The unsolvable problems…

These days my mind is preoccupied by one thought, or rather one question.
What do you do when you are the biggest obstacle in the happiness of your dearest people? What do you do when there is no right choice - when life is messy, twisted and confusing? Who gives up their happiness when everyone cannot be happy with the same choice? Philosophers have thought that "greatest good" is a good thing to strive for… but is chronic sorrow for one better than acute sorrow for many?
Can these questions of justice, happiness, fairness ever be really resolved?

I meander through these questions weighed by a sense of guilt and sadness unable to make the choices because I am hopeful that the future will change the circumstances. But who knows what the future brings? I try to train myself for a future where the people I care most for will not longer be there and I will be faced with a burden of guilt. A guilt for not doing everything I could to ensure their happiness. I weigh my responsibilities to me with my responsibilities to others. Who wins in the end and who loses?

We all seem to be losers in this zero sum game where only the future seems to have all the answers.

Incredible India!

India, many say, is like an addiction. I agree, because I need my fix every year or two. Else, it leaves me miserable, strung-over and frustrated, teetering on the edge of a collapse. There is something about the air that slows my pace and my pulse down. Time there seems to move at a pace more manageable. People are more personable, even perfect strangers. The days do not leave me feeling rushed, dazed and exhausted like they do back ‘here’. I become my own person, not some harried, do-it-all who is unable to do it all. 

This year’s trip, after two long years, came differently though and I didn't have any expectations. Friends were all too busy, family – close and far, ranged from disinterest and skepticism to occasional excitement. I wasn’t looking to get anywhere, only trying to get away and this has usually never been the case with me. I came on a vacation laden with fatigue, anxiety, trepidation, anger, skepticism and very little of hope for anything wonderful.

There was a surgery planned but no vacation. There was a hospital stay planned, but no hotel stay. There were tests planned, no get-togethers. I was prepared for nothing and yet, this time, I couldn’t care. I was above and beyond caring and needed the space and the time.

Surprisingly though, it was not a bad trip. It wasn't all that I had imagined because I didn't manage to visit all my haunts; the get-together’s have been different, have felt a little incomplete; home has felt different but reassuringly same; and people have changed – aged, some in ways favorable, but some in ways sad and unexpected; some places which were defined by their people have changed and become a little more alien. But despite the lack of expectations or plans, I must say things have not been bad. I wonder if it is because of the lack of expectations or because of that deep-seated fear of something terrible about to happen - whose mere absence is reassuring enough… 

After two years of a never-ending maze, I finally feel empty, peaceful, quiet. I can now sense the person I used to be – emerging from the haze. The camera, the books, the places and the people - are slowly becoming appealing. I think I am an addict and need my fix of this country held-together by nothing but its people and ‘jugaad’. 

I still don’t feel ready to pack up and leave forever.

Explore India…

to become aware of the vastness of space.
to encounter history in every day life.
to become aware of the smallness of your being.
to learn that wealth has little to do with happiness.
to learn to find your identity in a mass of humanity
to find a nation that is bursting at the seams but manages to hold together because of its people.
to find order in perfect chaos.
to find harmony from noise.
to find a nation that encompasses the climes of the world.
to learn to cherish diversity.
to become aware of the forces of nature.
to become aware of the eternities that lie before and after you.

Explore India….
For it tests your limits and grows them one step at a time.
For it reveals unsuspected abilities.
For it highlights the weaknesses that you have successfully ignored.
For it let’s you live happily with very little.
For a digital detox.
For the chai-coffee and gup-shup.
For the scenes of gully-cricket that beats with a pulse of its own.

Explore India….
to remind yourself of the better side of human nature as perfect strangers come out to help you.
to also learn that people have a dark side.
to learn to watch out for yourself.
to learn to enjoy the world with caution.
to communicate without words.
to stop and smile, to feel the wind in your hair.
to watch butterflies crash into your windshields.
to watch majestic elephants roam the wild.
to understand the language of horns, sirens, blinkers and reflectors.

Explore India….
to expand your palate.
to notice the sunrise and the sunset.
to slow down your pace of life because time here does set a different pace.
to float above the clouds.
to feel the wind in your hair and to feel the rhythm in your pulse.
to tickle your senses.
to meet new people.
to sing new songs.

In short, visit India if you really want to live your life... and that is why I need my dose of India to function sanely.

Seeking misery...

We do the strangest of things to get through bad days but hunting for more misery is the most twisted of them all.

I can understand trying to forget it, running away from it, drowning it - in pills or alcohol - but, no. This involves actively looking for misery. Who in their sane mind would do that?

I do it every now and then, in one of these carefully nuanced moments, when life seems to be getting to that point when every step forward is two steps backward. When every force seems to be a drag to overcome. Suddenly the rules of forward momentum, friction and inertia don't make so much sense, because no matter how much effort you put, there is no net movement. It feels like trying to pull a wagon-load of misery on an oil-spill. The harder you try, the harder you fall. The less you try, the less things change.

That is when I go trolling through other people's memoirs - books, movies, blogs, stories. Anything and everything. Anything that opens the lives of these perfect strangers' to me - in their own voice. And I look for these oil-spill moments in their life. Their miseries and struggles seem to numb my own pain. It helps me wallow in the depths of someone else's misery for a while only to come back and find my own pool a little less shallow.

It doesn't hurt a whole lot less but there is comfort in knowing there are others out there. It also makes me see the flicker of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel - through my cloudy, foggy eyes. If they managed to get out their oil-spill, maybe I will too. If I held on just a little longer. If I just tried something a little different. If the dice rolls a little differently this time.

Perhaps, all is not lost. And perhaps even if it is, there is a new beginning to be made.


Thank God, we can’t see the future because if we could “we’d never get out of bed.”

August: Osage County 

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.