Dreams

Only as high as I reach can I grow
Only as far as I seek can I go,
Only as deep as I look can I see,
Only as much as I dream can I be.
--Karen Ravn

So we all dream, from when, is a matter we never tried to find out, for dictionary defines dream as A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. And we have no memory of our first dream. :D

There are other dreams as well... the ones I am talking about now.

And in our strive to realise these dreams there always comes moments when you reach a fork in your road, and you have to choose. Most of the time... in fact why most of the time, i should say always... the future depends on your choice. The problem is that there is no such choice as "none of these". And in the process of sitting on the fence we have actually decided our next course even if involuntarily. I ofcourse wouldnt like to do something like that so that if tommorrow i look back, at least i will be able tell that okey fine may be i was wrong, may be it didnt work but i was at least sure what i was doing.

For now at least i can say well i did realise some of my dreams and well not all are related to acads :D. And now again i am sitting here having decided one more of my choices... to see if it takes me to the realisation of my next dream.

Here as i write about my next dream, i count those of my past... wasnt bad... i say 4 out of 6 were realised... as far as i remember. And the ones I dont remember must not be worth counting... !!!

Nature and me

Well this post is actually an effort to clear up certain misconceptions people have assumed from my previous post.

 

I love Nature... no doubt about it. I can stare at it and think about it for hours together but no I am not a nature watcher (i don't know if i am using the proper word) .. what I mean is I do not study nature. I can listen to the sounds of birds and look at them but don't tell me to recognise them, i cannot(i am not talking about crows and sparrows , if that is what came to ur mind). I always stare at the starlit night sky but then i cannot tell you which group of star is which constellation.. (the only one I can recognise is the "Saptarishi").. or differentiate the planets from the stars for sure.. i can try but then everyone can do that. Loving nature doesnt mean i wander in forests in search of rare species or i can go to a jungle and stare at the eyes of tiger just because its a part of Nature. Well okey, tiger is too big a thing, i have my fears for smaller creatures as well... snakes, scorpions (which this rainy season has brought before me quite a lot of time). I cannot look at a tree and say its biological name (or even the common name sometimes). Yes, i look at the moon too often, but then that doesnt mean i can look at it and say which month or season or time of the year it is... i prefer refering to the calendar for that. Sea, for example is a beautiful aspect of nature... i love to watch the waves rise and fall... but plss do not ask me if it is low tide or high tide. I love watching clouds, their varied shapes but no, i cannot tell u if they are Stratus or Cumulus (there was one more, i dont even remember the name). And I love seasons but may be sometimes i am not even sure which month is for which season (except winter and summer ... and rain too)

 

I look at nature in everyday life ... the same things which even you notice. I look at raindrops (can i help it, if i am stranded somewhere for the want of an umbrella)... falling leaves (even you would if u were sitting/standing beneath a tree at the season of fall), the sky, stars, floating clouds,moon, sun (if its not so bright).. flowing streams, flowers, butterflies... aspects which no one can miss. I look at sunset, sunrise (although rarely), falling and rising of waves, trees, stones, scintillating dewdrops... havent you seen these too?? I hear the "music" nature (thats how I refer it) in the "chirping" birds, "whispering" wind, "rustling" leaves, the "rattling" brook , the "gushing" rapids or even the soft sounds of flowing river. I claim that i can listen to "silence" but isn't "zero" a number too?

 

And i agree they do titilate my senses... that they are reasons why so may thoughts are cooked in my small mind.Yes, i can relate nature to anything. Give me a situation and i will tell you in which aspect of nature you can find it. Agreement or diagreement is ofcourse possible. I can find moments in raindrops, passing time in flowing river, moods in seasons, expressions in flowers, emotions in sky... inspiration as well as depression in natural phenomenon .... just anything in nature and even the whole nature in anything... like myself.

I am a part of this world
This world, a part of me
Every aspect of nature
In me, you can see

No, i am not a philosopher, thinker may be, but then everybody thinks... isn't that what human mind is for?

 

Home sweet home

Monday morning.... I leave for Howrah from Kharagpur along with one of my uncle. My train arrives at 12.30 pm. I find my seat, chain my suitcase and sit there waiting eagerly for it to leave. 35 hrs is a long time more so if the only journeys i have taken alone had been overnight journeys or of 5-6 hrs durations. But at that time, that was not my concern... what was more important to me was that at the end of those 35 hrs i will be at home sweet home. The journey started... i was sitting in the window side seat... staring at the sights of nature as is my habit. After a duration of 3 hours, there was nothing much to see and i found the option of sleeping better . Half an hour of sweet slumber exploraion and then back to senses. My co-passenger had by then introduced himself to me...  We had quite a chat on matters of career, in which of course i did not have much to say. Anyways, then I found a newspaper and started browsing through it.... and found an article in a corner of the 3rd or 4th page...about a train robbery at gunpoint near Dhanbad line. As I was reading it casually (nowadays these news r quite common), what striked my mind is that our train was going on tht same line. Then came the realisation tht in our coach... there were not more than 20 people. Not that i was scared... but it just occured to me.  And as is my nature... i decided to scare my copassenger as well... !!!

By then we had entered the state of Jharkhand... and with all due respect to the ppl threre.. the place was not a very happy thing to see (considering the situation we were in.) Dhanbad was the last place where we found a proper station and signal in our mobiles. What continued after that was a series of uninhabited area.

