Stream of thoughts

The desire to express often surpasses the desire to suppress,

The hope of a perfect life is more realistic than the knowledge of a realistic life.

The music that fills the ears takes one to a different land.... where all, but the bliss of the music, disappears.

What is it about applying one's creativity that pushes one into a zone where one is almost 100% involved in the task at hand?

And why does the mind behave strangely when an old companion is visibly happy with someone else?

In spite of all the broadmindedness, sometimes, one gets caught up in mindless tussles with societal norms.

And it's weird. One knows and fully fathoms and acknowledges the necessity of sorrow/grief/longingness. Yet, one wishes for it to get over. And how!

I like Hindi movies where they try to depict paradise. Sometimes I think they limit it by displaying a visual imagery of it.
But again, at least, for the lesser imaginative souls, it acts as a blueprint of that what could be.

Is there really a place with limitless grasslands, with lush green color... the wind tickling the insides of the blades... the cloudless sky with the colors of dusk brightly sprayed across it... and then the quintessential fire around which two lost souls sit silently, absorbing the inexplicable beauty...

An old thought

//Beginning of excerpt

I wondered what we were/are for each other all the time.
But today you used the term 'best friend'.

I like it. It's like a load off my mind. Now that the relationship is defined, the protocol follows. What to do and (more importantly) what not to do is defined.

I like the way you said "I don't want to fall in love with you again". I wish the same. I don't want to fall in love with you again. But in my case, it is not again. It did not really really stop... and at what point it increased in intensity, I do not know. But now it is like I am engulfed by you. You are in the classroom, you are in the trains, on the bridge, you are in the student who is asking me the question, you are on the staircases where we fleetingly and coyly flirted... you are so much a part of my life here, that I wish you don't enter this make-believe world... this world in which the image I have drafted of you symbiotically co-exists with me... because if you do enter this solemn creation, it might, perhaps, disrupt the peace that I have finally attained.

There is no doubt in my mind that my perception of what-you-would-be-were-you-here is more attractive that what you actually are. I endow you with all the qualities I want in you. I edit you blatantly. You are just the facade. For me, you look and appear like you, but your personality otherwise is a concoction of my desires.

The question that naturally follows is why would I ever want you in my life?
Can't I live with the mirage?

I am torn between "what is" and "what ought to be"... although it is ME who gives answers to both these questions

// End of excerpt

When someone quotes mad-or-what...

and pits my point in the blog against my conversational point, and then laughs accusingly... I belie my internal complacency with the facade of annoyance

Kaisa ullu banaaya! ;-)

Know Thyself

She hears the cell beep with the message tone. She feels her stomach contract slightly... and finds herself taking a deep breath.
She ignores her cell. But the more she ignores, the tenser she gets. She knows he must have reached downstairs, waiting for her in his car. She checks herself in the mirror for the nth time, smiles broadly to relieve herself of any residual tension... and walks out with a carefree gait.

The first moment, the moment when she enters the car is the harbinger of the evening. She looks at him, there is a momentary silence... and she feels the need to dispel it before the silence starts to imply anything. She talks in a fake tone, eager to set a light jocular mood. Once that objective is achieved, she feels much better. She likes being in her comfort zone... now things are under control.

They go about their normal routine of talking to each other without listening, deciding on the place to go and then changing their minds at the last minute, looking at each other furtively, playing bhangra music coupled with romantic bollywood... and in general giving opinions on each other and pulling each others' legs.

This is sooooo much fun. She feels so light during and after such meetings. These meetings have none of the intellectual thrills she had anticipated to have on an interesting date, and they don't do anything out of the way (its food or movie or food), and it's not even new i.e. its not the novelty that has kept it interesting.
But she realllly enjoys these meets... so much so that she wonders if she knows what she really wants.

She has begun to dread that her conceptions about perfection, and conclusions about self, may be highly flawed. And her favorite pet-peeve is an undetected narrow-mindedness that has remained undetected for precisely the same reason: her being narrow-minded.

On holding back

She starts scrapping him on orkut... then scraps the idea.
She wrote one of those I-have-nothing-to-say-so-here-it-is---hidden-in-a-silly-heyyyyy-msg.
Then she decided against it.

At night, 2 am perhaps, she was as herself as she could be. In that state there is generally very little holding back, being done. She gives in to all temptations/desires (thats what life's for, after all, eh?)
Yet, she controls the urge to click on the send button of gmail.

She hears those songs, reads those stories and watches those movies that advocate professing one's feelings before it's 'too late'... or advocate speaking one's minds nonetheless.
She believes in that partly. Perhaps wholeheartedly.

But there's something fishy. She doesn't know if its just her, but more often than not, she has been successful in eliciting a more satisfactory response when she doesn't communicate too often. When she doesn't mail or call or communicate much, in general, the other person feels a sense of mild insecurity. It is THAT which brings more enthusiasm/consideration-for-her-feelings in those rare communications.

She doesn't like holding herself back. But refraining has often brought greater rewards than being oneself without any check on it.

Does it matter that I matter?

Handling someone's emotions is a draining task.
Sometimes one wishes to escape such ordeals, even at the cost of a less involved relationship.

Is it inherent in us to rely so deeply on someone else for our emotional highs such that it becomes dangerously parasitic?
Isn't it true/proved that our happiness is 'within us'? If so, why is this knowledge not omnipresent enough to spare the heart-aches to many a lost soul!

A random realization

A person's true wealth is judged by how happy he is.
It is not money, but happiness that counts.

But money is valued because somehow it seems that happiness can be achieved by using money effectively.
So, one is as rich by x amount, if one uses the x amount effectively to gain happiness. The piles of rupees/dollars do not contribute to a person's wealth if they don't contribute to the person's happiness.

There are other factors that give one happiness....
1. The number of fulfilling relationships with other people
2. One's clarity of thought and peace of mind.
3. Lack of stresses and discomforts.
4. Variety and intensity of emotions felt over the lifetime.

Many more.. which I can't articulate accurately.

So, wealth is a summation of all the potentials that contribute to making a person happy.

But are these potentials measurable?
Since there is no provably clear way to gauge the intensity of these factors, the Fortue 500 estimates a person's wealth only by the measurables, which happen to be money.

I don't know what's the point I am trying to make. But sometimes, some partial realizations make one feel profound. This one is almost there :)