Remember to remember...

It was R's graduation day - a big occasion. One to be remembered for life but all she could feel was relief at having made it through the day and the excitement to move onto the next thing. But L knew better. Her years had taught her to pause, to reflect and celebrate before moving on; and so, she made R stop on the banisters of the school and to take it all in. She reminded R that within a span of a two years, this scary place with gargoyles, columns, and banisters had transformed from something alien, distant and scary into something familiar. It was a moment to remember for life. A feeling to cherish. 

L and R are fictional characters but that is the lesson I need to learn. 

The years have taught me many a things, but one thing I am yet to learn well is to remember the good things in life. The need to pause, reflect and to will something good, into memory. To store it safely, ensconced away in a special corner, far from the corrupting influences of daily living. 

We spend our days and years in constant motion, as an act of survival and before we know years have passed and we are at the end of the journey. It is then that we need these memories. The happy memories of a time gone by, of a life well lived. Of birthdays, of graduations, of celebrations, of successes and of milestones. The pictures, the letters and the notes give you a snapshot of it all but what breathes life into these memorabilia is the feeling you choose to remember them with. 

Hours fade into days, days into months and months into years. With sufficient time, years becomes numbers and what remains from all of those many hours are a few memories. One needs to make these memories sharp and bright else what remains is a fuzzy outline that has little color.  

I wish I had L in my life. To make me pause, and to remind me to make those memories before they are buried under the shifting sands of time; because now when I look back, I remember so little. 

In my efforts to forget the bad and to move on, I have also forgotten the good and life feels a little too uneventful right now. 

And so, I try, to take a moment every now and then - to stop. To wait and to remember what it was like... 

I had people who used to make me do that, but not any more. Now, I need to make my own memories...

Compressing time...

Our lives are often like a river charting its course through ever changing terrain guided by a host of factors. We change the terrain, even as it is changing us. It is usually a process of constant assimilation as thoughts and ideas find their way to us, like the sediments that muddy a river - either passively like the specs of dust that float in or through active effort. 

As we drift through our lives, there accumulate in us layers of memories. Memories that modify, distort and bury each other - revealing a little more of some things and a little less of some others. 

I realize now that I am often passing through life, in its grips, unaware of all my thoughts and feelings at the very moment, I am living it. Things then come back to me as versions of a story. A construct of my own mind. With every passing day, my memories are being altered, my stories morphing from what was to what I think was. What I see as my life today is probably a mix of some fact and some fiction. A melange of how I see the world and how the world sees me - colored by feelings, events, words and randomness. The stories of my life are perhaps written, not for accuracy or factual truths but for rational sense from only one perspective - mine. 

Over the years, these stories and memories have congealed into newer, more resilient layers, that now form the foundation of my being. These are the stories that I base my life and its choices on. But they are just stories, stories I tell myself (and others upon intense prodding). 

What I am often searching for is a way to reverse this process briefly and calmly. To unsettle the deepest parts of my being, with a hope to make sense of the journey so far. With the hope of shifting my perspective from what is staring me in the face, right at that instance, to what I will see with the benefit of time - an extrapolation as some might say. 

I want to unsettle the clearing waters with a hope that it will help me make sense of my life. With a hope to see the end of the story - my story. To visualize the incidents and the coincidences that shaped my life and the choices I made. To follow the thread from there to now - to see what I have survived and what I have not. This usually is difficult  because with every telling and re-telling, the story I know, is probably a little bit different from the truth that was. 

It is perhaps this quest for resolution that drives my love for stories of others - in the form of books, plays and movies. They magically help me live many lives over, many personalities over - in a span of a few hours, days or months. In their words, I have found my own. Through them, I have uncovered questions, thoughts, ruminations and answers that I have dwelt on over the years. I have searched for characters that resonate with me, that think like me, that have similar strengths, whims and weaknesses. I skim on the surface of their stories as I  drift through my own. I see glimpses of my life through them and that shift in perspective makes a difference. 

