Idyllic Thoughts

Yesterday I went to a temple with mom. It was night and the temple was crowded. I just stood outside waiting for mom to come back and thought of reasons why I was not inside like others. Well, why should I go to a temple? The most obvious and common reason was to pray to god so that He will feel happy and grant me my wishes. Another reason is to feel an inner peace. Yet another reason is fear. Well, I think I can refute all three: I don't think just by my praying to Him and offering money and things, He will grant my wishes because He is not a grant-vending machine like a coca-cola vending one. And He hasn't done so yet though I managed to pray sometimes, with conviction and devotion. So that's out. About inner peace. I haven't found it anywhere except within me by my own effort. And I do go to temple for that reason. But not a crowded one, more preferably an empty one. Fear is something I haven't been able to muster up with regard to god till now. I don't fe...

I will never forget May 2010. In a span of a week, I lost three persons close to my heart one after the other. When something becomes too much to bear, you'll just give up fighting and learn to bear it with a smile. And now, I have reached a point where I don't feel anything, neither good nor bad. But I am calm and I will remain so. It's the calm after the storm, it's more peaceful and empty.

One day last year, I had spent a whole day in silence. That was the calmest day in my life. Because I'm by nature very talkative and never stop chattering my way off. But that day I listened to others, thought about what others said and talked to myself. It helped me to listen to what I feel and talk, it helped me to listen to me, the one person who I never listened. Today I saw a Buddha statue, silent and calm. It was beautiful. I felt like going and sitting there for eons watching Buddha smile. Wonder why he looks so happy. Did he really live happily after leaving the persons he loved, the familiar surroundings of his home, the security of his country and position? May be he had too much of all those and that's why he chose to leave them all. Familiarity breeds contempt, right? We always crave for what we do not have. May be that's what he did. I wish I could meet him for chat over a hot cup of tea at a place where there would not be any interruptions to what he would say...

Have you noticed that you always come to a full circle -- in life, love and everything else? I really don't know even after all these years where I am going, why or what I am going to do once I reach there. I have met so many people -- loved some, liked some and lost some to that black hole called time. My one consolation is that one day I too will be lost in the same black hole and once there, will get an opportunity to meet those lost ones again. When I wake up and go for a long bus ride early in the morning with the young sun smiling & winking at me, I fall in love with life all over again. I guess that is something no one can take away from me, not even time.

In a few months, I learnt something very interesting. I learnt that friendship is not constant, but relative; relative in the sense it changes according to the situation, emotions and the decisions taken. I believed, like all sanguine youth, that friendship, like love, is forever and unchanging. Well, it seems on the path to maturity, you tend to step on a few stones thinking they are stepping stones and inevitably fall. It doesn't matter if you are hurt, it just matters that you misjudged. Coming to maturity, I think I have failed to understand it, let alone gain it. Does maturity mean accepting something they do not feel, as true? Let me be clearer with a simple example. When you love someone deeply, can leaving that person, knowing that its very difficult, be maturity? My question is, is accepting practicality a sign of maturity? What about accepting what you truly feel, what is nearer to your heart?

Today I re-read all my blog entries. In a way, slipped down the memory lane. And smiled, frowned and felt embarrassed at some of the entries; even wondered if I had managed to write some words in them. Then realised I have changed in a year; changed so much that I am unrecognisable. In fact, in one of the entries, I had written "I know without emotions there is no life, but they should be part of life, not the whole life. If they encircle us fully, then we can not perceive anything else, good or bad." And I am encircled, more precisely, engulfed in those emotions that my once-clear eyes have turned hazy. Hope to clear it soon.

I'm just dying to go to a place where there are (I won't say 'no people' because I want people) people who can be natural in their feelings towards me, who can live around me without trying too hard to entertain me, who can laugh with me without the plasticness, who can just let me be. I want to wash off my intellectual mud and be a nothing, particularly not a thinking person. I want to stop thinking completely and fade into obscureness. That nothingness is so alluring, it attracts me like a fastidious ant to a sticky sugar syrup. I want that void to fill within me like a black hole. Have you ever lain on a high rock looking up at the sky, you would get lost in an empty new world of your own, unaware of everything that goes around you. I want that feeling again in me.