The creeper

It sprang from beneath the dark earth

Upon the dark earth

Disillusioned by the light at first

That shone in the sky above

By day it watched its fellows

Wrapping above and below

Barks of trees, solitary logs, panes

of windows, always wanting support

By night it would dream

Of trees, of being tall, green and full

Of fruit, of the canopies that seemed

To decorate the sky & play with sunbeams

As days went by, it started to see

That behind the light, the sky was cloudy

That if ever it made it into a canopy

Its days would still be rainy & gloomy

Even after the strength getting there will need

So it started to dissociate from its dream

Now in its idle time at night

It would watch its fellows fight

To get to the nearest log in sight

Begging the gardener to place it right

And it began to fathom if it might

Make life easy to find a log to climb

It began to nurture the new dream

Started to source a site to lean

Slowly it began to crawl around

The way when born, its fellows it found

Began to resign to the fate of its kind

Dreamt now of only a support to find

As it crept along, it found a sturdy log

Standing upon the dark ground

It was elated, it bent closer to the earth

And reached out for the log

And reached out for the new dream

It had nurtured to camouflage the old dream

Now it was so close, it almost seemed real

Until a playful little kid appeared with a wheel

He sang as he raced the wheel

Until he crashed into the log

Our creeper wanted support of

The log lay on the dark earth

The creeper beneath, staring at the sky above

Wobbly, unstable and angry

It mustered all its strength to move

Away from the earth

Towards the light that shone above

And in that moment, it came to realize

That fate indeed was part of life

But fate too was made from dreams, real ones

And becoming a creeper wasn’t its dream at all.

So often, we give up our real dreams for easier ones, but fate sometimes leads us away from the latter. Behind the disappointment from that intrusion must lie the realization that there’s a real dream we must strive for.

A dry spell

The oasis of thoughts is running dry

Unkind is the trajectory of time

Between dreaming and doing

Imagination has sketched a fine line.

Many lives, many masters

Whether or not you believe in science, this is one book that’s bound to give you food for thought.

Penned by a psychiatrist, Dr Brian Weiss, Many masters, many lives is what he claims to be the true story of one of his patients. Catherine, a young girl troubled by inexplicable phobias, seeks his help, and when typical psychiatric treatments don’t bare results, he resorts to the rarely used practice of hypnosis. What follows is plain bizarre. In her hypnotic state, Catherine appears to visit her past lives, reincarnations of herself in varied geographical locations and time periods. Often, Catherine reaches an in-between stage, where she’s dead but not reincarnated yet, and she communicates to the doctor the messages of highly evolved spirits (called the Masters), including personal details from his own life.

I know it sounds like the plot of some psychological thriller, and as I re-read it, even the highly predictable story-line of a horror Hindi movie. But that’s the beauty of it – what you believe is completely your choice. At one point, I passed it off as a self-help book in disguise, one that will make you feel more aware about life and why it throws what it throws at us.

What makes me think though, is why there are barely any conspiracy theories about what might have happened in Dr Weiss’ office. The book was first published in 1995. There are tapes which recorded the hypnosis sessions, there are psychiatrists who have reviewed the treatment, and if anything, Dr Weiss has abandoned his practice to teach fellow psychiatrists the art and benefits of hypnosis. It sure makes me wonder; if we are to buy that life and death are really the way the book defines them, it will undoubtedly put into perspective everything else we have believed thus far. It’s a matter of faith, yes, but the ideas the book puts forth have an uncanny similarity to Hindu ideologies. For instance, it affirms the entire cycle of life, karma, death and rebirth. I must confess that the book tempted me to abandon my recently acquired nihilistic stance, at least briefly.

If you have ever questioned life and the after-life, pick up a copy and read it. There can be no firm evidence for or against the book, because as google says of the topic, all evidence is anecdotal. It sure however, is an enticing case to brood upon.

