Never Gone

Never Gone

She held Mark's hand and led him through the woods. He saw a wonderful land where the trees were as green as they could be; sunlight was peering out of the clouds and a perfect rainbow drawn across the sky. He could hear a brook gurgling in the distance, and little splashes of water as they hit the rocks.

Mark gazed into her eyes as she escorted him deeper into that magical land. Although he was aware of the enthralling beauty around him, he was more engaged in looking at her walk him through the forest. Her face was gleaming, and she wore her hair loose. Every now and then she would glance at Mark and secretly smile as she looked around.

Suddenly, he felt his vision blurring into darkness. 'Call the paramedics,' he could hear from a distance.

   *** 

'Doctor, is he going to be okay?' Alice hurriedly scuttled across the hospital to get enough help for Mark. 'He fainted as he was walking across the lawn this morning,' she explained.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, is a hallucination-inducing drug. All of Mark's tests came back positive for LSDs. Alice only wished she could be more concerned! Mark hadn't slept in six years. His eyes were always red, and he looked around as though he were gazing into a gaping hole. He was a wreck of a person - his soul torn apart.

Six years ago, Mark lost his lovely daughter. A rogue stabbed little Gina with a huge chunk of glass, while Mark crawled across the street trying to save her.

Mark sat in the living room waiting for his wife to step out. The Sun had set. The sky was black and orange; night was silently marauding in. The air was still. His face was blank, yet he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Mark put on a shoddy blazer, which was the best he had. He looked scruffy and exhausted as always. His face still was hopeless, and his eyes, vacant as ever.

He silently turned on the garden lights. The cake was decorated and candles were lit. She appeared before him in that same blue dress. She wore those pretty pump shoes, and her favourite suede jacket, still bloody from the stab-wounds. As she approached Mark, he could feel the ice in the wind. A burnished aura surrounded her presence, as she simply smiled at Mark and nodded in dissent. In a blink of an eye, Mark lost her. He was immersed in a mysterious hue of colours that formed a mist in the air.

The desiccated tree haunted the arid lawn; Mark sat on the wobbling bench. The dangling branches of the trees formed an ominous claw-like shadow over Mark's head. Yet again, he poured a drop of that pungent liquid on his fist.

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Disjointed Thoughts At The Break Of Dawn...

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.”

- Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXX

Yet again, I ponder on emotions – So many emotions. Off late I've been thinking about friendship – who really is a true friend? More often than not, I can’t place faith in my own self. I feel like a stranger in my own life… As though I’m watching myself in a movie and time is just passing by. I feel so helpless. I can’t differentiate between dreams and reality. My heart yearns for what is not mine, and, my mind abstains from choice.


Loving yourself is not selfishness and being strong is an endearing quality. If someone doesn’t make an effort to understand you, it’s not unto you to speak it out. Put up a smile and move on. You deserve only smiles.


Feelings are not meant to be spoken. Feelings are meant to be felt. Feelings are never wrong or right. They just define your closeness to a person. Would you have felt a thing, if you weren’t so close?


There is no sense in belittling your feelings by always speaking about them. The more you express, the more you are taken for granted. Gather yourself. Calm down. Take a deep breath and feel your senses relax. Look yourself in the eye, and respect yourself for who you are. If you can’t respect the person you are, how do you expect the world to respect you?


Don’t waste your tears over someone who doesn’t understand why you cry. Don’t let your own feelings hurt you. No! Your heart will speak to you. Accept its premise and simply understand its implications. Just feel your feelings. Don’t complicate your life by trying to act on it.


Sometimes, inaction is the greatest action of all. The one who loves you will find a thousand unspoken words behind your silence; the ignorant will find no meaning in your endless expression and tears.


The more you seek out friendship, the harder it becomes to find. Meditate. Love yourself. Accept yourself. You’re the best friend you’ll ever have. Don’t let yourself down. There is no life without hope. May be life doesn’t turn out the way you want it. That’s really alright. Don’t let your Tomorrow recede beneath the waves of Yesterday.

