Solo tales - Gift from Paris

My boss is a wonderful person. He is just the kind of leader I want to be. Having spent 1.5 years in corporate I have been one of the lucky employees who received absolute fast tack growth. Getting rotated to various verticals in a very short span of time. Helluva journey for me. 

Of course all this had a lot of costs involved. My opportunity cost was mostly sacrificing my personal front. Most of my time beyond office hours goes into my work related issues. This lead to mis-conceptions in personal life and lot of appreciations from boss/ office. I still don't know which one is more important in life.Till today, I was generally happy about how things are.

Today, when my boss returned from Euro Tour, he gave me a special gift. Special because he got gift only for me and none of the other employees in the department. I did not know how to thank this person for giving me first thing to treasure for in life. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude. 

My parents, were nevertheless very proud and happy to see picture of my gift. 

When I shared this news with my friends, they gave negative reactions; "All this is OK but why do they make you stay so late", "Fine, but don't work too much you are a female and you need to raise kids in another 2-3 years, don't stress yourself", "You better quit and take a big break".

I felt very disappointed and lonely. It was as if just my parents know how much this means to me and only they are proud & happy of what I am doing. I don't understand if working too much is right or wrong but I certainly understand that this makes me happier and content in life. 

Never felt this lonely in life, just curled in and cried. Bitterness of a male dominated society. 

If you have every discouraged any of your female friends for working too much, please don't do so just because they are females and need to raise kids in future. 

Their career is as important to them as yours and their focus is no different than yours. They don't want to surpass anyone, they just want to make a stand. 

And for God sake, don't play the hipocrisy game.

Too careful.

It is very easy to write about not being able to write. I feel my loss has been the ability to experience. I have denied myself of indulgence. Staying careful was never on my agenda; the way it is now. My independence, my freedom of thought was my indulgence. I was free to dream, take risks, travel far-off and return; for I always knew, there is someone waiting for me at home. Now, I am out of my shell. I stay outside, work like mostly people do, managing my own expenses and staying alone (read staying careful).

I wonder what an impact this small word 'alone' can have. It gifts you vanity of independence from outside but eats you from inside. To the world you are the one encouraging change, attending big meetings, trying to revolutionize bla bla mundane stuff. But at home, it feels like the world has a bigger picture. There is history behind each conversation. At home, you are part of the struggle, you are the myth and the change agent, you are the pages and the ink, you are the reason of someone's effort and persistence and you are their wealth and their priceless possession. 

Life is better now, or was so during my childhood is a wrong question. However, the answer is common; This too shall pass. :) 

XOXO

Saaki

esoteric.dreams@gmail.com

Dwell in possibility

I never thought this day would come. This is one historical day when I could finally overcome my writers block.

I thought about writing several times, while I got placed, while I started job, my first pay cheque and many such moments. The truth about writing is that you can write only when you are feeling strongly about something. Perhaps I am not as materialistic as I assumed myself to be, not overwhelmed by money that I earn, or a job that I bragged. My worldly connection was at a different angle.

Pain and love are my worldly connections. Last week I was in pain due to some health conditions. And needless to say, I received lot of love with some aberrations. Aberrations were not personal, all official. Sometimes I wonder, how important is my work so as to cause those aberrations. Atleast I could feel the discomfort caused. Ofcourse no one would say it, but it was officially evident.

Talking about love, I finally reached home to receive loads of it. Pain eventually succumbed as love took over. Family, friends and even maids; all were very cooperative.

Today when I picture myself admist a difficult time, I dwell in the possibility of it passing by. If something like writing, which I deeply loved, could return to me, there is always a chance that this tough time shall pass.

Dwell in possibility. Lets begin talking again :)

Liar

I re-read what he wrote

His words are innocent, mostly untrue

One day, he confides in me that I'm his world

I believe him. Like I believe his every lie.

Rose

Hello Readers

Its been a while, quite sometime actually.

