You will always be the one I'm thinking about when somebody asks me who I'm thinking about . . .

You will always be the one I'm thinking about when somebody asks me who I'm thinking about . . .

Merrit Malloy

Imperfections

(from The People Who Didn't Say Goodbye)

Why is it that you wanted me more on

the night I was leaving

than you ever wanted me

before?

Does pain bring people

closer together than

pleasure?

Are we more afraid of

living together than of

dying alone

Does distance unite people more deeply

than familiarity?

It is as though our hunger

is to be hungry and our real need is

to be missed

It's no accident that the songs

that sell the most

are sad 

One Of The First Things We Have To Learn

No matter how long she held on

to those people she lost

No matter how hard she tried

to get them back

Not one of them ever

returned to her

We must be careful

not to relinquish our future

to people who won't

be there

One of the first things

we have to let go of

is not being able to

let go of

anybody

I Won't Call Him

Knowing what you need

Is more than knowing what you want.

It's a kind of clear-eyed wisdom

To see what is worthless

Its touching on someone

Who you know won't turn away.

It's reaching for something

That's really worth the climb.

And it's learning to let go

When it isn't.

Knowing what you need

Is more than knowing what makes you feel good right now.

It's knowing that the same thing

Will make you feel good again.

I won't call him.

Something You Can Count On

I want to tell you

in a few words

what I could not tell you

in too many

I want you to know

that it will be hard

to live without you

again

You will always be the one

I'm thinking about

when somebody asks me

who I'm thinking

about

Song of the uterus

Glorious bloody tunes
when the first bleeding occurs at puberty.

Lusty glorious tunes
when the hymen is ruptured.

The first year of the marriage
An expectant tune of a forthcoming baby

But the baby never came
But the baby never came

Thus begins the scan room chronicles
Pricking, prodding and scanning.

Scanning, pricking and prodding!
HSG - oh no! by God, it's traumatic.

Surgical process
Pricking, prodding and scanning.

The baby might come
The baby might come

The biological clock is ticking - they say
God will have his plans - some say!

I did not sign up for this - I say!
The uterus sings its song thus.

Baring it all

Yesterday I sat up and read five parts of intimate chronicles of a blogger whose blog I follow intermittently. As she bared her soul and life, I was pulled into the vortex of her life. She is a brilliant writer and I couldn't but help feel immense pain reading what she had written. For a long time, the contents of her posts continued to colour my thinking and I wept quite freely for her, for the world, for pain, for everything that seemed unfair. You know how it is when you start crying. You remember every single thing that made you cry and the tears become copious almost as if you're crying for everything that has passed and everything that is to come. One question that kept arising as I was crying was, "Why?" I know that the question seems quite absurd and meaningless but still my heart pained for that promising young woman who is an epitome of everything postmodern and intelligent.

An afterthought that niggled me after the entire reading-the-posts-and-crying was, "How did she bare it all?" "How on earth did she have the courage to record her life in a public domain?" Perhaps she felt the aching need to record her experience as a repository. Her words still ring in my head and if I start to think about her powerful narrative, I would start pouring bucketful of tears. I refrain to think that the pain she wrote about is something real and visceral, not a story of some distant character with whom one can share a dispassionate relationship that is removed from reality; A pain that one can read about and forget knowing that it is the fanciful creative process of someone who is a story-teller. It is another thing that people do shed tears for fictional characters. Even I do. I did it quite occasionally then and very frequently now. I guess as you grow older you are prone to cry a lot. I recollect an incident from my research days. When I was living with transgenders for purpose of my research, I once accompanied them (Pandiammal, Mahalakshmi and Shailaja) to a funeral where they were called to mourn professionally. Professional mourning was one of their means of earning money. The way Pandiammal cried and beat her chest completely baffled me. After the entire ceremony was over, I asked her, "How did you cry so well?" To which she replied, "When I cry, I think of all that we have undergone . . . I think of my mother . . . my family . . . my village and my home. By becoming a transgender, I have lost everything - my name, my family . . . That's what makes me cry like this." True that. When we cry, we don't cry for something that just happened, we have a cluster of incidents that come to our mind. We don't cry for that particular character in the film, we cry for someone whom we know in the same situation, we cry for us remembering ourselves in that same situation. Tears are projections of our collective memories.

When I read that blogger's long rendering of her life and health, I cried for everyone who suffered ill health, for the talents that remain dormant because of the illness, of the dreams that have to be truncated, of the dependence that causes pain to the free-spirit and most of all I also cried because I knew many like her. I felt helpless that I couldn't do anything to ease her pain.

I didn't comment on any of her posts. What could I have possibly written, "Get well soon" or "I'll pray for you" or "I wish that a miracle happens."

She is a stranger to me but pain isn't strange. Any human capable of compassion and empathy can feel pain and that is what I felt and cried for.

I really wish that her ailments leave her and that she continues in her path of life renewed and rejenuvated and write sassy stuff without any pain.

