Drowning in Despair!!!

Oh God! I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating!

All my senses are jumbled up.

Engulfed in ice cold water under thick  condensed air,

Arms flinging and rummaging in despair.

Trying to grope onto something,

Anything to hold on to, just anything.

Attempts to resurface from this whirlpool are vain,

All of the sudden effort to strive seemed in disdain.

Oh! I feel something holding me, to pull me up for a new breath,

A hope arises of escaping death.

Alas, it’s nothing but a sea-weed,

Putting an end to my utopia with nowhere to lead.

Strength of the soul seems to be vanishing in a jiff,

The anguish is, kind of, winning in this tiff.

Succumbing to the pressure of living, the limbs went limp,

The chances of survival were anyways very grim.

Failing attempts of resurfacing once in a while, to gulp a gasp of air,

Just to sink again in despair.

Just as seconds keep ticking, the will to live keeps weakening.

Eyes begin to blur and thoughts begin to slur.

Just as the brain is going into a daze,

The heart realises it has to keep its pace ablaze.

From the two choices that the mind had, it choose the easier one

Unprepared to face this unfair world where it would have never won

Glimpses of the life flashed through piece by piece

May the blessed soul rest in peace.

The ray of dawn did not succeed to revive the rubble

All that was visible was the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Silver Lining...

       

      

          They always say that Life is like a Sine wave. It has its crests and troughs. I have had a lot of troughs in past, but somehow this trough seemed like the hardest to me. I had been facing disappointments in each and every walk of life, be it personal or professional. There were times when I just wanted to sit in my car and cry (and I have done that quite a few times). I was in a ‘Rut’ as one of my friends told me. Portraying to be a strong woman has its own setbacks, doesn’t it? Makes you want to hide those vulnerable areas of life and pretend to be rock solid. I was rock solid all this while, whilst combating this huge forced sabbatical, at the same time stealing those little moments of breakdown with my own self. And all this on the month of my birthday and I was like,” ‘Why God why?’ It’s such a wrong timing to be feeling what I was.”

         Talking of timing- then happened ‘The Perfect Timing’. I kept dwelling on this defeatism until one day I came across this wonderful speech by Angelina Jolie for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award she received at the 2013 Governor’s Award Function. She said, “Somewhere across the world there is a woman just like me with same abilities, same desires, same work ethics, and love for her family, who would make better films, and probably give better speeches. Only she sits in a refugee camp and she has no voice. She worries what her children would eat, how to keep them safe and if she will ever be allowed to return home. I don’t know why this is my life and that is hers. I don’t understand that. I feel that myself and everybody sitting in this room are so fortunate to have food to eat, shelter over our head, safe place to live and the joy of having our family safe and healthy.”

        Hearing this two minute speech, apart from giving me goose bumps, made me realize suddenly how vain I was being. How self centered was my universe and how I was worrying and blaming God for these little temporary setbacks in life. All of a sudden I started counting my blessings. And that’s when I decided, that this birthday is going to be about being Thankful. I am going to be thankful and appreciate all the wonderful things that I have been blessed with.
       Suddenly it dawned upon me that the most precious thing that I have is a Voice that I have never had to suppress. The voice that I know is heard by people around me, and even if that voice falls to one thinking mind it would be a wonderful thing. I was browsing through my blog and I realized how I have been given an opportunity to express my thoughts and how appreciative my readers have been and how encouraging that makes me feel to keep getting inspired, thinking, and writing.
       Apart from my Voice another great gift that I have been given is the Strength. The strength that I feel knowing that I have such an amazing set of parents, a reassuring sister, my girlies and my friends. The strength and the spirit that keeps me going and never lets me Give up.
      The third greatest gift that I realized that I possessed was my Vision- to see what exists and the foresee the unseen . Literally I experienced a great activity carried out by the Blind People’s Association in my city where they make you experience the ‘Vision in Dark’- which is you experience absence of light in your life for a little amount of time. It makes you aware of the fact that we make use of our vision for about 80% of the time. Using the sense of seeing is so convenient that it’s only when we are deprived of it, is when we realize there are other senses too. I feel so lucky to have all my senses intact.
     I also feel happy to have a cozy and warm home where I feel safe, I get nutritious food that nourishes my palate and my body, loving family, friends I could always count on, have interacted with some amazing people in different walks of life, freedom to be myself, a good set of skills, amazing people who have shaped my career and the list was endless.

