An open Letter to My teenage sister

I am not someone much into celebrities but this is in memory of Sushant Singh Rajput, a man I came to know only too late. A man whose last news didn’t affect me more than an eyebrow raise. A man who I didn’t have a crush on or I had googled ever. A man I knew just as a great actor. A man I didn’t know was interested in the universe and space. A man I who had thoughts so smart that he is worth every bit of the attention we didn’t give. A man I didn’t value like many of us while he was around. A man who, we wouldn’t have valued if he was still around. A man who feels like a series of flashback of someone I knew. A man I had a few chances to meet and I lost those chances. A man I got to know only when I tried to know more. Like Shakespeare said - ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.”

Today, Sushant is not a mere person to me. He is an idea. An embodiment of very strong emotions. A depiction of a regret that teaches every moment. He reminds me of so many people I may have not known and not been nice to or may not even have given a thought to. He reminds me of how, despite all promises to myself, have lost my existence in the mundane. He reminds me of how I rarely take the time to know people anymore. He reminds me of chances not taken. He reminds me that incomplete things are not necessarily not beautiful – rather, incompleteness is a notion of the bored mind. He reminds me that my curious self has stopped asking the kind of questions that make me happy. He reminds me that answers are not the destination, finding more questions is. He reminds me that there may be losses that just feel like a void, irrespective of the relationship and the time that passes by. He reminds me that while we keep aiming to be different for the prime of life, we end up searching for peace by being the same as all. He reminds me that there is so much of us in him and there is so much more of him in us. He reminds me in his own signature style that – “Babu Moshay, zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi” and he damn well made it big!

He also reminds me of so many times that I may have said something, given an expression on or just moved aside from, destroying someone’s day or worse, someone. There are so many of us, it’s difficult to be nice, especially when it’s nice to be difficult! Not because we are bad people, but because all of us, ourselves are going through so much. It’s just easier to not put effort and let things be. At the expense of sounding like his musings - There may be so much more to people we do not know and there are so many we know we don’t know and so many more we don’t know, we don’t know.

I wanted to start with the former. I have a lovely sister, who I feel I haven’t disappointed yet! She very innocently looks up to me and I feel for whatever reason, this time, things shouldn’t remain unsaid. It’s a miracle that while there are so many of us, the space time continuum has brought the people we know together - that all can’t be just by accident. So, here is my attempt for us to know each other - that’s two less people in the world who didn’t get to know each other.

To her and to the man who lived up to every moment!

An open Letter to My teenage sister

Dear Riti,

I know your birthday is long in the past and it’s high time I produce the gift. While I do not believe in the notion of wisdom coming with age, I feel there is a little bit of learning that comes with age. I would love for you to explore the world and see it with your own eyes and learn, I wished to pass on few things that stayed with me and helped me sail through the years till now. I would have mailed this to you personally, but trust me, there are many out there, exactly like us in so many other corners of the world, who need to hear our conversation. Much of it may not make sense right now but I hope in the due course it does :)

1.   Be Kind!

Riti, your perfection as a kid has always amazed me! Not that I believe in perfection of a person; everyone is complete in their own way. But even if I go by the societal way of “judgement”, I would still vouch for you being one of the best-behaved kids I have known. But you know what strikes me the most? That you are kind. And darling, that’s one of the rarest things to be today.

Being a bully is easy, making people feel bad about themselves is easy and you would see so many even at your age being mean. That’s the easy stuff. Trying to hold on your fort is the courageous thing to do. Not letting such words get to your heart is difficult but a task worth it. And once you conquer that stage, try standing up to the bullies for someone who needs your support. I promise you, it will be very uplifting. Be grateful and thank often. Being kind will matter even more when you grow up. Life’s experiences make people bitter and by not being kind, they spread the kind of negativity that hits us all back. Don’t lose the dash of magic you possess - In a world of darkness, be the candle that enlightens lives.

2.   Work  Hard

They say there is no substitute to hard work and I couldn’t agree more. It hurts sometimes, may be not so much when you are still in school or college, but more so when you get into the professional world. It may not pay off as proportionately as it does in schools where you know if you read more chapters, you answer more questions as the question paper is generally fair. It wouldn’t ask you something you ought not to know. It will have fair representation of all chapters.

Life may not turn out to be so fair in later years. There will be problems that you didn’t create or deserve, there will be messy situations, pretty much out of syllabus and there will be days that will be so difficult that you will feel like crumbling under the pressure of it. I will not give you any false hopes - Any amount of hard work wouldn’t help avoid the chaos, but it will give you wherewithal to deal with it.

