In search of words

Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.

I didn’t know until yesterday that it was John Lennon who wrote that. Yesterday, I found it on a book cover and the same day on a website, and today it was mentioned in a movie. It can’t be more true and ironic (not because a “legendary-hippie” wrote that). Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. You can’t blame it and you can’t completely accept it. Part of it happens with no resemble to the other part which you are so desperately trying to give a shape. Your decisions are half your chances and labored indifference gets you through almost everything.

Now as if that wasn’t enough, most of us (at least I am sure of me), don’t know what we want to do with our lives. And lately I have been so bad that I can’t even pretend to imagine what I really want to do. It’s painful. It’s painful not because I don’t know what to do, but more because I ain’t anywhere near to begin my search for what is it that I want to do. What is it that will set me free for once and forever.

I think, as a kid I was more of a person than I am right now. Well, actually that’s true for all us. But when I started out understanding this world, through books, people, music and movies, and a little of traveling, the more I knew the more I understood that though all this is essential, nothing is as important as having a clear mind and a serene peace which is untouched by absolutely anything around. But I also realized that I will be denied these two things. I knew in my deepest fear that I would have to lose both of them in order to wander and cope up with the world around. Today I am so lost that most of the times I even forget the purpose with which I started out this journey to nowhere from nowhere.

I know you will find it weird and me crazy. But today when I saw this movie, Frankenstein, which is a classic fiction about this scientist who in order to defy nature and push the boundaries of science puts life back into a dead body and manufactures a creature, who because he is denied of emotions and love turns into a monster killing innocent people to get back to his creator. I felt like I am that monster which I, myself created long back. The only difference was that it was less because of curiosity and more because of fear and to get away.

Honestly, today I don’t like myself. Which was fine, I have hated myself before too. But back then I use to smile about it as I was sure of the flight of my imagination and the innocence of my thoughts which always elevated me. Now I can barely walk trying to imagine something beautiful. My thoughts have become pieces of a puzzle that a lazy kid never wants to put together and so the picture is always incomplete.

Guess I have succeeded. I have lost myself and everything that I believed in. Actually I have gone way ahead of that. There is no hope in me but a faint breeze from the past.

I don’t know what lies ahead. Will I go down deeper this way or maybe I will stumble on something and the world around me will change. No I am not hoping for a miracle or waiting for things to happen. I am looking for something as small as;

‘A cold night

And it’s raining outside.

I am standing at the window

With a cup of coffee,

And beautiful thought in my mind, which will keep me warm and up all night.’

Do you really think that’s too much to ask for?

kyun khoye khoye...

Swanand Kirkire... undoubtedly the most fascinating and interesting artist around to emerge recently. Once again he has managed to sweep me off the floor (after Bawara Mann) with the title song that he has penned and sung for Sudhir Mishra's 'Khoya Khoya Chaand'.

Where was he all this while...?!!!

...kyon apne aap se khafa khafa
zara zara sa naraaz hai yeh dil
yeh manzile bhi khud hi tey kare
yeh faasle bhi khud hi tey kare
kyon to raaston mein phir seham seham
sambhal sambhal ke chalta hai yeh dil
kyon khoye khoye chand ki firaak mein
talaash mein udaas hai dil...


his poetries are about life... passion for life... and there is always this fleeting presence of a self within which is yet untouched by everything around... in the above extract of the song... there are so many contradictions... and then there is the obvious... the heart chooses its own ways and then decides its own distances... and even then it walks cautiously on these roads which it chose... (how true!!!)

I can keep writing about the song. Instead just listen to it a few thousand times...

zindagi sawaalon ke jawaab dhundne chali
jawaab (a half laugh pause) mein sawaalon ki ek lambi si ladi mili
sawaal hi sawaal hai soojhti nahi gali
ki aaj haath thaam lo ek haath ki kami khali
jee mein aata hai murda sitaare noch lun
idhar bhi noch lun udhar bhi noch lun
ek do ka zikar kya main saare noch lun
main saare noch lun
kyon tu aaj itna vehashi hai
mizaaj mein majaaz hai aye gham-e-dil...

Losing faith & gaining a belief

Given my past, my up-bringing and the way I have lived so far, I wouldn’t say that I have indulged in any kind of faith or harbored an enduring fidelity towards God or for that matter even a person or a thing. I believe in God through my mother, or rather more honestly and as I have come to see, her need to believe in Him.

So there was always this unspoken understanding with God that even though I don’t understand him and completely believe in him I will come to him if I need him. I will never blame him for not answering my prayers, as long I get to make them. It was as if the process was more important than the end result. Because I knew that if there exists a God, I would have to truly believe in him and that there was no way I could fake it. So the only way was to be honest about my doubts and so be sure as to what I expect from him. So he became the rock I could write on and the one which holds me steady.

Now I have learned that faith comes with learning and partly understanding what you can’t learn. But then if you hold steady, you might learn a little more of that too and thus proceed further on the journey towards your own understanding of faith. However, learning solely cannot and will not complete the understanding of Faith.

Because the very nature of Faith is incomplete, it needs that vacuum, where your beliefs are questioned and your doubts are put to test. It’s the union of your ‘understanding of reason’ and ‘the fealty of your will to overcome what you cannot understand’. So if you don’t acknowledge the importance of reason, your faith is one legged and if you believe that only reason alone will bring you to Faith, your Faith is colour-blind.

But to be honest, I am not looking for Faith, not as yet or anytime soon. I just need a belief that brings me one step closer to my Faith and still keeps me one step away. That way I get to question everything and still believe in miracles.