Over the years, there have been quite a few instances where I have cried my eyes out with a book, a character, a story or a movie. But with age and time, I have become a little more impervious and a little more resilient (happy about one, not about the other) and It now takes a powerful idea or a story to unsettle those calm waters. 

This bout of introspection and realization comes due to a movie called Boyhood. A movie, that stirred in me a whole horde of questions - questions that had lingered for so long that I had forgotten about them. They had become that unseen part of my life's fabric like the dust that stealthily creeps in. It took the musings of the young man to jolt me back to myself and to see the dust for what it is. 

Filmed over twelve years with the same individuals, the movie has a magical influence. It shifts your perspective such that you learn to watch the entirety of your life in a million tiny little moments as they lead up to the present. Somehow that takes you away from the myopic view of life - and shows a bigger, brighter picture. Made me realize that at some point, one has to 'choose' to focus on the bigger questions of life itself. 

Like what kind of lives are we leading? Are our lives built around what we wanted or around what was expected of us? How much of our actions are influenced by what we want and what others tell us we want? How much of our actions are a result of our desires and not just someone else's? How much power can and should the society have over us? How does one sever the umbilical cord and move away from the friends, family and society that have nurtured us? Should one? Do our choices make any difference? What matters more - how people see us or how we see ourselves? Do we really change over time? Can we decide to change ourselves? Or is free will an illusion? Do we seize moments or do moments seize us?

What is the purpose of our lives? Does anyone have all the answers? Do we ever find them? Do you even need them? 
What is the point of it all?

“‘What’s the point? I sure as shit don’t know,’ ‘We’re all just winging it,’”
"You don't want the bumpers. Life doesn't give you bumpers".
"I just thought there'd be more!"

Anna Karenina

Some books have a way of parsing through your thoughts and framing them precisely and exquisitely in ways that you couldn't even dream of. 

Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy is one such book and deserves all the acclaim it has been bestowed with. It is by no means an easy book - not because of labored writing or a flawed plot, but because of the deep and dark themes that lace the story. It is a tale of fatalism, plagued with uncertainty and unknowability. 

I have been procrastinating on picking up the book for a very long time but reading the following excerpt from an article in the New Yorker and an upcoming break were the last nails that hooked me to the story. 

"In “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin writes that, for Tolstoy, wisdom consists in the ability “to grasp what human will and human reason can do, and what they cannot.” The only way to find those limits is to struggle against them, but gently, with the goal of finding and accepting them. You can’t think your way to the limits. You have to feel your way, learning through experience and suffering. And there is a risk in experimenting with what will and will not work in life, which is that it might not work. You might move to New York to pursue your dreams, and end up with no career to speak of. You might think you can wait to find the perfect spouse, but wait too long, and end up alone. You might think you can have that affair and still have the love of your spouse and children—but you may be mistaken about what’s possible, and lose everything.

There’s a deep conservatism to this way of thinking. It’s fatalistic, in an off-putting way, since it suggests that the limits of what’s possible are just not knowable in advance, and that experience and tradition are probably our best guides."

And despite its many dark themes, the story is unforgettable as it explores life from the perspectives of so many characters with great finesse and perception. Here are some of the many wonderful phrases and instances where the sentiments echoed with me and in that resonance, I caught a faint glimmer of hope. 

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“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.” 

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”

“Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. ”

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly”

“They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.”

“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

“Something magical has happened to me: like a dream when one feels frightened and creepy, and suddenly wakes up to the knowledge that no such terrors exist. I have wakened up.”

“I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.”

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

“And you know, there's less charm in life when you think about death--but it's more peaceful.”

“There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.”

“All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.”

“He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.”

“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

"Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it."

"No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.'"

"I think… of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love."

"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable though they're always talking of it,"

How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!" "Why, who prevents you?" said Levin, smiling. "No, you're a lucky man! You've got everything you like. You like horses— and you have them; dogs— you have them; shooting— you have it; farming— you have it." "Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don't fret for what I haven't," said Levin, thinking of Kitty.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society —owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity— to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life.

"With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better."

He was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned.