 3.   Don’t be afraid to rest or ask for help

I would probably not tell this to kids your age with the fear that hearing this may make them complacent, but I am sure you are mature enough to understand when to exercise this one. You have heard me saying things like “Life is tough darling but so are you” – True but don’t burden yourself with the thought that you always have to be. Being strong for too long can also make you weak. It’s okay to say that you give up, it’s okay to call your Mom or a friend at 3 in the night and say you can’t take it anymore. And it’s okay to sit through a whole week because things don’t feel like improving. Whenever it feels too hard, find someone you will be able to talk to and I will be the happiest if that person is me but don’t ever let yourself feel alone. Talk it out.

Baby, it will feel like one, but life is not a race. All that matters that we keep going on and not ‘really’ give up. Ensure that your pace is to your comfort, not your friends or family or society. Trust me it’s never gonna be too late. There will always be time for things that you find worth it.

4.   Do something for the society

Well this is something I am yet working on and I am sure I have a long way to go. Since I do not have much that I know about it, let me take a different take on this one. Let me introduce you to Prof. Banikanta Mishra, Prof. D V Ramana & Prof. Indranil Chakraborty from my college and Prof. Subhash Prasad from my school days. They form a big part of the person I am today. I would love to share some of the things I have heard from them and may be some recordings of their class.

You know why I remember them so fondly, Riti? It’s not because of their expertise in their subjects. In fact, three of them teach finance/Maths and you very well know that I haven’t come even close to be enchanted by the magic of numbers. It’s because of the kind of people they are. They have been embodiment of a person I wish to someday become. It’s their thoughts about mankind, learning that they stressed on, prioritizing it over any subject knowledge. I may not remember about some factor theorem but I do remember that Subhash Sir would stress on honesty and hard work beyond any exams. I may not remember how to make a perfect balance sheet but I do remember that there were small business owners who were benefitting from the knowledge Ramana Sir had imparted to them. I may not remember how to determine the valuation of a company but I certainly do remember that Bani Sir would stand up for things he believed in and encourage us to do the same. I may not remember the equations between countries and their development quotient, but I remember that Prof. Indranil, in his last lecture would sing with us “Aa chal ke tujhe, main le k chaloon ek aise gagan ke tale…” and fill us with positivity for life.

 These professors were teaching since decades, seeing people do the same mistakes, teaching things they know most of us won’t remember for more than a year, but taking time out in their classes to impart few things that we will remember for life. These are the small things that end up being big in life. I am not talking about charity or some big project on climate change or changing the whole course of life to help the society. It’s the small acts of doing something for someone other than ourselves while doing what we are doing for ourselves. There is an old song that goes by the name “Jeena isi ka naam hai”. Hear it when you find time, quite meaningful! Also, there is an ambitious project I wish to take up since long – Making one person smile genuinely every day. Let’s do it together?

5.   Don’t be afraid of anything – AT ALL!

There is just one rule to go by - Do what your heart approves of. The voice within our heads, our intuition, is a dependable source for decision making in difficult times. Remember that “The fears we don’t face become our limits”. As long as you keep running from something, it has power over you. So, delve into these challenges, engage in them and go ahead and make mistakes.

A good girl knows her limits but a great girl knows she has none. You have read ‘The Christmas Carol’ and you know there will be ghosts of past and future but dig your heels in and do what you feels right in the present. There may be things you do, that feel like a mistake and unless it’s something that hurt someone, do not regret it. And even if it was horrible, if it hurt someone, apologize sincerely, but do not beat yourself about it because we are all mere human - bound to make mistakes and learn. If we were supposed to be flawless, won’t we all come with manuals? We all do what seems like the best thing to do in a given situation, we innately don’t mean harm. So, never regret something that made you smile once. It was right thence.

There is something called butterfly effect – Read about it when you find time. I find it very captivating. It simply means that any action, anyone takes anywhere has a hand in impacting the future of the universe. Very popularly quoted, “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas”. Meaning that even a small change like a wing flap can lead to some changes in pressure of some system which may tend to shift something in some other system and result into a tornado whose the exact time of formation, the exact path taken was influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.

Now if that’s true, there is so much that goes on in this world varying from spilling of tea over a sofa to major wars and pandemics. Being in control is an illusion – There is so much that’s not in our control, so much that we can’t do much about and can be mere spectators to. And then there is a possibility of parallel worlds in a fourth dimension of time. We will watch a movie called ‘Interstellar’ someday together. It opened my eyes to so many possibilities. 

