Veiled Existence

There is only so much that one can know about somebody. The truth is that the picture is always incomplete. Add to that fact that we are all evolving everyday. What I believed yesterday might be a fairy tale today or what I will believe tomorrow might be even unknown to me today. But that should not be a surprise because how much do we even know ourselves. We try to complete our own picture everyday  not for others but for ourselves.

And yet, every single day while going through our daily chores, meeting the same people we met yesterday, we keep thinking that we know them. We don't. We never will, just as they will never know us. It is common for most of us to complain from the very teenage days or sometimes even before that nobody understands. The opposite perspective is always lost: that we never understand anybody either. I could extend it further saying that even if I understood someone at that one moment of interaction we had, it was lost the very next moment because we evolve every single moment. May be the everyday effort to understand every single person around us is like the myth of Sisyphus: futile but still repeated.

Then again it is necessary at some level to understand a person so that you can interact. As a part of the society, that probably is the most important code of conduct that we follow. We try to complete the picture we have no idea about by our own whims and fancies and then when we have done so, we claim we have understood everyone. An illusion we create, nurture and defend for life. What can we do, after all to err is human.

Credits:

Inspiration for sketch

Random Things About Me

DREAMER

You're a romantic in your outlook with a bit of taste for the exotic. You love feeling the sea breeze in your hair, sun on your skin... You always take the first dip. Your choice of drink shows you care about your health and make sure you're putting the right stuff in. When it comes to holidays you reckon they should always be indulgent -  a very special treat and a chance to recharge your batteries in luxurious surrounding as well as spending quality time with family and friends.

 THRILLER

As for the home you have an expressive personality with contemporary taste. You like to be surrounded by the precious possessions that define who you are. For kicks you like to be spoilt rotten. It's always so much fun opening gifts. nothing beats that kind of surprise.

BACK TO BASICS
When it comes to art you find beauty in the world around you. Nothing is more precious than natural treasures. As for music it's the soundtrack to your world. You're up to speed with downloading and your mp3 is always close by. Music helps you concentrate. you probably find it hard to ever switch it off. You're never happier than when you are snuggled up eyes shut. So whether you're worn out or just plain lazy lay back relax and catch up on some zzzzzs! When you think of freedom - the great outdoors spring to mind. Getting back to nature is a big draw. It's the perfect place to find peace and quiet.

THOUGHTFUL

You're an indulgent character and you treasure your possessions. You're a magpie; if it sparkles you just have to have it! For you friendship is all about being there for one another. You can't imagine life without your best friends. And they are the first place you go when you need some advice or a shoulder to cry on.

Well, not bad I would say.

Find you VisualDNA.

One such evening

It was only half past seven in the evening. On normal days, you could still hear the din of the street. The lively chatting of the workers packing for the day, the crowded buses returning people after their day's work, the incessant beeps of the impatient commuter, and even the footsteps of the innumerable pedestrians. This time of evening, on a weekday, was as busy as the morning hour when people just began their day of work. Yet, today one had to strain one's ears to hear the same sounds. 

Not that the streets were empty but the crowd was missing. Only distant noise of passing vehicles could be heard. What was unmistakable was the occasional rumble in the sky. Neither threatening nor fearful but like a pompous notice of arrival. The ambiance was shadowy tending to sombre but not quite gloomy. The sky was overcast with dark clouds. The sun was already resting behind the horizon. And the empty sky was the cloud's playground. Their game was not violent or intense, only filled with not loud yet booming roar of thunder that were inter-spaced by the murmurs of the trees. 

The night had started to arrive early today, but the stars were not yet out. Outside, the current time could easily be forgotten. Only the street lamps devotedly lighted up the open. If you had not known that the lights are typically switched off before midnight, you could easily confuse the hour to be quite late. The wind teased the trees mischievously as it traversed its unknown path and the trees in turn giggled and swayed. The lights and shadows from the synthetic illuminations from the nearby buildings gave the surrounding an unnatural glow that could hardly swallow the duskiness caused by the nature. Rather, the contrast gave it an undeserved prominence. The cold whiff of the wind tingled the skin. The chill could only graze the surface but the cool sensation was welcome after the past few days. A slight drizzle was bestowed temporarily. It would have gone almost unnoticed if the scent from the newly-wet ground had not filled up the air. The freshness from the balmy earth diffused impartially and for sometime you could smell the lushness of a beginning everywhere.

