Umm..I really don’t want to start this one with a “sorry” but I guess that would be the only appropriate step to take. (To avoid myself getting cornered and getting a black eye.. :P )
It felt really great to read those comments all over again on the previous part of this series i.e. The Moment-Part III. It felt like blowing off dust from the cover of the “memory book” before flipping through its pages. Also the reviews on The Moment-Part I and Part-II were highly encouraging.
So to all those who commented, to those who didn’t and just read it and to all those calls immediately after reading the 3rd part blasting in my ears saying, “What the heck do you think of yourself! How can you just NOT continue this!!!”; I say a biiiiggggg SORRY for not moving further with this one. I would not give any excuses, just the fact that somehow, it just didn’t happen.
Anyway, without further delay, the last part of the journey continues here……………………………
The MOMENT
With the sky opening up smoothly, the cloudy agglomerations dissolving in themselves, similar to the transcendental gates to the heaven opening up for a hearty welcome of the Lords and the Angels, he felt as if the space time continuum had been broken. Time decelerated. The colossal blend of voices and noises around him weighted a ton, fused together to form a kind of boggy mass of waste sounds, stretched, lowered on their intensity and took light years to reach him. Silence had dawned upon the place. The only sound interrupting the entire muteness of the situation was the sound of the footsteps. Her footsteps. Easily recognized, and the perfect ingredient for turning his stomach knotty and upside down. But this is how he had planned it. So yes, It.Was.Happening.
Clasping his palms together, gathering all the possible strength from each and every part of his already trembling heart, he moved a few steps to his left and leaned to get a quick view of her but pulled himself back the next second when the excitement gripped him strong. Finally something was going to be really awesome in his usual daily humdrums. Unsure of whether to force his hands inside his jeans pocket to vent out his unnerving exhilaration, or to let the cool breeze embrace him, reminding him of the turn on the road where he used to embrace her years ago. Like the wind and him, they used to hug like they are meant to be like that forever, till the end of time. He decided to let loose. He took a deep breath combining his happiness, joy, nervousness and homogeneity of excited feelings, he looked down, closed his eyes. Somehow he knew it. She was there.
Sighing heavily, he looked up. As beautiful as ever, adorning his life as ever, clad in a sparkling white suite and her coat fluttering in the wind, as if expressing the mutual feeling of joy shared by her heart, she looked at him with the perfect expressions. Her hair was flowing like a river midway down a snow capped mountain, fresh from the melted glacier of her spic beauty. The sparkle of her glowing pure white suit seemed to be faded in front of what the brightness of her expressions had to offer. There could be just one word to define it: Flabbergasted! Going weak in her knees, she almost fell on the friend besides her. She clutched her friend’s arm, strong enough to dig her nails deep into it, and the other was pressed hard upon her mouth in amazement. It actually took a minute for the reality to sink in her. Standing few feet away and staring at him was tougher for her than lifting Everest with her pinky at that moment! Teary eyed, totally unconcerned about everything and everyone around, she ran towards him and hugged really tight. Their bodies touched each other, so close and so intense that everything felt like out of a boundary, as if they got a marker that selected them around their bodies so as to exclude them from the rest of the world. His fingers were lost in her hair like himself for the past so much time without her and his arms around her were almost of the strength of banyan roots. None around them, her doctor colleagues, her college, the admin block, the residents...none seem to matter!! The Moment had arrived! He held as if to never let go, never ever. Love had met! The moment they exchanged glances few years back, they knew it. It wasn’t just going out. It wasn’t just mere dating. It was something else. It was love. It is Love! And it was in their eyes. He felt as a sailor on a voyage in the ocean of her eyes, a voyage that led to her heart. The soil under their feet dug in. They hugged like they loved. Intensely and purely. A mark had been made in the ground and on their lives. There was so much more happening than just meeting again. It was like breathing again. Living again.
Holding her hand, he stepped back a bit. It was unbelievable. They were right in front of each other after a long time! After conversing with her friends for some time, both of them stood up. The hidden giggle finally came out of her presently vibrant and flamboyant soul. She could not stop kissing him on his cheeks and hugging him! The incessantness of the act was a proof of how unbelievably beautiful and glorious her heart felt at that moment! He, on the other hand could feel her resisting as hard as she could to get her legs stopped from trembling because of the surprise! He kept his hand on her knee, and she calmed down. They exchanged a hug, and sat inside an autorickshaw. They were finally together. Leaving the aroma of their togetherness, the feel of their kisses and the strength of their love in the air, they left to spend the 4 best days of their lives…unsure about when, and most importantly whether, they will meet again or not.
