Glimpses of the bright sun behind the dark clouds

Withdrawal symptoms- they are reactions your body has and exhibits to the discontinuation from use of a particular substance. What does it mean when a girl tells you she is suffering from withdrawal symptoms, from me?

I for one was shocked. Then sad. Then elated. And then the sense of impending doom came over. And I lost all sense of hope. But like a glimpse of the bright sun behind the dark clouds in a rainy monsoon, it brought me warmth when there was no hope for redemption. It brought a sense of peace. It was closure. Final. Unforgiving.

Withdrawal symptoms mean, it is a conscious decision by the user in question to stop seeing me. It means she is trying to distance herself. But conversely it also means she had a soft spot for me. It means I did reach her heart.

Yes, I am hurt. But the ache is there behind a veil now. There is an immense sadness threatening to engulf me, immerse me, suffocate me, blind me, burn me. But there is also a memory - happy and sad in equal measure. Inwardly whatever I might have felt, I know I managed to someone happy for however short span of time.

Yes, this also reinforces my sentiments towards commitment. When I want to commit, it always turns out wrong. When nothing is wrong, I don't want to commit. It's the kind of devil's paradox, when everything is right, I want to make a wrong, and when nothing is right, I want to do a right.

Yes, I love this woman. More than anything in this world. I'll gladly give up everything I have, anything I have or will have, to be with this woman. But I also realise and believe she should have the independence to choose me or otherwise. And isn't her happiness paramount in my endeavour called love? Even if her happiness is bought with my departure.

So here is my plan. Love her unconditionally. Expecting nothing. Once she no longer needs me, I'll disappear. Go places where no-one knows me, no-one will look for me. Live out my life. I know, I'll always find myself someone to love. Someone to cherish. Someone to keep happy. But I know there'll never be another one like you.

But she is a special one. Where I need to try and make an effort with everyone else, here it comes easy, from the inside, naturally. When she will go, I'll lose a part of me. I'll become hollow in places. But I'll fill it up with whatever I can find. Music, Art, Sports, Work or just plain narcissism. But yes. I did give her a part of me which can be hurt. Mangled. Mauled. Twisted and turned. Broken into a million pieces. But indestructible. For within us all resides a person who mends it back.

My dear, I love you so. If only, things were different. If only..
I'm sorry things aren't they way they were supposed to be. I will hope against hope, things turn out well for me. But I know however things turn out to be, you'll be a happy woman. I bequeath everything that was or is mine to give, to you. My only wish is that you are happy. Whatever be the cost to me, I'll buy your happiness.

Good luck, ******.

November Rain

Hmmmm... Here I come out of my reverie in which I had been immersed for the past few days. It was almost as if, life was passing me by, and I was just a curious observer standing to one side as a torrent of unfelt emotions and unfathomable thoughts zipped past me too quickly for me to comprehend the cosmic signs.

A whole day of plans that were carefully planned, torn apart at the seams by someone whom I barely knew, from halfway across the world carrying a few blue stones a box of chocolates and sweeping a maiden off her dainty feet.

But the killer blow comes when you're caught in the eye of the storm. With nowhere else to run, nowhere to hide, all you can do is to face it stoically and hope the blow falls quickly. Painless. Clean. Swift.

But somewhere there will be tears falling silently. Someone else will say sorry. Gallows humor then becomes the only weapon to fight off moist eyes. Music becomes the emotional outlet. Physical activity becomes the vestige to waste yourself.

With nothing left to give anymore, you become the empty vessel. The one who shall never make another noise, another sound. But then again, empty vessels emit a clean pure note when struck.

The storm passes over. You realise, in the middle of nowhere, that the world has marched past as you stood watching, and you're standing in a desert with a soaked cloth. You wish the bear hug, that left you breathless an hour ago, or was it a lifetime ago, had done the job. But the closure is implicit in its absence. With the world back in balance, the mist starts swirling again, enveloping the countryside in its soft embrace.

They say,  "Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours.", and you wonder how the sour grapes story ever made sense.