The air was still now, the trees silent. The clouds had returned the sky to the night, their game over. This was not their destination, just a hiatus. The stars have taken their positions and are now glowing undisputed. With the air undisturbed, the transient fragrance of freshness is also lost. Only the chill that brushed the skin remained, not as a tingle anymore but a memory, and a flicker of sureness that next time, it will rain.

Credit for photo

String of Pearls

Ever wondered what keeps us going? Millions of people wake up everyday to go about their daily routine. What would happen if one fine morning everyone decides "that is it!" It's not really an uncommon question. Most of us have wondered about this, if not for personal reason then surely for professional reasons but have we really found the answer?

Lost Individuality

Among many other things, we have developed the habit of grumbling. In fact I should say we have almost perfected it by practicing it for all possible reasons in our and other lives. I have been trying to find one such area which none of us grumble about and I couldn't find it. Any help on the matter will be appreciated. Now since I said "we" I obviously included myself and so this post is not about blaming anybody but rather it is about grumbling about grumbling.

Heroism and Martyrdom

When I took up the course for "Leadership: Inspiration, Dilemmas & Action", I hadn't realized what was in store. But with the end term over, I look back to a series of lectures that have rekindled my questioning. As part of the class presentation, groups had to take up sessions on given topics. Ours was "Heroism and Martyrdom" based on the book Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw. The groups were given the creative freedom to decide how they wanted to present.The topic was chosen by us of course. Our choice was based two reasons, it was about Joan of Arc, and it was a little later in the term. The third reason that it was based on a book applied for all other topics.

My latest sketch

 Dreams never give up!

Morning Blues

It is said that time flies. Usually I agree. And yet the last few days have been a challenge to watch the time pass. May be when they came up with the idea that anxiety dilates time, this is what they meant. They talked about fear but who knows if there are similar other feelings.They might have forgotten about boredom.
Morning sleep has never been a problem for me. Sleeping again after waking up in the wee hours of dawn has been what I may call my 'forte'. And my mom is sure to second that. Yet for the last few days that is exactly what has been a challenge to me. I wake up and I fail to fall asleep again. Let me clarify that I have nothing to do in the morning that might force me to wake up early. No office, no classes, no commitments to keep. I can wake up as late as I want but the 'can' part doesn't seem to work.

My Watchlist - Animation II

Now those of you who read my last movies post (My Watchlist - Animation), took my suggestion and watched the last 5 movies then decided never to take my suggestion ever again, this list is for you. Basically it is a fun list with animations as you expect them to be.

I will start with Up. Amazing movie!!! This is a movie that tells you that neither romance nor adventure has anything to do with age. So those of you thought that in the coming years, age is going to be your excuse for shying away from either of these, it is time you found another excuse. And there is another thing that this movie says ... but if I tell you that there wouldn't be much left in the movie. So go find it yourself. 

On a day like today

Dear Silence,

Most of the time I love rains. And I have really cherished memories about them be it in the school days, college or work as must be evident from my numerous chats with you regarding rains. Although sometimes the muddy puddles in the middle of the road are a cause of too much inconvenience specially after rain has left. And yet the early morning drizzle like that of today often fills me with apprehension and gloom. If I wake up to rain, the most usual thing to do is to go back to sleep and wake up a little later hoping that I have successfully shortened the gloomy day to some extent. Unless commitments of the day render such a plan completely useless. In that case I just give in to my feelings.

My Watch List - Animation

This is not a movie review.

During my stay in K, I had the chance to watch a couple of movies. Animation was top in my list and luckily I found quite a lot of them. :) Here is a list (not in any particular order) of some interesting animated movies that I came across. Not all of these are watched in K but I remember most of them are. I will skip the usual favorites of Toy Story, Lion King, etc but I cannot skip Wall E. 

Anybody with even the slightest interest in animation, must watch this.  I could tell you the summary but why spoil the fun, and anyways IMDB is always there for that. So it is the story of a lonely robot who falls in love and then moves across the universe (literally to find her). Now that plot itself would melt the heart of any romantic but that is not all. The movie is also about us and how we will have destroyed the earth. It is also about technology taking over us and about hope. But most of all I love it because there is so so much expressed in the movie with the minimum words.Lets start with the lighter ones now.

Haunting Words

Do words haunt you too?