         You must be thinking to yourself, ‘Ya so, we all have them, please stop with this thanksgiving speech. You are no Angelina Jolie.’ I know I’m not. But I just want to make a point that it is such a great feeling to be thankful and appreciative of these little things that we take so much for granted in life that it would help you spring back to enthusiasm in days of setbacks and in days of joys, would make you feel even more joyous. Like they say every cloud has a silver lining. The cloud can’t see it, but it’s always there.

Objects in the Mirror

               Hello friends, I know that my posts have been much more infrequent than ever, but I am busy collecting experiences and inspirations from the world. I was away for some time for work purpose, on a trip that I decided to end on a sweeter note of travel and exploration. The wanderer in me and the lust for the taste of local culture brought me to a beautiful ancestral huge home of a local couple, which I shared with a Lithuanian writer who had been staying there for 3 weeks. He was a very quiet, shy and a seemingly serious person. It took me more than a hello to strike a conversation with him. A missed boat ride and the fact that he was a writer was a reason good enough for me to take that extra step to get the thoughts flowing and the words rambling. It is always enriching to have conversations with people and to exchange ideas and thoughts and you never know, what secret treasures are waiting to be unravelled. This conversation with this very intelligent writer was one of those intriguing conversations that I felt I had to share with everyone. For some strange reason, his name seems to be fleeting away from my memory, but not taking any credits of the philosophy away from him, I’m trying my best to quote and reproduce the exact conversation that we had. This is also the part of introduction to his book with the same title, yet to be published, so if you ever come across a book of similar name in future, most definitely read it, I can assure you, it will be fantastic.

The Yellow kitchen

              “Hey, I haven’t seen you around since I have been here.” I said, stirring my cup of tea, and sitting on the quaint little dining table in the yellow kitchen of the house that I was living in, in Pondicherry. He smiled, and said, “Yes, I’m quite busy writing and I also have to finish this presentation for the conference that is coming up in two days”, he said cutting up some fruit for a snack. “Sorry, I forgot to formally introduce myself”, saying so I gave him my brief introduction and so did he, adding that “I would love to chat with you, but I have this thing I need to finish first, why don’t I catch up with you a little later, post dinner maybe?”. “Alright, do you want me to get some dessert for you?” I asked and he gave me a nod before going away to his writing haven.

              A few hours later, I knocked on his door, hoping for an interesting conversation, with a tiny shot glass filled with chocolate mousse in my hand. “I’ll be right there in the kitchen”, he said. After a few exchange of words to break the ice about the usual weather and politics, movies and stuff, “So, a writer!” I exclaimed. “What do you write about?” He replied Indian movies and his psychoanalytical and philosophical take on them. I was amazed at how Indian cinema can have such an impact on people so as to bring them to our country and live here to write a book on it. “Philosophy and Psychoanalytical take! Now that interests me.” I had finally found an interesting spark in the conversation. “Tell me more.” Apparently, it seemed as though, he was waiting for a similar spark, and suddenly with an excitement in his voice like a little child who is about to open his birthday present, he started saying,

             

            “The title of my book is ‘Objects in the mirror’. And you know I got that idea from the rear view mirror in the vehicles in India.” I was intrigued. And he described this scene he remembered from the movie NH-10, where Anushka Sharma (the female protagonist) is sitting in her car while her husband gets out of the car to get directions. She is this modern, independent, urban girl in a rural land. A stark contrast between urban and rural cultures has been very well painted in the scene. Suddenly a rural, bearded, rugged man, in his traditional tattered clothes comes up to her window and is staring at her which startles her and to an extent scares her. Although the man does nothing except stare at this strong, singular, urban woman, who is different than the women he is used to seeing, abusing and beating up in his village, there is a sense of fear of being robbed or harmed by his empty stare so she quickly rolls up the window. Her husband returns with the directions and they drive off. The end of this scene shows the rear view mirror showing the villager seeming to go farther away from them as they drive but the rear view mirror reading ‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear’. 