Everything seemed to be like a painting made by the Big man above. A painting made by the Love Brush with profuse amounts of the colors of Jubilance, Happiness, Triumph, Romance, Mushiness and a prominence of Perfectness, all smeared together on the canvas to create an amazing blend of unforgettable moments.
Multiple Personality Disorder: A relatively rare dissociative disorder in which the usual integrity of the personality breaks down and two or more independent personalities emerge.
I read this statement in one of the Saturday supplements of a newspaper. It is of high probability that the psychology students might have begun contriving a plan to hang me as this definition might not be the exact textbook definition, but for the layman I think it is enough to convey the essentialities.
On reading the above definition, my neural highways suddenly experienced thronging traffic of millions of ideas and thoughts. I read the whole story about that person suffering from such a disease, and felt how it would be for someone to recognise his own self in such a mode; several definitions of his identity, enormously confusing conclusions about his own personality and the dejection from his lost soul. I wondered if I would ever meet someone suffering from such a disorder, wishing that no one should actually suffer from this.
And then I realised that I have seen it. I see it daily. There is someone, or rather something I know really well, which suffers from this disorder in its grimmest forms. It is all around me every single moment. It is very famously known as Life.
For those minds which are already lost in a kaleidoscope of conclusions and confusions as to what am I blabbering, I would like to impress upon the fact that if seen clearly, Life suffers from MPD. Remember the time, when we are left abandoned with a very common sentiment nowadays: “WTF!?” Just because a friend whom we expected, and were completely devoid of any fragment of doubt, to say a proxy attendance for us, did not do it even though we got caught thrice saying his proxy a day before!?? Or probably, when that very same friend comes to us the very next day and asks us to cover up for him for his wrongdoing in front of college authorities! “A DOUBLE WTF!!” Such situations, though trivial in nature, lead us to frequently question ourselves:
“How can people change in such a trice?”
or
“Am I expecting too much from everyone?”
or of the likes
“Is there ANYONE, anyone at all, whom I can call a genuine soul?”.
Or probably, the worst case scenario leads us to the distressing conclusions,
“Maybe I am made to feel this. Maybe I deserve this. Maybe, I am made to undergo this strife.”
Lost in this dubiousness, we never realise one thing. It is not me. Or you. Or him. Or anyone. It is life which is suffering from MPD. One moment it is gleeful, the next it leaves you appalled. One moment you love someone, and a morning later you realise you are finding reasons to hate him/her. One day you feel successful, the next you are lost in self doubts. One moment life seems perfect, the next it feels as it was the worst thing that happened to you ever! It changes its face in a New York minute! If you imagine life as a person, you would never want to imagine the trauma he/she would face by the frequency of multiple changing personalities it undergoes!
On a larger picture, the best example could be love. For those who were once very seriously in love, or rather thought that, and have come a long way since they lost it, there must have been a morning when once they would have woken up and thought:
“Shit. I am not thinking about her!!??!@#!?” :)
Or something like..
“Wow, it’s been 3 weeks, I didn’t even think about talking to him!”... :)
...and you suddenly realise how much has changed. An example of a slow transformation of lifes MPD.
All of a sudden, life seems to have turned into something you could have never imagined sometime back when you were shattered into pieces. Confidence rules.
Life seems blissful.
The moment you get out of bed, and look at the mirror, you realise how beautiful it used to be, with a face besides you in the mirror, which is missing now.
Life seems bleak.
Once again, Life undergoes a makeover in a jiffy. Such prolonged and swift changes in its personality...doesn’t it seem too much to take for a young human brain and heart? Yes It does. And it is. It is this superb frequency of change that we experience in our lives, which is responsible for our instant happiness or instant gloom. These are the alterations which are responsible for us to classify random people to friends, from friends to more than friends, from more than friends to beloved and so on...and yes, in the reverse order too. These are the changes which are responsible for most of our shocks, disappointments, dismays etc. I personally for the same reason hate such changes.
But I guess what I learnt from the past and would like to share with all of you is that these are changes. They cannot be stalled. Our lives are diseased with MPD. I wish there was some cure to this disease, but alas, there is none. Time loves to tickle us. Sometimes also bruise us. And we react incessantly to it. The key is not to.
It is just that life changes. With time, the bruises heal up, the jokes die, the sadness conforms to elation, and the elations mellow down. At the end when you reflect back on the life one fine morning sitting in your chair in the balcony sipping on the coffee, you realise it was nothing but the diseased life. It was just MPD of Life. It was just the change. It was just that time played with us. Tickled us. Sometimes for short intervals, sometimes for years and left us with changes, which sometimes were responsible for smiles, sometimes tears. But its just time. So its better for the youth experiencing gruelling changes and ups and downs in their life, to understand that its just a matter of time. Things shall pass. It is not worth getting upset, wasting time drowned in agony and pain.
