, parents, relatives and everyone on this earth including you yourself, will one day, die – but we still fear for their lives. Don’t we know nothing is going to be permanent in your life – but we still fear for theft, damage, disasters. Does it make you any less intelligent or uber-emotional? It does not. It surely does not make you a saint- because saints are supposed to be free from worldly attachments, but be sure, it keeps you human. So how does this work? The factor of fear, possessiveness, crave, need?

Not that it is rocket science. Simple – You care for something or someone and you will develop a feeling of possessiveness for it. I do not mean extreme unhealthy possessiveness, but just a feeling of oneness. When you start to feel things are not in the form of multiple identities, but one. It is then that you begin to realise, you care. You care for its existence. For the togetherness. Along the care for longevity, develops your fear of separation. Fear of perish. And hence, all these questions and apprehensions.

But this isn’t the solution, is it? You cannot lament or grief over a particular separation for life. Or can you?

Can you?

You can?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe if it doesn’t create hindrances for those who care for you. Who care for your survival. People who fear for you and your happiness. Maybe you can lament over your own grief without creating few for others. Maybe. Maybe not.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

It was the third jury this semester and we were heading back to our rooms before we could just fall down and sleep. We were peddling our cycles at an unusually slow pace , fixing our heads on the front wheels of the cycles, with the shirt sleeves (which were decently tied full till now) folded upto the elbow. This was really tiring but thankfully it’s over. A full 10-15 days of concentrated effort had gone into this and here we were. 5 guys cycling over a silent road at 7 pm in the evening at a slow pace.

“Lets go out tonight?”

“Yea. Need to unload my mental shit tonight.”

All but myself, agreed for the same.

“Guys, I need some 3-4 hours for some pre-planned work. I wont be able to join tonight, can we make it tomorrow? It’s a Saturday tomorrow and there will be a happy hour too! We can barge in tomorrow. What do you guys say? Moreover, let’s just rest tonight”, I said.

People did not want to agree to it, but after a few seconds of silence, everyone let out a hmm.

I entered my room, kept the notebook at its place, shut down the windows, switched on the red zero bulb and took out my red headphone. Dark, silent and cold room. With a tinge of red. Noise cancelling headphones and good songs on the playlist. What better way to let off a half-month stress? I lay down back on my bed, with both the legs hanging down and not touching the floor. Hands spread wide and a soft quilt by my neck.

We all love companies of great people, friends and loved ones. Well, most of us do! But often, we do realise the need to just be on our own. Individual. For some time. Alone, in our own world. There are problems, we cannot share or deal with the help of others. There are issues we are better poised to solve ourselves than to involve others. There are celebrations we deserve to feast on, alone – not with others. Celebrating with your own self is important.

If I was to make rules for individuals, it must become essential for a person to know how to enjoy and celebrate with themselves. Dancing alone, singing alone and for yourself, cracking a joke to yourself and then cracking up on it. These are actions that will put you on a mode of self-romancing, a stage where there is nothing but pleasure and happiness. If you are finding it so difficult to love yourself, do not expect others to love you either.

Be ready to dance alone in a room. Never miss an opportunity to sing loud the songs you love in a park or on a terrace. Be eager to treat yourself randomly some day and go beyond the budget to treat your inner person. Spend more than you would on a very dear friend. Raise a toast to your self and set that inner human happy. It is far more important to keep that person inside you content than any other earthly commitments. Life is not what is, life is what you make of it. What you feel from within, you will make the same with your life.

Life is not always bless and bloom. There will be darker days. Let your eyes loose out the burden of your inner self when they are loaded with sorrow or grief. Make some space for the inner self to unpack that fist in angst when there is much pressure inside.

Be kind to yourself. Love yourself. Everything and everyone comes after yourself. You have to be the best friend you have ever got, the most critical observer, the most amicable fan, the most romantic lover. Once you treat yourself right, you will set on a path to treat everyone and everything appropriately.

Learn to live. Learn to have a date with yourself.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

What do see in a person? Thoughts, views, physical appearance, eyes or personality? Many of us would agree to one of the 5 mentioned traits. Some might say no, it’s the voice, or the walk. Some might say it can be the way they put themselves up. There are so many other things that one can say, describes a person’s first impression. But is it always true that something precise takes up your attention?

When you see a labour working in extreme heat outside, you notice their hard work and their poverty. When you see a person in a lavish car and entering into a 5 star hotel you notice their property and richness. When you notice someone feeding an animal on the roadside, you notice their compassion towards animals and so on. Most of us do make first impressions for people around us by taking note of something very exquisite. Something very typical.

But with some people and some instances, this may not happen. At times, we are taken aback by something unusually attractive or hypnotic in a person’s character and this creates an image in our minds which cannot be justified by reasons or nuances. Such images are simply absorbed by our brain and gets ingested and digested by the deepest zones of our minds. One may or may not want to be on the receiving ends of these expressions, but I strongly believe these instances are involuntary in nature.

These impressions cannot be explained, told or written down. They can be only felt, that too in an extremely yielding environment- like a full moon night or while sitting on a park bench in a windy night. The easier they get into you, the more difficult it becomes to express them out. Even if you try to put this out in words about how you felt about that one person, chances are that they might never understand. Because words can only illustrate what you have already felt and realised.

Sometimes, it will just be a strange, eerie feeling of unusualness when you see someone. Their presence will “cook” something in you and you will never know precisely – what? Its better not to try and understand. Let it be. Feel the beauty of the feeling and let it remain as complex as it was.

Afterall, not all stars emit light. Most stay because they create an unexplainable impression.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“Hope you feel better at home with your family. I will leave now, I need to hop on to my work now. Take care. See you.” She hung up the call after a long conversation we had after a long time.

I could say nothing else but the usual good bye and take care. People believe that when you live in a group or people who are close to you, your problems vanish because you communicate. But not always. Yes, sometimes your heart and mind is relieved when you talk and stay around people who are close to you, but not everything is porous. Some layers within you are so intrinsic and special to your individuality that it is difficult to share or expose it to others.

To imagine this is a little tough, but I will try my bit to do the same. Imagine I have several small bags tied onto my body – my head, my heart, my limbs everywhere. Bags of all kinds and sizes – small, medium and large. Bags that contain different types of emotions, feelings, experiences and memories. Out of these bags there will be that one – big and heavy bag right below your ribs and that will be the most insinuating package. When you are home, your parents will be open to share your bags of nostalgia, your career your friends, your family memories your future, etc. When you meet friends they have their own set of bags to share from. You interact with someone, you share their bags too.

But there is only one bag which is exclusively for one person. Maybe that person is gone. Maybe the contents of the bag are destroyed. Maybe the bag has nothing useful but some wreckages from a past event. But this is the bag which is the heaviest. This is the baggage which bends your spine, makes you lean forward and look down. Look down to what has become of you. Look down, only to see the number of baggage you’ve been carrying around for such a long time. You will suddenly feel a little weight around your shoulders.

Now, most of us have this huge bag with us. Most other bags can be shared with multiple people or situations but this one bag can be shared with only one person and when that person is not available, you wish to share it with yourself. I call this isolation or self-time. When you want to share these heavy bags with yourself. These bags contain emotions, special places of interests, people who were dear but are no more around, etc.

So even when you are in a big crowd, this bag, if full and heavy, tends to pull you back into the process of isolation and that is how people feel alone and isolated even in a crowd. Even if the interaction with everyone else is okay and normal, you might never know a person would be actually bogged down by that one bag.

And it’s no one’s fault too. People will have such bags of memories and you really cannot do anything about it.

This is life. We are all here to be bogged down by things which ones lifted us up.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

No, sometimes it’s just not possible to uplift yourself up. Sometimes we all feel broken down, tumbling down and diced up and I know that is not okay to begin with, but not everything in this life is supposed to be okay in the first place. There are several emotions we can express and most of them will be expressed. We as humans are not beyond emotions and other vices and that’s perfectly fine.

Be rattled someday. Be fumed up someday. Its okay to be. When you are angry, it is still you. When you are broke, it is still pretty much the same, its you! You don’t change when you are changing emotions. People who know you well, will handle you well and this applies to anyone and everyone of us. But, wait!

There has to be a line beyond which we don’t let our expressions wander around. What line? Personal containment? Capacity? Relations? Trust? Where do we draw the line? We all will be under some extreme emotion someday and at one point it’s okay to understand that it will and has to surge, but where do we draw the line? What do you do when your overwhelming emotions create a damage which you yourself know will be beyond repair? What do you do when your overwhelming emotions create a bump on the calm surface of social tension? Surely there has to be something definitive. Something that can tell you or hint you to stop, without someone physically telling you to do that.

One of the many basis of the lines is the understanding of the interrelationship of trust and responsibility. People who lay trust in you, do so at the cost of something. What is that something? That cost is a piece of their mind and soul that they give to you. Not all relationships have expectations in return, but most are simply limited to repeated acknowledgements and a sense of gratitude, that is it. So when, you tend to lose it to something unfair in your life, this sense of gratitude which turns to a responsibility is the line you have to stop before.

Yes. When someone places their trust in you, you owe a responsibility to them. You cannot break away when it comes to you paying back and as I mentioned earlier, most of the attachments around are okay with a meager sense of gratitude. You cannot jump this line. Every time you jump this line because of the surge of your overwhelming emotions you break a chance to show gratitude. In all earnest suggestions, never do this.

Your emotions are because someone else jumped their line and if you jump your own line, you’re going to pass it on to someone else. Be expressive, but most importantly in a complex social cobweb that we live, it is important that we learn to soak in the excess emotions, so we don’t cross our own lines. So we do not end up transferring our overwhelming emotions to someone else, creating a domino effect.

How do you know where the line in your case is? You don’t need to think a lot about it really. Just follow the thumbnail. Carrying your emotions safely so that other’s around you, who care for you, are not hurt is the key. Express, but when you get close to that line, begin soaking in! And that is the key.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Times change. They change terribly.

One fine morning you can be in your most comfortable clothes in the most comfortable bed having a sip of the most refreshing coffee available and the other morning you can be stranded in an empty field with 300 passengers because your train derailed. You might not be having even a packet of local biscuits, maybe a cup of watery tea and the green grass of the  agricultural field to lie upon till the police and the ambulance arrives.

Life is unpredictable. It can change any moment.

One evening you can be hand in hand with your loved one, sitting on a green evening bench, looking at the sunset and the onset of the stars- the Orion maybe and one evening you will wonder while you look at her picture on social media, if you can even let her know you saw this picture. Life does change rapidly.

There are times when few of the people that hold importance in your life, suddenly part and part with immense force. When the quintessential values become so far that from being close to heart they suddenly vanish into the thin air in a way that it is even difficult to comprehend their position. What kills more is the grim chances of them coming back. So, most of us understand that time changes and it changes terribly.

“So, you didn’t call her after that?” Paul asked.

We were both sitting on our usual spot across the dam. Same waters, same sky, but a lot had changed between us. The third person who accompanied us till he was here and the third person who became my second when he left, was now missing. He was not here when our friendship turned to a bond.

“You could’ve called me once! Just once, man! I could’ve tried talking to her. She is my friend too and I am sure she wouldn’t have put down my call.”, he again asked even after I completely let go of him. I was continuously looking at the waters and he started feeling humiliated at this attitude of mine.

He got hold of my hands and made me stand up. While he force stood me up, I looked at him and asked, “do you want to have a short walk here down the bank?” He gave me a puzzled look, but anyways he agreed.

I took him close to the bank of the little stream which flowed out of the dam.I brought two sticks and asked him to throw one at the count of 3 with me.At the count of 3, we both threw one stick each into the running stream. I then grabbed my arm and pulled me and asked him to run with me. We ran with the log together, for about some 150 m. Then we stopped as there was no way ahead.

While he ran with me and kept an eye on what I requested him to see. After a good 5-6 minutes of run, we finally stopped. I asked him if he saw what happened to the logs. He kind of moved his head in a confused way. I realised that he saw what happened but he could not make out how that was related to what we were talking about. I explained him the entire sequence.

Once we threw the two pieces of log inside the flowing stream, they two were thrown at two different points. But gradually as they both flowed downstream, at one point in time, they both came together and flowed together. They crossed through whirlpools, hurdles and the different other wreckages in the same stream, but nothing parted them away. But after some 30-40 metres, they themselves part – with one flowing ahead of the other, as if in a race for its own life. The latter tries to catch up but the one ahead races really fast. Fast enough to not hold up with the rear one. Then a little ahead, the one ahead gets caught into a small whirlpool and then swirls around thrice. By the time it swirls for the third time, at one particular point in time, they again meet each other, but just in a blink of an eye, part again.