Watch the Sun Rise. Feel the energy when Darkness breaks into Dawn. Fill your life with Light. Everything is luminous at the break of dawn, yet nothing is clear. Think of where you live and what you love – things that elude you. Let the realisation dawn upon you – You can love without complete understanding. Be your best friend. Let the Sun Rise into your Life!

Ponderings

He sat on the park bench, breathing lightly, observing his surroundings. May be, he was looking back at his life. Just then, I saw myself running towards him. It felt as though, time had turned back and I was 12 again. He looked at me running towards him and got up that instant – we walked hand-in-hand, as he regaled me with various stories. I remember his voice; my innocent laughter rings in my ears as he narrated stories to me. And suddenly, this picture is blurred into my tears.

******

Tears trickled down my face, as I reminisced time spent with my Grandfather. He was a man of old age – he was 80 years old, when I was just 10. Yet, I remember him walking in the house – headstrong, tall, yet mellow and smiling.

It’s very difficult to accept that a person in your life has gone away, to never return. You never know when a ‘moment’ would turn into a ‘memory.’ Sometimes, you want to wail your heart out just so that your shriek brings them back. But all you can hear is silence – Dead Silence.

I wish for his guidance, and I miss his wise hearings. May be, that’s why I’m dreaming of him. May be I couldn’t cry when he passed away because I was too young to comprehend human loss.

Tears came, a little too late, a little too soon – as, 8 years later, I know what it means to lose a loved one to Time.

It pains me to know that every moment of laughter will later only ring in my memory. May be, there’s too much amiss in this world – but our share of it, however imperfect, is truly tailored for us. Sometimes, I wish I could record every such moment of joy, and relive the memory – it’s only when I realise how painful it is: The Ability to Remember. Sometimes, you wish you didn’t have it. May be, life would have been simpler.

It’s very easy to blame a friend for drifting apart. You can ponder as much you want over your choices, they wouldn’t change. Your feelings will remain with yourself until you speak them.

Ever wish you had full-time access to some one’s mind? What if you did? Could you still change the way they thought about you?

Sometimes, you’re in the best relationship in the world, and it comes to an end – all you’re left with is a blank mind and a heart ripped into pieces. To begin with, may be, you weren’t as close as you thought.

It’s not necessary to explain every feeling you feel. May be you end up saying it because your hearts are not as close as you think they are. If they were, would there be a need to speak? When your hearts are too close for words, days, months, years of being apart never seem to matter. You know that you’re understood. You know that the bond is alive. It’s an odd feeling of unsettlement in your heart – the sweetness of being loved with the acidity of being apart.

As usual, I’m not being able to settle down on a single thought. But, I’ve learnt one thing. It’s okay to fall apart with people you love. Being truthful is what matters. Being truthful is very simple. Being ‘hurt,’ in my opinion, is an over-rated feeling. Sometimes, you think you’re very close to a person because you’re spending so much time together and doing all these important things in life. That may not be true. Deep down, in your heart, there lives a bond which you might not be aware of today. Look around yourself, and think – think hard on how every bond affects you. Nurture the relationships in your life. There will be a day when your moments will turn into a memory. You’re always going to have that sinking feeling in your heart, wherein you wish you’d done something more. Get ready for it. Someday, you’re going to have to look yourself in the mirror, and just hope that when you meet eyes with yourself, you’re not going to cry.

All these years, I never realised that my Grandfather was so important to me. But, I guess he knew. He was wiser. I knew he heard me cry. That's why he came into my dreams. He could feel my heart yearning for a lesson.

As I clear the mist around my eyes, I still see him walking… I see him walking away.

I wish he didn’t leave me. I need someone to hold my hand, and guide me through this world.
Nobody’s perfect. We all need someone.

The Girl Who Cried

Tears filled her eyes as she hung up the phone. Yet she made her way through the crowd and moved forward to work. Life hadn’t given her that option to relax or unwind and be who she wanted to be.

She had a plan. And, she was committed to making it happen. As she found a train and cleared her face of the big beads of tears it adorned… she noticed a boy. He was not more than 12. He was trying to make a sale.

