Is the idle mind some kind of workshop..?

The silence hangs heavy as I wait for my imagination to kick in, the experience of a lifetime awaits me. The very top of the mountain I have been longing to reach seems suddenly closer, and a slight shiver goes down my spine in anticipation of the vast panorama of unending beauty that will open

itself to me, where existence herself will take me in her arms, and carry me towards that which will alter my annoyingly childish conceptions of reality.

As the minutes role on, nothing happens, and the feverish sense of anticipation has given way to a slight sense of doubt, which like a good salesman, once having got its foot in the door, pushes home the advantage. The doubt grows, and I begin to feel restive. Have the frenzied activities of the last hour not been enough to invite that which I seek? Have they been lacking in some way? Maybe I am not worthy enough yet.

I start observing my thoughts and actions in a desperate attempt to convince my mind that I am now on the way. This observation becomes so intense that I lose all track of time as I continue my occupation. Suddenly I know.

Everything suddenly seems so vibrant and expressive. I am at one with my environment, conversing knowledgeably with the walls, floors and furniture. I am in the grip of a giant maelstrom of emotions that swirls uncontrollably inside me and all around me, but suddenly it appears to be more of a waterfall as thoughts hit me at high speed, momentarily distracting my attention, before dribbling away before I grasp on to them. The thoughts and emotions swell to a gigantic number, and I am bombarded by them all at once.

I now find myself in a garden of infinite proportions, with flowers of every kind. Nature has speeded up the processes and I can see each flower blooming and fading in rapid succession. The cocktail of fragrances intoxicates me and I bow down my head, marvelling at this stupefying spectacle. I think of all the thoughts in my mind, that take root, bloom, and eventually wither away as the life force leaves them. The mind is so like a garden, as I’m sure countless have said before. The infinite garden dissolves and I am now in an atmosphere of humanity.

The place is filled with people, dancing to loud music. Flashing lights, steaming breath, gyrating hips, and heaving breasts – I take it all in and move closer. The zest and happiness on their faces is electric filling the place with a kind of power. The sweat runs off their bodies as they dance on into the night, the music touches the very depths of their soul as the gyrate and express themselves with abandon, becoming one with the music. I see each person for what they really are. I see the aura of personality separate itself from the person. Some personalities I see leave me in awe, others I understand and appreciate. This ability to perceive gives me great confidence and I wonder at the complexity of human nature, what we really are and what we make ourselves out to be. The revelation of yet another facet of the stupefying spectacle intoxicates me again as I drift away.

My logical brain is on the one hand crying out, questioning the reality of all these experiences, telling me that it is just the fabrication of my monkey mind which is easily distracted into believing its own created fantasies, and on the other hand refuting its own credibility, relegating its activities to the lower level of that which it has been examining. I am seized with panic. Am I going mad?

My intellect’s dissolving leaves me unanchored and free, but this feeling is terrifying. I am becoming increasingly certain that what I have craved for has been too much for me to handle. I close my eyes and crave normalcy and meaning. Like a boat the fiercest of Atlantic storms, I am being tossed about, completely at the mercy of the waves. The darkness seems unending and all control is lost as I am overloaded by my capacity for self expression.

All things must pass, and the sun rises again. The storm has abated, leaving me in familiar surroundings. I find that I have not moved from my place, the only indication of my experience is time, which has moved forward by a mere twenty minutes. I look around and hazily try to recollect all that has happened to me. Was it all a dream?

Maybe it was – and my experiences seem too pure to be analysed with logic. Also, they have left me with more questions than answers, and I know that I will be walking down this path in future.

darkness

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

- Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Thus begins one of the greatest poems I have had the good fortune to read.The subject of darkness has fascinated me ever since I can remember. My attitude towards darkness has changed many times from my childhood to now. I think everyone is scared of the dark when they are small. It is natural to fear something that is difficult to understand. Darkness cuts off your vision, something that people depend on the most. There are also thoughts of monsters and fantasies that I associated with darkness as I was growing up. I was terrified of the unknown dangers lurking beyond reach, that were waiting to swallow me into the blackness as I entered it. Night was a time I sought to be in the light, making excuses whenever i was asked to leave it for whatever reason.