Because when you would be sitting in that balcony at the end of your journey, you would for sure know that life goes on...and it goes on...........changing.
I remember sitting on a creaky red chair in a marriage party when I must have been nine, or probably a sober ten. The common Indian verbal ruminations about what not in the world, by “who not” Indian females, were in the air all around under the fluttering typical reddish tent. Yes, tent. I am talking about 11 years ago. Anyway, I obviously couldn’t understand such ‘relevant’ women stuff at that time (with not much of a difference to this fact even today when I am 21 :P). This led me to stick to my chair obediently and wait for my parents to finish their miserably important socialising. Keeping me accompany was the chilly weather and the sound of the noisy dhol. In between all the social paranoia, I remember a very strange incident that happened. It happened with me. And the crux is, it was something which was totally unexpected. (Though really felt afterwards...)
Fiddling with the golden button on my baby black suit, I remember someone occupying another chair besides me. Shockingly, it was a girl. And the bigger shock was, she was looking at me. Direct, into the eyes. Actually what was actually a shock was the combo that she was pretty, she was a “girl” and she seemed to be inclined towards breaking a conversation with me. ME! WOW! But with my characteristic straight faced expression (It is still there...for people who know me know it) I looked back and she made a statement, “You know, you are looking so damn cute.” With the help of her stunning smile, she managed to get through pulling my cheeks. (Now you would understand why the shock was “felt” afterwards :P). Later, she just stood up and went away. I was left bedazzled.
The reason for me to gape was the false proving of my own belief that girls don’t, and probably would never talk to me. Later on, I do remember clinging onto dad while walking out to catch an autorickshaw back home (we did not have a car at that time) with one recurrent question:
Me: “Would girls ever talk to anyone like me when I grow old? Would I be able to make even friends, forget about girls?”
Dad: “It is not what you actually think it is.”
Again, very obviously, at ten you cannot expect someone to infer this statement to flamboyant precision. Even I could not. I got nuggets of what it could mean, but I could not decipher exactly. So I ignored and life went on.
11 years later my memory serves me wonders. Life seems to have undergone a complete evolution. Studying engineering in one of the most specialised disciplines, my life, till now has been completely different from what I imagined it to be like. I transformed into a self-believer after eighth grade. Till then I used to bear a lot of appalling comments, disgraceful looks and ignorant gestures. I was no more than a ludicrous dope! Right from the beginning of my school, I used to be below the poverty line in the section of “friends”. Living in the negativity bubble around me, my academics suddenly began to suffer. And suddenly I became broke in the section of “friends”. This struck a chord in me. I decided to walk backwards. And academics became my first step. Somehow things began to fall in place. I began to score well in my school. The world followed. I started reading novels, writing poems, studying academics, debating, gaming, socialising, understanding my culture, trying to become a good person........and what not! I even entered sports, though never could go beyond school level J. Maybe because....because I am differently abled. I realised that maybe I suffered the ignorance and avoidance during my initial life not because I was differently abled, but because I did not try to conquer my life. Maybe because I did not try to win over. Maybe I did not ever think that I CAN DO IT.
Now that I feel I did win over the difficulty and the hurdles, my address book comprises of more contacts of females than males.... ( I guess... :P) And yes, girls DO talk to me. J And I am pretty wealthy in the department of good friends now (like the one on whose request I am writing this post). :P J
So I understood a very important fact, which I would like every struggling person to keep in mind:
“It is not what you actually think it is.”
PS: I actually did not know what to write when I was told to do so. This was an impromptu when I came across a News channels award ceremony dedicated to the differently abled superstars...
Another one was in the form of a sudden realization that I have stopped writing. Actually, a much fiercer and abominable situation has been the birth of the feel inside me that I might not be able to recoup. Ever again. This realisation has the inherent potential of metamorphosing into a really dreaded situation because writing had been “the vent” for me ever since the demonized downswing. The feel of not being able to write ever again was enough to mess up my mental state of affairs. I have begun to feel like a lost nomad. Of late, I have been attempting to write regularly, but except crushed paper balls in my room and accompanied hopelessness, nothing met me.
But I believe in, “When you are just about to fall off a cliff, the tree branch you accidently cling on to is the perfect definition of a friend.” And that tree branch to me is a very sweet friend and a co-writer who came in contact after a long time and suddenly gave me just what was required for me to SERIOUSLY attempt writing. She kept a condition which left no choices for me other than writing! She said she won’t write on her blog until I write SOMETHING at least and believe that I can write and thus get back to writing. So I had to. What to write, that was told by another special person in my life. (Believe me I am no better than a lost memory case presently! It feels like I am writing for the first time, which I am obviously not as is seen from my blog!) She just asked me to write something, ANYTHING. According to her, I should NOT try for a masterpiece in getting connected to writing after such a long time. I say, forget master piece, I do not even know if this is worth being called something! Anyway, there is one more aspect about which I would write soon, (Yes! I have the urge to write at least another post.) Not here, as this is already stretched too far and too long.