If this is not the world where we will take our chances, where will we? We have got one life and its utilization lies with us. Being afraid to try something out may be the last thing we want to do. So, go all out and if it means being weird, be one. After all, it’s the weird ones that change the world.

 6.   If there is a scope to learn something, just go for it!

This is something I learnt from Sonu Bhaiya. In the chaos of life, not everything will make sense but in the long run, everything falls in place. It fits like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There is an Oscar winning movie called ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’ which had a profound impact on me. It’s a story of a boy in Mumbai slums who becomes millionaire on a TV show. The central theme is a beautiful one – Everything you learn helps you some place. Everything! I have experienced it in my life like many others. Did you know that Steve Jobs dropped out of his regular degree to do a course in calligraphy? It may not have made much sense to a man who wanted to build a technical career. But read what he had to say about it when he became ‘the’ technical person - “When we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them."

After all, I learnt how to play Jenga from you and I might have won a game on a day I really needed a win! 😊

7.   Read

Now this is one I can’t stress enough! You know about the history of writing? Perhaps it evolved during record keeping for trade in Mesopotamia around 3400 BC. There is so much that has happened in the world of literature since. From explaining the big bang to expressing feelings, from reading weather to dedications of poetry, from making satellites to the tragedies of Rome, from overcoming diseases to historic battles, mankind has recorded everything. This is the treasure trove and include all you can in your lifetime. My favorite writer is Mitch Albom and my favorite book is “Tuesdays with Morrie”. It is a wonderful depiction of a teacher student relationship. You will find books that transport you to a different world, books that change your life and books so beautiful that you cry when you finish them. Words are very powerful - Many times, things we say outlive us. There is so much to read and there are no wrong answers whether you want to read Ruskin Bond or Stephen Hawkins. Just keep reading!

Introducing you to a dialogue from a movie I loved, called Dead Poets Society:

 8.   Don’t be scared to love, but exercise caution – we are all fragile!

      I know this might not be relevant now, but one day and very soon it will be. There will be too much pressure for choosing the perfect partner and you will have no clue how to know who is that perfect someone. Don’t let that pressure scare you away from love. When it comes to love, we all falter. And like all things in life, here too, we make mistakes. While correcting mistakes may be easier in other walks of life where heart is not involved much, this one hurts a tad bit more. And that’s why all the tension around it and the need for caution. I am not telling you to exercise caution by not taking a chance. One of my favorite author says - " You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you have some say in who hurts you and you should like your choices". All I have learnt from my experiences, is sometimes, the best of people may be not “right” for you and you only get to know that after being with these people. So sure, take your chances but only with people who cross certain threshold in your parameters. Say for example, you are a kind person and you try being with a person who is not very kind while kindness is something you value highly. It may end up hurting a lot. Be careful of who really deserves a chance and I know even after all that caution, it may not work out at times and it may end up being the worst heart break of all times, but that’s how you know it was a relationship worth having! You may feel bad about a relationship not working out but you must not feel bad about the person you invested so much time and efforts on. The person definitely shouldn’t be someone who crushes your feelings or intentionally hurts you, I think I may be quite proud of my choices of chances because they all turn out to be people I respect to date despite the history. On the days of heart break, the world will feel like crumbling, you will clutch in pain and it will feel like you can’t love or trust for the rest of life. You will sleep crying or may be not even sleep for a few nights but it’s important to keep waking up the next days. The pain will feel like constant but I promise you, it goes away so slowly that you don’t notice. And trust me, both me and Lipi Di can assure you that there will be one day when you wake up and it doesn’t hurt unbearably. You would have passed through the stages of shock, disbelief, denial, anger for the other person, anger for yourself and regret of wasting your time.

      You must be thinking why take so much risk if the path is only hurtful – Well it’s because in the process you rediscover yourself. You learn what you really want in a partner rather than what you thought you wanted and more importantly, you figure out what you do not want in him/her. More than the partner, the process helps you discover yourself and that’s what love is supposed to do – Make you a better person. And in this process of rediscovery, someday you end up in front of that imperfect person who makes everything perfect. All the confusions will slide away and you will stop doubting anything. And this doesn’t come like the movies, obviously not with those violins but also not like the happy picture of first love they show. Do not confuse it with the ‘butterfly in stomach’ feeling, that feeling of blush and excitement will come every time you decide to take a chance. This one will be more permanent in nature and it comes gradually as you get to understand the person in front and the jigsaw of your life starts to fill up. For when it comes to that phase, I hope to be around and be of help. I am just a call away, always 😊

9.   Do not judge
Riti, you are living in times that are way more open and less suffocating than our times. There will be people you meet on your way who have different preferences, dressing styles, different hair, different languages, color, shape, sizes and culture. Judging comes naturally to us because appearances and visual input are the first to reach our brain out of the five sensory inputs. Refrain from that and try to stop your mind from forming an opinion based on how people seem. I have found my judgement wrong most of the times and am friends with people I had judged to be ‘not my type’. Give a fair chance to all humans and let them give you data points on how to treat them best.