I know it sounds weird but I have been haunted by words for some time now. Now there are different kinds of words that haunt.There are words that someone else told you and you liked them so you keep remembering them and feel happy. Now that would be a 'good' words-ghost. But it could be the other way, something you didn't like, something that hurt you or shook you to the core, something that you never expected and you had no reply to those. Those words might make you feel angry or weak or betrayed or just sad. And each time you remember them, that feeling is renewed, may be even magnified. Now forgetting would be an apt way of solving the problem but memory is often treacherous and mostly too independent. So the next thing to is to set out to prove those words wrong to yourself if such a thing is possible. If not, then as they say, time is a great healer.

Back to books

If nothing else, this internship at least rekindled my first love. 

So one day I was updating my bookshelf in Shelfari when the about me section suddenly caught my attention and from there four little words stared back at me "Reading keeps me sane" and with that all those moments flashed before my eyes when reading had actually kept me sane. If then, why not now. :) So I was back to books. What about blogging then? Blogging keeps me alive. Not the 'alive and breathing' but the 'alive and living'. So in short last one year I had been insanely dead. Not that I can disagree.

So what am I blogging today? Obviously its about books. And why? Because I came across this post - "And so read on" and I thought, its time I added another list. This time not just classics :)

So here is a list (in no particular order) of what I have been reading in the last month:

1. Vampire Diaries by LJ Smith
2. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
3. A Room with a View by EM Forster
4. The Invisible Man by HG Wells
5. The Wedding by Nichloas Sparks

Slaughterhouse 5 - This is not a book review

I looked up and then around. This wasn’t one of my favorite places to eat but this was one of those where I could sit alone unnoticed. It was perfect for getting lost. Firstly it was always crowded and noisy, then it was lighted dimly in the evening like it is now and most importantly it was such a vast area that there was no way one could see from one corner to another, no wonder no one cared. True, today was more crowded than usual and noisier than what I would have preferred. Even the lights were so dim that it strained my eyes to read. I was silently sitting in one of the edges where eyes don’t reach, and therefore the sound that made me look up was totally unexpected. Then I heard the voice:

Colored Vision

If all like the colors that they are looking at, they would like others too.

Imagine a bunch of children at a fair. Now fairs are very colorful places with lots of people and lots of things to see. Suppose each of those children in the bunch has a different colored glass. Then of course, no two of them will agree on what color a particular thing is because they see it differently. What is green for one is blue for someone else or even red for another. Interesting don't you think? May be not because you already know that they have different colored glasses which perfectly explains their perspective but suppose this knowledge was not known, wouldn't it seem a very unlikely situation except perhaps if the children have learned their colors wrong.

I think any group of people are like those bunch of children each with an intrinsic colored glass for himself/herself.

On Chasing Dreams

When I am done chasing everyone's dreams that I think are mine, will I chase mine?

Privileged are those who know what they want but blessed are those who know what they want and never had to rethink that. If I were to ask what is it that one wants from life or career, most of us will have an answer ready - money, fame, luxury and so on. Are we not limiting ourselves? There is so much more that we can get! Some of us will shy away, not sure if their dreams are worth sharing and important, some have never thought about it because there was always someone else who did the thinking and some only have a vague memory of where they had started. And yet when the so-often-asked question "Where do you see yourself 10 years from now" comes, we all have an answer.

The first day

Day 1

Writing Prompt: Everyone else was laughing.

Everyone else was laughing. I stood there in my place wondering what the joke was. The first day of school was never my favorite even though I had too many of them. Or may because I had too many of them. Those people who said “practice makes it perfect” had not considered first day of school. The string of my first days of school begins with a day when I had stood at the corridor of my school and cried as I watched my father walk away leaving me alone.

The Walk Home

Day 0

Writing Prompt: Your mother

Your mother never told you to stay away from strangers. You grew up with them. She was never there to rebuke. Or was she? You look back for the last time and then walk away. The road ahead is dusty and deserted. ‘Destination does not matter, the journey does’ – those strangers always told you. And today you wonder if it is true. This lonely journey does not look promising but at least the destination is known. Or so you think. When was the first time when you had walked on this road? You don’t remember. Memories are not reliable anymore. Not with so many of them, not when you cannot distinguish memory from illusion, not when all your memories are of unfamiliar places and unknown faces. Your stomach rumbles. You squint your eyes to look at the sky. It was not noon yet but you will have to find food soon. The question is where. A distant noise lifts your spirit. May be the town is near but you are not sure. You have seen enough mirages in your life to think better. And although this is not a desert, you know that the mind has its own tricks. You walk on, lost in thoughts.