 

"Nature is beautiful" ... coming that from me is nothing new for a person who has read my poems. isn't it? But this was perhaps the first time i had seen it so minutely or rather realised that i was looking at Nature. So now you will be going through the jumbled up thoughts of my mind when i was "with" nature.

Stones... hard stones... often when stones come to our mind.. we try to recognise them with absence of feelings and emotions... but why then when i saw those glistening black stones washed by the rain, they didnt bring such thoughts to my mind. Why did I enjoy looking at them... watching the sunrays play with them with so much glee. It was perhaps the first time when i saw stones from a different angle. Now i know.. why Diamond is a stone. Stones r beautiful. And once in a while I would find a tiny stream struggling to find ways through them.. and I would wonder what is it that gave that tiny stream so much strength and perseverence. Its a beatiful sight, believe me, more beautiful than the huge waterfalls. Know why?? because... the strong always has strength, it is rarer to see the strength of something small... no may be i am wrong... its not so rare in nature. The stream then joins some large or not so large expanse of water and then they flow... more or less like a river. Once in a while u can see small waves in them that try to emerge out and are gently crushed down again...wow!!! Then suddenly I will find drops of rain pouring down... a slight drizzle is more lovely to watch than heavy rain as i try to look at the patterns made on those water bodies when the rain drops touch them. Each drop makes a differrent pattern... and it keeps changing in small instances.... if only i could capture them somewhere... may be i did .. in my mind...in my heart... or else i would not have been writing this ...isnt it? From the water I would divert my mind to the skies... clouds floating... how beautifully they roam... as if the vast sky was their play ground... why did that picture remind me of my school play ground during the lunch hours. Morning sky is not noticed by many people... or may be i should say by me... all i see is stars and moon and when i thought of "morning"... u know what came to my mind.... yet isnt it in the morning when we see the clouds... beautiful clouds, each having its own shape... an identity perhaps. And then these clouds should bring rain. 

Rain... drops of water... tears... its my usual way of interpreting rain... i know i am wrong. I dont know when was it that i started thinking that.. when it rains, the sky cries.... but that thought has been with me ever since. Yet isnt it in the rain when the children play, as i could see now and then through my window... or when the peacock dances... isnt rain after the summer a relief... even i like getting drenched... but then doesnt too much rain bring flood...as in Gujrat. 

 

My co-passenger was ofcourse not enjoying my thoughts. While I was looking at the various trees of diiferent heights... he would find a tower and say... "that must be a doordarshan tower, if it were a telecomm tower, we should have got signals in our mobiles..." and i would silently agree. He would worry at the sight of uninhabited jungles and our safety in such areas... what if the train stopped... and so on. I on the other hand, was not interested in brooding on something which was neither giving me pleasure nor was my responsibility and hence let my poetic self enjoy the treats of sights....and i was careful that i wasnt voicing my unscientific thoughts, afterall as a budding engineer i am supposed to have some scientific thoughts... and i did not want to break that image of a JEE qualified bright student... once in a while the pangs in my stomach would remind me that probably it would have been better to be in an inhabited area, at least food was not a problem there... but soon i would return to my Nature.

 

We crossed the jungles and reached some villages.. if u call them so, for, village is perhaps not defined as a solitary house at the middle of nowhere... but then that is what i saw....once in a while I would see some people walking hurriedly towards some decided place alone or in groups of 2 or 3 with their umbrellas safely tugged beneath their arms...(it wasnt raining)..but. barefooted... and i would wonder what kind of life were they living that the necessity of an umbrella surpassed the necessity of a proper footwear.... and as i was wondering whether they have ever used  it... i found two more persons... this time not barefooted... but u know wat... they were on bicycles, barely requiring the shoes... UNFAIR!!!! my mind shrieked... but somebody told me life was not unfair... may be i had little idea of fairness and judgement... i shouldnt bother my little mind with it... and let life do wat it likes. Then one of those barefooted pedestrian would cross the stream stopping to wash his feet and i would see... their are certain small pleasures which perhaps, we people will never enjoy. Life for everyone is beautiful if he/she wishes it to be. Slowly night engulfed the region.... it was as if a blanket was taken and the whole world was covered with it... reminds me of winter nights.

 

Slowly... lights were seen... we were quite happy to  see electricity in that region... it wasnt that bad after all. There were of course some areas where the only source of heat and light were still the pre-historic source - "fire"... but single bulbs were also seen once in a while. All of a sudden i would find a TV visible through an open window...and I would yell with joy!!! My co-passenger must have thought me a fool... not that I care... afterall there are few moments in life when we should be happy without worrying too much. Night and  sleep... my world of dream was calling me... i left the real world for those precious moments when i enjoyed being the princess of those lands of dreamworld. Morning never forgets to come and sleep somehow has to leave... i was back to the real world once again to the world of my Nature.

 

This time the sights were not so much natural... there was water everywhere... we kept crossing rivers... small ones whose names i don't remember and big ones like Sone, Narmada.... and so on.... soon i lost the count but it must have been more than 15... i remember counting till then....you must be thinking... water everywhere is natural... isnt it... then imagine broken trees, bent electric poles and torn down electric wires... does the pcture come clearly to you now... i was moving through a flooded area.

 

We reached a somewhat bigger station, where it was announced that the route of our train was changing. Now all I wanted was to reach home somehow... route doesnt matter , destination does. thts it!!! After some long  tense hrs, i found myself holding the hands of my Dad. I ws home... home sweet home.