10.  Have a tribe you trust!

Stay close to people who feel like sunshine on a winter morning! Be with people who make you happy. Relatives you are stuck with, but friends you can choose! Make most of it.

You know what? It feels good to be someone’s inspiration and I will be honest with you that you make me feel very special and proud for the way you idolize me and share with me. I remember the poems you have written for me, I remember the calls when you have felt lonely and I certainly remember how you value time with me. In many ways, I idolize you back because you make me value myself. As you grow older, you get to know that there turn out really few people who make you feel good about yourself. I have kept a close circle of friends, people I know will literally cross seas if I need them by my side, people who will pick up my calls at any doggedly hour, people who will listen to me cry and not ask for explanations, people who would be there for me, no matter what. And you need that kind of positivity in your life. Let the toxic people filter themselves out of your life. Let them go even if it hurts. Be the kind of person who uplifts others and be with people who uplift you. As they say, ‘Real queens fix each other’s crowns’. Keep and nurture your tribe when you form one.

While I have given quite a lot of ‘gyaan’ here, your experiences may be quite different from mine. You may find happiness in other forms of art, you may like other kind of people, you may find fun in parties, you may have your own ways of finding peace. But if there is one advise that I would give you above all - it’s to never stop believing in miracles. They do happen so frequently, in front of us. Give yourself a chance to be enchanted by the magic that life is!

With lots of love,

Your Di 😊

#ShaShaSisters

A Progress in Progress!

My favorite piece of my writing remains “The Tantalizing Temporaries”. It has been read around 22,000 times and had some awe-inspiring discussions from readers of my blog and other sites where it has been featured among top 50 pieces. In many ways, it has stopped me from writing again, making me anxious if I could ever write that well again. Perhaps it was the beauty of the mind space I was in or the topic itself so relatable to the audience. May be someday when deep emotions strike as strong, I may write another as loved piece, but till then, these makeshifts will do, hopefully.

And only on lonely, dark, silent and cold nights do I ever feel like writing. I have tried being on dutiful writing regime earlier but somehow the system fails. It only comes when it comes. Months pass by postponing, but somehow, when it does, time and date don’t matter. Not that I don’t find nights inspiring, but I guess, we writers, have a way of romanticizing anything lonely, dark, silent and cold. All these things feel like our freedom, giving us a chance to be whatever we feel like being – no judgement.

30s is a time like that in life – the happy place and a great life stage to live in. How much ever it may seem so, but I don’t mean it in a consoling way! You have filtered out the energy draining people, you don’t think twice about blocking away the kind of energy you wouldn’t want near you, you are out of each one of those relationships that once seemed “the one”, you care less and only when necessary, you have the security of a livelihood and comfort of knowing that your parents no more worry on the basic stuff about you and you are in a position to worry about them and help in certain ways, you feel independent in your own skin and you get more confident about handling life. Well, perhaps, only till the time your parents ask for your opinion on the dinner table, about anything – That certainly stumps you. When did you get so much older that you earned a place in a meaningful discussion, since when your opinion is important enough to make into a decision. Man, that’s scary! It has too much responsibility blanketed within. But yeah, 30s still is great.

While it’s great, it also leads to too many friends going the family way, grocery shopping becoming the only outing, lazing around becoming your favorite “activity” and eventually to a lot of free time. All of this dedicated to either watching a screen or overthinking every damn thing in past, future and present and romanticizing them, to the extent of listening to the clock and feeling sorry about absolutely nothing. Or maybe the passing seconds? Life has happened so much so till this stage that comfort becomes uncomfortable and tranquility becomes unbelievable. That may not just be because of how chaotic and challenging the 20s are while you are figuring out literally everything – from career to love to what you want from life but also because of how fast the brain gets tired of not having new challenges suddenly. The education system, at least for us, millennials has been strangely engaging – not really in the positive terms. So much was expected and so much was already decided for us that one never had the time to really reflect and think what we ever wanted. And to be honest, the Baby Boomers are not to be blamed – they only did what they thought was best for the millennials - Survival.