Paul asked, “So?”

The point here was that people are like the logs in the stream. We will meet, we will part and we might meet again, only to part again. We do often waste a lot of our energy in thinking why something happened. And it is the natural course to where our mind leads us. Instead, if we could just accept what happened, it could be so much better. Accept what?

Accept that things change. Accept that things change so terribly fast and weird. That nothing again feels the same. That everytime you plunge into your memory of the past, you feel it’s another world and in that world too, we only wish if it could all come back.

To the same benches, the same stars, the river banks, the meals together and the night gazing.

Life is unpredictable.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“Where are you? I am hungry! Either you’re coming back in 20 minutes or I will start eating rice the way it is!”, she shouted on the phone.

Hunger. Panick. Longing.

“Are baba, wait! I will be there in 10 minutes at max. Met a friend on the way.”, I replied.

“See, people here have already started their meal. Don’t make a fool out of me please.”

“O lady, I know! Rushing in!”, I hung up the call.

I rose up from the chair in the park, where I was sitting since the last 20 minutes. It was tough to make a choice. Its difficult when you have to choose the impossible.  Especially when you know in all probabilities, that is not going to work.

Curd Rice. That was the plan for the evening. It’s an emotion. Beyond explanations – beyond words. I was supposed to go out, buy a cup of curd and come back so we both enjoy the best of curd rice. A sweet little program. Curd rice keeps sane. It brings stillness and calmness in situations which are unprecedented.

As I reached the hostel, people were halfway through their plates and she was sitting right there. Shaking legs, restlessly looking around with a plate for herself and for me, filled only with rice. A small cup of white salt kept at the side and the entire setup waiting for the curd to join the feast. I went closer and keep the curd cup between the two plates from the behind. A slight whisper of “sorry” to make sure there were no fatalities by the delay that had happened. She turned back and there it was, the much feared look. I sat by her quietly and in next 10 seconds I was about to witness the biggest emotional swing – from restless angry person to a joyous kid excited for the first birthday gift, that kind of thing.

Curd rice is not just rice mixed in curd. No! A lot of people will tell you it is this way. But it is not. Curd rice is just the next level of rice consciousness. You cook rice and you leave it for sometime to cool down. Then you batter the curd for sometime to make it even, break the lumps and make it into an even and homogeneously distributed mix. Then mix the white rice and white curd to get an even whiter mix. Don’t believe?

Yes, this is where the curd rice becomes all the more mysterious! How does rice white added to curd white makes the mixture even more whiter than both the components. We’ve never heard of this. Our books never taught this to us. Nothing of this sort ever happened to us. Precisely why, curd rice is a magic in itself. And wait, you don’t wait here. You go beyond. You see things that no one else would be seeing. You add some other components that make it more spicier and more tastier and even more colorful.

White is the symbol of peace. Curd rice white is a symbol of “too much peace”.

When both of our plates were nearly done with and our fingers were ridden with the white curd rice, I leaned over and asked, “How’s it?”

Two long stares and one short smile was what I got!

Curd rice cools down things. It creates space for that extra peace. A bowl of curd rice to this special day!

Always Ranting, Raantzaada.

Wall, do you copy?

Ey wall! Happy birthday wall. Do you listen? Its been, umm, long time since we had a conversation. You there?

Do you want me to sit down? Or just sit with my back on you? Ok, wait a minute.

Ah! Yea, so now! Happy birthday wall. Worried? Don’t wish to reply back.. ehehe.. no worries! I get what you say. I know you cannot say it openly right now. You got things to hide and to look for. Never mind. I can bear the conversations on my end.

Remember the day one when I shifted to this modest space. Me and you, totally different and complete strangers, we both made this 81 square feet floor area as our home. It was our home. Me and you. Both, in happiness and gloom. In announcements and in secrets. Remember, the day I saw the first bruises on you because of that previous room-owner, who had been sticking tapes on you to enforce what he thought would look good on you? Ah, damn that person. Your plasters came out as your skin looked charred. I am never going to forget that fool.

I really like walls the way they are. It was afternoon the last July, and it was really warm outside. My previous room was literally burning anytime of the day. A few minutes of nocturnal rest within the walls was a luxury, a luxury I could not have most of the summer nights. But here, you, forget my nights, you gave me utmost comfort in the light of day. You have the properties to be calm even when the whole world burns. I cannot forget the first afternoon sleep I had in this room. It was beyond pleasant. Like sleeping in mother’s arms. We had a very unexpected and a comfortable summer. Both of us.

Every nail on your body, pins me from the inside. I remember one friend joking on me, saying these nails are not something which hurt you, they are your piercings. I would have believed it, only if you’d said it yourself. But I really wish, these are not creating that discomfort for you. We really shared a comfortable journey through the winters and the spring. And here we are at the onset of the next summer. I really wish we were together forever. But I know, that is beyond joke.

I really wish sometime you would just speak. I feel the urge to know so much from you. I know you’ve been through more than what you tell me. You don’t like moving around much either. I am ok to sit here with you and listen to you. Till time allows, but do think upon this and talk to me sometimes. I would really appreciate that. Not that its all me trying to give you an exhaust, but its also me who really wants to hear you.

Happy birthday once again. Stay tall. Stay tough.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Take the alley. Get close to the main gate. Open the gate and step up on the street. Take a right turn and walk straight for 80m and then take a right turn at the third right. Then go to the third house from the end and wait there. Turn left and look at the house that stands there. Look at it and feel the nostalgia run down the spine.

Our life has taken us places to places, from villages to cities and from the lows to the highs. But some addresses, get itched in your mind. Itched forever. And contrary to the popular belief, it does not depend on the duration you stayed there for. You might have stayed or visited a place only once in your life, but everytime you cross that place or even in the close proximity, the lanes will call you up. Your mind will keep reminding you to take the required right turn from the third lane. You might have to simply cross through the lane because there is neither anything significant anymore with that third lane of your life nor with the third house.

It all begins with what I call “place”. A place is a term which can be defined in 1000 different ways  and there would still be a sense of ambiguity in its meaning as an entirety. But there is something very special with space that most of us can related to. We usually say, I need my own space, I don’t want to invade her space, etc. What is this space we are talking about?

Is it physical, social or just a mental construct? I play my bet for place to be a mental construct. Its nothing but a mental construct of a place. How you perceived that space to be. What made that space special for you? Was it a person, a sense of comfort, an old event or a nostalgia from distant memory? There has to be and probably there will be something concrete related to every such place that has this essence for you.

Do these spaces diminish with time? The question is akin to whether you forget people in your life with time? I guess it doesn’t. People don’t vanish from your heads over time. They just shift down in your general list of priorities. Not that their importance decreases, but something or someone else becomes more important by virtue of responsibilities or physical or mental proximities etc. Similar places cannot be and generally speak they don’t vanish off your timeline. They just end up taking lower ranks in your seats of priority. How do we check what’s higher in your priority when it comes to a place?

Ask a question like this. Can I go to the place as soon as I can? If your answer to this question is a ‘yes’, congratulations, the place is still on your list and it hasn’t diminished by any sense. But, if your answer to this continues like “Yes. But, I guess / May be / Probably…) When such indefinite and conditional words enter your answers, you get the answer. It has gone down the priority list. You can try the same with priority of people in your lives. More the conditions, lower is their rank in the list of your priorities.

But some places, like the 3^rd house at the 3^rd lane will always be at the zeroth place. There is something weirdly special with that place. Whenever you go there and see the house, every wall of that house will flush down thousand memories of people you want to see back. People whom you want to hear back from. People whom you want to stroll and walk with now. When the list of priorities of people and places fuse together, decision making becomes even more tougher.

What would you do when you reach the edge of the 3^rd lane – stop or continue straight?

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

This is a continuation of the Rant 245 : The dilemma of the lama – 2.  Read it at the below link.
https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/28/rant-245-the-dilemma-of-the-lama-2/

Though his mental health deteriorated too swiftly in the past few months, he increasingly found a growing concern for the lady he was been attended by. He was forced to lie to her about his condition to make sure she was not overloading herself with his problems and everytime he lied, he would slip one step deeper into the trench of his virtual darkness. It was more than 7 months since anyone visited his house and more than 4 months since he had cleaned his studio apartment. Everything in his house lay where it laid 4 months back when he returned from the hospital after his first stint of anxiety attack. Post that period, he had been consistently slipping into, what he felt, was a deep valley of ethereal anxiety and tremendous pressure. Then he happened to meet this lady, who in a way was a critical point in the manner he lived his daily life.

On one hand his reputation as a mental health counsellor was incrementally increasing over the past few months and he had more cases to work with than ever. From having a few visitors to his office to signing institutional contracts worth much more than his earlier annual incomes. The only setback, was his own health factor, which he believed was the sole reason behind his success. On his drawing room walls, he had multiple inscriptions made with pencil, charcoal or anything that could leave a mark.

Some of the lines he wrote there were:

“I studied so I could treat. I can heal them now because I am suffering myself.”

“Whatever you do for me, will not be enough”

“Each time I lie to you, I suffer.”

“All I want now, is to go out, meet you and take a stroll on green grass”

“Tell them that I treated them with the best I could in my own distress”

This anecdote from the life of a mental health counsellor’s life is just one of the many instances we can come through around us. Most of us, at some point in our life get stuck in a severe vortex, a whirlpool of compassion and regret, dark and light. To make a decision at that point in time is difficult and what most of us end up doing is to keep spiralling in the distress of the vortex.

We may be a lama in our own capacities, but inside us, each lama is in a dilemma. Those who break the sheath of dilemma shine while the others twinkle for some time and then disappear in the great cosmic darkness within all of us.

The Dilemma of the Lama.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

To be continued..
Continue reading at the below link.
https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/09/02/rant-402-the-dilemma-of-the-lama-4/

This is a continuation of the Rant 244 : The dilemma of the Lama – 1. Read the first part here.
https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/27/rant-244-the-dilemma-of-the-lama-1/

He came out, in a towel and stood infront of the mirror that lay on the floor. A thin tall man in his 40s, ribs easily visible and the collar bones telling the preface of his inner trauma. He tried to locate a cut mark on his stomach towards the left. It was healing. He took out an ointment and applied it on the mark. He moved towards the laptop table and wore the shirt which was kept on the chair. He wore the shirt and sat on the chair.

He opened up the internet browser and checked his mail.

“Hello Doc,

Can we have a video session at 9:45 pm?”

He looked at the clock, it was 9:37 pm. He went back to the mirror, combed his hair and tied up his shirt neatly. Then went to the other corner of the room and rolled a movable curtain backdrop behind the chair. All set up and tidy for the web-camera frame, he sat in front of the laptop. He put his hands to his face, rubbed it twice, kept his head down for a couple of seconds and then rose his head up in confidence. He opened the call application and dialled the person who requested a video call. While the call went through, he adjusted his collar and his buttons.

The call got connected.

“Hey Doc, how are you?”, the lady on the other side asked.

“Ey Thanks! I am fine. Just returned home.” He replied.

“Long day, uh?”

“Yeah! How you doing?” he asked in return.

“Well, good. What is the update on your medicines? Are you taking them up as prescribed?”, the lady on the other end asked.

“Yes, I am. I feel better. Its really been long since I was anxious. I feel much better since the last one week or so.” He explained her.

“That is great news. You’ve been doing great. Only if we had met earlier, you could’ve been perfect. Wonder how you’ve been living such a life since a long time. You counsel people outside to turn their lives happy and you yourself have been slowly pushed into this kind of life. I was really shocked to hear from you, your state.” She spoke as he listened to her teary eyed.

“Yea, Thanks! I am grateful to you for your help. It’s really been a great help.”

“So we will talk later then?”

“Yea sure! I need to go take rest too.” He replied.

The two ended the call. It was just an acknowledgement call he had to make to his supervisor doctor who was treating him for anxiety issues. He himself was a full-time psychologist and a teen-counselor. He attended several students, young attendees at his clinic every day 6 days a week. No one apart from this one doctor from whom he consulted online only, knew his state. He had met this lady online and since then was good friends with her. One day, he broke down infront of her on a video call, while he was drunk. He told her everything about how he felt and how his life had broken down bit by bit in the last 9 years. She too, was a mental health expert and she suggested him a few measures.

