What was it that got you?

Was it his smile that got you? Or was it the twinkle in his eye?

Was it his words that got you? Or was it the hidden gaze in his eye?

Was he hiding a pain behind that smile? Or was it a battle wound behind that scar ?

What was it that his silence was speaking about? What was it which his words seemed too quite to talk about?

Did he know how to close the door to this pain? Did he know where to throw the key after locking this pain ?

Was he just holding on to the key ? Or was he nurturing it all along?

My dear heart -- I know you are scared

I know you have hoped too much, I know you have believed too much

I know you have lived too little, I know you have fallen too hard

Why do you feel too much? Why do you want so much?

What is it that you are looking for? What is is that is lost in the sea?

Is it cruel to be here?  Is it wild to be alone here on the edge?

Are you looking for comfort in discomfort? Or are you lost in the abyss ?

What was it that got you?

Days like this

An attempt at writing a small poem on one of those quiet evenings :) Here it goes :

All I wanted was to feel nothing

People said it will be amazing !

I wanted to continue feeling nothing. .

But slowly I started to feel everything. .

My heart was fluttering

I asked it to stay quiet

In the hope that it would actually listen

And then one day .. when he was in pain

I was feeling his pain. . As if it was mine. .

I wanted it all to go away. . His pain and mine

People said it will be amazing. . 

But all I could feel was pain

I was feeling it all. .

May be this was one kind of love too. . They said

And then one fine day . .  he walked away.. 

Taking what was not his to take !

And then they said he was no good for me..

It’s good that we parted ways

Funny we did not say good byes

Then they said he was no good for me

The fluttering was gone but the pain remained

And my mind kept going back to those little moments 

And my heart was back to feeling nothing 

Strangely it went quiet now. .

I kept asking it to speak to me. .

It would again not listen to me. .

In days like this and that

In evenings  like these and those

My heart is lost in the wilderness of it all. . Trying to find itself ..

You are good !

There are a lot of days when things are more than you think you can handle.

Sometimes work gets swamping. and at others there are too many things in your personal to-do list (if you make one :) ). Or sometimes they are just sheer bad days ! I am just talking about normal busy days.This post is not intended for  extreme situations, rather it is for daily routine busy-ness. In short, I am talking about the days when there is "too much" on your plate to handle.

I have increasingly realized that in those cases, it helps a lot to STOP.. take a moment.. relax and take a deep breath and say to yourself (literally, not just in your head ! )

I am okay.

I am doing good.

I will be fine.

I can do this.

I will get through this.

If that is not doing much, go to your friends or family -- your support system. I am hoping you do have such a support system in place -- people who care for you !. Go to them and tell them this is I want you to tell me :

You are doing good.

You can do this !

You will get through this.

It is going to be okay.

Oh, and do not forget to say a thanks when it is fine and good :)

It is really important to believe we can get through the difficulties, only then can we can get through them. When we do get through it one day at a time, one hour at a time, we will look back at these days and smile on the fact that we really did it :) Positive energy can go over and beyond to help us.

Take the next small step, one at a time. Do not stop believing in yourself. Because you really are good !
There are times when some of your closest friends will tell you - "you cannot do this", and they will forget to add an "I think" before that statement. That's when you know you need to stop listening to them for your own good. 

Positive encouraging words can have more effect that we think they will have, same goes with negativeness around trying to bring us down. Get away from negativeness as fast as you can and as far as you can ! We need the positiveness because a lot of times we tend to over-think things and under-estimate our potential. We stop believing in ourselves sometimes.

That's the time we need a reality check. A check emphasizing : "We are awesome ! "

This reminds me of the scene from a movie I saw recently "Captain Philips", and the best part of the movie in my opinion was when the US Navy captain is saved from the pirates, the paramedic tells him "You are okay. You are fine."

So if you don't already, then take this moment and here-on :

Love yourself ! Believe in yourself ! Because you really can do this ! You are good !

Change.. the dark knight

Here comes my another one-off post after a span of an year :)
I have been thinking quite a bit about the phenomenon of change since some time. I often wonder why is it that sometimes change is met with so much resistance, and at others, welcomed with arms wide open :-)

Change is inevitable quite often. It leads to evolution of species, ensures their survival by helping them fight in the race for natural selection. Well, let's not go too far.. may be we should just talk about change as a process in our own lives. Change is a constant part of growing up as human beings. It is good to be a kid at heart, however, at the outside, it is equally important keep up with the pace of changes around. I am not saying change is not scary.  It is scary. It is unknown .. unfamiliar territory. It seems more difficult once you get used to the convenience of present day things. It is easier to live in our own bubble, stick to the familiar and resist the change. It is easier to hold on to the known things in life -- that is comfortable. Unknown is scary, for the simple reason that it is not known.

Sometimes, change is just handed over to us. It is not a choice we make on our own. It takes time to adapt to change in those cases. However, we as human beings are programmed to adapt and get used to the change. We like it or not -- is not really consequential in this case. However, at other times, it comes as an option. It is a choice we make for our own reasons. But if that is what needs to be done, then it needs to be done, for a better tomorrow. And in those cases, it needs efforts. It needs planning. It needs courage ..to step from the known to the unknown in hope of a new and better known. And hope is a good thing !

May be change is the nature's way of helping us evolve into better human beings. May be it is good to step out of our shells once in a while.. and welcome the change. Some times the stakes associated with change are too high. But, is not there a risk associated with each breath of our life ? A sunrise is a change after a night.. and it is beautiful ..and not similar to night. What is life without risk? Most good things with high stakes!  May be that's why we should put in efforts for change sometimes. Welcome it with open arms and open hearts :-) Embrace the change, because you do not have forever to try it at some other time  and postpone it for later till  it becomes infeasible to try.
Life is now, today, right now -- live it while you can !

