12 before 13

Fighting year end blues (and yellows), drowning in the misery of untouched bucket lists, marathon reading and being an ostrich. Every December has been true to it's promise to me in the past couple of years, no matter how differently the rest of the year played out. So I decided to play it up a bit this time, with to-dos for here and now - 12 things to do before '13. (The thought struck me when I was idling online, pipe dreaming and reading Stephanie's Europe for Three Weeks, and stumbled upon her 25 before 25.)

We make (and remake) lists all the time - and say, someday! A fortnight to 2013, and 12 things to do - that seems more determinate and doable. Until now I have four things on the list - Four. Talk about checking-off of a list that seems harder to make! Am off to finish the list and get going. (Ummm. May be that should be #1 on the list, taking the listed-total up to five.)

Being not-me.

You don't plan for it, and you'd think it is the silly thing to do. That second scoop of ice cream inspite a scratchy throat; rushing out of a restaurant - with your best friend, stomach cramps from laughing too hard, and a 'borrowed' knife in your pocket for a souvenir; 'happiness-in-a-shot', one too many you realize waking up to a heavy head; the stack of stones from places you've long forgotten or times you don't want to remember anymore.

Sometimes we choose or end up in the alternative tracks of our lives - ones you'd think is unlike you, ones you say you did not plan for. All silly, you say. Then you close your eyes, and feel happy. Exactly how you felt, with the ice cream melting in your mouth. With the wind against your hair and a grip so firm you know they'd pull you back before you went down - for the rest of your lives, each time, every time. Laughing, talking, sharing - not knowing when to say when. Holding the rock and knowing it still breathes life into a precious memory, a special moment unlike the ones you did not mark with a stone. And then you know, sometimes the alternative tracks are the right ones to tread, to enjoy and to strut your way through life.

The near extinct writer’s tool.

Not thoughts. Though it's very close in line to the frontrunner today, the pen.

I suffer the creative’s privileged disease of sulkiness. Humbly, I call myself neither a designer, nor an artist; neither a thinker, nor a writer. I indulge in little of all whenever the alternative moods set in. And these days, on the rare occasions that I conquer my laziness.

Yesterday, adorning my writer’s garb, I sat down with the smartest invention by mankind after the wheel and most constructively destructive by far after the guns and the bombs - Man’s smartest machine, and the most powerful today with every man with an average IQ being its slave - the computer.

I had been reminiscing about my childhood. A certain friend in particular. And the lovely times we shared. Then came the unstoppable urge to string these fragmented thoughts with words. I started typing. Leaping through the waves of my emotions I got farther with words than I had expected to go when I started. Trouble began when the power failed. I did save a copy of the draft before the battery gave out. The cause for the frustration was the inability to proceed with my writing towards its completion. Exhaustion, forgotten in the midst of an enthusiastic stunt with words, set in; heightened by the afternoon heat and the sumptuous meal savoured earlier. A quick nap put this restlessness to temporary rest. I had a strange dream. Nightmare, while I was still in it. My computer crashed. With it, my intellect. And communication. I woke up to a comic reality. Honest thoughts do not need a brush of fancy words generated by the thesaurus. To write all I need is a pen and paper. And my thoughts. Not MS Word. Not a web dictionary.

I concluded the ‘Autobiography of a Pen’ eleven years back, with its broken nib earning it a place in the corner dustbin. It wasn’t penned as an obituary to this marvelous writing tool. In today’s scenario, however, it’s metaphoric to this impending death.

(A page from 2009. Was compelled to pack it in with the rest of the stuff here!)

Melancholic.

The reading had left me so about a decade back; the movie did much the same. To a degree where when my four-year-old nephew declared, 'I feel sad, for the boy', instead of trying to convince the preschooler of 'the happy ending', I told him it was alright. It was alright to feel sad.

And then I slipped back into my own thoughts, about closure. And, about communication. Wondering about words that should have been said, but never were. How it is sometimes the hardest to articulate the most basic emotions. To say, I wish you well. Or, good bye. So you shrug it off, or, simply disappear.

'What a terrible thing it is to botch the farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things meaningful shape. It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled good bye hurts me to this day.' (Life of Pi)

'Just as far in as you'll ever be out.'

A rhapsodic way of saying stuck in the middle; that was my first impression when I first heard the line. And the logical thing to do is to keep moving. Grow the distance from one end, in order to get closer to the other.

Or, could it be?

What if you didn't start from one end, but somewhere in the middle? And, what if you didn't know how you got there, or, which end you were making your journey towards? What if you haven't been travelling in any one direction all this while, but back-&-forth and forth-&-back - vacillating - undecided on which end out you want to choose? What if this isn't about that one precise preordained moment of being in the middle, after all, but of all of the journey? And, what if, just when you pause to consider this, the tunnel is altering and you will always be just as far in as you'll ever be out.

Peonies & poh-uh-see, ah so passé!

(Delusions of a twenty-something-naiveté-not-anymore!)

Trust, I do.

Trust was

When love taught me

To lose my defenses

And give in to the moment.

Trust was

When silences abound

My aching heart with calm

Studied your beseeching eyes.

Trust was

When death didn’t scare

As we chased the wind

Navigating trails unknown.

Trust was

When fast asleep

As strangers the bodies apart

Our souls in love making sweat.

Trust was

When our throats parched

Tears hidden and smiles con

For time infinite we kissed good bye.

Trust is

When days of solitude I fight

With your memories unbound

To be just a day nearer to you.

I bet you know this one already!