It was not difficult to wake up before the break of dawn. It was not difficult to leave all those people whom you had hardly known. Nor was it difficult to walk on an unknown journey. But it was difficult to follow the path to a destination. You feel a bounded by the knowledge. The freedom to change your course is lost.  But is that true? Were you really free before this? Bound in a journey with a group of strangers who changed every day, where was freedom? With unknown destinations, only the paths were decided. And that too, you never knew by whom. You had followed them for all your life without questioning because you had never known another way existed. Then you met her. She had changed your life, not once, not twice but time and again. Each time you started a journey, she was there to ask you “Where?” and you had no answer. Had she asked today, you would have told where. You smile. Memory or illusion, for once, you don’t really care.

You stop. The town is here. The road is not deserted any more. You can see small houses clustered together. Somewhere in those cluster is your destination. You hear a voice beside you and turn your head. A small old lady asks you if you need anything to eat. You nod and walk into a small shop. The noise drowns your thoughts and dim light hurts your eyes but it brightens your heart to be among people again. How long has it been? You have lost track of time. In the beginning you had counted the nights, making sure you rested after sundown. But then you grew impatient and walked even after nightfall and then finally you stopped caring. Food is really good and you gobble up to you heart’s fill. Once your stomach and heard had their fill, you take out your only belongings, a newspaper and an old weathered photograph and spread them out on the table. On one small corner of the newspaper was an address. You show it to the old lady and ask her if she knew where it was. She strains her eyes, tries to read, mumbles something then calls someone to help you. He reads, nods with recognition, looks at the photograph, looks at you and tells that he will take you there. You are happy and unsure all at the same time.

The town is teeming with people. All of a sudden you felt lost in crowd. Walking along the side tracks you reach a small house. Your companion stops and looks at the house. The house looks abandoned. You look questioningly at your companion. He does not answer. You look down. It was time to return to the strangers. He tells you to walk with him. You follow him to a deserted path, walking below a string of trees, you reach a graveyard. He leaves you there and walks away. You stand there staring at your new found freedom.

And then when the night came down, the old lady comes and you walk home.

The Open Window

A rumbling sound wakes me up. For a moment I am lost. Where am I? A second rumbling sound reminds me that it’s still summers in most other places but here. The rain whose thoughts had lulled me to sleep just a few hours back had woken me up with its angry shouting.  Just above my bed is my cluttered table. A diary filled with notes lay open. On it are notes of my stay here. None of which captures my important thoughts, or at least thoughts that I will consider important a month from today. The travel book had its various pages folded by the corner and the pen was careless perched on the last page I had seen. It listed the places to stay. Planning my travel was one of the things that continued to keep me excited. Probably being ‘on-the-run’ kept my mind at peace. The window that noiselessly struggled to be free was beyond the table. I stretched my hands to open the window. It was closed in the middle of last night to keep the mosquitoes away. In my half-asleep state I had decided as long as I could really sleep, I did not care about the heat. No sooner did I open the window, the lights went off. It wasn’t dark yet, the somber light washed on my crumpled bed sheet.  I stared out. The long lazy weekend that I had been dreading last week had come to an end. I was still alive and sane. Or so I thought. Does talking to myself count as being insane?

It was getting dark. The keys on my keyboard are not visible anymore except at the lightning flashes. Rain! What is it about rain that fascinates me? I stare out again. A strong lightning blinds me and a loud booming noise swallows the songs from my laptop. For a moment my heartbeat stops. And then I laugh. Wasn’t I just talking about fascinating rain! It’s the sounds. The sound of splashing rain drops, the drops pattering on the leaves, the wind swishing through the trees. It’s the memories. The memories of paper boats, of running under the rain, of holding hands, of waiting beneath a broken roof, of chasing time, of laughing with friends, of cycling through the rain, of reaching home drenched, of drowning my tears, of writing endlessly, and of so many other things. The thoughts are so overwhelming that rain never, never fails to steal my moments. Like it did for years and like it is doing even now.

It is really dark now. The window across my room is visible only if I strain my eyes. The rain has also calmed down. The lightning and thunder are far away and less frequent. I come out of my reverie, close my laptop and walk out of the room. The reception desk is empty. Outside the hallway, the door is still open. I stand at the door inhaling the scent of the drenched earth. The darkness had engulfed everything. Even the doors and windows of the guard room are closed tight. Contradicting all of them the window in my room flutters in freedom echoing my heart.