The title The Dark Knight, I used to think the name somehow indirectly refers to the dark nights faced by the people of Gotham before they get to see the light at the dawn because of the efforts of their knight. I love this beautiful dialogue from the same movie : "He is the hero Gotham deserves, not the one it needs right now". However, it might even be referring  to a knight.. a warrior .. a solider in the dark nights.

May be this holds for change too. It is like a dark knight. It helps us fight like a solider in our battles of lives. May be we like to tell ourselves "Change is the hero we deserve, not the one we need right now" .. However, as the people of Gotham would really have been better off by accepting the real hero, may be we should accept changes in our life too with a smile :)

Questions without answers

Today, I entered the coffee room around evening. The room was empty. I felt as if I was wishing for it to be empty, and it was empty indeed. I closed the door, leaned against the wall, and stood there for a few minutes, staring at the blankness. I am not sure if I am referring to the emptiness of the room or something within.

Yeah, I had been losing focus for quite some time now. I often feel people get caught up in small issues, they worry about small things, and in turn, no attention is really paid to the big things. It is so easy to get lost in every day small issues. Then suddenly, one fine day, you start to wonder -- why are you doing whatever you are doing? Why are you where-ever you are? Is it somewhere you want to be ? The answer to some of these questions are pretty simple. Are you happy today ? If the answer is yes, then it does not matter how you got there, why you got there. At least I hope so.
However, if the answer is no, then what should you do? Try to find the reason for the same and eliminate it ? or find a work-around for the same?

I wanted to search answers for these things. However, I could not think of even an O(n) search algorithm for the same, forget O(log(n)), which might help me find what I am looking for.
It is hard to find something when you don’t know what it is.

Life is too short to not do things you like. It is too short to worry about things you cannot change.
Eww, I have a weird feeling -- It is one of those times, when I am not able to understand myself, when I feel I don’t know myself... not even one bit. Who is this stranger sitting in front of my computer, in my clothes? Do I know her? Who is she? Am I searching for an answer? Or just the process of search is good enough to keep me engaged in my thoughts.
 
There are times some simple short conversations leave huge questions. Care is such a important concept. How can you quantize it? What does care mean in the first place?
Am I looking for answers to my questions? May be not..I hope to find them on my way somewhere sometime. Well, if you do have answers (and you think they are convincing enough..)feel free to tell me. 

Chase is a funny word (PS : I am not talking about Chase bank). It has such a simple meaning, yet it is so complex. Mind, feelings, anticipation, focus, work are words which follow the same -- so simple in Oxford dictionary, so complex in real life.
May be real life is like that -- far from illusion. May be the only place they meet is in movie by Christopher Nolan, Inception.

May be it is best to just focus on things I can focus on and let the world around me handle its own problems. Easier path might not be the best, but that is what makes it easy in the first place :) :)

Anyway, too much writing for  a day, time to take off for dinner :)

Music on the Street

Date : April 21
Tasks to be completed in next 2 weeks : Infinite
Workload : (my capacity+1)

And I came home at 5 in the evening, thinking that I will do some serious work. I slept off and got up at 9 with some music going on somewhere far off from my apartment.

I opened my window to figure out the source of music.It was like a band : not too loud, not too faint. I guess it was somewhere near Capitol. I was too lazy to figure out where was it getting played. But, I was glad instead of closing the window and getting back to my mundane routine.. I left the window open and let the music + air flow in !

The music went on for some good amount of time...drums and drums and pianos..and may be other things.. It reminded me of OASIS... the bands playing inside the auditorium or far off in the lawns...and we lazying around in M Lawns...or just walking on the roads.. with that faint distinct music going on . It makes me feel as if the world has come alive, it is singing, it is playing. It feels like the world is walking with me, talking to me silently that no one else can hear.

It is like the world has come to a stop..and this night..this moment will never end..it will be here..

it wont go anywhere..it will do as i wish :)

and then the music stopped at 12 in the midnight..

Time to get back :)

Adios for now !

Myriad of Thoughts

Again, its been 1 year since my last post ! Sigh ! Exact 1 year, and here comes my next post :)

There are times I think about writing, but I realize it is difficult to start from one thing and end on another. If the mind was a sea, the thoughts were the fishes, and I the fisher-woman..It seems like all the fishes are jumping around, going hay-wire, and I am confused (Yes, as ever !!) which fish to aim for first. So, I leave fishing, and move on to my assignments, movies, novels, and catching up with friends.

Do you get scared of pulling your thoughts together and trying to understand what they mean ? I wish I could write a interpreter to interpret and understand everything going on around !

At such times, I enjoy listening to music. Music is so soothing ! It's like : It is always there, whatever happens! You can always bank on it. It understands everything. It explains everything. May be, it IS everything :)

It is a sheer joy to enjoy what you are doing, your work, company of friends and even the mundaneness of life !! Yes, mundaneness is scary, routine life is scary, its boring ! But : when you don't think about it... it is awesome ! I am not saying forget about tomorrow, give up your job, stop studying, become a hippie. Plan, but at the same time don't forget to live today !

Think about the day: the morning, the evening, the night ! Independent of other days. Completely MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE and INDEPENDENT days :) However, do keep the bigger picture in mind at the same time, because the union of these mutually exclusive days makes us what we are, and what we can be.

I am waiting for the movie SOURCE CODE to be released, primarily because of its trailer, a part of which says :

What if you had only 8 minutes to live ?
And the girl replies : I would make those seconds count.

Loved this dialogue totally !