The GenY, caught between the survival instincts of GenX and risk-taking ability of GenZ will always remain in the balancing act. While banking through the digital tools, we are comfortable knowing that there is some “Mishra Ji” who we know by name and face at the physical bank. While we saw the yellow filament lights turn to white lights, we are seeing the yellow becoming premium again. While we claim to be thick-skinned now, those ‘Tiny Tales’ still strike a chord. While the new content on Netflix and Amazon may keep us glued, we will keep going back to little bit of “Sarabhai” and “Friends” and may be even “Dekh Bhai Dekh” or “Malgudi Days”. While being on our own may be the in-thing, booking those costly tickets to home on watching that “Ghar Wali Diwali” commercial is trendier – “Wherever life may take you, love brings you back!” While we may fight our moms every single day, they are ones we will run back to her in split of a second. While we may be ‘pretty-sure’ of something, we will always be unsure within. While we will buy too many books, we may not be able to find time for them. While we may go on those envied solo trips, we will be travelling for the social status too. While we may be advocating living in the moment, we are the same people who are still trading reality for a role. While we reach out to our greatest achievements, some of our greatest fears lie bare. While we may all feel settled in life, we are quite unsettled in our heads.

So much uncertainty still awaits in life, so much eventualities and so much still to figure out. 30s may seem like maturity but it’s a long way from there, a milestone at best. On a lighter note, I have a friend in 30s who genuinely barks at dogs when drunk!

I remember reading somewhere “It’s growth that generates happiness, not achievements”. And then another of my most favorite sayings of all times, “There are many things that can make us happy, nothing that can keep us happy”. In that sense, we are all unfinished businesses.

May we remain WIP till we RIP. Amen!

ये रोज़ की दौड़ जिसे हम ज़िन्दगी कहते हैं

While we have all proudly taken the road less taken, have we essentially taken a detour from the road that leads to the place we call home?

THE UNSETTLING ‘SETTLING-DOWN’!

THE UNSETTLING ‘SETTLING-DOWN’!

There are phases in life we have been excited about, there are stages we crib about, there are changes we don’t like, there are situations we hate, there is music that is bitter, there are goodbyes that hurt, there is weather we complain about, there are people we dislike. And then comes a phase where it stops mattering, a strange lull that neither shatters us nor builds us. This stage is where we don’t care. Perhaps, a stage where life gets a little too predictable, a little too well known to us, a little too less risky and suddenly the idea of ‘settling down’ is no more comfortable!

It’s strange, we work our whole life towards reaching a stage where we know all that’s future and being prepared for it. Those ambitions, those higher degrees, a little higher salary, a better ‘disposable income’ (Anyway you are gonna ‘dispose’ it!), numerous insurance policies, that house, those cars and then what? Whole of the student life with the feeling of “Just this exam and then life is ‘settled’”. And then the exams actually get over! Whole of life with the feeling, if I earned that much, I would shop every weekend and fill up my wardrobe. And then the wardrobe actually is filled and then you don’t really feel like shopping. Whole of the life with a feeling that one would end up alone. And then one gets someone for life and gets worried if the romance would be as it was before during more ‘unpredictable’ times. Whole of the life worrying if I did right in not saying yes and hurting so much. And then you realize that that ‘no’ was actually good for that someone. Whole of life worrying if you ever will have that city skyline view from your window while reading a novel and sipping a hot cup of coffee. And then that day arrives and you thought you will have only a good thing to say about it on the social media with that lovely sunset picture, while on the inside you kept thinking was that overrated? Did those websites which serve daily dosage of motivational and life-stirring-promise quotes on irresistible templates were just selling emotions? Whole of life complaining that there is so much left on our shoulders, so much that needs to get done. And then suddenly, all that is done. And instead of feeling lighter, you end up searching for the load!

Mid-life crisis hits hard I know, but this one is not that! This is way different. This is not where you feel you have accomplished so less, this is where you feel- All boxes checked, and so what?! This one is not imposed, this is chosen. We made it for ourselves and then we get saturated! We created the palace with the glass walls and then we are surprised that it suffocates us? Strange are the ways of the human head!

So much that happens over time! When did we ever love what was there in front of us? We had never romanticized the classes and exams when they happened and now evenings go by remembering the beautiful time it was and how much we can give to get it back for one moment. Cribbing about that first ‘stupid’ boss was fun only till we had friends, not co-workers. It’s no more fun when you start pitying your boss. It’s no more fun when there aren’t any professors you can enact and laugh off. It’s no more fun when you thank them over emails. It’s no more fun when the most sarcastic and funniest of your friends have reduced to “How have you been? – It’s going on!” It’s scary when it’s ‘going-on’. It’s damn scary when you know that you are caught in a cycle of life that is going to be more or less be as it is planned for a mass of people. Breaking free is something I have always talked about but this time, I am clueless of what is holding me back. What do I break free from?