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag's horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father's sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash tray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: "No, you're not going to get away from us, and you're not going to be different, but you're going to be the same as you've always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won't get, and which isn't possible for you." This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood , but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

"The most utterly loathsome and coarse : I can't tell you. It's not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you ?" she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister's eyes. "Father began saying something to me just now…. It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it's not the truth, but I can't drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them— I can't bear to see them. It seems to me they're taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. 

"The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: 'Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.' That's the only way she can forgive me."

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class , vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

The old prince , like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the prince's touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a mother's duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty's age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men's society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands was their own affair , and not their parents'. "Marriages aren't made nowadays as they used to be," was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from any one. The French fashion— of the parents arranging their children's future— was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of match-making by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by every one, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: "Mercy on us, it's high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It's the young people have to marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose." It was very easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband . And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over her elder sisters.

Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one's wife, and one ought to have confidence in one's wife. Why one ought to have confidence— that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would always love him— he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife's loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.

At Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person that attracted her attention was her husband. "Oh, mercy! why do his ears look like that?" she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.

In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer.

Anna. "I remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is…. Who has not been through it?"

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what , are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day— that is, forget oneself .

"It's this, don't you see," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, "you're very much all of a piece. That's your strong point and your failing. You have a character that's all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too— but that's not how it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim— and that's not how it is. You want a man's work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided— and that's not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

In life, we sometimes relinquish our freedom too easily, while, at other times, we struggle unwisely against laws that will not change. Give in too easily, and you drift through life; struggle too much, and you suffer for it.

The thing about Levin is that, through some accident of temperament and circumstances, he ends up figuring things out. He struggles and shapes his own destiny just enough to be happy, while never going out of bounds, and ending up like Anna, or like his brother Nikolai, a political radical, who dies impoverished and angry. Somehow, over the course of the book, Levin achieves everything he wants: he is married to Kitty, and they have a beautiful family. And yet, he senses, he has not really improved himself in his soul, and he has done nothing to deserve his happiness. He still feels powerless, pointless, useless. “Happy in his family life,” Tolstoy writes, “a healthy man, Levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.” In the end, he is carried along by the flow of life, and keeps on living. He finds his way to a diffuse kind of faith. There will be no radical transformations, he realizes, either romantic or religious. What is, is. He will try his best to be a good person, within the constraints that his circumstances and nature have placed upon him, and that will be good enough:

I’ll get angry in the same way with the coachman Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I’ll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I’ll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray—but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!

Z

Z is that strange kind of a stranger for me - someone who you've known for a long time but never quite understood. I call her Z because she was like that odd letter in the English alphabet - rare, strong, firm (almost rigid) and impossible to ignore. She could be loud and sharp at times but at others she could soothe you with her gentle humming presence. 

Z could be Zoe, Zeenat or Zainab. She could be anyone she chose to be and she is everything I ever want to be. She is beautiful. Not pretty, unlike her name, which is both beautiful and pretty, but for the purposes of our story, she remains Z. The strong, rough edged, and rare voice. A singular voice that cannot be ignored or marginalized - not because she is loud and crass; but because Z, has that quality about her. She is not fussy or adamant but she would not compromise too much on her few principles in life - you can see that in her. She cannot be ignored, people remember her even after meeting her once. She jokingly says, 'people remember the best and the worst looking faces... and she knows she is not one of the best looking ones'.

But I know that is not entirely true because Z is a beautiful person. Her beauty lies not in the face though. It shines through her eyes and bears down through her smile. Her eyes wander constantly, almost as if they are searching for something. She doesn't care about appearances and she doesn't care about the world. Her people are her world and that's all that mattered. Z was full of dreams - life was never enough for her. This restless greed endeared her to me. She was always on the look out - for knowledge, for skills, for experiences - for life, in all its glory. She would race after things, demanding more from herself and from life.

