XXX

I have been running away from it for quite some time now. I do not precisely recall when it started. Perhaps some 3-4 years ago. But I cannot say for sure. It is like having a nightmare of sorts where you always find yourself in the middle of things. It’s always impossible to tell when that nightmare started and what triggered it. But before I could realize, the haunting had already begun. And it was only the fear which mattered and not the causality.

During all these years, I was simply running away from it, hoping to outrun it someday. I was being foolish, I knew that, but it is only when we act foolish that we tend to believe in miracles. And surely it needed nothing less than a miracle.  But the truth was that it was outrunning me. Whenever I looked back, it was a tad bit closer to me. I never could really gather the courage to stop, to turn back, and to have a good look at it. I was too scared. By not looking at it, I wanted to convince my self that it was surreal, merely a shadow and nothing more. But it was me, who was in the dark.

What option did I have but running away? I had seen many souls go down to it. They had tears in their eyes and certainly not of happiness. When they were on the brink of embracing it, they broke down like castles made of sand. With a sudden stroke of time, all the aesthetics comes down crashing like a glass vessel shattering away against the hard emotionless floor. Like others, they wanted the time to halt. They wanted the greys not to take over the blacks. They wanted the euphoria to become their virtue for perpetuity. And then, when it arrived, it would smirk upon them mercilessly, like a butcher in an abattoir.  And eventually, that gigantic knife would put to rest all the desires.

I know many, who thought ale would aid. That it would lessen the pain and the suffering.  But for how long you think this masquerade would keep you content in your denial.  When you wake up to embrace the virgin lights of dawn, it would hit you even harder. You would be ambushed to confront it in your most vulnerable state. And then I am afraid, all the lemons in the world would not be enough for the hangover it will embark upon you.

After surviving for so long, I feel that it is now almost inevitable. There is no running from it now. There is no point of hiding in the closet, no point in locking the doors and no point in turning off the lights. The beast is finally here to bring me down. As I sit alone in my room, I can feel that it has arrived somewhere near. I can feel its heartbeat. I can sense those taps on the floor. Did I lock the door right, I pondered while I shivered. It was not the cold that made me so, it was the eminent moment of truth.

I looked away, to divert my attention, only to meet the cruel gaze of time. That ugly clock on the wall. Those mean hands were moving so fast. The longer one moving faster. The longer one approaching the smaller. Perhaps only seconds away. And then they became one. It was time. It was here. It was finally upon me. I had no option but to bow to it.

It, the fateful, the dreadful and the inevitable, thirtieth birthday.

I see you

Travelling on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link is some experience I tell you. Nothing less than a wonder ride on a yacht. And when you reach around the mid zone of your rendezvous with the sea, you can see what Mumbai has transformed into. It was dusk and the dying rays from our beloved Sun were painting the whole canvas red. The clouds wanted to stand out, have an existence of their own, they seemed to be covered with shades of saffron, as if jealous, as if trying to steal Sun's thunder.

Touching this spectacularly red canvass, were the tall building of the city skyline. They were so many of them, some of the size where you would think, is sky the limit anymore? And in that crowd of skyscrapers, my eyes suddenly fell on the moon. Her texture was different that day, as if nervous from the competition, as if feeling inferior among the picturesquely lit buildings and complaining that no one looked at her anymore.

I kept my eyes on her, trying to find hers. I wanted to tell her, Dear Moon, whatever we may create in our world, whatever others may find beautiful, you would always stand out to me, you eternal beauty, I see you. Now and always.

Batman Moment

It was 0559 hours and I was more than jubilant for having beaten my damn alarm. I hate the sound it makes and that is precisely why that sound exists. With a bit of triumphant smirk, I put off the alarm with my middle finger. I could see the mighty Brahmaputra from my bed lethargically drifting along covered with a blanket of mist, as if the river too needed an embrace in this cold.

With all the energy, I hopped on my bicycle en route the gym. The adrenaline was exponentially surging. The endorphin were triggering a new high. It was amidst these hormonal outbursts and among all the mean looking machines in the gym, I started the routine. And just when I started to swing my body backwards, I realized that I was too close to this iron pole. Too late. Boom.