His hands were full of cheap stationery products and too huge for him to hold. It was almost as if he was drowning into his own baggage, yet, he seemed to exude the determination to walk steadily enough and make a sale.

He’d made up slogans, and was singing them out loud. His eyes showed the pain of his struggle, yet somehow his face was lit up with a smile.

At that moment, she wondered, what misery this boy must face. She wanted to go there and give him some money, but it seemed too impersonal for the connection she had with him – any money would just belittle his troubles. She knew that no material gains would make her tears go away.

 She wanted to go and buy something from him, but she couldn’t find the courage to look directly into his eyes.  It was a matter of shame for her. She wondered deeply and closed her eyes to let the tears flow away, as she broke into a hint of a smile.

Often we pray to our Gods, asking for wealth, courage, happiness… May be what we don’t realise, is that, we already have it all. It’s very easy to ask for more. Greed is such an ordinary feeling. The feeling of satisfaction is rare. That is what saints are made of.

The girl-who-cried, realised how little her heart was, how shallow her thoughts were. True happiness lies inside us, but it glorifies, when we see the light in other’s faces. Most people are so busy with their lives that they fail to acknowledge their loved ones, or thank God for the roof on their head and the food in their plate.

We are so busy in looking into our own troubles and magnifying them that we turn into selfish beings just hollowed by our very existence.

The girl in tears forgot her misery when she looked at the pre-teen boy trying to make a sale. He didn’t lose hope. May be he was robbed of his day’s work by some sick drug-dealer, or he earnings of the day were taken away by his drunk father, or he had to pay for a relatives hospital bills.

The little boy did not even find a chance to enjoy his earnings, and yet she cried over a petty fight for a stupid movie or a dinner party. Isn’t there more to life than our own worries?

The little boy never gave up his grit and determination to make the sale. He moved on with his life, notwithstanding the circumstances.

The same stands true for us. The best thing about Time is that it’s never the same. If you feel the Good days pass by too quickly, so do the bad ones.

All I’m trying to say is, joy or sadness is momentary. What lasts is the deed you’ve done for another. For, any efforts that you make for the happiness of others will truly lift you above yourself.

Sadness is an inevitable feeling. Without it’s existence, we wouldn’t know what happiness would mean. So, it’s okay to be the girl-who-cried. But, don’t forget to thank God for all that he has given you. There will be a day, when it won’t be there, and however little you thought it was, you would realise it meant a lot.

Rise above yourself. Like the little boy was thankful, so you must be.

You must think that somewhere on the way in this write-up, there’ll be a moment, when the girl gets out of her own troubles and helps the boy. But that’s not what happens. When you have to give or share a feeling, it’s not about how rich or poor you are. It’s about how sensitive your heart is to a stranger’s life.

It’s ironic how a small boy with far less means than the girl, could help her forget her sorrows and grow. He gave her a gift… A gift of a moment that she would never forget, and a lesson for life which she would always cherish, no matter how good or bad the times are – he gave her A lesson of Gratitude and Togetherness.

Give it a thought – “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”

Let’s make an effort to look beyond ourselves and be humans, in the true sense.

Feelings

Sometimes, when you hear something very hurtful, there’s a physical pain you feel in your chest. It feels as though you’ve been violated.

Your world has been vandalised, and when you look around, you can literally see the good days just floating in empty space, blurring out into your tear drops.

Pain is a feeling harder to describe than love – the feeling that eats you up and throws you down and vanquishes your faculties to even act coherently.

To every person, his pain seems the greatest. Truth is very hard to accept, but it’s even harder when you not only accept the truth, but also embrace the consequences that come along.

And, it is that wretched moment, when you want to speak your heart out, however much shipwrecked you may be…

It’s unnerving when you muster up all the courage you have, to confront the one you love about how you feel.

You’re short of words…sometimes, breath! You’re choking at every thought and your head spins, but you feel you’ve finally made it. You’ve shared how you feel. The battle against tears has not been won; alas, it has just begun.