She likes her people - I can tell from the way her eyes look back wistfully when she talks of friends and family. And yet, nothing quite thwarted her like people. She always had trouble understanding people around her who spent their time gingerly navigating the world by looking for the least consequential and controversial subjects to talk about. Z did not care for diplomacy or lack of opinions; she liked discussing controversial subjects and threading them to the bare-bones. She liked digging through the muck and the fluff to arrive at that one kernel of (almost always) gray truth. It left her wanting for more clarity but it was better than just accepting what someone else told her. She was led by intuition and logic but never by blind faith.

Unlike me, who had developed this patina of resigned tolerance, Z also expected the world from people. She sincerely believed that everyone had the potential for great things and that all they lacked was an opportunity. She held up men and women to a higher standard - of honesty, of fairness, of empathy, of justice, of rational and open thought.

There was this element of flickering hope that you could see in her despite the many jolts and stumbles - a hope that was often wounded but never quite destroyed. 

But despite the many disappointments, Z was not tempered by them. 

Unlike me, she didn't change her expectations or learn to be careful and cautious. Much to my puzzlement, she did not even want to. She managed to view the world untainted, with an openness and an eagerness that astounded me. He ideas were remained utopian despite her frustrations with their practicality. Me, on the other hand, had been made brutally aware of the practical world and its strange motivations. Unlike Z, I would often curl into a ball and avoid problems. I would pick the battles I wanted to fight and I would compromise. But Z, unlike me, was unwavering as she faced every battle head-on. 

Z was tough on the outside and yet she was fragile because the world left its deepest impressions on her. She could brave a storm when she needed to but it only left her ravaged and wounded. She would passionately rage through them, burn herself out and get hurt. There would be days when all she wanted was to be with herself and her few people. The world would have let her down then - yet another time. And then she would come back again with that same undying hope. 

People say it is foolish to not learn from your mistakes - sometimes, I think it is also brave. It takes courage to not paint the world in broad strokes, to be patient and open to the universe, instead of locking yourself in that cycle of fear, retrenchment and regret. 

Z is brave - unlike any one else I had ever known and she paid the price for it - every day. 

Ironically her strength lay in her vulnerability. And yet over the years, even as I have scolded her and chided her for her naiveté, I have wished for some of that. For that ability to welcome everyday in this world, like yet another unopened gift. She is not yet bitter or heart broken or cynical. She has held on to her innocence, joy and her faith in people. 

Z is that strange kind of a stranger for me. She is a part of me, I do not understand yet. 

Portents and signs...

As I stand at the store-front, looking at the colorful flowers and their fresh, spring-green leaves - hope courses through me. 

The graceful white lilies with their calming presence; the pretty pink tulips with their dainty elegance; the smiling sunflowers with their shockingly bright countenance; and tiny violets with their arresting presence - at some point they become me as I search frantically for clues from the universe. 

In a world that is constantly threatening to split apart at the seams, they are a source of comfort, reassurance and hope. They are my hope for a better future. They hold in them the seed of hope and the prospect of a brilliant bloom in a not so distant future.

Every now and then, when I find myself in need of hope, these plants and flowers transform into symbols and portents for the future. They have always meant more than they should and possibly ever could.... 

But what can you say to the deluded human mind that is desperately scouring the world for hope?

Today is one such day as I walk from one end of the store to the other, trying to think scientifically while my heart is moved by the colors. I try to weigh the pros and the cons - the clay pot for aeration vs. the aluminum pot for protection; the depth of the soil; the ease of maintenance; the temperature; the sunlight; the water, shade and the other many needs of the plant. 

I go through these many confounding factors over and over again because I desperately want this one to last.  

I NEED this one to last. I actually need it to thrive because in my deluded, searching mind, this plant is me - trying to find its place under the sun. Trying to find a firm footing in an ever changing world. It is 'me' being subject to the changing climes. It is 'me' being bombarded by showers, being left to wilt in the sun. Its 'me' in the world and all I can do to comfort me, is to protect them. 

And so, time and time again, I bring another new portent home and keep it by the windowsill. I water it - sometimes before it even needs. I bring it out into the warm sunlight out of the shadows of my apartment walls. I gaze at it longingly, hoping that this time, things would be different. I hope against all evidence that this time, this tiny new plant would manage to find its own space and that it would finally find its potential. I hope that this plant will learn to grow in the small, dark places and will learn to thrive despite the challenges.