I kind of got the black. It was all dark and all I could hear was the clink. And then I saw a shadow, a familiar one, Liam Neeson or shall I call him, Ras Al Ghul. And then those words, I swear, I did hear. "You never learned to mind your surroundings!"

Power Nudge

Imagine the behavior of a typical customer who checks into a hotel room booked for a considerably expensive amount and to justify that he simply wants to maximize his comfort He overuses all the utilities, puts on all the lights, switches on the AC even when it's pleasant and lets the TV run a random channel which he totally ignores.

While going out, he leaves everything as is. Why would he do the effort of switching everything off. There is no incentive. This customer behavior pushed the hotel industry to innovate a Nudge so that they don't have to tell their customers directly. And then came the Room Card-cum-Power Key solution. And the rest is history.

With increasing incomes, people stop caring about the need to save electricity. But just because you can pay for it, doesn't mean it's right to waste electricity. Hotels have devised a solution but what about private residences and government infrastructures. Why can't we have a similar solution there?

With the 24X7 power supply in our urban locale, perhaps we have been forgetting the still occurring long power cuts from rural areas. Perhaps we need to be shaken up to that. Perhaps we must ponder upon our moral obligations. Perhaps what we need is Power Nudge!

Liana

Breakups are difficult, you know. You suddenly feel like you have entered into a void. An endless dark pit where emotions are non-existent and you have all the space in the world for an eternal rendezvous with your desolation. Of course, there is this pseudo sense of freedom but sooner or later we realize that singularities have no meaning in our social dimension. We are incomplete without others and so are they.

Her name was Liana. And she was as wonderful as her name is. When the wind embraced her hair, I felt she was a meadow. When she smiled, I wanted to calibrate the word “beauty” from it. When she looked at me, everything else disappeared, or so I felt. She cared for me as if I was her child. And she weaved her world, her ambitions and her aspirations around mine. For the beauty she was, I was the beast. The worst part being, I didn’t even realize until it was too late. But the questions still haunt me, every single day, every single moment.

Since then, years have gone by and I have become a zombie of sorts. I move around places without knowing where am I heading. I have lost track of time, friends and kin. Sometimes I feel like those toy-figures whom we used to key and put on the floor and they moved around aimlessly clapping with a pretentious smile to cover up the blues. And today I seem to have reached an Art Gallery showcasing the works of this new young sensation.

Lately, I had started liking such art exhibitions. Not that I have the ability to interpret the work more than others do but I really like the quietness inside. We hardly see people absorbed into something like that. People keep staring at these paintings for hours looking to create some causal analysis. These art works are like puzzles and artist, the riddler.

This one painting, at the farthest corner, was unusually dreary. And perhaps that’s why there was no one in front of it. Just the way I like it. I sat on the bench for a date with this wonderfully weird painting. The first impression that I got from it was that it was extremely saddening and difficult to the eye. It had the power of ripping a happy-go-lucky person apart into pieces so much so that he would happily drown in the seas of melancholy.

Apparently the only thing that gets a sad person to think is something which he perceives as even more sad than his own state of mind. And that is what got me going. It started bothering me that I could not understand the dilemmas of this girl in the painting. She was crying her heart out but was hiding her face from these shadows. Perhaps she was keeping all the pain with her. May be she opened up and no one understood her pain. But these shadows were certainly bothering her. These shadows were surrounding her from everywhere as if she was held hostage in that corner. The shadows snatched her away from brightness and pushed her into that dark oblivion.

The bench was not comfortable anymore. I had to go closer to the painting.  The closer I went, the more connection I felt. Her eyes drew me even close, so much so that the only thing I could see now was her eyes. And then suddenly, I felt, as if the painting had pulled me in. And then I was playing the game of shadows. I saw myself doing what the shadows were doing to the girl. It did not feel unreal. It felt like a déjà-vu.

