The Smell Of Nostalgia

A stubborn white smoke wafted though the air in upward spirals trying its best to touch the blue October skies, and I stood silently in the sidelines, with eyes drinking in on the scene before me. I had spent the past 26 years in this house, seeing this sight and bathing in this smell on an annual basis.

It was Mahasaptami and the arti in my house was just ending. The whole family stood with their heads bowed low in reverence to the goddess, palms folded in prayer. We replicate the exact same scene year after year; so much so that if one was to click a picture of this mini-event each year and compare the photographs, it would have all of us positioned in complete congruence.

Festivals and their associated family traditions do this to you- they make you believe that this life follows only one set pattern which must be followed with a strict diligence and punctuality no matter what. 

But that is not always the case, I suppose. No one and nothing is immune to change, not even a tradition as pure and beautiful as the one I just described.

 As I prepare myself for the upcoming wedding and the new lifestyle that shall subsequently become mine, I am reminded of the countless articles I have read about how a woman's life changes immeasurably after she is married. Yes, I would be a fool living in an unnecessary mode of denial if I were to disagree with this notion; but I also think it's important that we acknowledge the fact that this is a voluntary change, unlike say, the changing of seasons or friendships which are beyond human control. I am choosing to marry, and I am choosing to make this change that shall affect everyone involved in this coalescence, so to speak. It marks the beginning of a hundred and one new traditions to come and even more smiles to follow.

These nine holy days of October will always carry me home to my lovely old house with its crazy occupants and enchanting traditions, but I am just as excited about the future that awaits on the other side of November. 

Not Photogenic

Photographs often just don't do any justice to certain folks. The stillness doesn't allow for the capture of the true essence of their appeal and beauty. You can't see, for example, the magnetic gumption in their walk, or hear the sweet whistle of their breath, or sense the velvet of their skin. You can't touch the jawline as it bathes in the shadow of a dying moon, or enjoy the view of a conversation as it leaves that luscious mouth, nor can you smell the musk of their imposing body, or dance with the fluidity of their hands as they gesticulate and emphasize with little bounces of glee.
 . 
Some people hide their beauty within motion; like a deceptive little surprise that only the worthy can find, and which a photograph cannot dare to capture.

You cannot restrict such beauty within the two dimensional bounds of a printout because it is like the thunderous waves that crash over the patient shores of the seas- uncontainable and untameable.

Break On Through To The Other Side

Running out of the patience (or perhaps the intelligence?) to construct sentences which adequately describe your mental framework at a point in time ought to be treated with a lot of tender loving care from those who live with and around the writer.

It isn't a petty matter to be laughed at or waved off with a casual nonchalance. This feels, to the writer, like mental constipation. However disgusting and smelly that might sound, it is the stark ugly truth and there is no better word to describe the feeling. I, for one, have been bearing the brunt of this horrid condition for what seems like too long to be true. My brain is burdened with the immense possibilities carried by the hundreds of ideas that float through my head all day long. And yet, when I put pen to paper, they seem to evaporate with a smirk, as if merely to tease me and put me down, and within a split second, my ideas don't seem worthy of another human's readership to me anymore. It becomes a matter of self confidence over time, until finally, like I am doing today, you must just break through these walls that are throttling your imagination and share your mad brain with the rest of this world.

Life is always going to be a great flood of emotions and voices, but I would hate it if my voice wasn't loud enough to make a difference and affect lives. Unless I touch some homes with a ray of sunshine, hope and the power to spark an imaginative fire in the minds of those who read my words, this life will have been in vain, and it shall turn into a burden I'll carry on into my next life.

My parents and my fiance have been doing their best and egging me on, trying to get me to write, because apparently, that's the one thing I'm supposed to do well. They don't know how this adds about a metric tonne of pressure on my dainty shoulders and I, being the legendary lightweight, nearly succumb to the weight every time my ideas fail to turn into respectable literature. 

It doesn't help when you criticize yourself more than is considered humanly healthy, and create delusions in your mind about having peaked too early. 

No, this has not been me rotting in some kind of decadent complacency, or hiding behind the excuses of career, traffic, lack of time, or my upcoming wedding. This is me accepting, wholeheartedly, that life changes; it evolves and remodels itself with newer places and newer people. There are tectonic shifts that have been happening in my mind and heart since the past few months, paving the way for a newer phase that holds the promise of love, travel and adventure- all things that I depend on to fuel my neurons and fire me up. 