While wandering alone in the market today in Sector 14, Gurgaon, Delhi/NCR, I felt great. Feeling great is such a big deal for me now a days, it seems life is throwing lemons at me. Nevertheless, I saw majority of girls holding a rose or a bouquet in their hands. Today, as we all know, is Valentine's day. Seeing every girl smile, every guy in love (others looking for love), was fulfilling. Love is such an important feeling, almost leaves you reach the satisfaction of being complete.

Dependance on love is natural and so are the fights. However, a very important aspect is communication. Too often we lose someone close because we couldn't say. We couldn't speak what is the truth. We prioritize our ego over a person. It cannot work this way.

When this person will be gone, a void will persist. It will take longer for you to feed that void than the time to feed your ego.

Song of the day: Love you for a thousand years.

Distance

"Distance is just a test to see how far a relationship can travel"

Distance has a void. Whenever I hear of distance it fills me with cursory pleasure along with alternating pangs of pain. I have never dealt well with distance. For me, distance is annoying and if given a choice, I would like to take with me everyone I love.Distance gives me a little pleasure for the sake of time to sink in and settle things. But when such a thing is not possible and there is hardly any scope for the time factor to intervene I feel the pain distance has brought to my relationship.Words become uncertain of their interpretations and there are meaningless smiles floating around. The discomfort between individuals grows to the extent that they start avoiding to save a relationship. The question here is how can avoidance lead to a solution? Never. Time can heal when people want things to normalize between them, not otherwise.

It is natural to be uncomfortable with avoidance. People like me like to talk at length about fights , hiccups in a relation and sort things out, plan a common path for people to move along. Some people might  not work this way. They prefer time to heal things. Patience is indeed a virtue and I am hardly to be blamed if I lack it. It is not in my system to be patient. I have my own term with distance, term of hatred.

Conversations happen when people are close, dialogs happen otherwise.


The song for the day would be: Vanilla Twilight

Curls!

The cluttered crazy girl with curls
Her smile wanes, complete to incomplete

What will you make of the eyes that stay silent
Of her raised eyebrows, lowered questions?
You can only begin to end her doubts
If you know how cluttered and crazy she is!

EveryThing!

If I will give my everything to you
You will mean the world to me
My reason, my logic
My mind, my soul
That is what you want?
That is what you like?
Between this war of love and myself
You will get all the love, but me
If I shall come to you
I will come with my everything
Together, with reason and soul and your everything
We shall make our world :)

Neodda, people etc

Things that get you back to writing are not things, they are people. Bouncing smiles from one corner of the class to another, uncontrolled crushes, bundle of mistakes and the typical gossips of a typical booze party makes you feel like writing. Writing all the nonsense that you've grabbed in the entire day and pouring out some truths and lies that are running parallel along with people by your side. People by your side- this phrase is nothing but an  irony, as literally those people could be running after your seat, your internship, your placements, your crush and your peace of mind.

Sometimes I think people here fear too much. Fear of giving each other support, fear of holding a hand, fear of lending an ear and so on. This fear is making them hollow from inside and the disease is spreading. I never thought I will feel negative about any place in my entire life. Here it is dark and when its dark people prefer trusting anything that they lay their hands on. Trust is not permanent for them, its just a support till they see some light. After that, they vanish. They don't fade, they don't stay, they just disappear. Their thought wanes out from your memory and in a few days you are again in that dark place holding someone other person's hand. Its just like a business cycle. They never ending cycle of trust and mistrust.

How I wish people here trusted more , smiled more , laughed more , cared more, pampered more and lived more.
In  brief sentences and gestures, lies their stingy opinions.

I feel my heart will sink one day, seeing the brevity of their lives.

Home

The journey must be completed fast in order to return home

For here it is bright, sunny but happiness does not fill my heart

The smile surfaces me, like a feather wishing to enter water

But too light to get inside depth and bring the bubble of love above

I hope I never lose memories that take me to you , home

As you always remain, the purpose of my entire journey

Sleep!