After few minutes, when I resumed my senses, I was still sitting on the bench. But now I knew what I had seen. There was this sudden rush of current in my body. I ran to the other paintings. I had seen that smile somewhere. I had seen that meadow somewhere. I had seen those tears somewhere. Suddenly there was some commotion at the gates. The artist is here, said the voices.

I don’t know what made me go back to that farthest painting. And when I looked at it, there were no shadows this time. It was me torturing that girl to stay back in those shackles. It was me butchering her wings and killing her flight. It was me who made her a slave, an entertainment and a toy. I leaned further towards the painting where lay the initials of the artist still pretending ignorance on my part. And there was it, scribbled in italics, “Liana”.

The exhibition now felt like a time machine taking me through the horrors of my own past. How foolish was I to not see it then. If only had I cared a bit more for her words. Tears came out of me like a fountain. The heart was pumping like never before. I ran towards the gates. She was surrounded by people. I looked at her one last time. She turned towards me, her hair moving away, like a meadow. For the beauty she was, I was that beast. Oh, did I tell you before, she liked to paint. 

But I have this

Sonitpur is a large district and marks a long fence with the foothills of Arunachal. On one of the recent inspection tour for IAY, I randomly selected a beneficiary whose house happened to be deep into those woods. Of course there were no roads to that place and as we stopped our vehicles alongside the highway, we could see the lush green and young mountains calling for us.

We started the short trek and within no time were surrounded by little streams moving in symphony creating their own concerts. The little rocks shinned brilliantly on the sidelines almost as if they were sentinels wearing the gold cloaks. And there we were, we could see the house, that she had build with pride, surrounded with serpentine streams and watched over by the guarding mountains hiding behind the mist.

When I asked her, why build so far away from us rest, she smiled. Then she glanced over the picturesque surroundings as if to make her point. I followed her glance.. And that did put an end to the doubtful air of desolation and melancholy that I perceived. Perhaps not sure that I have understood her visual argument, she put it bluntly in words, "Yes, no mundane benefits here. But, I have this!" And with those words, the mountains seemed more majestic, the streams more whimsical and the sounds more musical.

The Olympic Lane

After a long and tiring day at work, I felt that I needed to get high. And there is only one thing that gives me that, the Runner's High. Within seconds, all suited up with my running shoes and powered by Eminem numbers, I hit the road. After some time, I was sprinting on this broad lane opposite the playground which apparently turns into this open air badminton arena during this hour.

All along the road, youngsters had created there own courts with their bikes as nets and their slippers forming the boundaries. It is not that for the first time I had seen people playing alongside the roads. But they were all so damn good. So much so that I stopped and watched them play. They had the temperament, the stamina, the technique and everything you can imagine for a professional player.

Meanwhile, this one kid, with super skills and uncanny energy reserves had everyone's attention. As he took a jump and positioned himself in the air, I bet we all skipped a heartbeat. A perfect smash which bulleted its way into the road. If only we could put all these youngsters into a proper court, I wondered. But unlike me the kid seemed unfazed with the makeshift setting and shouted with ecstasy as he won the point.

I wish one day he finds his way to the top of the sport. I wish they all do. Meanwhile, I sat there for another thriller of a match, under those bright streetlights, across the cozy pavement and amidst this unbelievable talent, on the Olympic Lane, or so it felt.

That Restart Button

Finally the cold had arrived to Guwahati, just couple of days before new year's eve. And the dusk, never had been, so enlightening as today. The sun was kissing the horizon, for one last time, this year. The cold breeze coming down from the hillocks was making the trees move in symphony. "So, what's your resolution", I asked this stranger I had just befriended.

"To start afresh, you know. All year long we plan things and we endure. We win some and loose some. But mostly we get disheartened with what we could not do overlooking what we achieved. We give in too soon. May be our ways had been wrong. May be we must endure more.

It's like when something goes wrong with our machines, we engineers hit that restart button first and to our surprise most of the problems are resolved. I do the same with my life. Hit restart, endure some more, explore some more and then strike with even more tenacity!"

And with those words, it was suddenly all quite, the ambience, and my anxiety for a resolution, both. And the dusk, never had been, so enlightening as today. Happy New Year, you all.