Later when he realized that he had spoken tad too much while he was drunk he tried to cover it up and stay away from the lady, but she kept asking regularly. Over the days, he had learnt the art of faking it up infront of her every time she would ask for a video conference. He knew he was decaying from within and it was beyond the scope of few medicines to take up his health rise. But the lady kept trying and he kept her false hopes alive. His walls, that lay dark behind the light that was kept lose on the table, had multiple inscriptions written on them, some verses and some sketches. This room, was the testament of his ailing mental health which he believed would soon meet a silent end.

To be continued..

Continue reading at the below link.

https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/29/rant-246-the-dilemma-of-the-lama-3/

“Is it okay?” the counselor said. “I am here available for you anytime from 8 am to 11 pm on different channels – both on the phone and on the internet. Just give me a call or ping me whenever you wish to report some anxiousness. Is it okay?” He added.

The counselor shook hands with the young girl in her late teens and then left the house on his motorbike. It took him around 20 minutes of driving in the sparse roads of the rustic old town to reach home. A small two-level duplex that was dark from the outside with the yellow streetlight having a faint splash of yellow light on the front porch. He stood the bike there, took out a lock from the carrier and locked the front tyre of the bike with the handle. He moved his hands on the sides of the door to reach out to what felt like a switch. He switched a faint blue light above the door on and reached out his pocket to fetch his main entry key. He could not find the same in there and reached out the other pocket, but failed. He then searched the pocket in the shirt where he finally found the key.

He takes out the key and struggles for a few seconds before the lock opens up. As he pushes the door open, a newspaper, which was supposedly pushed beneath the door in the morning, fell on the floor infront of him which he pushed aside with his shoes. With his left leg, he pushed back one swing of the door while the other kept swinging open. Seconds after he entered his house, a feeble low watt LED light switched on. It wasn’t a proper wall-mounted light, but it lay on the table beside the laptop attached to a holder in a loose wire.

Beside the laptop lay a large sized coffee mug and a couple of sponge smiley balls. He went to the kitchen, brought out a mug of coffee and sat on his sofa, which was covered with a bed-sheet roughly and one end stuffed with used clothes. In front of the sofa, on the table, number of used beer and coke cans were kept. Some sturdy while some fallen. He took out his phone and started replying to few of the texts he had already received.

After a few minutes, he washed his face and went to the bathroom to take a shower. While in shower, he lay his hands on the wall in front of him and stood beneath the shower. Breathing hastily and looking at the water draining down the gutter in a helical manner.

He suddenly broke down.

Tears flowing down his eyes, he sobbed, trying to contain himself under the rain of the shower. His fists tightened, while still on the wall and he tried to press his teeth together to stop the breakdown further.

To be continued…

Continue reading at the below link.

https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/28/rant-245-the-dilemma-of-the-lama-2/

“Take care”, I texted her even though my fingers repeatedly told me not to.

But I did.

Tick.

Double tick.

Blue ticks.

Damn. I never thought it would be so tough. And then came the toughest part. The typing..

Why are things so tough when you move past one or the other things? Why do people wish to leave from your horizon but still hover around in the atmosphere? It is the inherent wish to have them around you that keeps them there. Well, having people around may not be ultimately harmful, but the only thing it hurts and hurts badly is the scope of recovery or healing from within. This in turn hurts most not your individual life but the people around you who are incessantly trying to bring you out or change your life for a change.

“Yes.. You too!”, she replied. Now? What now? What should be done? Reply, view or just let it be? In such situation follow the inner instinct and not some thumb-rule. Because our mind does not justify thumb rules later when you seek justification.

“There?”, another text appeared while I was all ingrained in this thought.

“Yea, tell me”, I replied back.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing, sitting idle, you tell”

“Can I call?”

“Umm, I am trying to write a report for my guide. Can we do it later?”, I wrote back hesitatingly.

I felt a little bad while I sent the reply. I mean, I have faced the same tune that has broken me down in the last so many months and now I am doing the same thing again back to someone else. I know this is very very idiotic, but I am surely not doing this on purpose. I just cannot let one part of me overrule the other part of me and go on to do something else.

Our mind is an extremely toxic Pandora box sometimes. It just does not let you open up new scopes of happiness and joy. Many a times, forces you to stay within the pungent, small and dark box of memories that have killed you for more than long. Even when you wish to pull out after a long fight within, it keeps checking your actions on a balance. A balance of ethics and morality. Would it be right? Was it just about all this? Are you so weak? These questions keep haunting you. Haunting you till you crumble. Till things just cripple you to ground.

What are we effectively waiting to do things for? Recovery from an old habit or fear of falling to a newer one? Why is it so difficult to step out of the old rotten habit? Why is it so always against morality to skip off something which you were really focused on but could not attain it? Questions like these are tough to answer. Probably even tougher to think. But we will keep thinking. Lets keep thinking, thinking is bliss. From thoughts emanates actions and from actions churn out results and results bring thoughts again. So it’s a cycle and the cycle as a whole forms one of the most integral parts of the duration called life.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

It was a good pleasant morning at home. Around 7.30 am and I woke up and walked up to the few plants I have in my small courtyard. Among all the well-growing flowers and plants there was one which was stuck. It wasn’t just growing up. I had last seen it in mid-December and it was still somewhere around the same height, same leaf texture and no signs of any flowering. Just seemed like a freaking loser in the whole lot of plants. Worried, I asked my father of the possible reason.

“why is this not growing dad?”

“Eh, its just because of the tree over it and that tree flowers. So I am not cutting it. Let it be this way till the other one grows tall enough, then we will probably just trim it off and let the smaller one grow”, he said.

It was a little difficult for me to understand this. What if the smaller plant just died before all that trim stage was upon it? Is co-existence so tough? I really wish life was a little less cruel when it came to making such tough decisions.

It was not long before when things had to be selected and most of it was based on cruel guidelines. What we select and how we react in these conditions is tough. Plants do wither and they fall down, but the most heart-breaking ones are those, who have a zeal to stand but are overpowered by extrinsic factors and are forced to succumb to all of them. It’s mostly these factors that lead to such a disappointing and rather disheartening end of a bright green sapling that once had the urge to surge beyond the horizon. To bear fruits and flower like no one before did.

This also brings us to one more and even darker reality of life. The concept of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. We, since childhood are trained to have a very positive outlook to life, hone our skills, increase our work efficiencies and permanently be indulged in an act of improvement. Everything and everyone in our preliminary learning stage including our close families, schools and our colleges and our colleagues – all focus on the same set of things. Increase and refine your intrinsic skillsets in order to shine bright in the world outside.

But little were we taught that the intrinsic skills are just one side of the coin. Once we are out in the world, the extrinsic factors become even more buoyant and they now decide if the environment will allow the growth of the intrinsic factors or not. This is the phase where the normal differ from the greats. The average human stays dormant and wishes that the environment clears out its way to go through, while the great grows in its own trajectory and tears through most of the extrinsic factors.

It’s difficult to point out which of the factors will push you down and which ones will help you surface and leap ahead. But one thing for sure, everything that pushes you down has to be ignored and torn apart and all of us need to spear ahead in a direction that helps us all grow and be the plant that does not wither.

“What are you doing?” , my father asked me.

I smiled at him and chopped off one big leaf of the larger plant that had obstructed the growth of the lower one. He looked at me with a quizzed face and went inside. I stood there, realigned the smaller plant to the wall and supported it with a vine so it could grow well.

A withering plant, now – will grow!

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“No! We will never know what it meant!”

How many of us do actually wish to go back in some point of time and seek a few answers? The ones which haunt us the most. Which haunt you so bad that it simply takes out your mind and heart at a particular time of the day when the thought surges. Makes things extremely difficult. It constantly nabs your head to think of the why and the what. Quintessential factors of the answers which we never got back.

Not all our acquaintances, ventures and endeavours end in a pleasant mode. Some do end at a terrible note and it just cuts off. Chops off like the muttons head at the butcher’s shop. Something so terrible, you will never wish to see.  Those ends haunt you. Not with the wish to change it, though some do take this route too, but mostly it’s a matter of a dis-satisfied mind and heart and the way it had to fight alone for all these days because someone or something just wanted to vanish and cease to exist.

Who ought to answer those questions? You, me, the situation, the past or the future? It’s easier to break the pot on the future. Most of us are waiting for our answers in future. We will see. Let’s see. These are the subtle ways to say that none of us have an answers to the shit just happened or had happened in the past. Well, if future is it, let it be.

But there are a few more concerns that generate out of this. What if the questions that were left untouched back then are consistently affecting your day to day mechanisms? What if you don’t remain the same when things that are happening in your day to day lives are nothing but the fallouts of the questions that were left unanswered? That makes it a little more tensed doesn’t it?

“But you could have stayed a little longer, I mean we did deserve a little more time to settle down the things which were pending”, she asked him over the phone in a slow tone.

“And stay for what? To seek answers to the existing questions and make way for more questions to come by?”

“No, I did not mean that. It’s ok. Forget it. It’s barely of any use to either of us now.”

“hmm”

“Tell me how is your training going? All fine?”, She asked him again, this time a little more confident and trying to change the course of their discussion.

“Yea, looks good. Same GIS shit and same cadastrals. I wonder why I am doing this all over again.”

“Yea and I am sure it won’t be that interesting without me, right?” She took a dig at him again with a a bag of mixed emotions and an unconfident tone this time.

“Eh, hmm. I don’t know.”

“Take care. I need to go now”, she hung up the call. This again broke her. Another unanswered question. Another mystery kept alive.

It’s true. Maybe there will always be some questions pending. Because if you manage to answer a few of the existing ones, a few more will and surely will emerge and when something has to end, it will end. Irrespective of whether your conversation is complete or not. So maybe this entire cribbing of the questions that remained is , maybe, senseless. Aspirations never die and so do questions. We all want to hear things that please us or console us and at times, such answers can stop us from rational thinking. From taking logical and tough decisions.

So what do we do at all such times? Maybe, let the questions remain. Let them remain alive for all the days and the years to come by.

Let the questions remain. So that they keep pushing the waters of the dilemma ahead. Let the questions remain so that there is that spark of the eagerness to face the person or the situation one more time. Let the questions remain, so that you don’t end up choosing sides firmly. So that there is an ambiguity.

These are the perennial doubts and they will remain forever.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Read the first part here below:
https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/22/rant-239-the-empty-frame-1/
———

“They are wonderful, indeed!”

I felt that he knew that I wanted to ask more about the photo frames. He looked at me for a few seconds after he said that.

“What would you like to have – tea or coffee or milk?”

“Thank you sir, I am fine. I just had coffee at a café with my friend.”

“The one outside?”

“Yes sir. He told me if you are going to visit Dinakaran Residence, you must taste the coffee of their private estate. I was really elated by the taste sir. It is wonderful.”

He laughed again.

“That small café has been the point of the genesis of so many relationships, couples still come and thank the café operator on their anniversaries. That place has something.”

“Surely sir. Sir.. Umm, what are these blank frames for?” I threw out the question which he probably knew I was about to ask.

And what he began after that was something I wasn’t expecting. It turned into a monologue of which every bit was as precious as a gem from the past. By the time, the monologue of a couple minutes end, my state of mind was a little different and I had literally forgotten what I was here for. It turned out as if I was here only for this.

In short, he told the photo-frames are here for 2 purposes – One, to display a part of his lives to the viewers and exhibit the sequences of his life that made him what he was today. The other purpose of these albums was that it was a pivotal sequence of his own life in his own eyes, a reminder of how his life panned out over the last 81 years. And this is where he stated the difference. He said for a person other than him, the blank photo-frames do not mean a thing. Maybe for some it can appear that these are frames waiting to be fixed up with an upcoming photograph. But when we talk of his view of the frames, he said, it means that he has some moments in his life, which could not translate to reality. He repeated that these are not things which he is waiting for, but these are already the dead possibilities of the past. These could’ve happened, but did not happen.

I was silent. I could not comprehend his explanation for sometime. It was difficult for me to translate his explanation for something I could understand. It was something beyond our age of temporary attraction. I could get from his eyes and the way his lips trembled in smile while he spoke, that it was nothing but an extremely close romanticism that could never be translated to a relationship.

Suddenly, I turned my face back at the wall and looked at the one photograph in which he stood with a beautiful lady and with superb grace. I noticed that she was nowhere else in any of the frames. I looked up to that photograph and looked back at him. He looked at me and smiled softly. There was a sudden silence all around. He rose up from his chair and started walking towards the frames. He pointed to the 7 frames. While he softly touched all the frames, he said,

“Do you see someone here in these frames?”

