Joie De Vivre-Making the Most of Ill Health

Being under the weather gives one a lot of time to think. In between naps that stretch through the day, and vile medicines, throw in some rumination for good measure. It's fascinating really, the realms the head can traverse when it’s supposedly on a "time out".
Amidst capricious thoughts of launching a career as a waitress in some roadside cafe in Antibes, my mind assaults the stomach with cravings for all sorts of food which are indeed prohibited on the other side of good health. Alas! The book I am reading with its graphic narratives of truffles, Bresse Chicken and Burgundies, is like an anathema, but only till the time I reach the chapter on gelatinous snails. Now THAT I can pass.
Another observations that dawns in my clogged up head for want of gastronomic delights, is that how television has nothing good to offer when you actually do have the luxury and liberty of devoting more than ten minutes to mind numbing movie marathons.
As I convince my self to watch the fifty eighth rerun of that movie which I already saw twice post my resolve to not watch it in the first place, I realize that the aroma of tea offers much comfort to me even as the decadence that has been brought about by excessive medication and rest refuses to let up.
I browse through the pages of a glossy magazine promising to reveal all on the haute couture of the working wardrobe. It is exciting this promise, I must admit. I feel like a dilettante in this world of fashion and accessories to be honest, and it’s valid to tell you the truth. I really can’t afford that Lambskin Chanel worth thirty thousand rupees.
Last of all I’d like to thank the inventors of muffins. They have been the best of friend in these trying times. The kind of best friend you eat though.

Metamorphosis

Permanence is an illusion which confounds us. And then, there is this eternal question of what is change really? Definitions can be half as warped as us. There is change inherent even in redundancies and repetitions. We change, time changes, how can repetition be repetition if the parameters which characteristically defined the occurrence of that instant have changed? The possessions we accumulate, the relationships which we engender, the people we encounter, the places we visit-all of it is transient. Why is that we develop such inveterate bonds with some things (I use the word things loosely, it can refer to humans as well) while with respect to some others we live in a state of oblivion or even a self constructed cocoon? We submit to winds of destiny when we are confronted with transmutation in mundane matters. Alternate driving paths are chosen without the slightest feeling of loss; a new seating arrangement is embraced with a servile undertaking, even a change in day is ushered in with a complete disregard for the one which went by. Perhaps we have made ourselves this way, carefully selecting a set of things towards which we will remain ossified. Is it self defense? I say it is hypocrisy. Embrace change pervasively. Feel a sense of loss when the road is blocked, it was the one that carried you home everyday. Say goodbye to that chair and bid a doleful goodbye to the day. Or if that’s too much - embrace permanence. Try anyway.

A song propels someone to do a mental jig of sorts, a little stream of water is perceived as a serene river cascading down rocks and the darkness of the night is paralleled to a space adventure. A wise kid said in “A Bridge to Terabithia”…close your eyes and keep your mind wide open.

Amen to that.

There is this issue of love and man
Perhaps god made love to show that he can?
And then he brought in the lovers and their heart
He told them his wish…love..
..my children, never part
Bud did he prepare them for the labour of love?
The agony, the pain, the upheaval of trust?
Pray, did he give a hint at all,
To the lovers and their heart..
About the mighty fall?
Nothing was told,
They were not fore warned
To bear the burden..
Would not be easy at all

Obscure Battles that are won everyday...

"I’m weak and ungrounded, the accident didn’t leave me with much to go on with. All hope was lost, all self resolve, all forms of resilience gone. Each day was a long journey of survival, every breath an effort of protest against the urge to give in to the abyss of loss. Every step I took came after much deliberation, and hesitation, it was accompanied with constant foreboding of doom. The fear of failure to walk was always at the back of my head. It impaired every move I made, it made me lose hope in myself. The days would float by, without much from me to it, and without much to it from me.
The passive existence continued. The hope would come one day and encourage me to conquer the fear and start anew, yet sometimes it would elude me for days at a stretch. The days it engulfed me, life seemed to have given me another chance. The days it went absconding, I wanted to crawl back to the beginning of existence or perhaps the end of it. I was broken at places I hadn’t even realized. I was broken in my belief in myself. I was broken in my belief in existence. I was broken in the perception of life. I would cling on to anything that promised to get me a step ahead. I believed I needed this support to learn to crawl back into the race. Somedays help came, other days I waited by the window, I called out its name, I even begged, yet it decided to stay away. Soon, I stopped waiting. I decided to inch back into the game by myself. I was tired of waiting for a miracle, a rescue mission. It started then, the recovery.
Soon, I was trying hard to live. Striving to move. Striving to be more than a breath. The motion and the breeze were my heroes, I sought inspiration from them. I was walking again. I could feel the wind in my hair. I started dreaming. Hope and fear stopped being quirky then. I knew they were not my enemies anymore. I wasn’t ready for the final race yet. Baby steps were all I could do. Then came the aftershocks. I wasn’t ready. The defense wasn’t in place, the gameplan wasn’t final just yet. I was broken again, the blow split me up. I lost my brace and suddenly found myself back in the abyss from where I’d just emerged. But this time I recovered faster. I’d been there before. It was familiar. I knew what was to be done.
I’m not perfect still, my insides are still weak from all those falls but I know, the next time when I fall again, I’ll be up faster than before, and then one day I’ll just stand the fall out."

All that you do is a drop in the ocean, but still, it counts...
All that you do can be wiped away by a single wave, but still, it counts.

Revolving Doors of Life...

People.Perhaps the single most defining thing in our life. Without the right kind, all accomplishments and sybarite lifestyles are worthless, and with the right bunch, pedestrian excursions to the ice-cream shop can be more fun than a helicopter ride across Manhattan.
All though life, some people make their place in our life, some however, leave.
All that seems important though is developing that keen sense of discernment, who do you let go of, and who do you cling on to for dear life.

How easy it is for people to rip our lives apart, as we go on with our life, naïve, vulnerable. Is it that the next step we intend take has been consciously destined to be our last, does such a though ever occur to us?
Outside, the sky is blue, the pedestrians mill about in quotidian fashion, but at some level we know, that something lurks behind the façade that obscures the darkness so well.
The reality that we can be violated grotesquely tries to reveal itself to us, and yet we choose to remain oblivious to the fact.
The Delhi serial blasts confirmed our worst beliefs, the plangent effect they had on the lives of its citizens, is evident. For, we have been intruded upon, our city has been attacked, and the places we frequent have been subjected to destruction. Government, and legal jurisdiction aside, the thought that something bigger, more powerful can change the face of a city in such a short span is unnerving. Terrorist activities leave us all wondering about our control on mortality and above all, safety in the place we call home.
Perhaps, in the context of these events, freedom has a new meaning for all of us, maybe its time the nation comes together, keeping the caste, language, religion, and state barriers aside. It could be the time to declare our solidarity; it is the time to be one.

Give me sight
Beyond the world I see
Let my speech
Be more than the words I say
Let my steps take me
Farther than where I can go
Let my mind wander
Beyond the realms of imagination
May this life bring to me
vistas unseen

Tiptoe around the dark
my child,
I can see through you
I know what you hide
These pernicious affairs,
Avaricious nightmares
ghosts of the past that reside,
I can tell like it is,
The beauty , the ill
All that rests inside.