The Other

          By now, I was mesmerised at the detailed and such an in-depth analysis of such a simple scene of less than a minute that apparently was insignificant enough for me to forget, but had inspired an idea to someone to write a book. Talk about small things inspiring huge ones. Then he started describing his psychological and analytical take on that scene. He said, “There is a concept of  the Self and the Other in psychology. The Self is you, the person and the Others can be whoever in the picture. Usually it’s someone around you, someone in the same scene as you are, someone that you can compare yourself or your situation to."
         'Without the Other, the Self cannot exist.'
Then describing the scene, he said, “Being an urban individual for me the Self was the female protagonist in the movie and the rural man was the Other. It was a perfect contrast between the Urban and Rural India. She saw the seemingly normal rural individual, the Other as a threat, as something that would frighten her, which probably may or may not be justified, but it created a strong emotion. At the end of the scene, when the seeming threat is going away from them, it is appearing to get smaller and that relieves her, but the rear view mirror is reading ‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear’. Another excellent contrast. In our lives, we always have the Other, who is could be a person or an object. Sometimes even situations can be defined as the Other. In people who may regard as to comparisons or interactions with anyone but themselves as futile, for them the Mirror becomes the Other. Coming to that, you may think that the mirror is just a reflection, technically. But psychologically it is the Other in the mirror. And depending on what you are thinking of the Self or the Other at that particular time, you would see the similar reflection in the mirror. How many times, have you woken up and looked in the mirror and felt beautiful or ugly. Your ‘Self’, doesn’t change, but the Other in the mirror changes according to the psychological state of mind that day. And that is the story of the Objects in the mirror.”

Reflection of the Self, as the Other you desire

               I was awed by his words and ideas that came out like from a seasoned writer’s pen. These things started making so much sense in my head. It just made me realised a very important truth in life. It is you who will decide the state of others in your life and their importance. You can use this psychological tool too much of your advantage. Want to feel amazing, look at self and compare with other. And the best Other to do that, is the mirror. Feeling negative? Look at the Other in the mirror as a positive person. Feeling low? Look at the Other in the mirror as a confident person. Your brain does know that the Other is just a reflection of yourself and thus you can slowly and gradually learn to fool your psyche into instilling so much positivity and confidence, into yourself. Although it might not be as easy as it sounds but I’m sure our mind can be trained to use this philosophy to its best extent. Isn’t this the same as creating a positive vibe for yourself.

So next time you glance at a mirror, don’t just look at a reflection, but try to look at the objects in the mirror.      

...And as the Diary spoke:

             

Opening the box of memories is like opening a box of chocolates,
You just can't stop at one. 

       
              Yesterday, while cleaning my loft, I was going through some of my old stuff, stuff from my childhood. Yes, I am a gatherer. You would be surprised at the amount of ‘junk’ as some people would like to call it that I have right from the time I was in school. The Barbie dolls that I would be gifted on birthdays or would have bargained for in return of straight As in my report card, my favourite denim dungaree, my candy doll, the bookmark some special friend gifted me with an inscription on its behind, the glass crystals that I may have collected from somebody else’s junk, the tiny handbag that I would carry around everywhere that I went with its tattered and cracked exteriors, those Enid Blyton novels that I would eat up in summer vacations, the Amarchitra kathas and the Chacha Choudhary comics, the Champak series that I would wait for each fortnight, the collection of the fairytale books that I would read to fall asleep and dream about my happily ever after, the cut out of the doll from a newspaper that I would call ‘Thumbelina’ after reading a fairy-tale about a girl of the size of a thumb, the pine nut that I carried from my very first camping trip to the Himalayas as a kid, the report cards from standard one to 12, all with A+s and if it was a bad year As, (no I’m not boasting), those notebooks and text-books of my favourite subjects depicting the evolution of my maturity along with the maturity of my handwriting, those science journals with the complicated and beautiful drawings that I marvel at today, my painting and sketching books that reminded me of the creative streak that I had, which has been lost somewhere in the run for excellence in life, the slam books that various friends from various walks of life had written when saying good-byes, the glossy real photograph albums from the time I was born till the time I left college as opposed to the digital images of self obsession that we call selfies these days rotting in the memory stick of my mobile phone, the peacock feather that my grandmother had given me to play with, neatly pressed in my diary, which now with age had developed a beautiful golden sheen on it.