The fools we make of ourselves

I never cease to be amazed at how big a fool I am. Everytime, I think I can't be any more foolish, and time just shows me how wrong I am.
Just when I thought, I had it all figured out in life, a hurricane comes along and sweeps it all away. From the tiny proteins called hormones, to the bigger concept of social self, everything goes for a toss. For an elusive idea of love, there are just so many many ways you can delude yourself and come crashing down. While there maybe hands waiting to catch you when you fall, it is sometimes just easier to curl up and fall all the way to rock bottom. Yes, shattered you may be, but you'll pick up pieces of yourself and maybe find out facets to your own self, that you never knew existed. It is painful, heart rendering, perhaps even fatal to a part of your psyche, but the experience of shattering is worth it, sometimes, when you weigh it against the fleeting few moments preceding it, when time seems to stand still, when the breeze flutters on your face, when sunrise becomes your absolution and sunset your muse.

So I sit here wasted, wounded with a six string in hand, trying hard to capture this moment in music for eternity.

Yes, that is the nature of love. It has intrigued writers and poets, kings and queens and the serfs alike. Love follows no rules. It just is. The more delicate the bond of love, the stronger it is, the more beautiful it is, the more mystical and the more endearing. The more special. And just as roses cannot be plucked without the thorns, the idea of "love" itself is not without its own deterrents.

The bond is like no other, it is ever changing, ever present and just beyond your reach. It is like the sea but only an arm-span wide or like the stream but so wide you can never hope to see the other side.

Love is everywhere. There is always just a hint of truth lurking behind the impersonal quips which have become so commonplace today. Haven't you ever felt there was a little truth behind a "Just Kidding?", a little emotion behind every "I don't care", a little pain behind the "It's okay" and the unsaid "I need you" behind the "Leave me alone".

Love is a lot of things. It is sometimes a person's vanity, when it is selfish and the rest of the time it is mere insanity. Love also takes two. Try as hard as you may, you cannot create love out of thin air. But noone's stopping you from barreling down the highway of love without a driver at a hundred miles an hour. Crash and burn is the name of the game we call love. But miracles do happen in life. And who doesn't love a miracle?

on the bright side

Well, so I lost my phone. Big deal! Yes it is a big deal!
But, with the cold clinical sense of helplessness took me by force and my own ever-present sense of humor, made me realize that it is the fifth phone i've probably lost to theft, and not for my carelessness. And not only that, but that a God fearing employee in a bank tells me, maybe it was for the best, you know the loss of the phone took care of a greater mishap waiting to happen. Maybe he is right. More likely he isn't, but how do I disprove the theory?

Another notion I heard was today is your birthday! You can do anything and nothing bad shall happen. A pitfall- can i stand in front of a running bus and still emerge unscathed?

Birthdays and Cellphones

I was once asked to link violins and transistors, but  guess this seems a little less crazy. Birthdays and cellphones can be quite a link. Friends can't call you, text you and neither can you plan your own party.
For someone who is so deeply integrated into the information world, a day without a phone seems like ten dog years with no contact with the outside world. I mean there is only so much that you cannot do with your phone.

Yeah, you guessed right! Its my birthday today and someone just stole my cellphone from my bedside, a few hours ago. Why, just last night I had my mother call me on that same talking parrot to tell me that the talking box was my gift for this year. And with seemingly no value to that sentiment, the world conspires to take away the gift, which became precious to me after those words, right on the day when it was priceless.

That the talking gadget probably costs as much as my month's stipend was just an irrelevant fact which became the collateral damage to my internal rationalization. The whole point being, the phone had just multiplied in its value to me after the words from my mom.

So here I am today, a nice english afternoon, with beautiful clouds hanging overhead, cribbing about a gift lost in the morning, and trying to imagine what a day will be like.

I guess birthdays make all the sentiments more acute and clear and penetrating. A small gesture of kindness makes you feel on top of the world, and a smallest of slights makes insinuates you no end, the smallest of hurts pierces to the depths of your heart.. and the world conspiring against you... well thats just the last stick that probably broke the proverbial donkey's back. Maybe sarcasm ill suits me, maybe cynicism is best left alone, maybe hedonism is what I lived by, but today might just become a crucible for some psychopathic, clinical sarcastic, hedonistic cynicism that I shall live by.

But hey! Its my birthday today! There's a wide vista of opportunities out there waiting for me and I am naught but just a leaf floating in the wind, willing the wind to blow in the path which shall take me to sea, when I know I am on an island, and every which way leads to the ocean.

And I am probably just rambling because I feel the need to crib on this occasion when just losing a phone, is not "just losing a phone" anymore.

when the world is half asleep

When the world is half asleep, when half the world is asleep, when only people like me are up and about, it is not night anymore, but it becomes a "World of Dreams", a parallel world where things happen almost like they would in the real world, only twisted and malformed by our thoughts, desires and aspirations.

