Of gifts wanted and gifts given

Up until a few days ago, gifts were confined to birthdays and weddings and I had a limited range of gifting capabilities. I held back my own imagination when it came to gifts because the amount of effort each gift warranted far exceeded the time I could budget.

But times are a-changing and so has the situation changed. I now ask people what they would like for their gift. I also find it easy picking out items from a catalog that people have shared. It all worked fine until my better half told me in no uncertain terms what she'd like as a birthday gift for this year. She wanted to read my writings and despite my attempts at trivialising these rhapsodies, she convinced me to write a piece for her eyes only. So here I am pouring my heart out in my attempt to put to words things that I've felt and all the things I wish I'd not left unsaid.

First off, happy birthday to you, mon amour. I wish you all the very best and all the happiness.

You are half a world away and I've not seen you for a hundred days but when I close my eyes I can remember your smile as if you were standing right in front of me. I can feel a tingle run up my spine when I remember how it feels to kiss you every morning. But what I love to remember is the way your eyes sparkle every morning after you wake up, as if they can behold a clever joke the universe is playing. Its sparkle lights up my day. Its dark here and I wish you were here.

You are still half a world away and I've not seen you for a hundred days but I can feel your presence in every half-heard song on the radio or the steady patter of the raindrops as I spend this Sunday. Even the playful sun peeking out of the clouds remind me of how you peep out from behind the curtain of your hair to flash a playful smile that can brighten any room no matter how lit it was before. Its dark here and I wish you were here.

You are still half a world away and I've not seen you for a hundred days but I never feel alone because I feel your presence, just out of reach but never too far away. In the world of light and dark, there must be a time and place where our shadows still talk to each other and perhaps dance in the moonlight while we sleep. Its dark here and I wish you were here.

Lord Byron put into immortal words that je ne sais quoi which you emulate in an eternal grace,
"She walks in beauty, like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 
And all that’s best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light, Which heaven to gaudy day denies." 


As today draws to a close, soon it will be another day that has passed me by without you next to me, my eyes fill my vision with an ethereal form of the woman who stole my heart away on a cloudless night while we stood under the stars. That she still holds my heart hostage is a source of unadulterated joy to me for she has given unto me her own heart in exchange and I wish to care for it my whole life for it holds the nectar that gives life to even the dullest of moments and places. It is still dark and I wish you were here.

I learned to live a life expecting the mundane in the humdrum of a corporate rat race but in a moment of good fortune you materialised out of nowhere and you shone bright. A bright light that constantly drew me towards it. To me, it represents an orgastic future that I will forever run towards. It represents what I where I wish to be and if I have to run further each day I shall gladly do so. It is still dark and I wish you were here.

Now I may no longer look like the crazy-eyed youth you met in a waistcoat, but I wish and hope that the tempered craziness that I still carry in my heart will continue to dance with your craziness so that one day we may light up this world with love. With you I have learned to dance and sing, to paint and to write, to talk and to listen, and so much more, all over again. And the child inside me is happy to have met another child who loves to do these things with me. 

I wish I can keep you smiling always.

Always yours
Aniruddh

Fated to pretend

The title is at odds with what I am writing here, but in life, it is rarely is as it seems to be. And this thought has been keeping me up for a lot of nights now.

Friends come and go. Its a part of life. Family stays, but the people in the family change. This cycle- this unending cycle where we are all merely an act. The transient figures who play act and mime- in tune to an eerie music that each one of us hears in our own distinct and unique way.

I have lived in a dozen different towns and cities. Okay- may be not a full dozen but close enough to define my life, for all of  six years now, into different stages based on where I stayed and my friend circles. What happens is simple- we meet people- they leave an impression- maybe we leave some on them as well- and then we finish that chapter and we move on. This is life and thus it will always be.

My existential question however is more rhetorical than anything else- of the many many friends who left marks on our lives- do we meet them ever again?
I have had my share of friends, good friends and chaddi-buddies. We all had a gala time, and then I moved on to another town. Despite all the promises we made to keep in touch- it was never the same again but we never ended up saying our goodbyes. We just lost touch.