I guess in life, it’s like crossing the Rubicon. Once you ‘settle down’ there is so less that you want to change and yet hope to. The key perhaps is to not let the calmness become numbness. This age is dangerous - Too much of maturity is expected out of us. It’s important to ensure that this maturity doesn’t kill the child within. It’s important to climb up the roof and get drenched in the first rain, it’s important to still make those paper boats, it’s important to scream out, it’s important to know that “I am fine” is not the only answer to “Are you okay?”, it’s important to know that a next professional ambition is not going to fulfill you, it’s important to sing – however your voice sounds to others, it’s important to jump around on way back from office and not look at the on-lookers, I know you have to buy grocery, but it's important to make friends while you do that, it’s important to go sit with complete strangers if eating alone haunts you, it’s important to stammer in a child’s voice, it's important to wave your hands out from the car and look like a complete moron, it’s important once in a while to be that dumb person people blurt out laughing at, it’s important to not listen when someone talks you into “What will people say?”, it’s important to crack those stupid childhood time jokes and laugh on them yourself if no one else does. It's important to call those long lost idiot friends and talk to them till they are their normal self, it's important to spread the craziness because you don't wanna dance alone, find people who are ready to get embarrassed with you. It’s important to know that feeling of embarrassment is the reason enough to do it again and again and only when you lose the embarrassment, you grow further. It’s important to understand how complete you could be when you let the child and the adult in you walk together. It’s important to know that you are never too old.

Maturity is not in growing up only once. Life is too short to live childhood only once. That is only if you wish to live and not just keep it “going –on”. Even while I write this, I am not sure if the invisible chains are invincible too. But that’s only the adult in me. The child is already out on the streets looking at the beautiful pixie dust that the raindrops make as they touch the rusty old yellow street lights. The child is in love with life as it has always been. It’s time to shut-up the idiot that the adult is! It’s time to make some crazy stories that you could be proud of telling your grandchildren while your children are not listening! J

Taking that NEXT Plunge!

           Taking that NEXT Plunge!

I still remember the red sharpener my Mom got me when I entered my first school. I never shared it with anyone, lest they might lose it. I have still held on to the only winking doll my Dad got me when I was 6. It was easy to hold on to them. So easy to keep them. I have always been a person very cautious of not losing my belongings. Always checking on them. And then I grew up. The list of things that could be held on to kept growing smaller. As we start preferring people over things, we start preferring loving over holding on, belonging over possessing, trying over fear of failure and sadly sometimes even getting hurt over never having someone by our side. It’s a miscalculated gamble, for each one of us. Over years, the choice between letting someone into our lives and being by ourselves, between taking those independent solo trips versus couple resorts, between the bike rallies and long drives, between the books and someone to read beside becomes a decision, a rather difficult one. More so because people are so different from things.

The extreme static nature of things is what we start with, all of us. There is a strange comfort about things that don’t change. The attic at my grandma’s place hasn’t changed since I was born. These are things which are taken for granted, as if they will stay, if not forever, for our lifetime. Human nature loves ‘granted’ things. My coffee mug has stayed the same since I got out of home. Coffee certainly does taste better in it.

People on the other hand, fall on the other extremity. They change. Always. The dynamism is what pulls us towards each other. But it’s the same dynamism that leaves us scared too.

When a child moves away from his/her toys, is loved by all relatives, exchanging laps, being loved and caressed. And then there is that one relative who molests him/her. Life changes that moment for the child and forever. It takes decades before they can classify a touch in the casual or romantic category.

When the teenage girl believes in the star-struck love story and finds her new found first boyfriend making her just into an alternative, her concept of platonic relationships sure gets distorted

When the guy waits for the girl since childhood and despite all promises, she marries another one for the annual CTC (!), his heart rejects the notion of love he knew since years

When the student who gathered only friends during school suddenly find himself in the middle of the dirty politics at the workplace, his mistrust on people grows. He starts questioning his judgement and others’ existence

When the young couple commits suicide over their love marriage not accepted due to caste differences, the society readjusts its balance towards negativity

When every relationship feels like ‘it’s the one’ in the beginning and ends up nowhere close to the finishing line one imagines of, hearts get broken

Experiences with people turn people into cold, insecure and even numb beings. Not at all undermining the great experiences that make us into who we are, the ones that really make us are the ones that break us (The Zeigarnik Effect sure does exist!). The insecurity of passing on the power of controlling our happiness sure is scary. It only gets scarier over the years. It’s easy to get over the first partner who knew practically nothing about you, but how about the n^th one you have shared your fears with, the one who knows your mood from the way you nudge your head, the one who can forecast your actions? Rather difficult. Opening up to someone is letting someone into your little secrets you have never shared with anyone. It takes courage, a lot of it. Faith takes time to grow and no time to subside into trenches deeper than the ones known to mankind.