I come back from work and search for the blooming bud or the tiny new leaf. I check on it everyday - waiting for that sign; but all I find are the drooping leaves and the withering flowers.  I find the leaf tips being burnt by the sun and the flowers being blown by the wind. I hold on to the vestiges of my hope unrelentingly; but then one day, some animal decides to come and uproot my hope in its entirety.

I come home and search for the two of them - but all I find is the empty water stained spot that was left behind by them. They did not make it - yet again. Like me, they struggled to stay together as the elements rattled their very existence.

Sometimes that is what life comes down to - searching for answers even when there clearly are none to be had. We end up looking for comfort in the strangest of places only to be disappointed... and only to hope again.

Life in hindsight...

She woke up when the world around her suddenly shifted and she found herself adrift. She was flying and finally she was free.

After being anchored firmly to her roots all her life, a sudden gust of wind had yanked her away from everything familiar and had set her free on an unknown journey.
She was in flight at long last.
At first, it was exhilarating, thrilling and intoxicating as freedom often is and as the wind alone can make you feel.
But then the gust of wind died away and with that, died the transient feeling of freedom too.

The sense of freedom she experienced a while ago was replaced by a sense of dread and fear. She felt rudderless, powerless and out of control as she plummeted rapidly to the ground, only to hit a hard place - first, of the many that she was to encounter.

It was then that the incredible loneliness of her situation hit her. She was now all alone in this big, wide world - far from everything she had known or seen. Someone will look for her and find her surely. It can't be that far away. She thought to herself and willed herself to stay calm.
"They are family, they will not abandon me", she repeated the same over and over again, as fear gripped her and loneliness crushed her.
Will she never see her people again? What is to happen of her? Will someone ever find her? 

The world was a wicked place, she soon as learned. No day was easy here as she was jostled, pushed and kicked from one hard place to another. She was often kicked around, trotted upon and bruised. She stumbled, fell, knocked herself over, but she never left the side of hope. She found comfort in the familiar. She gazed at those wings that had brought her here. There was a time when she had longed for them but now she blamed them for bringing her this far, to this dreadful, unknown place. They had abandoned her much too soon and had left her in this desolate place - but she did not lose hope. Not yet, at least.  

Even as hope fluttered in her, she found herself drowning in a warm sludge that had appeared out of nowhere. She tried to hold her peace. Surely, this is just another bad spot and this too shall pass, she thought. Maybe, this will protect her from those jagged edges, stones, rocks and hard corners. Maybe people will finally leave her alone because drowning in the sludge, she would be invisible, she thought. Her worry was that she would not be visible to the search party, if ever there was one. "Surely there must be and I can scream my lungs out when they come", she reassured herself. 

Things did become better as she was finally on firm ground again and this time, it was not too rough. She had found a comfortable spot to rest until her family came looking. She decided to save her energy by not putting up a futile fight. She quietly bided her time and waited for her rescuers - in the hope that she could scream her lungs out when it was needed of her. 

It was but a matter of time, she thought. And it was.

And before long, she witnessed a miracle. It was a sign from above, she hoped against all hope. 

On a chilly morning, as she lay there, dried and shriveled, she woke up to a gentle nudge from above. She had been touched by something pristine - cold and glass like - with rough, raggedy edges that  strangely did not quite hurt her. It had glided there near her, just as she had probably done, a long time ago. Maybe her family had finally found her and maybe this was her ticket home. 'Maybe', she thought. 

She lay there admiring the glass-like perfection in front of her, as it slowly dissolved around her. It was nothing short of a miracle - something so beautiful had disappeared into nothing - right in front of her own eyes. Hopeless as she was, she took this as a sign of good times to come. She had been looking for signs for far too long now and this seemed like a pretty good one - a secret message that was delivered to her, and her alone. 