The feather that absorbed the tears of the past

           Did I just say ‘In my Diary’? Yes my beautiful diary. To anyone else it would be a binding of beige coloured papers with scribbling inside, bound with a magenta satin casing with rusty golden-ish edgings on it. But to me it was a window to myself. The diary which had absorbed so many of my tears and fears, the diary that was my most loyal friend, to whom I could open my heart out to without the fear of being mocked or judged, the diary that had a plethora of unexplained emotions like excitement, fear, sadness and tears, the diary that harbored all the stories of the little me,and there it was staring at me, urging me to open it, to look back and soak myself in the nostalgia of my childhood and college days to feel those emotions again, to smile at my stupidities and laugh at my fears. As I ran my fingers through those aging and yellowing pages, I could smell the saltiness of the tears and feel the joy. My cursive handwriting in it (which was a thing of envy those days) bore the mood of the happenings of the day I was writing it. 

I thought to myself, if the diary could speak what would it have told me? What would I like to have told the little Me, now that I am looking back.

As the aging pages of the diary spoke to me... 

             The very first thing that I would have told the little me is 

“You are beautiful”.

And no it has nothing to do with the way you look, but it’s much deeper than that. Your skin will change with time, it may wrinkle, the shape of your body will change with time, but what will not change is that smile. And that is what defines you. Beauty is not just skin deep, it’s so much more than that, so don’t waste your precious time and energy on those beauty creams, or starve yourself for that zero figure, instead build up your personality. Confidence and grace is so much more important aspects of beauty than skin deep beauty. If you are comfortable and confident in your skin, you will be beautiful.

             The second thing that I want to tell the little me is, 

“It is okay to get lost in your way or take the untrodden path sometimes.” 

Well, you’d say, really? Yes, It is okay to get lost if you are determined to find your way back (Literally and metaphorically). Sometimes unexpected turns in life are deliberate so that you come across the most beautiful sights and experiences in life. It gives you the excitement of finding your way; it makes you more capable of taking wiser decisions in future. If everything was perfect you would never learn.

            Yet another thing I’d like to tell the little me is 

“Believe in people and life; and you’d be really surprised at how amazing they both can be”. 

Doubt is like a slow poison. It impairs our capabilities and we tend to hold ourselves back by our illusion of fear. We miss out on wonderful people and experiences in life. Again, I don’t mean being silly and just close your eyes to reality, but put belief and trust before doubt. So what in the process you get your trust is breeched, it will be, but you will most definitely spring back to normal, believe me.

             The last thing that I’d like to tell the little me is 

“Let go, Accept, Love and Enjoy”. 

These, I have learnt from my variety of experiences are the simple things that make life so much simpler. Don’t hold on to grudges, makes your heart and soul heavier, let them go.
Whatever curveballs life throws at you, don’t complain, try to change it, and if you can’t, accept it and most definitely in each of those curveballs, u will see a blessing in disguise.
Enjoy each moment because there are no do-overs in life, so make the most of what you have. Life is simple and don’t complicate it, just have fun.
Learn to Love. Never give up on love. You may have gotten your heart shattered a number of times, it may feel impossible to put back those scattered shards of the broken heart back together, but you will, eventually.

                "....Because love is the closest thing to magic we have on earth".   

The Touch, The Feel...

               

                 Reading the title of the article, you may wonder what is it that she is going to write about today. Well, off late, I was troubled by the lack of being in touch and feeling the warmth of friendships in life inspite of being in touch with people 24*7. Besides the jungle of gadgets and tech-stuff meant to keep us connected forever was really getting onto me. That's when a conversation dawned in my mind with a very intelligent and impressive gentleman in his fifties who actually taught me a very important lesson. Also it sparked the need to explore other forms of communication in life. What I want to say is how futile the words are as a means of conveying one's thoughts and mind, but ironically I have to use the crutches of words and only words to convey the same. I am not disrespecting the power of words here, but what I really want to stress on is that how the lack of other dimensions of a conversation make the words seem powerless.