My logical mind tells me- it is probable that we will cross paths in the future in the least expected place and in the unlikeliest of times and by then all of us will be so different- we will not share the same camaraderie ever again. Does this all mean that our briefest of moments together, a blip in our entire life, will always be just that- a memory that we can never go back to? Will it just be a photo album that is meant to be reminisced once every decade when we revisit the times gone by and how we are all growing older and realising our mortality every day?

This futile exercise of reminiscence and remembrance deserves an ode to life as we know it so that we may cherish it and not manage to lose too many moments that may never ever again come in the future. Its like seeing a firefly dance in a night and knowing that I won't see that firefly ever again.

These are just questions that overshadows my need to love and cherish- because without an end- what the purpose of doing so? One may argue- the best course is to live in the moment- but I would ask- to what end? To create memories when it will only be a one sided reminiscence once a decade without any conscious understanding if there will be another such incident ever again. 

Brownian Motion

Life is a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Maybe it is - maybe it isn't. But to think about life in those terms is one of the easiest ways to keep alive hopes of a better tomorrow. I am not complaining about my today- I have a good life, a bit of money, some friends, a very understanding set of parents and a good mentor at work.

But what I miss terribly is the easy camarederie I could share with college buddies. The easy way we would pick off from where left off the last time. That easy friendship that we knew would no longer be as it was after we graduated. I knew, but I never really felt it.

Now, sitting in one of the world's famous cities, working in some of the best offices with some of the best minds, having a lot of things, I always wanted, I miss those easy days when a dinner would become an impromptu sleepover and the days were so much brighter and the evenings filled with laughter.

Now, its calm music, a mad rush of meetings, a delicate cup of wine, a pretty plateful of roast. But the seats are empty. And I miss having the tumultuous roar of friends deciding which cheap beer goes well with the greasy chicken and which movie to watch that night.

Life moves on. So do we. And so should I. But once in a while- the empty chairs takes me back to the times when things were different. It's as if we came together after a seemingly random set of events only to go apart again to perhaps cross each others paths momentarily again somewhere in the future.

At long last

Another year comes to a close and I sit here sleepless in the middle of the night on a bed in an unfamiliar house in one of the world's most popular city in a foreign land. But I would be wrong if I were to leave out the adventures I've had in this city.

London has treated me well over the past several months. I've met people from all over the world, dined with some of the most interesting people, worked alongside some brilliant people and have watched some lively festivities in town, but what I have not done is find a good friend to hang out on those dreary days when nothing is going my way.

However, there is a silver lining on the horizon- I go to my friend's wedding in three weeks and I can't wait to get into my car's driving seat again. Perhaps what I really miss is the intimacy of another lady- her warmth between the cool cotton sheets and her conversations over dinner.

But that is no excuse for me moping around on the internet and feeling sorry for myself for absolutely nothing that I can change. But I can't shake this funny feeling that I feel a void somewhere deep inside me that I never thought possible. I know theoretically- we go through a certain preordained cycle of emotions after a breakup- Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression and Acceptance- but no one ever told me how to identify where I am! Its funny how I can diagnose someone else, but not myself!

What makes you beautiful

I should put up a disclaimer at the beginning, before I put all my thoughts on paper, I got piss drunk last night. Sorry heavily inebriated. And then I read an article about beauty. And I may be in love. That is a lot of disclaimers, isn't it?

They say, 'Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.' And how apt it is! We all have a different appreciation for different objects, different values and different ideas, but we all still find something to describe as beautiful.

We remember the instances when beauty buffeted our psyche and overwhelmed it- that sunset at that beach, that winter morning with a beautiful azure sky, that rainy evening when you were on the road, that first kiss, that lady on the sidewalk who flipped her hair when the wind was strong, that crinkle of her mouth when she laughed, that wink of your best friend when he tries to make you laugh, that sound of laughter in a crowded train station, that car that just drove by, that photo of stars, and the list will go on. And on.