‘Painful’ isn’t even the word, to begin with. You try to be numb, but you are not. You can feel the agony in your heart – you feel a physical torture inside your head and the inflictions of those emotional wounds on your corporal being. It’s like your mind is numb, to everything but the hurting and throbbing; your head’s heavy and all you see is a glare of colours disintegrating into their natural forms – you’ve lost the capacity to distinguish between your pain and reality.

The heart aches for love, and it aches more of curiosity. Expectation is such a bitch!

It’s painful when you can’t convey how desperate and lonely you are for someone’s love and acceptance. What stings more is, when all the courage you’ve amassed, have turn into hollow words – because, they can only hear your feelings, they can’t understand.

Follow Your Heart...

From the Ink-blots in my Notebook...

Sometimes, your goals seem too close, yet too far. Like, it’s a hard day’s work, taking you no-where. You feel exhausted and lose hope; and, all-the-same, there is a voice inside you that pushes you towards it.

You’ve been with yourself forever, but you just can’t seem to fix the puzzle in your own head, that is, - What do you really want?! May be it’s the closeness that blurs your view; may be standing further along and judging would give you the vantage point you need. May be, it may not.

All you need to do is continue on the path your heart feels is right. Love your family, fear God, and be honest with your day’s piece – you’ll get what you deserve. Don’t leave any stone unturned.

It’s very difficult, sometimes. You think you know what you really want from life, and suddenly you’re without a plan.

May be, that’s it. Life has no plans. Life is unpredictable. You just have to live it. And, the day you reach your goal, however sooner or later it may be, no one can take it away from you. It’s your achievement, you worked for it – No one can take it away from you.

And now, magically, when you look back at the time you spent, you see the plan unfold. All this while, when you were flustered, now seems like a good day’s work – your journey to success.

May be that’s all life is about – being truthful. It’s way too simple. Wonder how people manage to complicate it?!

Doing what you love best shall never let you down. Failure shall not hurt you easy and success shall not render you proud. It shall humble you – give you an odd sense of unsettlement in your heart, to push yourself a little more, and compete with yourself. Cause, that’s the real measure of competition – open and the toughest, where you challenge your own faculties. Mind over mind!

Think over it. May be, you’re wrong. Yes, you have been with yourself all your life. But, make sure you aren't seeing yourself in the light of how others perceive you. There’s a little voice inside your heart trying to scream out what you would really covet. You’re dimming that sound within the drone of the world’s expectations. Nevertheless, you hear that voice humming.

Think really hard before you decide – Are you judging yourself too much?

Colours

Where do I go? I wonder. There is this ardent desire to break free. I wanna fly.

I have been thinking about these colors for some time. I feel like they’re almost trying to be vocal. They’re almost like a cure for my pain. Or maybe a consolation to my fears. They seem to break my sense of disillusion and take me into a beautiful world- a bright, lively and vibrant world. Yet how is it that every time I try to feel them, they seem to disappear?

There is much more to this tint than being a mere figment of imagination. Or maybe I am just foolish enough to try and find meaning out of something so trivial. I don’t know. The more I try to discover them, the more intensely they seem to blend. They seem to merge to such a extent that a magnificent glare is produced that blinds me. And soon enough before I regain my senses, they crumble into their natural forms… and I am back to where I began. So significant, yet so alarmingly inconsequential! I almost figured out what they were trying to tell me, and suddenly my words come crashing.

My words are not eternal. It is a harrowing process of blending together, yet it takes only a split of a moment to disintegrate! Just like, it takes a lifetime to come together, and a moment to withdraw. Wonder how do I forget things? They haunt me. I am hanging on a hope that is already shattered. The idea of forgetting is unacceptable, and remembering things only makes me realize that I’m desperately trying to maintain a promise that is already wrecked. Its vexingly eccentric. I am beginning to understand my slow slide into madness.

Words

It’s like time has played the most ruthless wager on me. Pen testing … 1... 2... 3...

Works! Hah. So, words just flow through a pen? It is a medium for thoughts to flow, and not the origin. Where I stand, right now, I wonder why each and every relation in my life seems so distant. There is a sense of disconnection. Like, a certain level of understanding is lost.