But before she could admire and wonder at the miracle and rejoice in the possibility of a great future, she was attacked. She was pummeled by an army of these cold, pale, glass-like structures. They fell on her from all directions and buried her fast. What was a pleasant chill was now a deathly, freezing cold. These pale, glassy ghosts were hounding her. What looked angelic in isolation, seemed like a demonic presence when in such large hordes. She heard joyous screams from somewhere far above announcing a snowfall, but she saw no reason to be happy.

She fought for a long time, struggling to keep her head higher but before long, she was engulfed by this white nothingness with no possibility of an escape. She was frozen still by this unforgiving cold - colder than anything she had experienced ever before. This was the end, she thought. She was going to be frozen to death. 'This is how it is meant to be. This is the time to give up the fight', she thought as she cloaked herself in her old blanket and dug deeper than ever for that last ounce of comfort. 

She had decided to give up the fight.
The cold, harsh outside had seeped into her and had strangled the last remnants of hope too. Now, it was just a long, interminable wait till the end. She wondered if it would be painful. What happens when you die? Do you go back to the old beginning or is it THE END? Why had no one taught her all this? Why hadn't someone warned her of the risks of freedom? Of the price one has to pay.

She replayed these questions over and over again as she waited for the darkness around her to swallow her existence. She had drowned in this cold, dark, interminable silence - where nothing moved. Maybe this is what the end is like, she thought to herself. 

But then, one day, the world shifted again and the cold, dark, silence that had drowned her in entirety was rudely shattered.
The silence around her crumbled as the spaces around her rumbled and cracked. She woke up, only to find the world crashing down upon her. She was surprised that she had survived the cold death but this must be the final blow - the nail in her coffin, she thought. She held on by habit, even though there was nothing to hold onto. 

Her world was fracturing all around her and all she could do was to let go and wait. And wait she did, but unlike the last time, this was shorter. Soon, the cold, icy whiteness that had swallowed her, ceased to exist. She could suddenly feel the warmth, the way she did when she was with her family - in what seemed like eons ago.
She had survived.
That was all she could think of as she marveled at her strength. She had done the unthinkable. She had survived - alone and away from everything she knew.
She had survived - through dark, freezing, unending nights; through repeated assaults, bruises and stumbles.
She had survived.
Being alive felt like an achievement and she thought - "maybe this story will end well, after all".  I have braved so much and survived through so much - it couldn't possibly be for nothing. And so the warmth of the sun, rekindled the hope in her heart and she decided to persevere - just a little longer. 

But this time, instead of hiding herself in her cocoon and biding her time, she decided to take matters into her own hand.
Surely, after having survived death itself, she cannot give up. Perhaps she can fashion herself a new set of wings and begin afresh. And so she began the painful process of division. She divided her old blanket and fashioned herself two new brilliantly green, wings. But, she was still trapped in this hard shell that had been pressing down on her for ever so long. The shell had protected her all this time but now it was suffocating her.
It had pressed on her from all sides and had held her back, forcing her to work all day and all night, in tiny, dark, cramped quarters but now she needed to break free.
She needed to break free, but how?
She reasoned that she could possibly push through the walls by build pressure from the inside. And so she began the long, winded process of division - the only time when division actually leads to multiplication (and an increase in numbers).
Day after day, she clawed at the walls around her. She scraped through them even as she shredded her old blanket. The new green wings lay there by the side. Their brilliance gave her hope. Soon, the shredded blanket was building up pressure. It was suffocating her. She was drowning in it. There was no more room and it seemed that her plan might fail after all this effort because, no matter what she did, she couldn't break through.
She was going to be suffocated to death by her own efforts.
She was left with little to sustain her and if she didn't get out now, this would be the end. There was no other escape for her. She was hopelessly fatigued and could see no other way forward. After all this struggle, her very survival was questionable - yet again.

It was then that she felt a crack in the walls. She could see a ray of light seeping through from above and she sensed the darkness around her melt. There must be crack somewhere high above for she could now smell the air above. The suffocation inside was finally giving way. The mere possibility of a crack reenergized her as she continued to claw at the walls. She pushed at them and pounded them with all her might. She kept at it, till her entire existence became one painful bruise - sore and tired.