“No sir”

“I do!”

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“Are you there yet?”

“Yea, yea just a minute, I am just stepping in. Will be there in 5 minutes.” I replied as I hurried into an old building, probably built in the late 1880’s in the later phase of the British era.

I knocked on the door and was received by a lady in her 50s and was asked to sit in the drawing. A wide, white indoor hall (they called it drawing) which could easily make you dumbstruck. It had the typical look of a big palatial entrances. Pointed arches, coloured glasses, various weapons hanging on the high walls and wooden beams and rafters running through and through the ceiling, bearing the heavy weight historical virtue of the building.

The lady went upstairs and vanished somewhere after the heavy curtain. I could hear her speaking to someone and informing that I was here. She came out and hinted me to wait for 15 minutes as she went away into another room with a wiper and a duster in her hand. This house ( or palace), though humongous in its scale and architectural excellence, did not paint a very happy image in my mind. It felt so gloomy to be sitting here and everything there – on the walls, on the floor and on the ceiling called for an unsolicited conversation on how important their presence was in the current context.

Anyways, I turned behind to see a wall with numerous photographs, framed beautifully into a golden wooden frame. I could see a young guy, probably the youth of the person I was waiting here to meet, in the initial photographs. Then follows a series of photographs with a lady and a tall handsome dark gentleman. Most probably his parents and then a couple of photographs with a lady in the most elegant poses you will find on this wall. Then follows a series of photographs with another lady, which begins from marriage, kids, a few festivals and then one with the grownup kids and in the last row, there were 7 blank photoframes.

BLANK PHOTO FRAMES.

I wondered why? Maybe for the images that are yet to come! Oh yes, surely, that must be the reason. I was impressed by the consistency of the frames and their construction as not all were made at the same time. It was evident from the state of the frames that almost all were made at different times, whenever a new photograph was clicked. Quite passionate work of photo-framing.

“Hello, young man”, I moved my head to the voice of the old man coming down the stairs in his white kurta and dhoti with a book in his hand. His spectacles seemed very modern – the frameless ones and probably not the usual ones you will see on people his age. I was awestruck by his persona and the fact that he walked with his spine absolutely straight even though he was not in the best of his health.

I am not sure of what was running in my mind, but the first thing which I spoke while he sat on the chair, was – “These photographs are beautiful sir.” He smiled a little to my remark and dearly looked at those images.
.. Contd.

Continue reading the second part –
https://the11oclockdiary.home.blog/2020/03/23/rant-240-the-empty-frame-2/

What did she want from within the grave? The ladies thought. A set of jewelry for her post life endeavors? A set of expensive silk for her luxurious life in the heavenly abode? Maybe none of these. They asked the little female kid what the lady lying dead would want once she was back to the heavenly abode.

“She would love to walk freely, on green grass, without shoes, on the dew.”

“She would love to run across an orchid of tulip and marigold.”

“She would love to pet as many animals as she could in their natural habitats.”

“She would want to have a dough-full of caramel and gum-berries.”

“She would love to have lots of fairy tale stories and share all of them with all her friends.”

They all looked at each other in awe.

What would the lady in the grave actually want? Would she like the things the adult women suggested or the things the little girl said? Would she not love to just be alive again? Just be able to touch and see and sense her whole world again? Her loved ones, her toys, her belongings. Would she not love to simply walk into her house again and hug her parents and tell them just how much she loved all of them? Would she really be bargaining a few more goods after death for some time to spend with the dear ones?

It’s not that easy as it seems to be. Life ceases to exist when we drop the human feelings for material comforts. Its only when something ceases, do we realize it’s whole value. Touching a flower’s fresh sepals is not a good feeling, unless you’ve been packed in a dark space for months altogether. To get a baby hold your finger with both it’s hands will not seem to be a blessing, unless you’ve been away from empathy for quite some time. And if at all, you want to experience all the happiness of the world and accept the gift of life each second as it passes, you have to cease life.

Once the process of life ceases, the values of things which we believed were the most basic ones increases exponentially. The smallest and the tiniest expressions which a fast modern urban life ignores and majorly crushes down become the core sense of compassion. Where ambitions take a back seat and is replaced by empathy. Its not how long the life is, it’s how great your compassion to live was.

Whenever there is a doubt of what could be the primary objective of a human being, ask the one who has stopped living. They are the ones who value life the most. They understand that the most beautiful thing on the earth is right infront of our eyes – that is life. Life makes everything perfect. Everything beautiful.

So what does the woman finally want from within the grave? The group of ladies could not find a decisive answer to it. They kept discussing this for long. They discussed nearly everything from their ideas of material wealth to the kids ideas of everything she stated. But that one thing which could make her blessed for her next eternal birth? No one knew!

“Give her a life”, the kid said while she walked away.

The ladies were confused. The kid smiled as she faded away into the darkness. The ladies looked at the grave of the woman and kept a small pot with a small flower plant. As they left, a small butterfly came hovering around and sat on the flower in the small pot.

The woman smiled. Teary-eyed. A life was what I want.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Ok. So here this is. The 200th post. I started writing back on the 22nd of July. I was a little sick that day and the weird silence of the hospital rooms made me open the note application and write something on it. It was the first rant. I had never really thought of a blog by then, but it came to me that I will never be a regular diary writer. So I moved to the digital blog. 23rd July was when the first rant was published. One after the other I wrote several blogposts and the responses I received was overwhelming. With every blog post and every rant, there would be a couple or three viewers who would relate with it and be grateful that I wrote it. 

From 20 ot 50, from 50 to 75 it gradually reached a height of 100 posts. I remember, the 100th post was quite weak in the sense that it showed signs that the posts might just have come to an end and it did, infact. The 104th post made a sudden quit from writing. With two days of missing posts, it came upon me again that maybe this was much more than an exhaust for me now. It had begun to identify this with myself. With a story that was running parallely in my head. 

Stories are fun. The real ones are good but the ones in our heads are wonderful. You are the protagonist, the antagonist, the lead, the villain, the cast, the director, the screenplay, everything. You think of a utopian plot where everything that you pulled back from your real life keeps happening on a daily basis. It is akin to a parallel universe you’ve made for yourself. It really goes a long way in imagination – sometimes to a freak level. 

Another aspect to this long journey had been the reluctance to make it anything but a personal account of daily rantings made public.There were several instances where in suggestions from well-wishers to convert this into a monetized model poured in, but somehow the sense of this being a brain-child just keeps that thought away. There are several characters, several stories, several angry rantings and some dreamy accounts. With nearly 1.5 lakh words already typed and surely many more to come, this blog has become a mirror of my personality- in and out! 

“Will we ever talk again?” he asked. 

“I will miss you”, she said and the taxi started. 

We all know things do run past all of us. We do know things, sometimes, really special like the ones we smiled and laughed to once upon a time, will never come back. But we do keep living. Not in a hope of revival of an era, but with the memories of a past. The memories and the sentient expressions that anecdotes carry with themselves, help you keep striving. 

I have reinforced it multiple times, that this blog here has never been a mundane writing exercise for an external reader. Yes, people do come across and read it. But it is a silent conversation I have daily with entity I identify myself with. There are creations in my head, the colors, the hair, the voice, the smell, the freshness, the touch and the imaginations, that I relive, every time I type a rant. 

Rants are to me, what an oxygen mask is to a dying patient. Gives me a 30-40 minutes of solace and ultra-personal space wherein, I move around and bloat around myself and my imaginations with happiness and adventure. We all come together to curate stories, churn out lessons from them, create memories we would share forever. 

He came in and he went straight to the room where her mattress was kept. He sat down on the couch, trying to imagine what he’d lost within a week. An entire kingdom of empathy had crumbled down to the smallest of pieces and clouds of dust. In the distant corner of the room, stood the laundry bin and a small hand-made greeting card, from some recent past lay there. He stood up and picked it up. 

“Happy New Year and please wake me up at 8, I got a meeting at 9. When you wake up, look up for the gift for you in the wardrobe”, He smiled as the flashbacks of their first new year celebrations had ended up in a complete chaos 3 years back. Neither of them woke up till 12pm, she missed an important meeting and the gift, ah, forget it! The gift was eaten up by mice. A beautiful safari jungle jacket, which ofcourse, became a wall hanging later on. The meeting she missed made her quit her company and join his and then as you and I both can guess, the story took a beautiful turn. 

As he closed the card, smiling on the beautiful memories that had struck him, he saw something scribbled on the back of the card. 

“Maybe this was supposed to happen this way. Maybe you came in so I could understand the value of what I had left behind. Maybe you were the one who had to mend things for me. Thanks for all you’ve done and sorry if all of this hurts, I hope it wasn’t meant to end this way. Be happy.”

The card read this. 

Rants will continue. Till an uncertain future. Because they say. “Things happen for good”. But they never say, “how long will the good take to happen”. So till all of this becomes good and shining and lovely again, we will let everything flow. 

Still Ranting, Rantzaada.

Its time. We received an email that people who wish to leave can leave. There is no stopping by the authority. All attendance and scholarship issues will be handled and the students are requested to take utmost care with their travel and shifting. It was a difficult decision, but my inner hunch suggested me to leave. I booked the tickets, luckily got one and was all set to leave the hostel the next day. It was a travel without a return ticket. A travel whose proportions I could not ascertain.

After packing up and making the difficult decision of leaving Joe behind, I left the room. 30 hours before, I did not have an iota that I am going to travel 1200 km’s just within days. Life throws weird things at us. Sometimes we are ready for it and sometimes we are not. At all such moments, we simply have to respond to the situation, taking into consideration all pro’s and con’s. Contingency is the word. You think of terms which you will possibly be facing.

The world outside looked like a lot had changed. People travelling with masks and sanitizers and all necessary precautions. People travelled keeping spaces within themselves. It took me 5 hours to reach the point from where I had to board the train to my home. I waited. Just 24 hours back, I was in my bed thinking of how better I can utilise the next 15 days of the month. I had no guess in the remotest part of my brain, what was coming up. I boarded the train but one thing kept me thinking and that was how quickly we align to order when the question is of the survival.

People have suddenly become crazily aware of basic tenets like hygiene, health and social order. People are objecting those who are not abiding by rules of social order. What makes such mass scale changes suddenly in action? These are nothing, but the fear of death and ailment, which forces us to take all necessary actions.

Unaware of when I might return, this journey is one of its kind. I am leaving behind a world only to enter a world which is primary to me. We will all be home some time. Till then, let’s just play to the tune of life.

And there goes my journey beyond halfway and all I can hear is Bees Gees on my headphones singing aloud –

“..Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother

You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive

Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’

And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive

Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive…”

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Do you sit alone and hear 1000 words, right into your ears? Like someone is pouring in words and thoughts right inside onto your eardrums. You cannot possibly silence this by shut covering your ears. NO! That is not going to work. Never-not a chance. There is something peculiar about these thoughts or words. What, I did not understand. I have been hearing these sounds for quite some months now. 

“What if..?”

“Is it really..?”

These are the few things that frequently fall into this zone of that invisible conversation that takes place. You can be in car with loud music, in a happy birthday party, in a job interview before a panel or at a funeral – this sudden podcast in your head can just pop out any time. And the fun part, you just cannot stop. The more you move to silent zones, the louder this noise gets. Is it just that this noise wants to be heard or is there something more to it? 

I decided to write whatever thoughts come to mind during state of chaos and write it over the next 3-4 days so I could get a hang of what’s wrong with my head. 

Day – 1. I wrote things down on a sheet of paper. Didn’t make much sense to me though. Just random stretches of apprehensions that were mostly baseless and just not enough to be taken seriously. 

Day – 2. I wrote things again, Out of the 6 lines I had written, only 1 made sense, anyway. 

Day – 3. I was in a bus when this head-beating began. It felt like a beatboxing track. It came with a music. A kind I cannot classify. I took out my phone, opened the notepad and tried to put it in words. All I could write was “what if”. That long beating in the head and all I could pen down was what if. 

Day – 4. I could write 7 lines today. Most of them, began with what if, may be, etc. Such words. Surely, I was getting a hint. 

Day – 5. I continued this the 5th day too. Same observations as the day 4. 

What do all these observations hint at? What’s going on in my head? Is it some kind of hints for future or just things which I couldn’t get done in my past? Or are these pointing out things I should be doing right now? 