'Today is the first day of the rest of my life'. It's a beautiful thought, yet stifling 'cause of the weight of 'the rest of my life'. Carpe diem, yes! Make it good; make it count. But, let me not overshadow the promise of today with the responsibility of it being good enough for tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after the day after. I want to tell myself instead, twenty-four hours should never be good enough to be played on loop. For the rest of your life. Improvise. Don't settle. And, take the chance to be you, a renewed you, everyday - for the rest of your life.

A cat named Dog and a dog named Steed.

I once had a cat
I called him Dog.
I bought him a collar, and
A tag that spelt out D-o-g.
I'd chase him down perches
And find him chasing bees
But never picking my paper
Or wagging to please.
I didn't like cats
But he was my Dog.
So I watched him,
Pick after his poop
Lick his coat clean
Get his milk,
And leave no trails.
I loved him much,
This Dog of mine.

I now have a dog
I call him Steed.
And I love him much,
This Steed of mine.

Gotta keep 'em there, in my pocket.

'Then I guess you've got to just stay here, in my pocket' said the voice at the other end. No, it wasn't a random chat-up line or an ex caught up in a cheesy moment! It happened to be a rather Do-I-have-a-choice-but-to-deal-with-this-now work moment. So there I joined, with my cackle into their earphones, on another's jogging track. And I have since come to cherish this picture of myself, a really tiny me, swaying in a gigantic sweatshirt pocket!

When I run, I carry my music and my thoughts. I sometimes take a longer stride or skip a step, to keep in sync with the rhythm of my thoughts and the music. I fancy breaking into a bollywood number when 'Suraj ki bahon mein' makes it's sunshine entry. I should do it, some day; or why, every day! I sing along, I mumble. I try to make a plan for the day. And mostly, that ends up being the only structured work that I'd have done that day- make a plan. And I heed to some more thoughts, and at the end of the trail I think, 'I've got to put you away now, in my pocket'. And I picture me, a really tiny me, swaying in a gigantic sweatshirt pocket!

On Coffee, Roy & lucid writing

One can't expect a day that starts with Roy and a cup of strong smooth German coffee to be anything but inspired and spirited!

'To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.' - Arundhati Roy

Great respect for the lucidity in her writing, deeply researched subjects and honestly rendered thoughts.

'As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between the thought and language', writes Roy.

It has been an ongoing struggle with me, as a creative - and it evidently holds true with all other media of expression as much as with writing. Ergo, I find greater relevance to her usage of  the term 'language', not limiting to words, letters or symbols.

'I think what I've got is something slightly resembling, Gumption.'

It was a weekday morning crowd at PVR Saket - socialites (assuredly, caked out), a gang or two of f.r.i.e.n.d.s., corner seat couples, and scattered loners. I am not to be confused as being a part of this frame. I am mostly capable of being invisible to the world, while playing the lead in the fantasy of my own making. I had made a solitary trip that wintry morning to watch The Holiday. Donning my then favourite pair of brown laced boots and the green and purple flannel scarf passed down by my sister, I had set out, secretly revelling in the fact that in the parallel world, no one would notice my absence from school. (I did mention that I was capable of being invisible, didn't I?)

It proved to be exactly the kind of two hours I had sought. Light, witty and uncannily relatable. And it continues to be my go-to movie to destress, to chuckle, and to hear Winslet say 'Gumption' in that most endearing English tone! 

(Nonchalantly gets up with a li'l head tilt, a shrug, a wink and starts to tap dance!)

'Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude', writes Neruda.

Some moments, if you put them away long enough like pressed leaves, turn into an obscure musing from the past. Veins remain, as a pretty painting to the soul, without the fragrance or the wind that it once soaked into its being. And the wind, the winding path, the tree, the park bench - you start to wonder if they may only have been a figment of your imagination after all.

One such random musing, on changes.

'Soon as it begins it begins to change. It's strange, changes!' (The Weepies)   

I never liked change much; mostly the kind that comes unannounced and steals your sunshine! Yet I have come to appreciate what comes with the patience and the small steps that get you through it. And though it sometimes involves a painful amount of packing, shovelling and reorganizing of my thoughts and plans, I have enjoyed the new experiences, the learnings, and the renewed sense of being alive that it instills. The more I contemplate on the course of this metamorphosis, the greater I realize that I do not want it to stop. I am not intent on arriving; and if there were to be a 'being-me' destination anyhow, 'now' doesn't seem like it!

Passe-partout.

Words are tricky, emotions chaotic and complications clearly unwanted. So we agreed that there wasn’t a need for tags and definitions between us. Yet occasionally we are confronted with uncanny parallels to our life, in the casual unfolding of a sitcom, or the pages of a book. They prompt us to dig just a little deeper into our own subconscious. It was likewise that I found the near-perfect articulation to my early impressions about you, as I read the prologue to 'Around India in 80 Trains'. Passepartout. My (prospective) travel companion.

The wanderlust - our dreams of the road (and gypsies and caravans); the frustrations and limitations against taking off, albeit not for shared reasons; and the desire to ‘get lost’ – had lend to the solidarity. I relished, connected to and had started to look forward to our conversations, the occasional scrambled eggs and coffee, and the somewhat lame yet seriously rendered downtown rendezvous. The growing camaraderie, the wish lists, the short getaways, all agreeably nurtured my vagabond dreams. And the prospect made me happy (and hopeful).

Though tags and definitions can mean no more (or no less) than our actions, I say this all the same. I think of you as my Passepartout.