Out of curiosity I read today about sleep patterns  and learnt that I'm a foetal sleeper. I release all my tensions while sleeping. So the unconscious curling up has a meaning too. Foetal sleepers are those who curl up while they sleep, the more the curl, the fresher they wake up next morning. So I need to sleep like a puppy tonight to wake up all fresh tomorrow morning. On second thoughts, that could sprain my neck and back. Nevertheless, I sleep in the  log position in the afternoon. Which means I am stubborn in the daytime and I don't prefer relaxing. I have things on my mind. Quite true as half the day is gone in jumping from one lecture to another and I have a lot of networking and projects to do in the other half of the day. Good that even in my dreams, I recognize that. Good that I am a practical sleeper. Not a hopelessly snoring one! None of the posts on the internet talked about occasional Tsunami like moments in my sleep when I fall from the bed, or sense as if I am falling and wake up scared.
I have the habit of keeping as many pillows as possible on the bed to get the feeling of a lion sleeping in his den! Over stated statement that was !

Nevertheless , have a good night sleep! Much needed!

The man

He thinks he is armed. Full of bullets of ideas, chauvinism, chivalry and what not. He likes to be treated as a hero. Limitations do not exist for him. He is like the bird that returns only on will, never otherwise. How I wish I could tell him that every part of his ideal dreams is nothing but fiction. How I wish I could tell him, some wishes bring sorrows and the only way to avoid being sad is to forget them with a smile.

He keeps on looking for random keys that could connect him back to the lost wish. He appears, so determined, as if nothing is impossible. Reality would strike him one day but love, my love, doesn't want that to happen. For I am happy to see him like he is: lost in the dilemma of truths and lies. Sailing courageously for an island that does not exist,

I like him this way. He is ignorant of the truth, not unaware of it. But his hope reminds me of someone so similar... me. I wish I could blindly trust some wrong things, some wrong people, just because I love them so much, even after knowing they would fail me one day. I knew those people would  fail me, hence I feared loving them. But this man loves, the way people are to be loved. Always without fear, he loves them despite the truths and lies.

Merry Xmas :)

A deep sense of void fills me. I haven't been writing. Zilch. Except the monotonous MBA papers, there is nothing that I manage to write. The irony is that an year back, I used to love writing. Has the love waned?
Today when festival songs echo in my campus and I seem like a misfit to this festivity with 2 books in my hand and nothing related in my head, I wonder why did I stop writing? How difficult it was to shell out half an hour of my day and write about the thing that made it a good one, or maybe a bad one. This love for life seems to have retreated. Or maybe I have stopped giving enough time to things I once loved. I loved acting neurotic , being human, cracking poorest of jokes, gifting people chocolates and doing random stuff for them to make their days. I haven't been acting myself. Lost? Yes, I am.

This sense of loss fills me with rage to fight back. For every love is worth fighting for. I unnecessarily blink my eyes to console myself of my overwhelming loss, the kind that even refuses to squeeze out as tears. The point is that everything can change in some trivial moments but what matters is that how we lived before that moment arrived. So make goodbyes lovelier, greetings affectionate and times worth remembering. Every moment you spend, should be worth your time on earth. God Bless! Merry Xmas :)

Broken lines and dreams

How do we manage to pick a broken quote from a book and love it so intensely? This book that I am reading is filled of lines that will complete themselves before I sleep. Such is the nature of innocence in these sentences. The silence well defined, the noise well controlled. Every feeling measured against rationality, every feeling melting and crossing its boundary towards the end of the chapter. Today, when I am on the last page, I feel I could have written different stories about every line. Stories that I will recite to myself years later. Stories that will say, how the half moon decides to complete itself, how a rude guy makes a soft decision, how we get those butterflies when love happens and how we always hold onto, our broken lines and dreams.

Red

I like this colour of love. I like the insanity in this colour- the tinge of isolation and the need of love this colour shows. This colour is not a shade of mere colour, but a transformation of mood: from dependence to independence, from curses to immunity from etc to beyond etc. I have seen and worn every colour, but nothing like red. The air around you tells you that you are present where you are, important where you exist and noticeable in every manner; when in red. That's why I say, its not a colour. Red is a state of agony wrapped in art of love. Because all that you say, turns into plain red. The red that bounces between love and hate.