Over all these observations, I now have realised that these are things, mostly unattended, unfinished ones which should’ve been done way back in time. Maybe in the lead rush of our lives we just forget the little things which eventually turn into radio voices and play in our heads. These are all nothing but the mere frequencies which we ignored and are probably ignoring even today. 

We’ve all heard stories of the wish angels who come close to you and speak a hint to fulfil your dreams. These are all those unattended hints that have compiled into our ears, barging into the eardrums, just so they can be fulfilled. I wish I would have written these things before, maybe some years back when things were in my hands. When I was in a larger control of things, when I knew things way better than what I know now. Nevertheless, I still have time for the same. I realise now, that when you listen to your angels hints, things will be better for ever.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

“Why do we come here so often?”

“Umm, I don’t know precisely, but it does feel good with you here and by here I mean, right here. This spot. Precisely here!”

“Hmm..hahahah.. K. What now?”

“Um, nothing. Just sit here, both of us and feel the breeze, the large lawn before us and just let the ambience go in.”

“Aha! Feels just perfect for the night, doesn’t it?”

“Damn, yes!”

It was all quite for a couple of minutes. Suddenly, the phone vibrated again.

“Do you want to speak something?”, she asked.

“Um, who, me?”

“Yea, I feel you want to say something since a couple of days now. What is stopping you?”

“Hahah.. Its nothing and you need to sush now. Its so calm here. Just be quiet and see this. No typing texts”, he replied. 

“Umm, k! If you say so.”

“hmm” , he replied. 

They both sat there for some 20 more minutes- one there physically and the other one made an online presence. But it was evident they both felt the thing there. Our brain tends to make spots- some secret and some special spots for different purposes and people. They had this as their spot. 

How do spots carry special reverence to some people. I think of it sometimes.  Is it the people or the spot? What can survive- people without the spot or the spot without the people? An answer to this will potentially solve the above conundrum. But there is something more to it – memories! Memories are the sole adhesives between a person and a place. 

Some places, they relax you. Some places, contain that eerie aura of silence which is healing in it’s very nature. Some places are the precise spots of memory cultivation. You visit it once and then pursuade yourself to beleive that it has worked to your favour and has an iota of the memory you wanted to make, or “you both” wanted to make. 

Some spots become so much etched with one particular type of associations that it turns to a cult. Like, family spots, friends spots, couple spots, senior citizens spots, brats spot, etc. The gradual interplay of a place, people and the memory leads to a characterization of a place.This is a wonderful phenomenon in itself. Something brilliant, worth been pondered over. 

Places are painful too. They can take you to memories which are associated with people you do not wish to bring back. What else calls for such type of uninvited cameo? Nothing usually. 

The triad cameo of place, people and the memory is a boon and a bane, both. It depends on you how much salt you put to this triad. Just sit back and think of the not so flashy but more significant spots in your life. Try thinking of the people-place-memory triad. You will shocked how many triads your mind has access to. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

What if I just ruin my life doing this? 

What if there are just ruins and failure and disappointment at the other end of this dark tunnel? 

What if I get bogged down by all the negativities I borrow from people when I make them smile? 

What if  someday, I will be just craving my own self for myself, will I come for the rescue? 

I really do not have answers for the above questions. I know somewhere, somehow things will take an ugly turn and they already have. I feel much less productive, more impulsive with my actions and decisions, more temperamental and definitely more emotional. But what does all of this mean to me? 

Freedom of choice of life. 

Yes. That is what it means to me. The will to choose a fragment of your personality on your own terms. I adhere to the philosophy that an individual is not a mono identity, but is composed and created out of a web of other things that contribute heavily to the development of that individual – positive or negative. I can see my life taking a sudden U-turn at this phase of my life. I am doing things I have never done, I am behaving the way I have never behaved. 

Things like mood swings. Things like sleeplessness. I never suffered from these things. Not because there is a weird thing happening over me, but because things are steering sharp and sharp enough to create a tussle between the status quo and the direction it should go. It wasn’t the same since ever and it will not continue till ever. But still, to the tune of disbelief, it will take a longer course of time and will give results that, for most of the part will be unexpected and unaccounted for. 

However, while all of these phenomenon happen and take place over a particular stretch of one’s life, it should not be forgotten that events and actions like these are not just a result of our past but also contribute to the building up of our future and it is to this building up of future, that an individual has to stand tall against all odds.

It is important to foresee our life building brick by brick at times and allowing nature and the choice of selection to command the construction of our life all the other times. What it means at the end of the day, is that it is important to hold the steering of our life into our own hands and not letting it loose into some arbitrary force. Sorrow or joy, both should and must be a product of one’s willingness and design. When we let life flow in the gorges that we design for ourselves, we are accountable for the flow and the pause both ourselves and I guess, after all this it’s absolutely okay to be accountable for something I have done myself all my life. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“We really hope you are able to this! We have put faith in your abilities and you must not let us down. We know it is a tough task, but so was your enthusiasm when you began this project. We expect you to keep up that same enthusiasm and deliver a good product this time. With such a fresh innovative idea, it will either be the best or the worst. It’s a gold or crap thing. So be careful and work hard.”

I walked out of the room after the panel gave me suggestions about my work. It was not that the panel was too harsh, but I surely had a good and a sound reality check. How dearly we miss and de-prioritize our life goals and objectives with things which are supposed to be temporary and flashy. 

Yes, I had begun the project with a very very high enthusiasm and it turned out quite well. I was interested, enthusiastic and super concentrated on the work. But as science has it, most ordered systems are often disturbed by the extrinsic and not the intrinsic factors. No one ever explained the reasons to keep the extrinsic factors at bay. 

While I walked out of the office, a sudden pressure surmounted. Was it a rescue hinted to me by the eternal energy to move away from the chaos to a more structured arrangement or was this just another extrinsic factor at play? It is difficult to recognize the factors unless they start showing effect. 

This is why humans are often so critical of human-human interactions. An extrinsic factor from an absolutely another isolated system, interacts with our system and generates a high degree of entropy which leads to disarrangement of thoughts and feelings. To attain equilibrium, this extrinsic factor is subsumed to evolve into a component or a part of the system. With the amalgamation, the turmoil in the system increases which finally leads to an increase level of chaos within the system. The system then re-recognizes the factor as an extrinsic factor. 

This declaration now, faces strong resistance from a part of the system that has now interacted well with the factor. But as time and science would have it, the isolated system strives to have an ultimate equilibrium which is attained by the expulsion of the factor and hence creating an absolute vacuum within. 

This vacuum ought to be filled over in due time by other intrinsic factors. But the components which interacted directly will always be bruised. 

I came back to my room and sat down with  a sheet of paper and a few sketch-pens. I started doodling things from my memory and my older diary on the paper. Wrote down all my targets regarding the project and set up a subsequent deadline for each of them. 

Clearly, I have been affected, but then there are parts in your life which have to kept independent of whatever is happening within. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

What would grab your attention first? A smiling kid or a crying kid? A well off person travelling by his private car or the beggar by the street? No you are not supposed to do a deed for them or contribute or comment anything upon them. Just stay and say, which of the two will grab your attention first? 

I asked this question to 6 people today and surprisingly all of them agreed that they would look at  the one showing pain and poverty first, or for a greater duration that the one showing happiness and prosperity. Regular observation, right? You might be wondering what is so special about it? 

Even I wondered. Ofcourse, we are going to look out for pain because we are humans with empathy, well most of us. So that is very very natural. But then, the next moment, something else struck me. Was it the very reason that most of the media and internet relied heavily on sad faces and sad news? May be. Maybe not. 

But it really is a matter of study that we yearn more for pain and suffering as our brain feels a sense of hazard and wishes to know about it in a greater detail so it could ensure safety. 

If this is true, is it the very reason why become sad from a happy state is much more easier than becoming happy from a sad state? I guess so. It is so very easy to fall to depression, while being elevated again takes scores of efforts, sessions, medications, meditation and what not. It is our inherent likeliness to move towards sadness, darkness and fear. 

Effect of  this? Way too much. Examples? If you are really worried about citing examples, close this website and sit down for 5 minutes and recap your recent life. Recent years. Recount how many times have you actually chosen one over the other. If you have a number which can be counted, you are still lucky and an optimist. 

It’s not a matter of the right or wrong, just an observation about a tendency, a behavior. What do you think about this? Is it really the way I feel about it or am I just vaguely generalising things? Do let me know in the comments box below. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

What does a burger kept idle for a long time turn into? A stale burger. 

What does a plate of french fries kept idle for a long time turn inot? A fungus full of fries. 

What does a battery kept idle for a long time turn into? An inactive battery.

What does a mind kept idle for a long time turn into? An inactive mind.

What does a dark room kept idle for a long time turn into? A visibly dark room. 

What does a painful emotion kept idle for a long time turn into? An emotion of normalcy. 

While all thing degrade to a lower state or an ill-featured object, can we so conclude that a prolonged emotion of pain that turns into a pseudo sense of  normalcy is also a degradation? Am i better when I was pained than now, when I am okay with the pain? Surely it is. 

When we fail to realise that there is a problem, when we kind of get accustomed with the problems and cease to seek solutions and any scope of improvement, that is when you start dying. It is like a battery out of charge. Maybe you are 90% charged now, but now, since the thought of a better day is out of question, you are prone to run out of charge soon and that will mean just one thing. ELIMINATION. 

The problem begins when you fail to realise that something is affecting you bad, but you also realise it the same moment that it is okay if that stays. This is where disintegration begins. Decay begins. You begin to decay. You’re like the frog in the pan of boiling water then. You feel nothing is wrong while the whole world keeps shouting at you to come out. By the time you realise, it’s usually very very late. 

How to deal with not rotting with time. How to make sure your pain doesn’t turn to normalcy? How to ensure that you are on a progressive curve to betterment and healing and not the other way round? What will help you keep yourself on the right edge? 

Well, I don’t know and probably will never know. I am at an abnormal stage of normalcy, where I have come to terms with the most weirdest things for a sane person and while you might disagree to think that I will remain as productive as I always was or probably even higher. How? Why? I don’t know. I will never know. 

The point is, two sided – first, does sadness for a long time does induce normalcy which is satanic and secondly, this satanic normalcy will not always degrade your performance in whatever you do.

So, if you are going to judge a person’s mental health with their academic or professional performance, probably you have touched a wrong metric. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

Theory:

What is white? It is the presence of all the colors. 

What is black? It is the absence of all the colors.

Practical life:

What is white? The absence of colors on a white sketchbook.

What is black? The color you get when you mix all colors of your tube set. 

Conflict much? This has always been a burning question throughout my post Class 11 period. That was the time, when we learnt details of optics and also color theory. Both these things were happening parallel. Something somewhere was wrong. Either of theory or the practical was wrong or at least inappropriate. What was it? 

It goes without saying that I am not going to claim empirical evidence to support what I mention. It’s an observation I have made over a long period of time. Things don’t turn up the way theory describes them to be. That is the reason why every single time, we keep things separated as theory and practice. What was the purpose of theory if all it had to do was to create a euphoria that will never be true to begin with in real life? 

I asked the same question to myself over and over again. Multiple times. Across all my ages. It’s only today that I believe I have got an answer to this. 

Things in theory are assumed without a chaos. They are stated as they would exist in a perfect world. It’s not that the perfect world does not exist. It does. The moment these things be brought into reality they confront the reality. Dark harsh reality. Like the love life you thought would work out perfectly in your head because you thought you both want it equally? Precisely like that.

The moment they are brought out, the chaos begins to act. Things begin to transform, evolve, mutate and the perspective changes. And this is where the theory fails to match up. Because theory is fixed. Static. Practice and reality is dynamic. It changes every second. The further changes are recorded in vast quantum and we called these pockets of changes as experiences. Hence, experiences are what separates theory and practice. By the time, this part of the experience is brought out in theory, the quantum change. So, there is a perennial gap between the theory and the practice. It was always there, it is right now as I write this and it will always exist. 

Nothing can change it or edit it. We can just make sure that we adore and respect both these forms in their own sacrosanct positions and move on with the chief virtues and lessons both have to endow on us. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Ever felt terrible when too many good things happen to you at one go and you suck at it because you really wanted to stay low-key just normal and this surge of happening is kind of disorienting you from what you thought you would make out of this day? How does it feel? Lucky? Overwhelming? Or just out of plan? 

Indeed it is an out of plan thing for me. Ofcourse it does bring on a spike of excitement and joy, but then you also know that this has destroyed of what you had though to be an average relaxed day without any hulaboo of anyone or anything. That you would just lie by the edge and peep in to the past and see what was the course the most happening thing in your life took and where it has brought you up. But, well thanks to the new set of spiked up happiness, this opportune feeling is gone. 