But at long last, finally, her efforts paid off and the walls crumbled. They slowly peeled away - as if made of nothing but scraps of paper, revealing a gloriously blue sky overhead. The world felt new, with the sun shining on her. It was the most glorious thing she had ever seen, much prettier than what she remembered from her days before at home.

During the day, she would feel the breeze caressing her gently even as the sun soothed her aching body. She would gaze at the blue sky with the patchy clouds. At night, she would be mesmerized by cool, white, shimmering light from above. She would drift off every night gazing at the big, shiny moon above. In the mornings, she would wake up to gentle drops of dew, that would roll all over her, tickling her. Life was good and things were getting better; but fear drove her to hold on tight. She put down her anchors - firmly in to the ground, because she did not want to be adrift and unmoored another time.
It had been much too long for her to hope that someone would come and find her, now, after all this time. That was but just another dream - unlikely to come true. She was destined to a life of solitude, she thought, but then, she at least had life. And she could get used to this life - even when alone. After all, she had made it thus far.

She slowly started to find her feet again. She held her head a little higher each day. Things were better, she told herself. But deep down, she was paralyzed by this gnawing fear that it may not last very long. She was worried that another strong gust of wind would uproot her anytime and flung her into the icy darkness again. But things remained pleasant and she became stronger and healthier. And then one day, she saw her home, her family and her people - just across the bend. She recognized the twin nests on the sloping branches and the giant hollow in the trunk - just as she had remembered them. She was not far away after all - she realized. Her heart rejoiced in seeing them so close-by. Her fear melted as she realized that she had survived through it all - all on her own.

She no longer felt alone, vulnerable and abandoned.
She was strong.
She was a survivor.
And in that epiphanic moment - her life made perfect sense.
Every struggle in her story was not a step backward, as it seemed then, but a step forward. The wind and the wings that she had cursed for so long had only brought her to a better place where the sun would reach her. Sometimes, one needs a little distance from the past, to come into one's own, she thought.

The bruises, rocks and the footfalls had been rough on her tiny, tender self then, but they had only helped weaken those walls. Those walls, that she thought were trapping her, had only protected her from the world outside till she was ready to face it all. The snowy glasslike demons had buried her in a dark, icy place but they had also vernalized her. They had primed her for the good times and shielded her from the bad times. The suffocation she felt later-on also seemed essential now because how else could she have pushed through those walls. Her struggles so far, suddenly made all the sense in the world and she no longer felt alone and abandoned. She gazed admiringly at her strong family up ahead and longed to be big, strong and independent. She was glad to see her hidden potential, her future form, as she went from one day to another... but she now knew that time makes a world of difference too.

She had needed the benefit of hindsight to make sense of her life so far. And now, she needed persistence, patience and time to realize her latent potential. But this realization was all she needed - to trudge through the rest of her life with hope and perhaps a little faith.
For after all, hindsight seemed to be the only perfect sight.

IF

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- Kipling

Words of wisdom...

After a while(You learn)

After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child
And you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns
if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and that you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
with every goodbye you learn...

- Veronica A. Shoffstall

If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together. - African proverb Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

- Alan Alda 

 There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. 
- Leonard Cohen 

Life lessons..

We wade into some relationships, unsure and ready to bolt.
We walk into some others, thinking all will be well.

Some glide us through, like on a gentle feather.
Some fling us about, like a raging tornado.
Some carry us away, like an ocean's powerful sway.
Some guide us through turbulence, becoming our own little parachute.
Some keep us grounded and secure, like the roots of an age-old banyan.
Some leave us scarred, like the old burn mark, that stings a little even after the years.
Some hold our hands and wait for us to lead.
Some lead us out of darkness, like the moonlight on a dark night.
Some stand by our side, and some fester in our hide.


We wade into some relationships, unsure and ready to bolt.
We walk into some others, thinking all will be well.

Life is all about the sum of these relationships and the lessons we learn from them.

No such thing in the world as the right decision...

Sometimes one stumbles onto pearls of wisdom in the most unlikeliest of places.

This was one such unlikely source I had never heard of, until yesterday of course. This is a song from a band that called itself "Jesus Jones"...    :)

The Right Decision... 