And I genuinely do not know what title to give this, but one thing is assured: This is what I FELT. And thus, I wrote.
I received a mail today forwarded by my sister. It had a story in it. I knew what it was made of. So I didn’t read it. I went to the washroom and splashed water on my face real hard. And stared at the mirror. Actually, I stared at me. And “me” stared back. This faceoff usually is detrimental to the arising mess in my brain. So, it was a relief again. The mail was another attempt by someone who was very close to me to achieve god knows what by making me read it. Actually, I am still unsure whether to use “was” would be correct. But I guess the blistering and eventful past that I had, left me with no other option. There are similar mails, which lead to similar mirrors, which in turn lead to similar stares and similar thoughts that I encounter. The point is, all this happens almost daily. I have lost account of the time since when all this has been an integral component of my already undefined and random life.
Phew. I finally got an OK from my conscience for the above paragraph. I say so because I have been experiencing an intensely choked up, stagnated mind state since a long time now. Imagine to be forcefully stuffed in a half your size air bag, your and the bags mouth sealed with a scotch tape, limbs tied around with dry, rough jute ropes and silently placed in the middle of the room where people are doing heavy breathing yoga exercises to relax themselves, with none of them opening their eyes so that they could see you and help you! Height of mental and physical exertion? That is what has been my mode of living, rather existence, for the past many months. In every domain, irrespective of its nature, I have been feeling the same. And I really have no clue what to do. Relationships (I am not only talking just about the “youth love”, it includes friends, families, acquaintances and some undefined but special ones too), academics, hobbies, interests...everything has been facing a major blow.
One of the major setbacks has been the totally unexpected end to 2009. I had my 5th semester exams over, and it was no less than the end of a mini world war. I was jubilant and exulting in high spirits. All the frenzy and excitement with which I came back home got snapped off in a moment. In one phone call. It was the New Years Eve and all that I was expecting from her call was a wish. No, she was not the girl with whom I was in a relationship. In very recognizable terms, she was not my Girlfriend. She was someone who was (still have doubts about using the past tense, how I wish I had been left with an option) very close to me. She held an extremely special place in my life. A girl whom I loved. But not as my girlfriend. Just as someone.........someone whom I LOVED FROM THE CORE OF MY HEART. I had gone through a very vehement downswing in my life 2 years back just for the fact I got committed in a relationship. She came to the rescue and made me believe. I didn’t want to repeat that downswing. Just the fact that I really liked her as a person and that she was there, was enough. But I guess not for her. She had one question. What about the future. I said I am 21 only. She said I love you a lot but cannot carry on like this without a relation or future commitment. All this when the world stepped forward into 2010. I for a change, had nothing to say. I had another blow. I wanted to return to 2009.
Huh..finally. I am back. Again! :P Yes, I return again to this world of words and emotions. I have no clue what to say and what not to about my absence. The only thing that I can say is that this habit of intermittent appearances that I possess is actually not intentional. Its the outcome of ENGINEERING!
But the ironical shit is that, last time when I was on a writing spree, my "ENGINEERING" end semester exams for the 4th semester were going on. Today, when I decide to return to this, I have just entered my room after giving my end semesters again! I have no idea what kind of a drive do my final exams instill in me that I really feel like writing. Or maybe its the more probable reason that I can think of: Ab kuch ho nahi sakta, jitna padhna tha padh liya, 10 din ke baad ghar jaana hai, so relax!" :P
However, the interesting part is, that whenever I think of relaxing during my exams, I think of blogging. For people who know me know that I have blogged mostly to vent out. Not to display my literary skills, or that I have ample time in my hands that I feel like playing with the keyboard and play "tap-tap". I have no explanation, why do i feel like venting out ONLY during my exams. I just do. And this is what I feel like now.
Anyway, its been time that I wrote something. Not that I am a master of the pen, but still I feel all of you who read me must be missing me a lot :P ..
So guys I am back, (no guarantee till when will I stay.. :P i am serious!!) and I have to write. Stuff has been happening. Good, bad, dirty, fun, etc.. So here I am.. this is me...! (With due respect to Bryan adams. :P)
I'm in search of a revamp. And that is why I am here to vent it out. If you know me, you would understand what I just said. If you don't know me, welcome to my world. You would soon understand what I just said!