Then came the time when i would consciously try to fight my fear of darkness. I was afraid, but I used to openly challenge the monsters in my boldest tone, puffing up my body to its largest size, daring that which was unseen to come out and fight me. These challenges remained unanswered much to my relief, but did nothing to ease the tension. Were they just toying with me? Laughing at my rather naive attempts at bravado? Or were they waiting to launch an all out attack when I least expected it? These questions were part of my life growing up. Be it from under the bed, or from an unlit room, darkness seemed to be inviting me, drawing me closer to itself, as my thoughts focussed on it.

Gradually, when nothing ever happened, my fear dropped from me. My attitude towards darkness changed and over the past few years I have come to welcome darkness into my life. It is almost as if the unseen monsters have welcomed me into their fold, and I am now one of them, waiting for the next innocent who hesitatingly takes a few steps into my world.

Life is a funny thing. As you experience more and more of it, you keep changing, adapting, and learning. My attitude toward darkness has changed in much the same way. A few days ago, the only bulb in my hostel room stopped working. I initially thought of replacing it, but then I let that idea lie for some time. Since then, whenever the light fades, I am left in my world, in unending darkness, the occasional light filtering into the room via a crack in the door, or from the window. Unending darkness is a rather loose term, because its not that its unending, its just that you cannot see the end and so make the darkness into something bigger than it actually is. In darkness, you cannot see anything but black. This can be pretty dreary after a period if you were expecting it to be similar to a visit to The Louvre, but it is the best setting for the mental museum to run riot. Memories come and go. Past incidents that have left their mark on the hard rock beneath the shifting sands of the mind.

Can anything be clearer than darkness? Only pure nothingness can be clearer, but darkness is about as close as we can get. Darkness is a major stress reliever, because you have nothing to look at on the outside, so you look inside yourself. People often close their eyes for a short time during stressful periods. They crave a small amount of darkness in order to ease their stress, and closing one’s eyes provides it. This darkness, in larger quantities is what many people fear. They do not fear the darkness that results in the closing of one’s eyes as they are still in control. Should a monster suddenly appear, light can be immediately restored. When entering darkness, such simple methods cannot be used, and some of that control is wrested from your hands. Of course, ultimately, the sun will shine again. I think of those people who are born blind, or have been blinded permanently in an an accident. These are our true heroes because they have come to accept something that many of us find unimaginable. Total darkness.

Being blind is probably my greatest fear and will always be (till I get to know of worse). To accept darkness is something I find unfathomable. I will have to experience it to know it, and I cannot even hope to understand the pain that a blind person feels. Not physical pain. Rather, the pain of not being able to experience what others are experiencing. The pain of not being able to see the beauty of a flower while being struck with its fragrance. The pain of having to cope in a world works on the principles of sight. The pain of never seeing a loved one while listening to their voice. The pain of having to feel a person’s face and fantasize about how they look. The pain of being surrounded by people who are able to experience more than you can. The pain of being constantly dependent on others. This is just the tip of the iceberg. And I acknowledge the blind as true heroes because they have learned to conquer something that many of us find hard to accept. If not conquest, then at least acceptance.

I love to go for long walks at night in near complete darkness. I can’t see much of the road ahead, but there is a stillness in the air which is constantly felt. I see lights, far away, and I think of the next day, the next occurrence of light, and the new challenges, highs and lows it will bring, and I enjoy the darkness for this brief period while it lasts. I enjoy the happiness of the moment. The happiness that a day gone by brings. The nest day will bring challenges, but this is my moment. So, without a care in the world, milking the situation for all its worth, I continue my walk.

stagnation

Well, this is the first post that I’ve started without having anything definite planned. In fact, that is the very reason for this post. When you work for a very long time, almost non-stop, foregoing everything including sleep and food, and then the work finishes about four hours ahead of time, you get bored very easily. The initial feeling of relief is soon gone and you begin to realise just how much of your mind has been focussed on getting the job done. It begins to feel like the atmosphere is getting thinner and the breath is being sucked out of you. A vague sense of unrest begins to grow, interspersed with moments of extreme tiredness.

You begin to realise that this work, which you may have initially hated to do, has now become your comfort zone. It is your bubble, that separates you from the world. You can put off stuff to be done because ‘there’s work that needs to be completed’. How many things in life operate in the same way? Quite a few apparently.