Image 1: Internet
Image 2: Internet

An argument that makes me cringe

Some arguments make you smile. Some make you see sense. Some arguments seem pointless. But some make you cringe, not in fear but in irritation and anger.

When you speak about your problem to an individual, pat comes the reply: Just think of people who undergo more sufferings than you. You are much better off.

The above given argument puts me off and saddens me further. First, instead of just listening to what I am presently undergoing, the person decides to provide a comparison. Second, I firmly believe that suffering cannot be measured. Each one has his/her own cup to bear and that cannot be seen with the backdrop of another's pain.

I have come across this kind of argument many times in the span of life I have lived. And the people who bring up this argument belong to various age-groups, social-standing and positions. Why should one's pain always be compared to someone else's?

Now complaining is not similar to pain but many times people confuse the two. There is even a famous proverb which says: "I complained I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet." Now this saying is not about pain, it is about a state which has no contentment but many use this wise saying when they see a person in pain.

I think all of us experience pain in varying measures and each one has his/her unique way of handling the same. But using X's pain and comforting oneself saying: "X is suffering more than me so my pain is nothing" is a foolish way of looking at pain.

I am sure this argument has been thrown at you while you crossed a difficult path. What do you think of this argument on pain and suffering. What arguments seem pointless to you?

Image courtesy: Internet

Layers and folds

Analysing
Scrutinising
Reading between lines

The common things that most women do so well. Certain traits are acquired, certain cultivated but there are those eternal ones which one is born with. Let us take the emotion of feeling pain. Even when I utter the word 'pain,' I can think of atleast three references to what caused me pain. Effortlessly it flows. No initiation. No forcing. It just flows. And how . . .

I remember whenever I am so pained that I start crying, I cry not only for the present pain but for all the pains that have passed by me. And that happens in chronological order. That's magic. How can one be coherent in pain? Well, it happens.

After the order, comes the detail. I think no one else can be a sucker for details as me. Gradually the scene unfolds (of the past pains). The dialogues. The exact words. The pain that was there then. The days of wallowing in self-pity. The end which strengthened and made me spur on.

The place and the time: Well, I tend to take it a bit further and think of the songs that reminded me of that pain.

This does not happen when I am happy. Happiness captures only the present moment. No flashbacks. No details. Probably that is why happiness is lovely to be in as it completely wraps up your senses to the present. And that's why I like to be happy happy. Sometimes one forgets that and raises tragedy to greater heights calling it the high point of emotion. Nah.

Let me leave you with a poem by Hopkins. It talks of pain.

'No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief.'

~ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-

ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small

Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,

Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

Poem courtesy: Internet

State of Mind

Sometimes when words fail to describe the meanderings of the mind, I thought I would borrow them. After all words are words and if someone has already described it the way I want, let me save my thinking power. So I let the lyrics explain. The lines that kept resonating in my mind were the lyrics of Paul Simon's and Art Garfunkel's song "The Sounds of Silence" written by Paul Simon in 1964. I thought the lyrics would suffice . . .

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence 

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turn my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence 

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence 

Loving unconditionally . . .

These last few days left me wondering about unconditional love. What is unconditional love? Does something like unconditional love exist between two mortal individuals? Love and pain are synonymns, someone told me but is it something true? Love for me always is a process of pain and more pain. Losing oneself in pain and then trying to gather those parts lost is a very very slow and doubtful process. Wonder why I use the word 'doubtful' - because one is not very sure of anything. Hope is a lovely word when one is in this context but isn't hope the other side of fear? In that is the case I shall still hope against hope forgetting the fear part completely. I am so very thankful that I have a faith where I can dislodge my mind's trappings and sojourn. I am thankful that the faith helps me in every step I take and assures me that 'All shall be well.' I am weak but yet I am made strong by the hour by the pain. When I wonder about the unconditional aspect of love, I know it exists but I am yet to see something of that sort in a mortal soul. One may think of Mother Teresa and St. Francis of Assisi - they are a class apart in spite of their own frailties, they managed something that I cannot.

I like to quote something from another blog:

“In all persons, all creatures, the Self is the innermost essence. And it is identical with Brahman: our real Self is not different from the ultimate Reality called God.”

If this be the case, then it should not be difficult for unconditional love.

I would like to give unconditional love with the condition that I would also like to receive unconditional love but then . . .

Wondering about the nuances and intricacies of the mind . . .

Today while having a telephonic conversation with a friend made me wonder and ponder on various aspects of the mind. Well, the friend told me about a bizarre practice in Jharkand. In one of the villages, as a sacrifice, a man is tied to a cross and how - his body is held by a hook and hung on a cross. The incident sounds quite bizarre in this given day and age but to imagine that these kinds of self mutilation as a sacrifice still takes place and people doing it are many in the tribal belts of India and other parts of the world. Well, the reason for this blog is not to discuss about the sacrifice itself but the thoughts going on in the mind of the person who is subject to these rituals and practices. What would have been going on in his mind while the hook was pinned to his back. Would the pain have numbed the thoughts to the act or would he be happy to give himself as a sacrifice with the ardent hope of a better future for him as well as the community.