“Where are you now?” 

“I have just boarded the metro and will go to the bus station.”, I replied.

“Are you serious? You’ve come here after so long and you are just going right now? Its not even 6, man!”, he kind of rebuked me with that question. 

“Eh, I know it’s 6. I am just not feeling enough puffed up to roam around. I just want to get back to my place now and take rest. Had a really tiring day man!”.

“It’s fine. But I thought we would really meet up. It’s been long since we’d caught up”. 

“Hmm, I will text you back once I reach my place”, I replied and kept the phone inside. 

I probably cannot explain it but I really want to be back in that small room. Because that room brings me back to my senses. To the problems and the solutions that I need to seek on a daily basis. Typing in the dark and looking at the laptop screen when it’s the only lighted thing in the room is a different medittative feeling in itself. 

It is like having a plain porridge when you have open options of having wonderful delicacies. But then there are some days where you simply want to have a plain porridge and that is it. No debating and no bargain on that. 

While I unlock my room later than night to enter into my den, the things that I have left throughout the day keep hitting my head. Did I just lose an opportunity to network with people? Did I just miss an opportunity to be happy and jolly in a good company? 

Nay! 

I think I just ensured that I be having a good time with myself and for today I believe, it is a good enough achievement. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

A cat has nine lives- for the first three he plays, for the next three he strays and the last three he stays. 

An old English proverb which we have been listening to for a long time now.  I feel sometimes, this proverb stands true not just for the cat but for almost all of us, just that we don’t acknowledge it more often. Like who doesn’t live multiple lives together? You, me, they – everyone does it. Some speak about it, while others keep mum.

Some simply live a different version of themselves in their other halves while some create an entirely different parallel universe for themselves. I am one of those.The need to create a parallel universe stems from the fact that not all your wishes and fantasies will be appreciated in a normal world. In a world that demands empathy and humility, some of your whims may actually end up hurting human sentiments and potentially be a relationship annihilator. To avoid such circumstances we cease from doing it or putting it to action in real life. 

But does that fantasy or internal desire part from you? No, it doesn’t. It never does. It may change from a larger wish to a smaller and less priority one, but it does not vanish. A few of those wishes don’t even shift priorities. They are adamant wishes that refuse to scroll down the order. So you create a parallel universe for those emotions and wishes and award them the paramount position there. This settles down a whole range of things.

This I call – the parallel universe. Where I do what I’ve always dreaded to do out in public or in my real world. There are no boundaries defined here and I rest perfect to my own habits. We are all engines of aspirations running on the fuel of possibilities.We might want to think better, but we are no less than broken cars running somehow till the next mechanic shop and wait till it tries to fix us. 

We are all simply rushing in without an aim. We all think we are loaded with aims and objectives in our lives, but seldom do we realise that all of it is fake.Ask a person to write a paragraph on what they want, you will suddenly realise 80% or more are things that they never ever execute in their own whole life. 

What is it that makes us so insecure with our dreams in the real single life that we have? Insecurities, peer or social pressure, ambition thrust, well I really don’t know. 

For the time being, I just know that I have a very secure parallel life, infact not just one but multiple of them and all of them are running perfectly fine. Surely it does take a lot of me in keeping them running all the time, but that’s the effort cost I am putting in to ensure I stay happy – at least in my parallel worlds. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

“Is this overloaded, Narayan?” I asked our gardener while he trimmed the roses in our hostel. 

“Not overloaded, but yes a little bit. It will be okay, I will just trim off the outer petals and it will be fine”, Narayan said while he started touching the rose making sure he did not point out fingers towards the petals. 

I saw him separate the petals one by one from the flower. One petal at a time. Suddenly the loaded flower seemed a little bit better and slightly upright now. Great irony, I thought to myself. The plant that mde the flower bloom with all it could do, that same flower made the stem’s head hang down and to keep it upright the only thing possible was to chop off the flowers petals. 

“What if things never pan the way we are thinking they would?”

“I don’t care, I just want to live every bit of what we have!”, she said as she tightly clinched his arms, as they looked over the deep valley. 

Living in the moment and having a short myopic view often lures us, most of us. It is an attractive scheme of things that keeps you away from the things and apprehensions of the future and you keep on living the dream you are into. It is not just pleasant but also motivating. It pushes you to take that extra risk and venture into the dark – one step more. 

The stem of the rose would have been a myopic too. It would have kept growing the rose with all its might, making it more colorful and even brighter. It would have witnessed the flower bloom from a small bud to a well-grown flower. 

How difficult, must it be for the stem to fall to the weight of its own flower? When you are myopic, you meet unpleasant ends. So did the stem. So did the two hearts in deep myopic affection they shared for each other. 

“See, now it looks fine, doesn’t it?” Narayan asked while he was done with trimming the petals. 

“Yes. It looks much better!”, I replied. 

“And now, since this is trimmed, there will be room for another bud to grow and get nutrition from the roots.”

Something struck me again. Things have to be trimmed. It’s not the whole flower, but only the dead petals have to be trimmed out. New flowers will bloom only when the dead and the unhealthy buds are chopped or trimmed off. 

I took out my phone and sent an sms. 

“Can we talk, for one last time?”

_______

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

“Where’s the key?”

“On the bed, right there. You go down and get the car ready, I will join in a minute”

I took the keys and went downstairs. Took the cover off the car and wiped it clean.  Rolled down the windows so the stale smell goes off. Arranged the seat towels and the dashboard. All this took some 20 minutes. We were home after a long time and I would be driving today. Seldom do I get a chance to drive in my hometown. I cleared off the car and kept it ready at the parking to start.

He came downstairs and we began. It was the first time that I had come back on a vacation and my parents weren’t home. I was here in my homecity with one of my closest friends and I really wanted to take him around the city. We started at some 5.30 in the morning, so we could go around the city in the least traffic.

“Its cool, the wind is so nice. No wonder why you hate that place”, he said.

“Yea, I am used to this place, the greenery and the good people and comfortable life from here. The metro cities feel like a mad rush. I like it much better here. But job concerns, you know!”

“Hmm”.

I took him around the marine drive road, the one built next to the river for around 9 km. For a city of our scale, it is big thing. He was excited to see how a river abutting such a highly industry based city was not polluted to an extent which rivers in the metro’s were.

Suddenly he saw a spiced cold-drinks shop.

“Oi, is this the same shop you talk about all the time?”

“Yea yea”, I replied.

“Stop the car, I will get a glass for both of us!”

“Sure”

He took two glasses and gave one to me. He returned to pay him, but he was short of change. I handed him over my wallet and sat back in the car. He paid the vendor and came back inside. We moved next to an interesting place, a spot from where you could see the furnaces of the steel factory. But he wasn’t responding properly.

“What’s up, not feeling well?”, I asked.

“No, I am fine”, he said while we walked upto the point from where we could see the whole of the city.

“You look off man! Whatsup?”

“I saw her photograph in your wallet, are you still not out of it yet?”

Took me a second to realise that he was talking about her photograph in my wallet. It was long back – some 7 years ago, that I’d promised my 3 closest friends, that I will move out of her memories and move on. He was one of the 3. No one had known of her ever since. These 3 hated her for whatever she did to me. They could never understand what she did not express.

“How much more? What would it take for you to get rid of her? Was all of it not enough?” He asked as he pulled my arm.

“Forget about it. There is no use thinking or chatting over this issue. It’s a personal issue for me now and I don’t think you should interfere now. Its beyond the world to persuade me to forget her. I cannot. Not in this life. For whatever she did, was what you all saw. But what she didn’t, only I could see.

Sometimes, things don’t fall in places, as you think they would. So, that absolutely doesn’t mean your affection for the things decreases. And surely, the presence of something so close in me, shouldn’t be affecting others. You saw this photograph and I let you see this, this is my mistake. I should be a little careful henceforth.”

“How long will you carry those memories with you? Isnt it already too long to just let her go?”

“I’ve let her go. That very day. The memories you ask? They will last for ever.”

“How long if forever?”

“FOR-EVER!”

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Meeting people is funny. Meeting new people is funnier. Meeting old friends, the funniest! When you meet a bunch of old friends, like really old friends and after a really long time, it mostly turns out to be funny. Even if you happen to stay in some kind of touch over the online networks. It is the weird transformations that make things funny and humorous. Remember leaving your school friend with a 56 kg body, with thin arms and a dried up face and then 12 years down the lane, meeting them again. All of them puffed up, mustaches and hair-do’s. Some even have hair colors on. Seems like life traded the experience with the color of our hair. 

It was more than 20 minutes that I was waiting for P1 (the first friend I am talking here). She was one of the group I spent my most times with. Certainly, my entry into the group was a selfish one, me been crushing over one of the group members back then, but we’d really been wonderful friends ever since. The fun part is when you meet, the story seems to play like a default “resume”. You tend to begin things from where you left. This is what differentiates friendship from love. 

Friendships falls back on old memories. Because these are the grounds on which the fresh relationships that will last for some more decades will resurface. Friends that meet up after a long time again do last a little longer than the ones you will be meeting often. Not a well-laid theorem, but an observation I have made over the years. 

But romantic relationships, if ever you get to meet them again, do their best to not touch the happenings of the past again. The effort is to try and not meet mentally. Not come across each other’s thoughts and do away with mundane questions like how are you and what’s up in life. While they ask this, all they are wishing within is that they have moved on and are happy with whoever and whatever they are now. Also, there is a slight content of a sigh from the one who was left abandoned, wishing what happened did never happen in the first place. While these feelings gush in and then the other one suddenly says, I am seeing this person since a few months now and then you become a little more stable with your thoughts. Sensing that the bleakest of chances are now gone, you try and engage in a much better form with the person. This sense of a “chance” with the one you were in love with once, makes you belittle yourself, finding a scope, a ray of hope. 

“Do you still think of her, why did you never try back?”, P2 and P1 asked. 

“I just don’t know man, I’d never actually thought of it.”

“She told she had felt bad for something you did and you never apologized and then she went away.”, P1 said. 

“What? What was it? I don’t know about it!” 

“She said something which you did pissed her off and she expected you to come and seek apology for it and then we just parted and then we never met. It all just fell apart.”

I felt as if something worthy was lost. That feeling of getting maybe two minutes to talk to someone again and that one question that you would ask them again. Just to clear off the things. 

The evening was very well spent with the folks. Lots of discussions. But one thing that kept moving in my mind was what was that went wrong. Was I always under a wrong impression about what had happened 12 years back? Would things have been a little different now, if that did not happen. Who knows! 

Maybe we got just a minute together again, so I could ask one question and answer one. 

What would be the one question you’d ask your lost friend/partner if they met you again? 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

It is not always that we come across such days. Days when you face such conundrums of doing the right and the appropriate. The dictionary states that appropriate means something that is suitable and proper in the circumstances, whereas, right means being in accordance to what is good and just. The two sound so similar and are approximately used to make similar sense in our daily usage of these two words. 

But, I believe in our life, in our daily life, we usually do not get confused between chosing the wrong and the right. What freaks us out and what most living humans are caught up with is the appropriate vs the right. Social issues, political issues, financial issues, emotional issues, personal issues – everything in most of the cases boils down to this infamous comparison. 

All of this might sound a little more imaginative, but just give it a thought. We usually do not really get confused between the wrong and the right, we know it most of the times. But when it comes to the appropriate vs the right, that is when it comes to real world problems. Because appropriateness in itself is a ground for the righteousness. Understand this again. Appropriateness is, in itself, a ground for righteousness. Things first become appropriate and then move on to become right. Hence, when it comes to this difference, it often leaves us with a very minor and bleak space of judgement. 

What should we strive for? Appropriate or the right? Being righteous is in a way the best and the utopian way to look at things. A very ideal world indeed. Appropriateness is, on the other hand, modest and practical. But there is a catch. Righteousness leads to radical changes, big transformations and terribly brilliant outcomes. On the other hand, appropriateness gives rise to a more tolerable mediocrity. Appropriateness generates out of the need to sustain and survive. Righteousness sis fuelled by rejection – of the wrong and the appropriate. It seeks nothing but the right and the correct. 

And hence, this is one of the most recurring intersections in our life that keep testing the waters of our social intelligence. I have a lot of instances to mention and plenty of anecdotes, but I believe just to understand this basic difference and to realise how often it happens to all of us is an intensely loaded read. 