There is an emptiness in my life. Ugh. The more number of people I meet, further lonely I feel. Is there anything I can fill my life with?

There is a thought in my mind which I might fervidly want to express at this juncture. But an effort is being taken to forgo, and move on. Nonetheless, the effort is otiose.

Paradoxically, where my strength emerges from, is where I need it the most. Like, my mind exudes so much power that eventually it can’t get a hang of things for a while. It’s grueling.

There are people I love. A lot. I wanna give them my love, and feel good, probably great. The exultation of gifting love, which is so perfect. Impeccable! I don’t know. I don’t know where this write-up is taking me. May be it’s just helping me tune my judgments, which are precisely, extremely harsh on my own self.

Like, an explosion of thoughts, and fragmented images joined together to form the distorted picture of my chaotic life.

Time is not the greatest healer I’ve met. Nonetheless, it remains the greater preacher I know of. I promise to do full justice to it.

This pen doesn’t seem to be the perfect agent of my words. Thoughts are still rambling. I can’t seem to find a flow.

Probably, there is none. Probably, all I need is nothing. There is nothing that is amiss. Yet, this stretching hollow in my heart; it’s like the tunnel that separates me from the rest of the world, where I hear various significant voices reverberate, and tell me something so inspiring, yet so alarmingly inconsequential as opposed to the vast hollow of the tunnel. Worthless, muted and woeful. Like voices are dimmed as I move forward; only to find myself completely absent in the world I have created for myself. Like, I’ve gone adrift; perplexed, I can’t find what I’m looking for. Where am I, I wonder. I’m tangled in my own labyrinth of words. Words, that empower me, only vanquish my faculties to sensate, comprehend and respond. Like, they’ve left me with a feeling that I can’t even dredge up, or achieve all my life. A feeling that leaves me, with nothing but tears that wordlessly flow down my cheeks. Wordless.

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Think, again!

12:00 pm
June 30, 2011
It’s about knowing how you feel, yet not knowing how to express it; when you feel so important, yet so
insignificant at the same time. You feel happy, like on top of the world, yet petrified as though it’s the
last moment of your life.
It’s the fringes of life that make your head spin, and it’s so ironical that joy and sorrow almost always
stand juxtaposed to one another, and mostly you can imagine posing right in the middle of them –
trembling, confused and fighting for breath!
Sometimes, you wonder which could be worse – A moment of happiness filled with tears or a life of
tears knowing it couldn’t get worse!
It’s all in the mind. It’s all as you see it. Ever wonder who conjures up these images in your head? Why
have you turned into the person you are? Why did you ever make decisions you regret? And, how
uncanny it is, because you’ve been living all your life all this time, yet you don’t know what you want
from it?!
Why is it that you run after building a house and buying a car? And how is it meaningful if you have no
love to share it? Who is your true friend? What does a well-wisher mean?
Sometimes you wonder if you could break free from all the chains of these norms and do what pleases
you and say what you feel. If only you could open your heart and cry out loud, or, dance around life a
buffoon to express your joy!
Your sorrow does not emanate from the money you earn, but from the people you hurt; more so, your
happiness does not emanate from the riches you gross up, but from the smiles of the people you love. God didn’t intend money. God intended love, and he brilliantly filled the world with it. It is unto you, to
find it, and embrace it.
The truth is, you know it all. You always know what you want, you know what you love, you know
who you are and you know how things will be!! But you’re afraid. You feel judged. And you want to
prove yourself to a bunch of people who don’t matter anyway! There is nothing about your life that
must baffle you, and there is nothing that you don’t know. It’s only love that your heart craves for. It’s
acceptance that it cries out loud for!
You could be yourself, and God has tailor-made one such person on the face of this planet, who’s
capable of loving you in countless ways, however ugly you may be – Cause we’re all very ugly people,
made of more bad than good. Yet there is one person, who is a friend, a lover, one who cares silently
and lends a hand in the hour of need – A friend who loves us without a reason; someone who’s always
on our minds, someone we can never get enough of– The one person we can love all our lives.
May be that is why they say, Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder; yet somehow they vouch that Love
is blind!