Liking it? 

Type ?

How we are connected is a different story all together. Sometimes, amidst of the noise around me, I am reminded of your laughter. The cheesy grin that runs through your face and covers a huge part of your facial geography. I like to imagine you this way: smiling. I pick up a means of technology and start punching my fingers, writing what could, perhaps, sound perfect. Perfect enough to match your smile. I fail a lot of times in my attempts to make you smile. Sometimes the conversation is interrupted by people who are nowhere involved in it. At times it is interrupted by the network that connects us and at times by our dilemma to make the first move. Sometimes, in between these interruptions , I predict what you are likely to say. And I smile when you later say the same.

Is it the technology that really connects ? Or are we connected beyond it's scope ? 

The story of an introvert

The story of an introvert has to be a little secretive. For the introvert does not accept so easily that he is one of a kind. Today , I met an introvert. Eyes constantly searching for topics that could hide this nature of his , concentrating on details and asking silly questions. He and his kind are filled with an intense void of knowing no one, not even self. The are plain uncomfortable among a lot of people. Their voice level , a little above low , makes you wonder if they will ever speak to you in the usual frank way. They sometimes make you insecure for letting people know indiscriminately about yourself all this while . They , instead , can decide to whom and what to reveal. Quite a power that is. The introvert by your side is playful with eyes , calm in movements and diplomatic in choices. For he never wishes to be reveal.

Another esoteric phenomenon? Perhaps , yes! 

My name is T

I wonder if a place can ever be strange to me. My name is T and  I can't get enough of Tea. I confess my jokes are as void as my name mentioned here . But you have to know that I am a subtly anonymous person. Subtly because I gave you a hint of my name. I am, anyway, a photographer. My journey is a random one. I am never done with a place . There is always a corner left untouched by my lens , people and their life uncovered . Somehow places I visit after a long time give me a fulfilling feeling of having lived longer enough to have made it back .  Places I visit often , the popular ones , the nukkads known to everyone here and there , joints that have made it to silent magazines and violent newspapers and so on make me uncomfortable. They change so fast , they seem unknown to me every now and then. I wonder if people understand what it is to preserve a place , a lost random feeling.

But then a disconnect is dangerous for a person like me. After all places and people make my picture perfect.

Say cheese *grins* 

The other side: Part 1

I ) How I hate her long nails. It feels like being loved by a cat. Now I  understand why my mother used to run after me every week with a nail cutter when I was young . Long nails are annoying. She complains about her nail paint waning , kajal splitting and her old rings unwilling to settle again in her fingers.
I wonder why she doesn't understand that she doesn't need all this to look prettier. She has a soul that suffices.
A conversation she left last night in the bed, while attempting to leave a scar on my torso with her long nail, still lingers in my mind. I wonder what she thinks of me , when reveal  my uncordial relationship with her nail to her .

II) The love for my story takes over her. She scribbles the names and characters on her tiny pink diary. Her pen needs another refill, she likes to risk being without a pen , having to apply the sweet girl tactics to borrow it from someone - a stranger . She likes to risk certain things in life. On roads with a little petrol in the car , without drinking water while she travels in slums and without courage when she leaves her Delhi office late (risk it is). If you compare her with me , I will say I love her audacity as I am a little weak. I don't like her risking herself for her dozes of adrenalin rush. In turn , it turns out to be a couple on adrenalin rush.
I wish she understands , the yin yang of being possessive.

Some of us are desert people

Some of us are desert people

Strained by heat , tanned in disgust

Raised eyebrows and swollen feet

With a work which drains , a work which feeds

Men and their faces , cut by moustache

Women and their nose , bound by rings

Drunk in merry , at a godly place

Drunk in pain , drunk in grace

Like sand , our fate struggles under our feet

Some of us are , after all , desert people.