Ever next relationship’s impact is inversely proportional to the number and intensity of such experiences. When the ‘love of one’s life’ couldn’t keep up the trust we put in them or couldn’t stand by us, every other partner we ever have in life, pays for them. When the so called friend betrays, every next friend puts in that much extra effort to enter our circle. And then there comes a time when we lose it, we lose the human touch we were born with. The cold numb creature that stares from the mirror doesn’t even seem familiar. Our new partners crying doesn’t matter in the least because the previous ones kept crying while they were cheating on us. Our workplace doesn’t give us any friends because we stop trusting genuine smiles. Our lives no longer lets people in. Unfortunately, it happens once to almost all of us by the time we hit youth.

Learning from experiences is perhaps not the best thing engrained in the human mind. If only we could start afresh with every new person in life, if only we could drop the baggage with the relationships, if only we could choose the last relationships first, if only we could be enchanted with every new thing the world showed us with shiny eyes and open hearts, if only unlearning our heads was as easy as learning.

Difficult certainly, but perhaps not undoable. The easier thing to do is not trust anyone and not get hurt, but the bigger thing to do is being able to take and give another chance, and yet another and yet another! That doesn’t mean staying foolish and ignoring lessons from the past. Cautious might be fine, shy never. Being able to see different people differently must be the key, being able to not compare people like things, being able to say “He/She might really be different, being able to look at the risk-return frontier and say “I am not afraid of the risk of getting hurt at the chance of being loved, being able to say, “He/She might actually be the one”, being able to know that knowing reasons is not necessary, just knowing that things happened for a reason can be enough. This might look like over-romanticizing the real world as it is. But to be honest do we have an option? Can we forever not trust any other person because we were muddled with once? For that matter, can we forever stop tasting any new food because one particular sushi tasted pathetic? Can we stop accessorizing our homes just because we can be burgled? Can we stop loving because we can get hurt?

No one knows for sure. It mostly is a matter of time. Few experiences take a lifetime, few a second after you decide to let them go, few stay on, cling on. The only thing to remember is testing new waters with baggage will only drown us. Floating happens only when you let the flow through you, when you let the instability stabilize you, when you let the hurt heal you, make you stronger, not numb, when you let your heart do what it was designed to do, when you let someone complete the painting someone else deserted, when you take the plunge – without the baggage. Go back to the child in you who looked for good experience in everything new. Go take that chance….let the rains drench you to the soul and let no one stop you, specially, yourself! Who knows the change you chose to not take might be your only chance? Strangely, it gets simpler as it gets complex!!

“Life is made up of a collection of moments that are not ours to keep. The pain we encounter throughout our days spent on this earth comes from the illusion that some moments can be held onto. Clinging to people and experiences that were never ours in the first place is what causes us to miss out on the beauty of the miracle that is the now. All of this is yours, yet none of it is. How could it be? Look around you. Everything is fleeting. To love and let go, love and let go, love and let go...it's the single most important thing we can learn in this lifetime.”
― Rachel Brathen

The Tantalizing ‘Temporaries’

The Tantalizing ‘Temporaries’!

“Forever” and “Happily Ever After” are the way we have always seen a perfect life as. I feel it has got nothing and everything to do with those diabetically sweet fairy tales from childhood. The prince and the princess who spent a lifetime together, the couple that got married, the true-love kiss that brought the princess to life, the grandparents who grew old together, the brothers who got lost and met again to spend an eternity happily, this is all that we heard and read about.

What about the ones who didn’t? What about few people who just crossed your way? What about the lovers who couldn’t make it? What about them who assumed that all love went down the drain because it couldn’t end in a marriage? What about the relationships that ended in misunderstandings and what about those that never took off due to society? What about those who had too much love but a matching ego? What about awesome friendships that got lost in distance? What about people who could never forgive a loved one? What about a little love that remained for the ex-es even after marrying someone else? What about brothers who fought over property when they grew older but somewhere the childhood love kept haunting them? How about those who couldn't have their ‘forevers’?