When they say ignorance is bliss
It makes it sound too good to miss
How about that?
And the problem with success is you become what you detest
How about that?

So who to believe and who do you trust
Well, it might as well be you
'Cos it seem that no-one else has got a clue

Get it wrong get it right
You can try as hard as you like
But there's no such thing in the world as the right decision
(Compromise and confusion steal us away)

Now it's okay for you to smoke
Just as long as it's not dope
How about that?
Two wrongs don't make a right
But there's a Gulf where they just might
How about that?

Suspended by trust
Reserved my belief
And did all I could do
In the hope that I might pick up any clues

Get it wrong get it right
You can try as hard as you like
But there's no such thing in the world as the right decision 
Compromise and confusion steal us away

When to serve and protect
Means we may just break your neck
How about that?
For every question why
There's an answer on the sly
That few will look in the eye

Get it wrong get it right
You can try as hard as you like
But there's no such thing in the world as the right decision
(Compromise and confusion steal us away)

Battling homogeneity...

The world is shrinking and there is no denying that.

But the world is also becoming more homogeneous and averse to differences. People are becoming the same the world over and we are becoming less and less able to talk of differences. Differences of gender, race, culture are nationality are being trivialized and even being ignored. Even talking of them seems to make one a racist or a chauvinist these days. No! I am not espousing the millions of racist or chauvinist people living all around us. I am not saying that people should be discriminated against one way or another. No!

But this post is meant for the rest of the world. The world that is so determined to be impartial, fair and politically correct - that they deny the very existence of differences. Differences between races, people, genders and social strata. 

This is a theme that has been recurrent in my thoughts, ever since a popular science writer once told us in class that when writing about women scientists one must avoid reference to their gender and simply focus on their work. But even today - almost two years since then - when I read of the Finkbeiner rule that is espoused by many science writers, I can't help but disagree. I am not saying that writers should focus on merely the gender and judge people or their work in that one dimension.

No!

But I do think, we should learn to write the whole story without any prejudice and at the same time give due respect to the person, his/her origins, character, gender and his/her story. After all, it is these things that make us who we are. Every individual is a sum of these and many other parts and these factors play a role in shaping our thought processes and formulating our decisions. Then why should we deny these differences? 

People are different.
Just because we are flooded with genomic scale data that tells us that we are 99% similar to chimps, we should not develop this perception that all men and women are similar. No. In fact, science today is grappling with the understanding of how the diversity is generated.
People are different.
Caucasians, Asians, Africans - we are all different - genetically, culturally, socially. And these are important differences. People's attitudes, priorities, choices, interests and thought processes are a summation of these and many other factors.
They are different in obvious ways - in ways that are imprinted in our genes. And these differences don't mean inferiority or superiority.
But then, instead of accepting and respecting these differences, I find it strange that the world is promoting homogenization of the world and its people. And by limiting the perception of an individual to any one dimension - we only limit our understanding of them.

I do not advocate trivializing a woman scientist to just a woman. Certainly not!
But at the same time, the "woman" part of that "woman-scientist" is not excess baggage. It tells you a lot about the journey and the story.
Women today are caught in this time-warp of sorts where they have been unable to completely break away from their traditional roles and at the same time they have successfully taken on newer roles at home and in the society. In many ways they have moved a lot faster and the rest of the world just couldn't keep up with them.

The challenges that people face in the world, because of their race, gender or background should not be brushed under the carpet. Coming from a developing country. Coming without any training in english. Being a woman. Being a man. Having a family. These are all factors that affect you and there is no reason to emphasize one versus the other.
What is needed however, is to develop an attitude in the people where such details are taken for what they are, in a non-prejudicial, perhaps even an inspirational way. What is needed is not the nullification of individuality but the open acceptance of individuality and the differences that come with it! We need to make people embrace differences again - without innately associating any value with them!!

Equality does not come from homogeneity.

It comes from appreciating the differences and from learning to value them. After  all, the best things in life are like the rainbow and they arise from the differences built into them.