Do share your feedback if you read this and have something to share about your experiences regarding the same. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

I walked through the office reception when I saw this guy sitting there, his head buried in his hands and sweat on the forehead. I went to him and asked him if he was okay. He told me he was fine, but just a little worried and tensed about the interview that he was here for. He later told me he was here for a job interview for the post of lecturer and that he had been trying for this job for quite some time now.

I gave him my contact card and asked him to contact or meet me in my chamber once he is done with his interview. About a couple of hours later, he came in my cabin and I offered him a seat. He instantly asked me if we could go down for a cup of tea in the canteen. I agreed as it was nearly lunch time. I introduced him to some other close colleagues of mine there and moved towards the canteen together.

I came to know that this guy had left a well-settled job in a big firm after 8 years of experience, just because he had realised it was not where he wanted to be. He was keen on research and reading, instruction and academic discussions and all he got to do at his workplace was to deal with clients and get as many projects for the company as he can. Though this fetched him a lot of money and incentives, he could clearly hear his soul disproving of the status quo. So, one fine day he quit the job.

A week later, his aunt was diagnosed with cancer and in the next 6 months two things happened – her aunt’s treatment cost him a fortune and much family stress and he could not land into an academic position which would give him decent pay and also respect his industry experience. Since he did not have a higher postgraduate degree, that did not fare well for him. So in a year’s time, he had lost on his savings a big time and the frustration of not getting a decent academic position frustrated him.

He said, he realized one day that things were really bad, when his daughter one day asked him, whether she should write “working/unemployed” in the annual student database for her school. He then decided to try for this college one last time or simply go back and join the world where he came from. I was really amazed why he would leave that lucrative a job in the first place, he could have still continued as a guest faculty in major institutions. But there was something he told me that day which I will probably never ever forget in my life.

He told me he would never compromise on his dream and his love. If he could not keep up to his own ambitions and expectations, what else must he expect from the entire universe? I expect myself to stand this test of time.

And now, 3 years down the line, when I rethink what that man said it seems to be nothing but raw truth. You simply cannot and should not keep things that you love doing away for the sake of things which are “forced” on you. By force, I do not mean forced by an individual or a part of society. Maybe it was the conditions that forced you do that. Maybe you wanted to do an internship with a non-profit but had an education loan to clear off and so many other scenarios. But what is important is to understand that the forced has to one day give way to the loved. The forced has to give up to let the loved surge. The forced has to sacrifice for the loved to enjoy. When this happens, heart and mind both find solace in the situations.

That person is today a full-time lecturer in an even better university and has been completely enjoying his stint as an academician. He has already presented and has been published at a number of journals and magazines of repute. He also has been selected as the industry interface for a conglomeration of a few institutes together where he undertakes the industry interaction. It is inspiring to see how his “forced life” has come in handy for the “loved life”.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

---

The receding waters.
“Come here”
“No, no. I an fine here. You do your stunts there.”, I replied.
It was such a cool breeze at the not-so-wellknown beach of Pondicherry. We two and a few other folks. All I could see was the happiness on her face and her laughs. I had never heard her laugh that much. Never. Maybe it was the sea or the dogs that played around, she was just ecstatic. An emotion which I was unaware of.
“Are come no, come!”, She came up to me and pulled me to the waters. She asked me to imitate her and do nothing else.
I stood there and waited for the waves to come in. I could feel the nerves going high while I saw a wave build up and come close, but then she held my hand so tight, I felt absolutely fine. The waters came, touched my feet, it felt wonderful. Before I could even contemplate on the feeling I just had, there was a receding gush which nearly blowed back the entire sand below my feet. I was taken back by this and had it not been her holding me so tight, I would have toppled over. Super woman saves the day.
“See, I told you, nothing happens! Such a cat you are!”
“Come on ya”, I replied to her taunt. I knew this would last for atleast 6 months now.
Suddenly we saw between my right and her left leg, there was a mini-conch. A very small one indeed. She picked it up and got down on her knees.
“Ey, ey your jeans”, I shouted as she bend down on her knees on the wet sand.
“I offer you a gem from the oceans and the seas my friend”, she said while she kept the small conch in my hand.
“Urgh, you drama queen!”, Her drama skills were beyond comprehension.
3 years down the line, I am here at this beach again and that small conch still with me. I kept it on my side while I saw the waves come and go. In a sequence. Sometimes unpredictable.
They bring along anxiousness, of what would it feel like when they come and come in contact for the first time. Most of the times , I admit now, it feels exceptionally pleasant when the foamy waves touch your feet. It’s all magical unless it starts to recede. It’s not just the water that recedes. It takes away a good volume of the sand base below your feet. A little less cautious and bam on the sand.
Pretty much like everything in our lives, lovely on the onset and cruel while receding. This was all about it when I decided to get up and walk past the shoreline and into the waters. Deep inside. Where there will be complete waters. Where there won’t be a recession. It’s good to drown in emotions than to see them come and go.
Still trying to justify the receding waters.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

---

I woke up to a dusty Saturday. The door was open and there was a weird wind that flew into my room. With the first view of the day I saw lumps like cotton in my room at the corners. I raised my head up and saw the cobwebs above on the ceiling. I rose up, took the slippers in my hand and put them on the floor. I saw a puff of dust bouncing off the floor by the hit of the slippers, against the sunrays. Logical conclusion? The room was dirty and had to be cleaned. What better than a Saturday to do this august work. 

I started with my table. The principle of my cleaning anything is first clutter the space to an extent that there is no way you are going to leave it unclean. Clutter it to an extent where it becomes non-functional. So I just took out all the contents of the table and just dumped it on the bed, so by no way am I going to lie down before I complete the cleaning. 

Out of the whole clutter, one thing caught my attention. The green frog. Actually it’s been there on my table ever since, but it was after a long time I saw its lower face, where the manufacturers brand ,etc are imprinted. It contained the two letters “MT” written by a marker. The frog, when I bought it was a wonderful souvenier for the wonderful vacation I had last summers. It was a vacation so fantastic, coming back actually made me feel vacation-sick, rather than making me fresh. 

Nevertheless, this small toy used to make a small jump and then croak. It was a wonderful toy, the only thing which gave me some company during the vacation. They told it would work well for atleast a couple of years. I came back and it worked well for a couple of months. But I could not just keep playing it every now and then. So, I would keep in boxed and then take it out occasionally. While this kept it fresh and free from scratches or mishandling, that somehow killed the very soul of the toy. Gradually the croaks and the jumps became feeble and it seemed as if it grew tired of me trying to key it every now and then and asking to play. It stopped working after approximately 4 months. I took it to a toy-repair shop, but they said it would be a lot more expensive to repair this than to buy another one. 

I came back, as I could not well afford the repair. So the prime joy of the toy was gone. But while it could no longer jump and croak, it still was a remembrance of the good times we both shared. Like the one on the hill-peak, where I made it croak in a silent solitary confinement and believe me it was funny. Also, an instance when I fooled the co-traveller in my dorm, making him jump out of his bed. That was hell funny! 

So now, like some 8 months down the line, the toy still occupies the prime spot on my table. It is very much there, never to go back. The croak is gone and so is the jump, but the memories stay. I took up the toy and tried to erase the “MT” below it. After a lot of effort I could erase it. I placed it on the table again. It is important to keep the frog there. Because it is not just about me, it is about the frog too. 

Maybe this frog turns into a beautiful princess some day. Who knows! 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

I left a vibrant road behind. A road which was not the one like I had been travelling on my whole life. But it made me feel happy. I enjoyed every bit of it and it made every bit of my journey memorable. None of it will ever be enough for me to go beyond it. I shall savour every bit of that and I shall preserve the memories as long as I can. The memories are beautiful. 

Imagine a few decades down the line, maybe I am not so happy as I ought to be. Maybe I did not make it up the way I wanted or dreamt of it to be. Even then, when everything around will cease to exist and relations will start getting stale, I will still have the memories afresh. That is the best part with beautiful memories. They might cease to exist on your face, but in the mind they are always fresh. Fresh as a living flower. Warm as the mother’s hug. Beautiful as your lovers eyes. It is always fresh. 

But there is another thing I fear of. What if at that point in time, I am unable to bring back the memories from inside my head? What if the retrieval is impossible? What if, the memories are lost inside the head somewhere, like a needle in haystack? It would be the most unfortunate incident and the most cruel nature can get with someone. To lose your memories at some point in time, is a sheer misfortune. 

Alzheimer’s, a dream which has been, since long, a persistent dream I see. It scares me because for me, there is nothing more furious than forgetting things or memories which I am so relentlessly savoring for the solitary future. I often see myself as surrounded by people who are trying to communicate to me and myself not remembering anyone or anything, just see a visible bunch of weird, unknown faces trying to look at me and smile. 

I always wondered how it would be like for a real person with Alzheimer’s. But I guess, from the way I have been feeling in the dreams, it might be similar to the state in which you are woken up from mid-sleep. The first few seconds after you wake up, that is how it feels. When you see something and then you have little or none reactions to the objects around. The mind basically does not recall the values or the virtues related to the same objects which earlier held values for you. 

I fear what would happen if the roads I left in the far past, come across and I fail to recognize. All the years of careful handling of the memories will go in vain and all that will be left, will be a dry, empty brain – devoid of evocation.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

“Whatever happens, happens for a reason”

“Whatever happened will turn towards you something good”

“Don’t frown too much, there are a million good things in this world to look upto”

“Go out, see the world. It is beautiful”

I really do not understand those folks who keep on torturing distressed people with their overly positive (tend to) behavior. I mean it is really very generous and wonderful of you to be approaching the other one and trying to pull them out into the stream of healing. It is good. It is empathy. But understand one thing, it might not always be safe and healthy to pull out the knife from a wound until there is some specialist is around. So sometimes, just let the people be what they are. If you really want to help (in most probability you want to) stay there. Just stay. Assure that you will stay.Come what may. Assure that you are there to listen. Because some pains and feelings come to stay for a long time and it is imperative that they are not “forced out”. 

It is not at all a vice to possess enormous amounts of positivity, but those in distress need to be understood too. What is the distress about? A calamity, an accident, a financial loss or a personal loss? Many a time, a person wishes to stay a little longer or maybe for the whole of their life with the reason of the distress and it makes an absolute sense for people to do so. I can be completely healthy and happy and normal in my life and keep the loss of something or someone close to my heart for the rest of my life. It is a matter of self concern and self care. When time comes for the thought to be released, it will be released on its own. Nobody will have to force it. 

The problem happens when people keep telling that person to drop down the things, drop down whatever happened, to relax and to move ahead in life. Remember, it might become a case wherein your intent of help turns to an event in which you end up harassing the person. Incidentally, what happens is your attempts result futile and that person will stop exposing their feelings infront of you. This is what precisely happens with most of the distressed souls, they finally become tired of expressing and getting the same rote and mundane replies back. Maybe they do not owe the potential to drop off things that easily, so? Let them make up for their losses in a way that suits themselves. 

So, if the next time, a close one gets pained or falls into an emotional vortex, just stay and listen. Do not enforce ideas of positivity upon them, because it will do no good but to keep them from believing in you or sharing their things with you. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

I keep reading of all these statements of how people seek solitude. Solitude from humans, from relations, from responsibilities and from constraints. Solitude from everything in life and staying in a zone where one connects with oneself. You can call it a hermit’s life or a bohemian life. This was pretty much the philosophy of the Bohemian lifestyle which emerged in the early 20th Century. People on social media or other groups on internet often fall for the great Bohemian dream of free life. The life which is lead by free-style music, lifestyle, clothing and less temporary relations. 

The Bohemian dream emerged out of a war-trodden global disorder that was devoid of peace, opportunities, equality and happiness. There was rampant political and administrative mishappenings all over the globe, practices of slavery and apartheid, etc. Out of all these vices that existed, rose a philosophy of Bohemian Lifestyle which led to the famous Hippie Style movement of the late 20th century. 

While the upper fabrics of the Bohemian life are pretty catchy and are extremely tempting for the generations ahead, the lifestyle itself has been wrongly inherited by today’s generation. It is what I call the Great Bohemian Farce. This tool which is nothing but a parody profile of the Bohemian movement, is used to shoo away responsibilities and accountability. It has now become a tool for grabbing eyeballs and practicing vices in the name of “Bohemian Dream”. While the list of followers of this philosophy is long, seldom do people realise the rationale behind it. Like all other dying movements, this also has now been used superficially, that means, by the top layer and the surface of it. 