My father often quotes his favorite poet, an age old one, where he talks about life being like a water bubble, life itself being the most temporary dimension and then we talk about ‘forevers’ and ‘eternities’. Although I myself am a believer of a few constants, a few things one’s life revolves around, but are they the only things in life? May be the centre remains the same all through, but what about the varying orbits? What about the distance we cover during a lifetime while the centres stay in their place, always there for you?

Perhaps the ‘temporaries’ do claim a space in our heads and heart, but how often do we mouth them? How often do we gather courage to tell our spouses that we still remember our first love? How often do we have the courage to look at our own journals from a decade back? How many of us can bring ourselves to listen to the music that we once loved and then hated for such a long time? How often does the silence not deafen us with sounds from the past? How many of us can think of our past without flinching? How many times have we avoided memories, good and bad alike? Good because they are not there any more and bad because we don’t want to revisit times when we fooled ourselves. How many of us will walk past the memory lane and accept the physical and mental scars, acknowledge their presence and then return to our forevers (which sadly again are temporaries)?

Do we really ever forget the butterflies in stomach when our first crush looked back at us? When our best friend (among the tens of ‘besties’ we had every year!) held our hands while we were literally thrown out of the classroom? When the first date (and nothing else) happened!!? When although someone might have broken our hearts, they were the ones who made it pump in the first place? How many of us can acknowledge that there were people, who came into our lives for a really short while, but changed it forever? That we are who we are, because they existed?

Life does come a full circle.

At times, people forget their anniversary, take each other for granted and hurt each other beyond measure while the relationship is going. They then forgive each other on an ‘anniversary’ , years later, after there technically cannot be an anniversary!

People promise an engagement and then move away the same year. They bump into the same person with their ‘another’ love of lifetime and look into each other’s’ eyes and know that they have been forgiven.

Couples cheat on each other, cry, fight and separate. Then one day, one of them becomes a parent with someone completely different. And yet that day, they look their kid and can’t think of christening them by any name other than what they decided in their very first relationship!

One day a mother who can’t explain her son’s explicit love for all the things she used to hate in her first boyfriend, calls him to say, “Now I understand you. Thank you and sorry”

One day a widower calls his girlfriend from college. When she picks up, he only says “Sorry…wrong number”. She forgives him for not being brave enough to marry her, but dies in peace of knowing that he wanted it as much as her.

Friends fighting over each other’s time get together after a decade and it doesn’t even take a moment to realize nothing ever changed. They just had to look for a little longer.

Brothers fight a lifetime for a property that doesn’t even matter and then beg for forgiveness from each other. A pat from the elder soothes the younger, just like old times in the playground.

Temporaries never really leave our side. We carry their burdens our whole life. Sometimes without realizing, sometimes in full consciousness. Time undoubtedly is lost in between all the commotion, but when we see back, perhaps all will be worth it. Because the first girlfriend/boyfriend cheated, you chose the next one more carefully. Because the first relation couldn’t work, you put more into the next one. Because the first ever relationship you thought will last a lifetime, the third one actually did! Because it couldn’t work with the wrong person, you found the right one. Perhaps there was nothing wrong ever with the ‘firsts’ and yet they didn’t work, you stopped dreaming and then you actually found your ‘Neverland’. Because you kept fighting for something worthless, you came across something that made you worthwhile! The challenge only is to accept the existence of temporaries and give ourselves time to absorb its importance.

One day we would realize that destinations are truly overrated. It’s the journey that matters. All the hands that we held in the process matter. All the smiles that we gathered, matters. All the moments that we thought were permanent and which then became temporary matter.  Scars that make us more beautiful and memories that make us stronger matter.

You value it because they don’t exist any more. If there was no end to life, no uncertainty around every day, would Gods still be jealous of the human life form? Would we really rate permanents over temporaries? It’s commas vs full stops and when you realize every full stop is just a comma, extended a little longer. After all, our day is a mayfly’s ‘forever’!

We are a little of every hand that ever caressed our head, a little of every voice that soothed our loneliness, a little of every smile that adorned our day, a little of every hand that reached out for us in melancholy, a little of every moment that made our lives worth living, a little of every person who touched our hearts.....They say, nothing is permanent, and yet "forever" is what we want, "permanent" is what we find enriching....Not at all challenging the importance of things that we hold constant since whenever we have them, but in the ever changing world, should we sometimes reflect on the temporary and embrace them with all the love they deserve? Perhaps it's time......

The best part is, like the constants in your life, once you had a temporary, no one can take it back from you. Temporaries also stay with you, FOREVER! J