                 “So... How attractive do you find British men? Fancy anyone yet?” He said while sitting across the kitchen counter, sipping on the mug of beer, while I was clearing the dishes from the dinner table and loading the dish-washer. “Well, it’s very different for me. I have never actually dated anyone ever. I don’t know the dating rules etc. And besides I am very awkward in creating first impressions”, I replied while wiping the kitchen counter with a damp cloth. “Oh, come on its not that difficult. You are a beautiful and smart girl and you are well spoken and sweet. I’m sure you’d have guys swooning over you. You just have to have an expressive body language”, he said. He added saying, “It takes one tenth of a second for a person to create a first impression which is the lasting impression. You see someone sitting at a bar or in a tube, glancing at you. You look at the person, if he looks healthy (physically and mentally), is dressed well, smiles, and seems confident and you find the person attractive as well, sit up confidently, and give him a warm smile. It goes a long way. It conveys to the person that you are open for a conversation and the next moment you will find him -sitting next to you, chatting to you.” ‘Beep-Beep’ rings the dish-washer. I bend over to unload the dishes and start wiping them and arranging them in the cabinets while pondering over what had been said and replied, “May be you are right. I’m usually so tightly wound up that I forget to smile at all. I think I will try what you said.” And then I smiled. “See there it is”, he said with a wink and went to the lounge to watch his usual favourite TV show.   

                    Communication! When you hear the word the only thing that comes to our mind is the jungle of mixture of sounds and words created by man a zillion (500,000 to be precise) years ago used to simplify the expressions inside their brains. It is basically defined as an act of transferring information. It made understanding the complex commands, emotions and facts easier for man at that time. Over time the art of communication kept evolving from the jibber jabber of sounds to words to petroglyphs (carvings on the rocks) to pictograms and ideograms, to written alphabetic language, to mouth to mouth transfer of information to letters, to telegraphs, to telephones to the complexity of the satellite signals, televisions, transmitters, and most recent the social media and so on and so forth.  

                    But Communication is not just verbal. Two-thirds of all our communications is nonverbal. The parameters by which we interpret them are visual cues that include body language (kinesics), distance (proxemics) and physical environment (haptic or touch) and speech characteristics like the rate of speech, the pitch, volume, the tone (paralanguage). And the most powerful factor is oculesics, which are the actions of your eye, like looking into the eye or away, dilatation of pupils, blank stare or playful wink, sensual glance or a sympathetic look. They reveal the most about what you intend to convey.

                     It is such an interesting science. Usually our brain is smart enough to pick up obvious clues of these non-verbal communications. They are very primitive. They don’t impede communication at a primitive level. Imagine yourself in a foreign land where you don’t know the local language or customs. But it is this non-verbal means of communication that will help you make ‘the connect’ with the people. They are what we would describe as a Vibe. You may have said or heard it a number of times that a certain person gives out a positive vibe to me or vice a versa. Well, when you look back and notice, it’s probably because the person has had a relatively open body language to you, has been physically at a comfortable proximity to you. Maybe you find the pitch of their voice and the tone of their voice soothing. Their eyes, and the pupils which if and when dilate, give out a positive vibe, which is a neural response to the happy chemical released in their brains. There is a reason why they tell you, your eyes are the window to your soul.

“You don’t speak the language, the Language speaks you.”

                   So, when you get an idea in your mind, a form of energy is created.  (I know Mr Newton says energy is neither created nor destroyed, but just a figure of speech). It will release the chemicals in your brain forming neural pathways or circuits. (It is a fine balance of the Happy and Sad chemicals called Agonists and Antagonists in your brain). Now the brain is clever and can formulate and decide the words that it may want to use to convey a thought but these chemicals will basically govern the non-verbal means of communication. It is very difficult to alter these neural pathways or circuits. Thus, it is known that it’s easy to lie by verbal means of communication but more difficult to do so by non-verbal means.

                   

                         Such is the complexity of the action called Communication.  The existence of a mechanism that constantly encodes and decodes messages, involuntarily, subconsciously and not verbally with a human being is a fascinating process. This nonverbal communication might be between two human beings, human and animal, human and nature, human and stimuli. We tend to take the gift so lightly but come to sit and ponder over it and it would make you realise what a powerful tool it is. It will also make you realise the futility of the over-abuse of the social media and the other forms of communication that surpass the non-verbal cues. No listening to their voices, no squeals of laughter, no snorting, no slaps on the back, no handshakes, no hugs, no whispering secrets in the ear, no rolling of the eyes to show disinterest, no cringing of the nose to show disgust, no playful wink to team up and tease a friend. There is so much that is missing… Where are the rest of the dimensions, the kinesics, the proxemics, the oculesics and the paralanguage, the touch, the feel…???

