Category: Notes

Answer.

Posted on by Nirmal

“What are you looking for?” asked Nature. The disillusioned Dream staring into the oblivion uttered a senseless “Hope!”.

“Are you hoping to dream or dreaming of Hope?”, said Nature like it was playing a game. Dream was out of words, or more like tired of uttering them, was looking for a mono syllable word to answer her. Such a nurturing being Nature is, couldn’t resist to bother him more. “Tell me about this Hope”. Dream sensed the smile trying to creep into his lips like a crab sneaking out after the wave. Hiding it, “She gives you hope, a sense, a direction, a dwindling beam in the dense dark forest. Might be even momentary but shows signs of purpose, where there is none. Even sometimes misleading, you can never distrust her”.

“So why do you miss her, do you lack direction or purpose?”

“I don’t miss her. You can’t, no one can. She’s the warmth of life, lying in the living tissue, breathing life into your soul. If you miss her you might be dead, dead inside. At least I don’t miss her, yet.”

Dream was unnerved. It went on to ask nature. “Have you ever wondered what is your purpose?”

“Sure, keep doing what I do, as long as I want to”

“But how do you know that you want to, and what if you don’t want it anymore? Do you even realise it?”

“You have too many questions that no one has answers to.”

“If not for answers, what are questions for?”

But slowly Dream began to understand, that all it had was questions. It was not as much as Curiosity had, but it was too much for anyone to bear. Also it sensed why it missed and looking for hope. Dream spoke to the interested Nature.

“I’m not looking for answers, I’m just looking for directions. For it is not my purpose to find answers. I’m the purpose for which the answers need to be found.”

It went on. “I’m not the key, I’m barely the lock. I’m not even what the door guards, but just the perception of what lies behind those doors. But if not for hope, I’ll be just an empty black void before even the door is unlocked”

Purpose.

Posted on by Nirmal

Dream decided to take a stroll around the park somewhere no one would find him. He didn’t expect it to be too dark at that time. He didn’t consult with time, it was all of a sudden decision. He looked around to find darkness, may be request to leave him alone. Not that he was alone, he was already surrounded by nature, but she would understand his thoughts, its only natural. After a moment of searching he realised he was already surrounded by him. Politely he did ask, but all he could hear was laughter. Dream felt like he was being bullied again. But nature whispered to him, that it wasn’t Darkness he was talking to. She explained, it’s not dark because of Darkness but the absence of Light. The problem was not that Dream needed light but was too get rid of Darkness. Since he was already out of the picture, he wondered who would that be laughing at him. It is Eternity, whispered nature. Dream was pissed at first, later came the realisation as usual. It decided to post the question that was bothering him to the wisest being, the all eternal Eternity. “Dear Eternity, the wisest of us all, the one without beginning and end, infinitum ad infinitum, I have a question that’s been bothering me forever from the moment I met Thought. Would you care to help me sort it, else forever I’ll be glomming over it.” Eternity said, “Sure”. “I don’t understand what is my function, when most of the time I fail. I have the worst failure rate, you should know that already. I can’t assimilate why I do what I do, giving Hope false directions and now she is hooked up with Depression. I don’t know what is the purpose of my existence.”

Eternity said, “But you are the purpose of existence!”

Conversations with her

Posted on by Nirmal

“What are you scared of?”

“What!?”, she sounded puzzled.
“You heard it, what scares you the most or what are you afraid of?”
“But why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious to know what your worst fears are.”
“But why!?”
“May be because, in my head I see you, as you are. And you seem to be a brave person. So I want to know what scares you. I can’t imagine anything that would scare you”
“Why would I tell you my secret?”
“OK, don’t tell me. Thinking about it, I feel that may be I’d lose interest in you”
“Good!”
“Or may be not. May be i won’t. May be one day I’ll get to explore you, even find a one way ticket to your hidden fears. I’ll dive into the deepest dark corners of your mind to find the treasure trove of your best kept secrets and sift through them to find your worst fears, what are they made of and defines what you really are. Even if it consumes me. I’ll lie within them, fighting it for you, defeating them one by one alongside the inner you. Not like you need my help, but I would. If you let me.”

The ghost of the house lizard

Posted on by Nirmal

The lizards are not that harmful. At least to humans I guess. But still we develop an incorrigible fear or hatred toward the inconspicuous species. They eat the pests pestering us but still pester us by their mere presence. I’m not going to judge you for loving them, they might deserve some, but I definitely hate them like the herd.

I checked the expiry date on the multi grain bread packet as I picked four slices to toast and butter up and soak it in honey. Just as I picked the pan lying on its back with yesterday’s leftovers still in its underbelly, sneaked out the lone lizard that has been squatting in my house. I mostly ignore it’s presence and as a courtesy I believe it never made any noise. It could have been mute or may be being alone in that house so long it had no purpose or reason to make a call. Well today I can’t ignore it. It is a sore thing to see in the morning and up close with the fear of it in the proximity and the chances of contact only scares you, makes you jump too. I did. As I tried to chase it away, it kept crawling between the spaces within those metals and plastics spread around the counter. It can’t blame me for it getting behind the chopping board leaned against the wall, just convenient enough for me to tap it against the wall jamming it between. Losing the board was worth having a peaceful breakfast without any lizard in sight. Well you can wash the board for reuse but you can’t remove the stain etched in your neural synapses.

