Into December . . .

well well well. its almost eleven days into december and few days for a brand new year to start. a beginning of new things, one assumes and ardently hopes. hope is a good thing. it keeps one alive with expectancy, it creates a pregnant desire for change and above all believes in the power of things that 'might' come. even yours truly is a victim of hope. there are many four letter words that come to my mind but hope always stands out. maybe the situation forces one to have nothing else but hope. it is good to hope and be hoping: note the semantic difference. one is a noun and the other is a verb, i presume! i never liked grammar. the poem, 'a grammarian's funeral' by robert browing, lighted my senses as the title brought a hope of death: death of grammar. funny, yes but sure. well, meanderings and ramblings have a pattern - they don't follow the norm, they follow the stream of consciousness. the term brings virginia woolf to one's mind.

the rambling goes on and so does hope and ofcourse december and another year of ramblings!

the railway gate operator

another random conversation. this time the person was the one who operates the railway gate in the meenambakkam gate. often one sees them and pass by with a smile or a nod but never really talk to them. their personality is so subsumed by the railway lines and the gate that they ofter seem part of the railway landscape. last night while waiting for the railway gate to open, i struck a very casual conversation with the gate operator. he along with another man were doing the night shift which starts by 9 at night and ends by 7 in the morning. he tells me that he has been doing this for the past 25 years. in the given day and time when one shifts jobs as a matter of routine and satisfaction quotient, this man seemed happy and content doing the same job for 25 years!! (reminds me of a song which also has the number 25. for 25 years living next door to alice) well, he seemed proud of the job he was doing. he patiently explained as to how there were two levers and both have to be used simultaneously otherwise it will lead to a confusion of signals and the trains cannot move. it almost seemed that he and his colleague were the reason for the trains to move, stop and proceed without any hassle. the man (i am very apologetic here as i did not ask his name but then his identification lay more with the trains, the railway gates than his name). he told me that he will be retiring next year and that he has only six more months to go. i innocently asked him, 'what will you do after that,' for which he replied, 'i have done enough, what more will i do?' i felt rather sheepish asking that question to him. the small room that is provided for the two people is quite anything but a room and there is a mosquito coil emanating fumes through and through choking one's breath. i asked the man whether they knew all about the trains and their timings to which pat came the reply, 'no' as the trains can be delayed or cancelled so one cannot say the exact time (i would have used this opportunity to proudly exhibit my total knowledge about all the trains passing but he chose not to - a lesson learnt).

well, that was one memorable tete a tete with a person of the railway landscape. connecting with him that night made me humbler in many ways. contentment, joy and a very no nonsense attitude is something quite hard to find these days where 'my space,' 'my individuality' rules the order of the day.

Treading on to December and the last month of 2008

Sitting few hours away from the next month, I wonder at the passing November. I must say that the month did not take very kindly to me. Or is it the other way round? Did I not take November in the right spirit . . . Well, I can ruminate and introspect. Reading the Big B's blog was truly connecting to him in several spheres. He may be the ruling man in Bollywood but his blog connects one to the man - the real man who is great, vulnerable, sad, angry, tired, sleepy, grumpy and many other things. I resisted writing comments on his blog, maybe I wanted to be a secret reader of his everyday travails. It unfolded like a page of the book of his life. He is like any of us and is humble enough to show it and bare it all. My admiration for him has moved in degrees. Nice and neat blog. Well, coming back to a review of the passing November, all I can see is that I am not what I had assumed I was. When bared of high talk and emotional strappings, I was a vulnerable woman standing and waiting for something nice to happen. Well, that is me and was. maybe at this instant I am changing and growing. November will be etched (I say this as of now) in my mind or maybe in later years it will become a faint and faded page of history that exists but does not seem as alluring. History interests me now but earlier it did not. maybe things might change like that. Sweet November you are passing by . . . I cannot thank you less for you unfolded many things that were unnerving and moving at the same time - The floods in Chennai, The Mumbai episode and certain aspects that involved yours truly. I shall wait to enter december with hope and grit for that will lead me on the new year with promising horizons - Sometimes unknown melodies do seem sweeter than heard ones (Thanks to Mr. Keats for this).

Reader, never lose hope. Always keep sight of joy for sometimes it likes playing hide-and-seek.

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.

How Cannot I not Nag . . .

Well, sometimes the mind works so fast and makes one beserk that one needs to do something. Well, this contradicts the path of meditation and being calm, but sometimes I choose not to be calm and let my impulses drown me. Then I realise, "Was that me?" Then I hit myself - this is me under an absolute adverse situation. Well, I surprise myself at times and hope that the surprise element does not shock someone else as someone else's perception of me. After the mind works on me and forces restlessness on me, I sit by and wonder, "Is this the done thing?". Well, the saner me says "NO" but the emotional me says "Why not, what else then?" This is what precisely Eckhart Tolle tells one not to do. But did he have any idea as to how difficult its going to be once a situation arises. I did enjoy reading Tolle but in reality it was difficult to follow him. Maybe one should resort to the adage, "Practise maketh a man perfect."
Striving to seek and not to yield!!

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