While all this has now become and turned into a commercial gimmick, selling off the nuances of the gleaming past of the Bohemian heights. The effect that remains today is more visual and less philosophical. Bohemian expressions are now a proxy for unresponsive and mean behaviour. Bohemia was not based on “ME” but an independent “US”, not bound by want of wealth, territory or power. But people back in the 21st century really have no time to understand the philosophy behind but adapt the cosmetic version of it. 

I recently saw a friend of mine, posting a verse on how complicated it was to be between humans and relations and responsibilities and how liberating it is to stay alone – establish a connection with self. The world has accepted such ideologies and philosophies in lives of hermits and sages across the globe. But the new elite kids who fall for the visual of bohemia will not be able to bear the brunt or the toughness of the philosophy. 

This is where the bigotness lies. Go ahead be a hermit. Go ahead be a sage. Go ahead be a yogi or tantrik. Denounce relations and earthly connects. Go become a human of the globe. That would surely mean to liberate oneself from the worldly affairs. 

But people want the “rights” of all good things. The extracts of all fruits. No one understands the responsibilities associated with things, which is why it becomes critical. 

And for the fact that connection to self is a mean to liberate oneself. Ah, this is a very very wide phenomenon and it took years for people to do it. Sitting alone in a room doesn’t liberate you, just makes you more vulnerable. Because till the point you are liberated, you will need human bonds and ties. It surely brings along fear, worries, possessiveness and that is what brings in the comfort and the pleasure too. 

Life is beautiful with people around you. There will be difficulties, with or without people, maybe of varying degrees and type. To be isolated and happy is being happy, to be with people and make them happy is to be human. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada. 

“Why is the room so dark?”

“The light socket fused this evening, will get it done tomorrow. No worries, we just have to watch a movie anyways, we don’t need the lights. The cove is lit up anyways”, he said while I was still trying to figure out where the couch was kept. It was really dark in there. 

In a a few moments though, the visibility increased and I could figure out the couch and the bottle kept next to it. It’s all about your iris commanding you and “telling” you what is dark and what is not. Such a master we have! 

It was long back in the 9th standard in school that I read first about this unusual phenomenon that happens with the eye. I always wondered why we feel so disturbed when we suddenly go outside in the sun after waking up, why does a newborn take so much time to open their eyes and what makes a dark room at 10pm, look like a pretty-much visible room at 3am. It was in the chapter of optics wherein we read that the iris is the one that controls the amount of light getting inside our eyes, which in turn leads to different brightness and varying levels of visibility in the same space over a period of time. Damn good administrator. 

And well, it makes sense. To let acclimatization happen slowly and with peace. I wish I had an iris for my life too. That brought in sensations and feelings with a certain ease, like a gradual acclimatization process. We suffer pain, usually because, often we advance at such a huge speed that is superficial. This huge speed leads to crackling and starry expectations and then as soon as we meet the zeroth line of reality, dreams shatter, expectations blow up. This leaves an unearthly scar on your mind and soul, which tends to just stay. Stay simply till someone else comes and acts to heal it and the same process repeats up again. Human mind is a nasty shit of foolishness and tremendous amounts of impatience. 

Imagine that there would be a digital meter right infront of our eyes telling you “slow down, feelings approaching too fast”, “Please shutdown the floodgates of the mind, too much love coming in”, etc. It would surely save thousands of humans everyday from tripping into this shit of falling into something or someone, very quickly and instantly. 

While this might not be there for the good things, it is surely there when you are in trouble. When you are in dark for sometime, the first few minutes seem like pitch dark and what you see is the hallucinations from the lights or their sources which suddenly disappeared. But gradually, these hallucinations defer and the darkness becomes comfortable. 

Try sitting in a dark room. Within 10-15 minutes you will get to see things in their dimensions and volumes. Things will be much clearer. Life also follows the same pattern. 

When in trouble, just be calm. Relax. You will see hallucinations of the good times that suddenly disappeared. You will see tantrums that your senses will throw at you, but very soon the absence of light will no more be a problem. Your life will get accustomed to the darkness and the structurality of the things that exist in your life will come to surface. Things will clear out- brick by brick, wall by wall, floor by floor. It will not turn to light for sure, but the darkness would not hurt anymore. 

Such is the master, the iris. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Doing nothing. 

Absolutely nothing.

Yes, I do it. I can pull out 18 hours a day for a week or a month, I can act normal with an 8 hour shift, I can act like a punctual pal for an year, but sometimes – those few days, I sit idle. It is absolutely necessary sometimes to just keep everything else on mute and just sit idle. Let things happen, let the others rush and everyone whine around you for you sitting idle. But understand  it, if your body and mind and your entire frame of reference, needs a rest – Learn to listen to your inner voice and give it the required pause. 

The competitive world we live in today, taking a break is a sin. People will start looking down at you and you will be “downsized” on the scale of your ambitions and achievements. Do not get bogged down. Do what your inner voice says. If it needs to just lay idle and take a pause, take a pause. You own it. Not just for yourself, but for your mind and your soul. 

But, there is a huge setback to this approach. There is a thin line between “pausing” and laziness or being slothy in nature. You are worthy enough to be able to listen to your inner voice and then take a pause, only if you can uphold the fine line between the two things, the pause and the laziness, between the strategic-wellthought postponment and procrastination. 

And many a times, we tend to just cheat our own selves with excuses and mundane explanations to stop doing something, change your goal for nothing and sway around. Remember, as a person you are entitled to rights as well as duties. You are entitled to food as well as labor. You are entitled to sloth and slog equally. You do waste the global responsibility and global welfare if you put your self out of the grid with absolutely no reason. Life is tough and it always will be tough. For you, for me and for everyone else. But cribbing and crying of it and giving silly excuses for not doing, well, is sin. 

First, to be eligible to listen to your own and act, you must first figure out the responsibilties you owe. Then go ahead and make sure you figure out how importatn you, as a person are. What are the changes you can and should make. Are you simply here to do nothing and pass out on favours or nepotism? No! Once you realise that you are here for a reason, things will and will make a change. You will find sense in things you do and the others that you don’t do. Be logical, be inquisitive and think. Think for others and think for yourseld. 

When you are responsible enough and dutiful enough to have been given the power to nab a rest, go ahead and take a pause. A pause for however long you want/need. Because, once the pause is over, you will again jump off with a fierce force and momentum which will keep you going for a really long time henceforth, again to pause sometime later. 

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

A4? No slightly less than that. Maybe something in between the A4 and the A5. Okay! Colors? Ofcourse, Oil pastels. I have dying to touch the pastels since a long time now. The one I got for me has 15 colors. F-i-f-t-e-e-n colors. Just the basic colors are ok, but then the real feel and the texture of the oil pastel si best felt with colors, isn’t it? 

Ok. So paper done, colors done. 

I sit down peacefully. As I unpacked the oil pastels set, it was not just the colors that came out, resting in a neat manner shadewise, but along came fumes from the past. Nostalgia. Nostalgia of days, when I was the sheer king of whatever I was now planning to do. When guilt and lament was not even of the lowest degree in my mind. It was so overwhelming, this entire thing of the oil pastels that I felt a small and a little choke in my throat. 

I gulped a little water. Tried to stay at ease and hold the pencil in my hand.  Let my hands sketch, I thought. I shall not force the art, let it just flow, let my hand be the medium not the creator. I let my hands flow and surprisingly the took me 9 years back to the last sketch I made. It was an oil based paint work that was based around the theme of faces and surprisingly my hands went ahead and drew exactly in the same line, as if it were yesterday I drew the last face. 

Should this be contemplated upon? Is there something similar between the two times? Faces then, faces now? I don’t know, maybe it is just a continuation from where I last left things. Those days, when “present” was at peace with the “future” uncertain and now, “future” looks promising and the “present” has gone astray. Today is definitely the future I wanted back then, but not the present I have right now. 

I start sketching. Light pencil strokes. With every stroke, memories packed from the past resurface. 2006- 2007-2008, pause. 2008-2009, pause. 2009-2010, pause. 2010-2011, pause. Ah, such intense years these! When the mind and body both were changing at crazy speeds. Before you could figure out the last thing that happened to you, there were already 158 things more to look up to. 

When school days began with sincerity and ended with romantic love dramas. When Monday’s began with cries about waking up early and Saturdays ended with the eagerness to meet again on Monday. From love to enemosity, from romance to fights, from cycles to “illegal” motorized two wheelers, we had it all. Not that my school story is the best, but certainly a marvel in my own world. 

I kept sketching. It went here and there. The pencil was just running on the paper as if it has by-hearted the sketch and was just recreating it. I watched in awe as the sketch unfurled before me. A couple of faces. I guess I was content with what was made. I started picking out colors from the pastel palette. How easy and interesting and happy life is, when you get to chose the colors. Probably the reason why, colors and painting are such a big relaxation to any human being. 

I started the colors. One shade at a time. Slow and cautious. Took me around 2 hours to get this done. While, the sketch was in colors, I could still see the two faces as opposites of each other. It was a monochrome. Not the color, but the subject. It was two instants of the same shade. And yes, that was the thing which is changed now, between then and now! 

I now know, different faces are not different people always. Sometimes, they are the same faces. With a different intent and a in different time frame. Also, it should not be taken “for granted” that it is wrong to be having different faces at different points in time. Because some accidents happen because they had to. Not that anyone had a control on something. But just that no one could control it. 

I cleaned the frame I was working on and took out the “portrait” in my hands and saw it at a hand’s distance. Definitely, not all was lost in these days (years). I still had the flair, the grip on pastels and most importantly the conversations in my mind, that once pushed me for working more on faces. 

I just finished my first pastelwork in 9 years. MY COLORFUL MONOCHROMES.

Always Ranting, Rantzaada.

Crippling pressure. Too much work. Stressing deadlines. Problem? Not much! Been there, done that. But that needs a lot of internal dedication and the will. The will that boosts you so much that you burst out of energy and optimism. The tough tasks start appearing like a roller coaster ride, where it no more fears you but the same chill gives you an adrenaline rush instead. The same hormones gives you a kick, instead of pain. It is all the game of internal motivation. How you look at it and the way you approach the issue. 

But there are times when your motivation levels are not at the best of all times. They are not zero either, but there exists something that keeps pulling you back time and again and that negates out the energy with which you approached, started and began your journey. It constantly tries to pull you out of the game and the optimist in you stays at a constant struggle with this emptiness. 

What do we do when things like these happen? Seize the work? Stop moving towards it? Desert the vision and the objective? Or just move out? Drop the beacon of achievements and the zeal of life? Well, this may be an option and people are free to pave their way out their own way, but I have a different plan. 

When the going goes tough and you cannot become any tougher, when things just get so rough that nothing is visible to your salient vision, remember the word SLOG or PLOD.Well, Plod can be a better phrase to express what I intend to say. 

I came across this word plod when I first started travelling. I preferred the other way of travelling – walking at my own pace, without a team, without a target to reach an XYZ place by the end of the day and without being cussed upon by fellow travellers. Some experienced travellers and walkers told me that this method was called “plodding”, which basically means walking with a heavy feet. (well, this ultimately did not fit in with my way of travelling), but I bring that term back to this context we are presently talking of.

In the situation described above, plodding is the key. Plod. Stay slow. Slog. Take rests. Pause at abnormally smaller intervals. Desert the feeling of being in a competitive state. Just stay in the slowest motion you can maintain. THe slowest you can move. Keep moving. 

Why do I insist on keep moving? Well, wait. This is not the “Move on” which is generally meant when you are in a bad zone. You keep moving in other walks of your life. Slowly, silently, without any hallaboo, without a lot of traction. 

“Why do you say I should keep moving? Logic?” He asked while he walked with me, hands in hands with his fiance. 

“Why should you not?” I asked back. 

“I mean it might be so difficult for someone to even act to act in such a situation and you suggest people should carry on their lives? Status quo?” 

“Yes, because that is where the healing will begin. That is how you will meet new people, go new places, do new things, try new skills, eat new food and in the meantime, get healed over. Slowly, silently and without much quest for the same.”

“Seems right, but let’s not talk such depressing things. It’s not happening to us right now, so relax!”, his fiance told while cutting the discussion. 

I stopped. 

It won’t come to us. 

It won’t come to me. 

It will not happen to me. 

We all thought the same some day. 

“What happened, what are you thinking?”, the guy shouted. 

“Nothing, just plodding”.

________________________
Always Ranting, Rantzaada.