As the toast was burning over the pan, the assumedly dead lizard, came walking like Lazarus out of the pit. I’m not Jesus. I just covered the stupid thing with a plastic cup. We had two hammers that was just rusting. Laying it over the cup to trap there lizard would be a better purpose for it to serve this morning. Then I had my honey toasts.

It’s been two days. There was no mourning for the lizard. Are there any way to send it off to the other side, we’ll never know. Where do the ghosts of lizard go? I wondered as I checked my crooked wisdom teeth for leftover meat. And suddenly I felt something running over my hands and pulled it away to get a better view. And slowly turned my gaze to the mirror, with the realisation of the horror of watching that pale thing slip into my still open mouth.

Explore.

Posted on by Nirmal

I like to get out more. Explore.

The ceiling in the room I stand in, is not so tall, I’m already hitting the floor. I need more space to grow.

I need to get out and collect more colours for my palette, for it has become very boring, monotonous.

I need to go chase the sun at dawn and dusk, for all the oranges and red. I need to dive deep and drink the ocean to filter out all the blues from the teal and put them in separate bottles. For the green, I think the forests would suffice. But I may need to wait around from spring to autumn to catch them brown too. As far all the whites are concerned, it’ll be a day in the snow. And for the black, I might need to dig deep into my soul. I hope I wont need it anymore.

I have to meet new people and talk endless about their struggles and aspirations and life, for I’m tired. I think It’ll put me to sleep, listening to all their boring stories. For all the mediocrity a man can consume might even strengthen me for the next day. So I can wake up fresh and listen to their dreams. And get drunk on their madness.

I hope to walk long stretches, across beaches, along the cliffs, through the forests, upon the mountain and down the valley. And find a lake that has been waiting for me since the beginning of time, gathering stories and waiting for this moment just to enrich this night for me. Along it’s bank will I lie, listening to the lake sway, staring into the sky, naming the stars with every people in my life. Everyone deserves a star, for everyones life is a struggle.

And It’d help if you were there, right by me. All along the way perhaps. It’d make us. And the whole time worthwhile.

Hug’em out

Posted on by Nirmal

I’m the guy who hugs the wall. Cause it feels so cold and might need some warmth

I’m the guy who hugs the floor. Cause nobody pays it the attention it deserves.

I’m the guy who hugs the fan. Cause it’s spinning madly around the clock and needs to be told that everything’s going to be fine.

I can take the sun’s anger, the rains sadness, the winds sorrow, the clouds murmur and the waves anxiety. But I can’t take these silences, the unspoken emotions that need to be heard.

Pay attention to the silent cause they might have a lot to say. Nothing you haven’t heard of. But need to be heard nonetheless.

What are your dreams made of?

Posted on by Nirmal

What are your dreams made of?

Are they rich in texture, like the beach sand? Are they mellow like the pink ice cream that tastes like strawberry? Are they sweet like the smell of the first monsoon? Are they as colourful as your memories from your childhood? Are they filled with your dreams from your waking life? Are they reminiscent of the life you wish to wear? Are they refill of your fantasies, to get you past another day? Are they dark as the other side of the moon? Are they vivid as the stars of the dark sky? Are they haunting you like a bug under your sheet? Are they as good as you wish? Are they daunting you as the flying kite that you can never seize?

Stumbling.

Posted on by Nirmal

You dwell in this mad path and you run around in circles. Time and around, some clowns chase you and you chase your shadow otherwise. Within that closed dark pit, which is lit only as long your eyes can see, you stay. Nothing beyond. Nothing that exist that you can see and everything there is that you can’t see even from the back of your eye. As you go on your usual rounds chasing the shadow of a butterfly, on a night darker than the realm, you may stumble upon a pit. A shallow pit, looks like swamp if you were a flea, but with just the run down water. You feel you fit into it. The pit feels the size of your footmark, almost. And as you wonder and keep running looking behind at the pit, you traverse too many until you realise, that it is indeed your footmark. Just that you have growing small. Or the pit growing big, along with everything. What does it matter? And before you contemplate to stop and agree with your conscience, you end up in another dark pit of your footmark. But now fully engulfed in one.

Where do you go looking for love?

Posted on by Nirmal

Where do you go looking for love?