Parallel to this, I would also like to think of a similar incident two and a half thousand years ago. Well, what would have Jesus thought while he was being crucified. That he was guiltless and without any blemish would have crossed his mind but then he also had the responsibility of carrying the sins of the world, as the Bible tells us. But he was a man and as a man, he would have had thoughts of agony, pain and sorrow. What would have been the thoughts and emotions of the two thieves who were crucified by his side. The Bible tells us that the three had a sort of a conversation and that one thief was also convinced of his guilty life and accepted Jesus.

Pain, sorrow and agony have always been part of the human race but to alleviate that there is hope, love and joy. That is the key to our marching forward.

What prompts those tears . . .

Many a times sitting in the train, i have seen people quietly let down tears simultaneously while talking over the mobile phones. i wonder, who is that at the other end, who makes those worthy tears fall without even realising that they are being a reason for someone to shed precious tears. The tears that fall from the eyes are filled with many stories and memories. My mother while recounting a simple incident from her childhood, sheds tears and the tears seem to be shed effortlessly almost saying that they are interwined with the story being narrated. The tears that some shed while watching an emotional movie also seem to say that. The tears that flow while a particular scene is enacted is almost from a memory that mingles itself with the enactment that prods the tears to fall. i have also witnessed people standing in front of their deities and shedding copious tears as naturally as praying. The tears seem to evoke the same passion as a prayer and many a times they seem to have a cathartic effect on the person. Some songs evoke that response in me. i cry when some lines of a song are rendered but at the same time I am quite unable to actually communicate the reason for the tears. Joy in abundance, a joy that overwhelms us also seem to surface as tears and oft times i have wished for the tears never to cease from pouring forth. Reading the bible sometimes makes the tears flow profusely, sometimes threatening never to stop. Love, joy, pain and a myriad of emotions cause those tears to fall impromtu, which seem as natural as the act of smiling or blinking. Recently, a passionately written email made me cry. The reason for the tears was not the mail but memories and stories which surfaced as the result of the mail. Tears always have memories, stories with a pinch of salt (literally!!)

Why do I not smoke but write and talk . . .

a quality that i am very proud of! why do i not smoke but write and talk? let me make myself clear that i am not against smokers or smoking. maybe i have some health concerns with being an active as well as a passive smoker but absolutely nothing with the quality of smoking. i am sure about that, you see. well, that is why i prefer to talk and write. talking with people, writing long hand written letters, tapping away mails on my computer and off late writing these blog entries. i frankly do not know who is following my blog, i do not even know whether anyone is remotely interested in reading my meanderings and ramblings but still i write. i write for me, myself. like hamlet who said, "let me and my bosom debate a while." this quality of hamlet struck a chord with me during those days and still is struck to the being, that is me. well, that is why i precisely write - to allow a debate with me and my mind, heart or whatever. the 'high' that one gets from smoking and drinking and see it as a way to lift oneself from whatever situation (maybe they genuinely feel it that way), i do with writing to people and of course talking to people. for a long time, i did not talk, the way i am talking vociferously now. i kept myself from talking and sharing but now i talk and talk and meander and coax people to follow me, my thought processes, my feelings and my pains. by talking i share and force my inner dialogues to hit the outer realm, i.e. my mouth. when i talk, i get responses, maybe they are responses that don't make me comfortable, maybe they are responses that scare me, maybe they are responses that soothen me BUT i get responses nevertheless. what say, reader? smoking and drinking can be a social affair or an individual one but there are side effects like cancer (i cannot think of anything more) but talking and writing, do they have any side effects? maybe they do, of a more deeper kind. whatever the case, they are not as painful as the insides being slowly eroded. and talking and writing is an addiction worth flaunting. that is why i write and talk instead of smoking.

Allowing pain to wash over and drown you

Pain is always seen by one as something negative which causes a llot of heartache, loneliness and a low feeling. It is definitely true that pain does cause all the above given sentiments and in addition to that there are also other things that pain causes. It causes a cathartic therapy within one's being. Pain is always seen in a negative light but little do we realise that the same pain which causes so many ebbings of neagativity makes us something hard to break. it is therefore good for pain to envelope us, drown us and submerge us. We often get restless, cause ourselves misery and welcome sorrows with arms open wide little realising that all that we need to do is wait for the pain to get inside of us, break us and thereby shake us out of our comfort zonez. Now comfort zones are something very personal and subjective and every one of us possess atleast one such comfort zone. That is the point. We need to destroy one comfort zone and get out of it knowing fully well that we can come out of our comfort zone but alas! we form another comfort zone. Now what if that pain becomes our comfort zone. Well, it is the best comfort zone ever as pain subsumes us in sorrow, there is an internal cleansing going on. A washing machine effect that cleans, wrings and finally dries. The end result need not be written down to be found out. Experience pain and let me know the results.

Wecome pain, welcome loneliness for in that you can find out your self.

http://www.ijourney.org/audio.php?op=play&tid=588