Pen, paper & poetry

Poetry can truly transcend time and geography, and make you believe in the equivalent of a fairy tale for adults; a kind of serene, beautiful existence where words can smell, touch, smile and cry.

The Street: Octavio Paz

A long and silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
stepping on silent stones and dry leaves.
Someone behind me also stepping on stones, leaves:

if I slow down, he slows:
if I run, he runs. I turn: nobody.

Everything dark and doorless.
Turning and turning among these corners
which lead forever to the street
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me: nobody

[Original: La calle]

Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The Saddest Poem: Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

[Original: La Poesia]

Gen Y generations

Forget generations X and Y. They definitely can’t be seasoned by decades, particularly not gen Y. It is evidently split into micro-generations; Gen Y-ers could at best be clustered by 3 or 4 years.

Take the early 80s-born for instance. They loiter around social media, they’re mildly fascinated by facebook, they use skype as a ‘cheap’ means of communication, they google their recipes. But that doesn’t make them one of us. They’re not compulsively RSS-fed. They’re not facebook addicts, nor pro-multi-taskers. Their social lives aren’t dependent on google talk. They don’t get twitter. SMSing is not ingrained in their system. A blog is just another website. Forget functionality; their motivations, aspirations, values, opinions, all belong with gen X or are only incrementally different. Here’s a snapshot of us (not them) in the workplace.

I surfaced in 88, incase you’re speculating. I wonder what the 90s-offsprings would say to my ‘micro-generation’.

Given the pace at which our lives are evolving, we are probably not far from the point when a year will be sufficient to create a radical difference in lifestyles, a generation if you may. Generation clusters are accompanied by a certain sense of belonging, but frustration and miscommunication are by-products.

No one said technology could bridge the gap.

What will be, will be

We walk through life not knowing what would’ve been if we had taken the other path or made the other choice. And we find comfort in dismissing it as destiny.

Through time, destiny has become inseparable from religion, spiritualism and in the bigger picture, life. Objectively though, it seems to be yet another measure to give order to all the chaos in the world. It helps, the way the it helps to have hope and faith, to believe in something bigger than ourselves and our circumstances, to even surrender in the name of a bigger plan for our life. Chances are that those are the very elements that make our ‘destiny’.

Destiny is often intertwined with fate, and somewhere along the way, the two meet astrology. Astrologers claim to be able to predict our destiny, and sub-consciously, we are inclined to believe them. In fact, sunsigns, zodiacs and horoscopes have exerted more than their fair share of influence on people by becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.

I can’t say if it’s a factor of age or experience, but at some point, surrendering to destiny or fate or whatever it is we want to call it, seems like the right thing to do. As though something will hold our hands and make us walk the ‘right’ path. As though the wind will knock at the ‘right’ door on our behalf. As though we’ll open our eyes one morning, and there it will be, the ‘right’ life, fixed and ready to be lived.

Let’s get real. Let’s write our own stories.

Of this & that

This is not a comeback post.

Pledge: I have decided to stop blaming my work-life imbalance, fleeting weekends, social obligations, and deadened-by-work-thought flow for my persistent inactivity in the blogosphere. I hereby pledge to revive my blogging life.

Awards: This one is long due. Thanks to Aadil for awarding me The Lemonade Blog award, and to Valerine & Varun for the International Bloggers Community award. I hereby pass these awards to Thethoughtfultrain, Manchitra & Jayesh for their comforting presence in the blogosphere.

Corporate  woes: I dedicate this to all my fellow-mates in the corporate jungle. Cheers to survival!

Mini book review: Tin Fish, a book about an adolescent’s boarding school life, post the emergency period in India. It’s a walk down memory lane, a back-to-the-basics lesson in friendship, and a breezy read to momentarily transport you from the complexities of adulthood. (Author – Sudeep Chakravarty)

Advice: I have been aching to learn something new, something radically different. Any advice, besides a language, an instrument & a sport? Lately, I have also been fantasizing about freelance writing. Any tips?