People are basically ignorant. Let’s first agree on that. I mean even the most intelligent person on earth at any given moment wouldn’t know an answer for everything. And while the answers to all the hardest rational questions harrowing the world could be derived after copious thoughts. But questions on even the simplest irrational things like basic human emotions such as fear and love and hate, could throw the world on its heels for answers that would seem so easy yet still the hardest thing to be found. Cause all the answers are perceptional. We are all in search for such answers all our lives. We kind of set our purpose of life around the answers we draw out of these emotions that we emote, to others and within ourselves. Our emotions basically bifurcates into love and hate. People, things, actions we love to do or we hate to. Every other emotions could be fit into or be brought upon by these two. Like happiness, sadness, anger, fear, joy are all derived but being with people and/or doing things you love or hate. Just a mix and match of it. Sometimes you love to hate and get aggressive and at times you hate to see things you love in others possession and feel jealous. All these seem to be brought out basically of love and hate. But aren’t both ends of the same spectrum. Like heat and cold. Light and darkness. Oh how we love to put the positively I words first. You feel odd saying hate and love, don’t you. Then again, what is coldness? Isn’t it just absence of heat. And darkness absence of light. See cold and dark are just zero scale of heat and light. Because cold and dark don’t exist. They are non existent. You can’t spread cold or darkness, you can only absolve light and heat in order to achieve dark and cold. So the only existent thing is heat. Light. And love. Hate is just an absence of love. So what drives all our emotions and by means all of us? Love.

Love is hard to define, isn’t it? Conventionally when we say love, we mean it as it is the highest there’s to that how someone could feel about something. It is the end of the scale. Could be infinite if numbered but remember it’s irrational. That’s why we have various measures asking the way. Starting with like, can we say? Mostly we look for similarities to identify ourselves with something so that we can put it on a scale to measure and even if it shows a little the positive, we develop a likeness towards it. If not dislike. But we are not here to talk about it. So as this likeness grows, we start to get attracted, grow fond of, start admiring and even worship people and things. We even named the similarities as likeness, do you see. This likeness is the start of identity. We start to identify ourselves from our likeness to other persons. Like family, the most likeness you could find physically and friends mentally. Even the things we do, that defines us, that creates our identity is by how we put things on our love scale. Even art. An artist chooses do something that he can identify with, by finding the similarities to his ability and developing the likeness towards the medium and by due process excels. A painter paints cause he likes to paint. Just for love. Hard work delivers by the investment of time they put in, again driven by love.

Is love all good? Shouldn’t it be providing just peace and joy? But why does it hurt sometimes, to love? Well you see, you don’t need burning hot, just the warmth. Not blinding light, just enough to read. So if love is on the end of the scale, how can we say it’s overboard? When it causes dissimilarities or dislike or hate from outside. You might love to eat a burger but there’s a physical limit to how much you can. But not with other things such as people. In an uncomplicated love towards a person, like being a fan of a person, an one way affair between a person and a persona, too much adoration causes discomfort or hurt when you pay too much of your effort just to prove a point. Like trying buy something related that you can’t really afford. Or simply in an altercation with someone who hates the same persona you worship. In a two way relationship, things get a little complicated. Because it’s like two mismatched gear of uneven sizes trying to pull something too heavy. Doesn’t matter how much effort you put in, there are only certain times when the cogs match and roll together. That’s how families and friends roll. Trying to fit in when possible and pull as much as you can. But what about the epitome love, the unbounded love between two souls, with not much genetic similarities as a family, but more of mental, friendly thing, except the gears are set to roll together till the end of either one. How do they pull their weight? When you think about it, you realise how it’s such a miracle. And how often such miracles happen is a question that can never be answered. But still aren’t we all in search of such miracle in our life, to fit in with someone and pull each others weight till eternity!?

So how do find that love of our life? We can’t wait on our couch for that miracle to fall through the roof, can we? Where do we go find this cog that would fit yours? Is there only one such wheel in the whole world that could run with yours? How do we even know if their teeth is going to fit with yours? Even if we settle with someone who thought were a match, how sure can we be that things will set the cogs in motion? We hardly know the answers. Aren’t we all such ignorant little creatures!?

Seaing life.

Posted on by Nirmal

As he drowned in the sea, the memories left him slowly, like the little pockets of air that escaped his body and popped as they hit the air.

He could now understand the beaching of the whales. Why would an intelligent being of the seas would seek land and crash ashore, claiming the only possibility of death? Even though he doesn’t have an answer, he could understand the pain that would cause it. Same as he has this urge to drown in this sea.

As he discovered the depths of the ocean, the cloak of the water above blocked even the little ray of hope from getting to him, plunging him slowly into darkness. The salty water rushed into his lungs and started engulfing the life from within. He just wanted to feel something. The numbness of the real world had overtook his senses and transformed him into one in the flock, putting him in a queue to slow death. He couldn’t take it anymore, he just wanted to feel a little bit of anything, to feel alive. Even if it was pain, he was fine with it. But this amount of pain, he was not ready for it. There were no regrets though, it was his decision.

It got too dark to see himself as he sank into the bottom. He needed to see himself to make sure he’s still there and not dissolved into the darkness around. He wasn’t even quite sure of his physical presence and wondered if he was dead already in the waters. Just to make sure he took the only source of light he had, his burning heart, in his own hands, carving his body. He held his fiery red heart out in his hands with the remote hope of dispersing the darkness around. But the water seeped into it, putting the flame out tardily. He watched his heart slowly pump in and pump out the saline water through the arteries and veins. As the water consumed every space within him the last pocket of air left his body and along with it escaped a bit of his burning heart, like a red spark. The tiny bubble traveled up and surfaced and popped as it saw the sky. And at that instant, a moment between life and death, he disappeared without a trace.

The ocean was left unperturbed.