Guardian

You can
Demolish an entire city
With the wrath of your eyes
When another pair scans mine...
You can
Bring moving bullet trains
To a halt as severe
As the unexpected arrival of death
When another heart hurts mine...
You can
Burn the shadows that haunt me
To an unforgiving merciless char
Without allowing an escape...
And you can
Hold the key to my kingdom
Until that day is past
When my remains have met
With mud and sea,
And I am again one
With where we all stem from...

The Unforgiving Shroud of Idealism

I was once told by an acquaintance to never be an idealist. I understand why one would give this piece of free advice to people around-an idealist will always expect things to be of a certain textbook standard and never leave enough room to accommodate others' mistakes. To summarize, such a person will always be left hanging in an uncomfortable state of limbo; neither here nor there. Always disappointed to not have received as much as they gave, always dejected to not be able to get an appropriate representation of the script they wrote for the world around and how it ought to be.

In my quest for mental peace and my impassioned pursuit of happiness over the past quarter-century, I suppose I have inadvertently and unwittingly been transformed into an idealist. Was this the deed of all the books I read over the years which advertised happy endings and perfect worlds with perfect friendships? Or perhaps the wrong doing of all the life-lessons taught to me as a child and adolescent by parents and well-wishers?
Either way, it did its job and left me in that unenviable position of living a life of great expectations and therefore, constant let-me-downs.
All those friends that you had saved from turbulent storms conveniently seemed to disappear when your wars were being waged and your body took on beatings. And sometimes, they complained of you not caring enough and not being present when you should have been. When did life become this busy whirlwind where you had to actually set aside a time to come up for air just to make sure that you didn't drown? How did the days compress into hours which flew by like seconds when you least expected them to? How did mornings turn into nights with such speed and mercilessness? Whatever happened to the world living up to be like what all our books promised?

I am undoubtedly naive and unarguably daft to truly have held such beliefs and expectations in my head and heart for people. I am also extremely stupid for expecting a pat on the back for something I may have done for another's benefit, even if it was devoid of any selfish intent and executed purely out of concern and a deep, understated love.

No, this world is unforgiving and harsh. People are strange and cold. Nobody stops to stare at the flowers anymore, or to even say hi and exchange a smile or two.
Idealists ought to hang their boots up in shame. Their time is past. Their reign is long over.
This world now belongs to the heaviness of a man's wallet and the mileage of his car; the length of a woman's legs and the smokiness of her voice.
No one has the time to peel layers and dig deep.
I must remember that the next time I'm in a soup and expect a friend to turn up or help out. That's the thing about great expectations-they always fall, ungracefully and unattractively, flat on their porcelain faces.

I Think I'm Done Looking

Winter crept up on us with a slow slither, catching us unaware and unprepared. The calendar had undoubtedly issued warnings and announced the arrival of a new month, but I find that we tend to forget each year that seasons change; summer is not perpetual, and the rains don't last forever. We forget that November mornings can be chilly, because we got too used to the sticky swelter that October presented to us every day.
Our lives were running on parallel train tracks, so to speak, and we were oblivious of the fact that a certain magic was waiting to happen. I have always despised the monsoon; there is nothing appealing about cloudy skies and muddy roads to me, and I had never before experienced anything remarkably joyous or memorable in those random months that seem to be silently sandwiched into the year for no good reason.
But this year, August decided to award me with an exceptional kindness. A friendship grew out of what seemed like a dry arid land devoid of fertility, and September added more flavour to the brew, making both of us believe that an irreversible change had just occurred that had tattooed an indelible heart on our brains. How people meet, and how their lives together pan out is in nobody's hands, but we were both grateful and supremely glad to have found each other.

We stood, hand in hand, on that windy winter morning, looking at each other and sipping on our coffee with a certain contentment that only comes when you're done hunting for any deeper meaning to your life. Time was flying with a manic acceleration and yet neither of us could really feel the inertia. It felt like we were cruising along, together, to a shared destination that would house our dreams and desires.
I wondered what the next winter would bring to me, and to us. Where would we be? What would we be doing? What would we be looking like?
Somehow, the answers to these questions didn't seem relevant to me. As long as we were together, it would be fine. It would be perfect.

An Unnecessary Hyperbole

I run on extremes.
There are no half measures in my book, there never have been, and there is no scope for changing that twenty-five years into this life. Specially because it's one of the few things I take pride in; being a passionate person about a few things is better than being someone who drags themselves into situations, surviving the day but never leaving behind a mark because they were too disinterested and cold.
When I laugh, I laugh like I'm high on nitrous. When I cry, it's like I have a clinical condition. When I love, it's all that I know how to do. And when I'm angry, you'd think that the whole world's anger is contained in one skull waiting to burst into flames.

Being a balanced human being is a desirable attribute, yes. But I'd rather be someone who is remembered for being fueled by the more visible shades of the rainbow than black and white; I am attracted to passionate humans unafraid of being opinionated and being recognized for who they are. And above all, I am attracted to honesty. There is nothing more charming and magnetic to me than a person who is truthful and unapologetic about displaying their love for something or someone. For anything or anyone.

I don't believe in mincing words, and I find that I am unable to do so for too long.
Say what you need to say today, and do what you want to do right away. You can't take this life for granted, because tomorrow might not come, and even if it does, there's always the possibility of it being a boring endless Monday, right? 

Scalpels, Sedation, Stress

Sleeping on a couch that was barely as wide as me, and which only allowed for me to lie on it if I assumed the shape of a poorly drawn comma, I realized that I smelled strongly of hospital-fumigant, coffee and a latent fatigue that begins to display itself beyond a certain stage.

On a bed next to my sofa lay Mother, exhausted after a surgery that took much longer than the textbooks would have had us believe, sedated with motley drugs and all that surgical intrusion. I suppose I must tell you right away that fortunately, the operation went well, and she was now firmly standing on that bridge that would lead her to good health in the coming months.

I looked at her supine form in that semi-dark room, and she looked so fragile to me. I was afraid to allow even the nurses to get too close to her or poke needles into those prominent veins on her arms. I wondered how long it would be until she would be back to her normal self, making lame jokes or telling me off for being a spoilt brat. I had lived the past few months with that looming shroud of worry and fear over my head that didn't allow me to look too far into the future.

We realize in times such as these how dependent we are on love and on those who love us, because suddenly, the rug under your feet seems to have been pulled away by forces greater than what you had predicted, and you are devoid of all guarantees and assurances. You are stripped bare and exposed for the person you could possibly become if you had to exist without having love in your life. The crankiness, the perpetual heavy-headed feeling, the desire to gobble down a sharp long breath of air every two minutes, the insomnia-- they can really get to you.
I know for a fact that I have been rather insufferable off late and snapped at people for reasons as random as breathing too loudly next to me.

Today, there is a sense of relief, and waves of gratitude that are washing over my tired self periodically with what feels like a secret sedative. Mother is now back home and sleeping on her own bed, wearing her own clothes. The shroud of worry and fear hasn't dissolved completely, but it merely behaves like a light tint now, not being able to harass me half as much.

But I will never forget that night when she had just been brought in from the OR-- pale as a woman who's possibly never been in the sun, cold as an ice-sculpture, wearing light blue scrubs, barely conscious, and yet when she saw me, she smiled that beautiful warm smile of hers and extended her hand to me. I took her hand in mine and kissed it.
Things would be okay; I would need to be patient and she would have to be strong, but we would be okay.