It is very easy to get caught up in something. Initially, you struggle and try to break away. You are dis-satisfied and want to change things. Then the stagnation fills up in you, converting you into someone else, and finally binding you to itself. The beauty of this arrangement is that you don’t even know where you’re at.

This very life itself is an example. Look at children smiling and laughing. Why don’t adults smile and laugh in the same way that children do? Well, many of us seem to call this apparent seriousness ‘mental development’. We strive to appear ‘normal’ at all times lest the other ‘normal’ people see us in a lesser light. We always follow strict rules in society and religion without even knowing why we follow them. We treat everything as a task that must be completed rather than an experience that must be felt.

The way to beat stagnation in life is to do things just for the heck of it. Do crazy things, things that you would normally never do. Keep promises to yourself, and keep changing the little things, even if the big things cannot be changed fast. Without sounding too pompous, it can safely be aid that there is much more to this topic than I have discovered so far. We can only wait for knowledge to hit us as far as this is concerned.

what is sadness?

What is sadness?

Its pretty odd really. Each person will have his own interpretations, and memories on which they are based. For me, sadness has been the last 4 months, ever since something happened which has changed me forever.

What happens, when you love a certain person to death, and you know that the person is in enormous pain. There is nothing you can do for him because the suffering is not something you can know or have known before. It is not physical in the sense that you know it. It is not mental in the sense that you know it. It is continuous and cannot be eased. There are no breaks. This is his life. You know that death is the only release from that kind of suffering, and that too is uncertain. Still, you run around trying to do things which you think will ease the pain, or you go about trying to find cures, all to his continuing exasperation. But he understands your predicament totally, and smiles your worries away. This person has always been larger than life, and has made your life happier at every point. His ability to withstand pain is great, and he rarely lets it show. Yet you can see him deteriorating and weakening as there is no improvement in his situation. Years of continuos suffering are taking their toll. His fight becomes more visible as he gets weaker, and you see him repeatedly trying to rise after each blow dealt. What are you supposed to feel when one day, this person decides that he has had enough, and leaves?

That, in my mind is sadness.

A most singular experience

As this is my first post in blogdom, I will take my mind back to the 26th of January 2007, and relate the strange things that happened that evening.

It was a special day for me, as it should be for all Indians, being India’s Republic Day. The day started normally enough. Saw the parade but skipped the cultural function they usually have after that. Somehow, I don’t like to see small kids doing aerobics, synchronized to drumbeats, in front of a crowd, after being ‘posed’ by their teachers.

Well anyway, it was the afternoon of the 26th that things started to get interesting. While I was on my way downstairs from my hostel room, heading in the general direction of food, a strange feeling overcame me. I walked straight past the canteen, which was a feat considering the meal I had missed just a few hours before.It was as if my legs were following a new master. They took me past the canteen, through the hostel entrance, and around a bend. That was when I came in sight of the setting Sun in all its glory.

When the Sun sets, especially in Guwahati, life stands still. I catch my breath in admiration at the sight of the the lilac clouds that surround the Sun as it leaves this world, to continue on its journey to more distant lands till it returns the next day. As it goes, it leaves behind a few rays. These stragglers dance around with the clouds, creating wonderful patterns in the sky making it rich with colour, echoing the wonderful harmony of life itself. Although poets come close, some sights cannot be described by man, and this is one of them.

So, as I rounded the bend, I saw the wonderful sight I have just tried to describe. Suddenly, everything seemed to automatically fall into place. I walked on in a daze, my eyes staring into the distance, at the Sun, God of all things, as it sunk lower and lower. I hardly knew where I was. I walked on, and on… Time seemed to stand still. Life seemed to be one endless walk, with no beginning or end. One walk of endless bliss…

Then suddenly, the Sun sank below the horizon completely. I almost staggered, feeling a little sick. On looking around, I realised with wonder how far I had traveled from the hostel without knowing it. I took a last look at the sky and then turned back. It was a good twenty minutes before I got back to the hostel, and all the while marvelling at the experience I had just had. It had certainly been out of this world, in the true sense of the meaning. In retrospect, it seemed pretty stupid. It was like ’some dumb guy followed the sun because he had nothing else to do’. Now I’m not exactly a religious person. Other people are entitled to their own opinions, which again, need not necessarily be wrong. But I think, in those twenty-odd minutes something special happened.