When we use 'beautiful' to describe a person, it is with an intense and personal note. 'Beautiful' is a hallowed word, that is used to describe someone who is so much more than just a pretty or handsome face. It is so much more than an hourglass figure and a v-shaped torso with well defined musculature. Because it is about that what cannot be described- a person's quintessential being, what we call a soul.

We don't hear people described as 'beautiful' much these days. When we do, it is either on the telly or at the movies or in books, because 'beautiful' is a word that has connotations of 'love', platonic or romantic, and love and beauty have made minstrels sing countless songs, poets write endless poems, writers write feverishly, painters paint wonderful art. These two words, 'love' and 'beautiful' have kept almost everyone of us awake at night at least once and some of us every night. And that is what makes our life so much more than a simple existence.

So what makes you beautiful?

Of the angels and our demons

Do I believe in a God? No. That is because I do not want to follow a religion. I dislike the intricacies that come attached with religions. The dogma. The rules. The boundaries.

But, there has to be a but, I would like to believe in a cosmic balance. Call it what you will- Karma, Fatum, destiny or any other of a million words. I reject the notion of a single fixed ending though- everyone cannot have their futures written out before hand- that would go completely against the idea of life, of freedom, of choice.

I believe in the idea that there is a multitude of possibilities for a future that can be pursued by each and every single one of us and its our choices that allows for an infinite number of nexus in our futures at every turn. Around each corner.

Its how we meet someone from our past. Or future. In our present. Life should be a choice- chaos of choices that miraculously fit into a pattern. A web called time. A network we live through.

In such a realm, we only have control over our own choices and the most we can do is to build bridges towards where we expect to go, or where we expect a nexus to be. We can only hope for other's choices to bring them to the nexus where we are headed towards. The key being, the key people will also come there eventually.

Some nexus are important for they are the highs and lows in our lives, others are dreams because the nexus are so so far and so complicated that sailing across an open sea without a compass would be easier than swimming through time to our dreams. And then these nexus do happen, elation settles in.
People involved in these situations become angels. When such nexus don't occur, the whole experience gives rise to demons- a figment of our own imaginations we create to pin all the blame on.

But the wheel of time goes on spinning its web and we are inevitably drawn towards some nexus more than the others. All we can do is walk the paths we create with our own choices and not regret about not choosing the alternate path. In the end, its not about how many nexus we passed through, but about how we conducted ourselves when we did find our dreams coming true. Did we become angels or did we create demons?

Loved and lost have you?

I have heard a lot of people express feelings akin to having loved and lost in their lives; how they've had a star crossed romantic episode only to end up falling apart. I have read a lot about it too. I would beg to disagree- first to the concept of losing and then some more about this oxy-moronic phrase.

We all stumble through life looking for our dreams- who doesn't have a dream? Even the most hapless and  aimless of people have dreams which can rival those of the most ambitious of people. The only difference being a choice we make- act on our dreams or not act on our dreams.

In this journey, we inevitably meet people who we admire and find incredibly attractive and fun. This small window in time when we found such counterparts is itself a reward, with indelible moments shared and memorable experiences had. Yes, some of us have a knack of extending this to last their entire lives, but it is mathematical and logically  impossible for everyone to be able to do so. If that is the case, why shouldn't you be thankful to have had those treasure trove of memories to last your entire life? This isn't a loss, its just life, the flip side of a coin, if it were a pie we could have half each, but a man or a woman is no pie- you have them completely or not at all. Even if you now no longer are together, you had them for sometime, didn't you?

When you have loved, truly loved, don't you feel like the king of the world? Don't you feel like you are levitating six inches above the ground? Don't you feel happy? If not, then you aren't in love- you are mimicking love; you love the idea of being in love.

If you can tether yourself to the happier times, why would you ever say that you've lost? For isn't happiness what we all long for, at the end? Would you buy a Ferrari to cry about? And even if you then had to return it because you couldn't afford the payments, you still drove the Ferrari for a day or two, and isn't that much better than someone who could not even dare to dream about the Ferrari but had a Toyota?