Flaunt your Flaws...

           

          Reading the title of today’s article may make you wonder that I am probably going to be talking of some physical features and maybe talk about how to hide them or not to hide them. But as a matter of fact I wish to talk about flaws that probably are more reflective of our psychological attributes and shape up our personalities.

               Having a rather interesting conversation with one of my dear friends who was distressed about the situation at work and constant nagging of the boss, I happened to give some pep talk to her, as a reflex to make her feel better. After we were done talking I was sitting and wondering to myself, it is actually such a shame that we have been taught to not make mistakes, right from our formative years. Making mistakes is actually been ridiculed upon. If a child commits a mistake we have a tendency to scold or ridicule him, make him feel miserable in order for him to realise that what he did was wrong. I do understand that the idea behind that is negative conditioning and associating the unpleasant behaviour with an unpleasant response will reinforce the importance of not repeating the mistake again. But, hey, isn’t that how the dogs or monkeys are trained. Humans, on the other hand, are believed to have more complex brains and more complex algorithms in their mental circuits to be just trained by negative conditioning responses. What such kind of ‘training’ rather does is associate the fear of committing mistakes. Fear of committing a mistake will in turn make the person dread the actual process of initiating the action. So consequently the ‘Fear of Failure’ actually instills the comfort of ‘Not Trying’ in a person. They want to feel safe in their comfort zone and decide not to try or take risks. I have been guilty of occasionally doing the same. And it just doesn’t end at the childhood. It keeps becoming worse as you grow up. It becomes even worsely judgemental when it is regarding the physical aspects and aesthetics.

“Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate. Without them, what would shape our lives? Perhaps if we never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, or have babies, or be who we are.”

Wounded knees are signs of falling, but most importantly getting up after that. 

              Mistakes are beautiful. They are a way to remind you how brave you had been to try, how in spite of falling, you managed to valiantly get up, how you may have stumbled but managed to keep moving. When a child who is learning to walk, falls and bruises his knees, those scars will remind him of his first steps, all his life. The scar on the forehead after falling from the bike, will remind him of his first ride. Those marks of smoke in your kitchen wall will remind you of your first burnt cake. That place in your heart which still aches sometimes will remind you of the first heart-break. Going on the right, straight path can be boring and a wrong turn may lead you to a beautiful destination, the one that you didn’t imagine. Imagine the world without the Penicillin (invention that was actually a mistake by Sir Alexander Flemming), or your favourite chocolate chip cookies which were actually a chocolate dessert gone wrong. Mistakes are not wrong. Mistakes make great stories. Mistakes make great lessons. Mistakes make great people. Of course the idea is not to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, but to learn from them and make sure you don’t repeat them again, coz if you do keep repeating them, then you are simply stupid.

             So, why don’t we teach our children, our students, our teenagers, our employees, our friends, that it’s okay to make mistakes? It’s okay to be flawed. It’s okay not to be perfect each and every time. Because, every flaw is actually a sign post of your attempt. Every mistake will show that you had the guts to make an attempt, to give your effort and the courage to learn and improve from that mistake. When our child commits a mistake, instead of scolding or ridiculing him, why don’t we try reasoning with them the cause for the mistake, try explaining them that how much you appreciate the fact that they tried, insist that so what if every attempt doesn’t succeed, that shouldn’t stop them from going ahead. Encourage them to find a reason for the failure and push them to try again the next time. When your boss snaps at you when you have committed a mistake, why don’t we learn to accept that the anger is directed towards our betterment in performance and personal development, put up a smile on our faces, realise our mistake, apologize, make a promise to ourselves and if needed note it in pen and paper to not repeat the same mistake again and keep moving ahead. However sometimes one lifetime is not enough to commit all the mistakes by yourself and thus you have to keep your senses open and learn from other people’s mistakes as well. Discuss your flaws with others and they will open you up to their world of flaws. 

               It’s the time to celebrate your mistakes as they show you tried. Show off those bruised knees and scarred foreheads. It’s time to let the world know that, “Yes I fell, but I got up as well.” It’s the time to Flaunt your Flaws and let the world know you are Fearless to Fly.