So here, with this candid confession and intimation, I hope that the words that I churn out henceforth will arrive at shorter intervals and with an impressively regular frequency. I need to polish my art until I reach that glorious day when I can spend my days being true to myself, immersing myself in that delightful world of literature: being my own boss, making my own rules, and telling people- with genuine pride- that I am, indeed, a writer.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Is it a dream that I see at night while the air conditioner blesses me with gushes of cool delight and the blanket caresses me with friendly warmth? Or wait. Is it actually a parallel universe whose blurry glimpses I'm only allowed in that state of minimal consciousness which doesn't allow reasoning or gravity or that pedantic sense of human logic to overtake the power of imagination?
A child will hear stories and believe with a casual faith that dragons exist, that man can grow albatross wings and fly over oceans, that puppies can talk to you in English. But a grown person will readily discount these things and call it balderdash. Why does our imagination suffer such a horrible and unfortunate blow as the years take their toll on us? Is this resistance to accepting miracles and possibilities of a world beyond our understanding the reason we end up with wrinkles on our skin and voids in our hearts?
You won't easily come across an unhappy child- they find joy even amidst poverty, hunger and disease. But an unhappy adult lurks around each corner like a surly creeper hiding from the sun.
I have always maintained that the importance and value of good imagination must never be underestimated or forgotten.  Don't live in a make-believe world, but believe in the possibility that you can, in fact, make a world worth being happy in. Because after all, everything in this life is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. Our time is short, but our powers are infinite; let us broaden our minds like the elastic bags that they actually are and fill them with dreams of laughter.

A Whole New World

After a great deal of introspection and an unconscious hiatus from everything creative that I assume myself to be capable of doing, I am back to my beloved blog. It feels like I have done a great deal of living in the past few months, and certainly a great deal of decision making.

The whirlwind that has swept over me in the first half of 2016 has been an utterly eventful and memorable one. I could call it tumultuous for all the storms that my ship has faced, but then the waters have also been kind and given me ferry-rides to such happy shores that I have pinched myself and wondered if it's just a dream.

Professionally, I find myself in a somewhat stable situation for the first time since I graduated from dental school. It is an exceptionally gratifying experience for me to hit the bed every night knowing that my vertebral column has really earned a night of rest after a day of hard work. It has taught me to respect professionalism far more than I ever did before and also opened my eyes to that tiny glimmer of possible future success. My confidence levels feel like they're on an upswing, and that definitely calls for a knock on wood, I'd say.

Life is good, however it is. Let me learn to finally say good things about it without worrying about jinxing my time- something I have never truly learned to do before. I do an honest day's work and come home to a family which accepts me and my hundred flaws. It feels a bit hard for me to believe that there is an impending change of address and name that is coming my way within half a year, but I suppose this is what they call excitement and not nervousness. 

So yes, like I said, life is good, specially when you've put a ring on it. 

Life Keeps On Keeping On

Is success merely a mental construct? Or is it a quantifiable, measurable, tangible thing? Can you see success, can you feel it, smell it, taste it?

I have always believed that happiness and success are congruent. You can only be truly successful when and if you are happy, and your happiness can only ever be unadulterated if you are successful. But is that really the deal?

I find myself struggling professionally in ways that have been previously unknown to me, because since as far back as my memory allows me to retrospect, I recall success- academically and otherwise. I was always a good student in school and in college, with good grades, a good record and good references. Looking back, I know now that I was a successful young girl in whatever I chose to do. But then that's the thing- you only have 20/20 vision in retrospect. 

I have spent the past two months struggling to feel like myself, to feel confident (because confidence was so inherent to me all my life, that this now feels very uncomfortable), and to be able to give as much love as I get. I know that I have grossly minimized my social interactions over this period because of the reasons I just mentioned. It hasn't been an easy phase, but then, is any phase in life an easy one? Doesn't each phase come with its own demons? And most importantly, doesn't each phase come with its own expiry date? 

My big brother, in all his bearded wisdom, told me a few days ago that life simply 'keeps on keeping on'. Now while I think he ought to really trademark this line because of its brilliance, I am also trying my best to inculcate this into my brain and heart. Good things take time, and it's important to remember that if you find yourself in a (professional) rut, at least don't sit and furnish it. I have been doing my best to work on my book off late because that seems like the only thing that I can actually do to feel useful and productive. 

Meanwhile, I wonder in my spare time- which I currently own in plentiful- what being successful must feel like. Maybe this wondering will help me visualize it and get there, because I really do believe that you always get what you truly want if your wishes stem from a pure and real place. And mine stem from the heart, so it really can't get any realer than that.

Rich

There hid a magnificence
Beneath that muddy squalor
Where the weeds grew,
And the insects thrived,
And where coins hummed
An infrequently heard jingle.
Beneath this grime
That grew in salty layers
Of despondence, poverty
And hopelessness-
The child still played
With the runaway wheel,
His laugh resonating
Like echoes in a wine cellar
Which hid bottles and secrets,
And stories that you could
Only hear when you listened
Close enough.