In this world, innocent yearnings turn into nightmarish hauntings, truths are maligned into lies, aspirations become desperations. What was black and white now turns grey. Where there was light, there now lies shadow. In the heart of all this lies our innermost desire to grasp at things beyond our powers. It is malicious particularly at night, when jealousy and hatred dominate the bizarre.

It is only the ones truly at peace with themselves, who are content with themselves and their lives, who manage to evade this ensnaring place - which tempts everyone with the bait of dream-fulfilment, which haunts their failures and turns them into a twisted success.
Those who are truly blessed, exotic as it might sound, rarely step inside this illusionary world and instead of being sucked into this parallel universe grow to dominate it, for nothing can dominate a heart which yearns for nothing, a heart which has no chinks.

Signing off to test my exotic bizarre theory, which came about as an offshoot of reading too many unrelated pieces of scribbled paper from an Age long past, an age they call the Age of Legends..

somethings no-one should read

This is not a blog which I'd expect you to read if your name does not have the initials AP or AT.
And if your name does have these initials and you still don't know if it refers to you or not, you'd be better off skipping this particular post and discarding the memory that you ever came across this article ever.

But if you are reading this line, then I guess you are the one I am talking about, since, I'm pretty sure, I'll never read this after I'm done putting my thoughts here for you to read.

Personally, in my life, I'd gladly choose a happy moment, even with the certainty of a sad moment in the future, to a dull moment with no assurance that a sad moment will not wait for me in the coming days. I'd rather have ups and downs in my life than a simple straight path with no undulations, for the high-points and the low-points leave behind powerful memories that make up the essence of life.

When I am 80 years old, I'd love to think back and remember my life-road's highs and lows, my successes and my mistakes, rather than look at an empty and drab life-road where I managed to circumnavigate the potholes, by taking the safe routes and the middle paths. I'd love to be able to laugh at my mistakes and see a tear or two trickle down at the thought of the happiness bygone.
I'd like to laugh at the stupid castles I had built in the air, and cry joyfully at all the things I'd managed to do right.

I'd love to be able to tell a lot of tales to my grand-kids, if I have them - tell them of the days when I was carefree, risk-loving and accident prone. I'd love to be able to fall back into a reverie of thoughts, along paths that I'd never explored before, and which only then the "old" wisdom would show me. I'd like to be able to fall into my final eternal sleep with enough experiences to relive for an entire eternity, until I'm finally let free, to roam wherever I may forever and ever more..

night outs - nights out

I looked at my watch and wondered where the hours had gone since I had last looked at the white dial. Wasn't the small hand parked squarely at 2?? It seems to have skipped all the other numerals in between and landed stubbornly past 5. Really?? 3 hours???

Somewhere in between, I must have lost track of the time or else my watch has had a serious case of amnesia and malfunctioning. Or perhaps it is just too indignant at my callousness with which I treat time and is punishing me for it..

But then somewhere down the line I realise that the poor watch is a mechanical contraption after all, unfeeling, unemotional and untenable. I feel sorry to have hurled abuses at its steady rhythm and slowly and sarcastically berate myself for having being so thrifty with Time.

In a dark corner of my heart, though, I smile and relive the moments which had seemed so fleeting, and yet I know they are moments which will last a lifetime. I chuckle at the day that spreads out before me, and before you know it, I have already planned to make up for the lost time, for that time holds something I consider very precious to my soul. Under no circumstances will I let that time pass me by, so I make do with being harder on myself, for I hold those times dearer to me than my life itself.

And as I put my thoughts to paper, the morning star winks out, and its soft light is lost in the brilliance that spreads out of the west.

the story of a bright blue star

This is in continuation to the same motivation from a particularly peppy chat today afternoon with a particularly "Pretty" lady friend.
As it turns dark but before the moon and the stars wink in, there is a bright twinkle in the sky just like a diamond only infinitely prettier. It is the evening star shining bright to watch over you, Oh thy sleeping child!
And in the cold mornings, as the stars gradually wink out, the morning star winks again to let you know it'll be back.

There is no lore to this in many cultures, but they are the romanticists delight, the star-crossed lovers' sigh and the poet's sonnet. They are the one and the same - Ishtar more commonly known as Venus, named after the Goddess of love.