Until We Meet Again…

Life goes on. It never ceases to flow, always changing directions, it takes you to places unvisited and bring you experiences unexplored, till one day it finally stops. As seemingly incessant as it is, life does have its ebbs. None more so than while saying good bye, to something or someone you hold close to your heart. Every time that happens, it leaves an empty space within you, like a void, constantly reminding you that something is missing. Every time that you have had to walk away, you seem to lose some small part of yourself as well.

You may not be aware of that side to you, till you are in the presence of people you hold dear or at a place special to you. The things you do then and the words you speak to those people are not things that you would normally say or do. These are thoughts and feelings that you hold back, and only share with people you are truly comfortable with. And these are the people with whom you can let your guard down and freely divulge your deepest fears and darkest secrets without being judged or questioned. You are free to speak your mind and show your true self to these people, and be accepted for who you are. The bonds you have with them are special and these bonds leave an indelible mark in their life and yours. You wish that these people would stay in your life, now and for the foreseeable future. But life doesn’t always work that way.

Whatever plans you may have for yourself, life has its own plans for you too. You may want to settle down in California, but life could take you to Singapore. You may have wanted to take a trip to Canada, but life gives you a Coldplay concert instead. In place of a cold American winter, you could enjoy a tropical Indian monsoon. You could be munching down tangy pani puri, on a day you thought you would be devouring a delicious cheesecake. The roads you go on may not be the roads you wanted to go on, but that doesn’t make it any less of an adventure. And with every new road you take, each new journey, it is inevitable that you would have to bid adieu to the one you are on now. As painful as it may be, you have to say goodbye and move on.

You can’t keep all the people close to you in your life forever, but you can always look back fondly at the memories that you have with them. The trips that you have made together, the late night drunken parties and all the time you have spent listening to their hilarious stories or debating over their harebrained theories are things you can reminisce and laugh out loud at. You may even miss spending the whole night playing board games or watching movies, usually with a drink in one hand and a slice of cake or ice cream in the other. All the plans that you had made and the schemes that you had cooked up, even those which never came to fruition, was still time well spent, as it was spent in the company of friends. You may never have times like these again, but no one can take those memories from you.

As you bid farewell to the people who were with you on your journey, you also realize that every person has a unique way of saying goodbye. Some may cry their eyes out while others would keep making jokes and nudge you to go faster till the very end. Then there are those who help you plan your journey ahead to the last detail and there may even be some who write about the whole thing as a way of saying goodbye. No matter how they say good bye, you can rest assured knowing that all of them want the best for you and genuinely hope that the journey ahead of you is even better than the one behind. Your journey may take you away from them now, but who knows, your paths may cross again one day!

VOID

Death… had a hollow ring to it. And my melancholic heart resonated with the tune of its silence. It’s as if some small part of me has been taken away from me. And all it has left in its wake is a pit of emptiness. A void that seems as if it would stay there till eternity, a wound that even time won’t heal.

Some of my dreams died that day, as did a few of my hopes. The vision I had of the future was gone, and nothing could ever bring it back. My path was shrouded by a suffocating fog, growing thicker by the minute. Every step I took I grew wearier than the last, till I could no longer bear to walk. I was lost, outside and within.

The fog started closing in on me, like a noose growing tighter, and the more I tried to breathe the less I could. I was gasping for air, for one ray of light through the fog, for a glimmer of hope, but there was none to be found.

The heart rending pain that left the void was gone, as did all feeling, but the void remained. I felt a strange numbness take over me, and I wasn’t strong enough to withstand it. I was giving up, and I was giving in to nothingness. I was receding into the void within, and it pulled me into an abyss. There was no feeling any more, nor thoughts.

The fog had covered me whole and last thing I remember was a darkness enveloping me, embracing me in its cold lifeless arms. I just wanted to sleep, to drift off into a dreamless slumber, and never wake up again.

HOME

   I open the door to this place I belong. A place where time stands still, where nothing has changed. A place that remains untouched by the vicissitudes of life. I open the windows and smell the fresh air. A cool ocean breeze blows through the window, as if to welcome me back. The evening sunlight flitters in like a welcome guest, as it always had. I watch the last embers of the fading light play with the gently swaying coconut trees outside. They cast long shadows in my room, forming monsters that dance with the wind. The dying of the light paves way to a beautiful sunset, the horizon painted in hues of orange and pink, growing darker by the minute. I have watched many a sunset through these windows, and yet its beauty captivates me now, like it did the first time. I feel thankful, that in this ever-changing world, this place and this sunset has stayed the same.
 
   I dust off my armchair, grab a book and throw my legs over the window sill, as I have done many a hundred times. Soon my mind begins to wander and I contemplate this moment and this place. This is my niche, my own small corner in the world.  A place where I forget and stay forgotten by the rest of the world. It is in this place that I spoke my first words and where I learnt to read. It’s in the yard outside that I’ve skinned my knees learning to ride a bike and broken countless windows playing cricket. This is the only place in the world with my pictures on the wall, and my trophies and medals in a shelf, slowly gathering dust. It is here that I’ve spent my entire childhood, and my years through school. This is where I’ve cried myself to sleep and also where my greatest ideas were born. This is where I’ve lost myself in sorrow and in solitude, and also where I’ve picked myself up again, a little stronger that before. Here, I’ve grown up and this is perhaps the only place where I am truly myself. As I close these doors, I open my mind.
 
   Within these four walls, my thoughts flow unconfined and my hopes run free. Within these four walls, the walls I’ve built around myself come tumbling down. My imagination runs free here, unfettered by the cares of my life, and my dreams take to the sky. I may shut myself from the world outside, but in here I’m in my own world. I may be alone, but in the quiet of my room I can hear my thoughts louder than ever, and I’m never lonely. If I’m silent enough, I can even listen to the low undertow of feelings trickling through my mind, which I never notice otherwise. Sometimes I just let that undercurrent flow and at others I dive into it, and let myself drown in it. When I’m here, I let myself feel what I truly feel without restraint or caution. I dare to explore the deepest and darkest recesses of my mind without fear of what I may find, because in here I’m safe. The rest of the world is a blur to me, merely figments from a half-remembered dream. This is my world, my kingdom, here I am whole. This is my sanctuary, here I am at peace. I am where I belong, I am home…

Coincidence...

Coincidence, that’s all anything really is. It’s all anything ever is. Every moment up to this has been a part of a long chain of events, each link of it connected to another. The chain keeps growing longer every second, and new links are being forged as we speak. These links have been wrought, in part, by the situations we go through. A good part of it can also be attributed to the flurry of people we meet, whose lives have coincided with our own. We are like particles that collide, both of us change for the one moment we meet. But then we drift apart, never to meet again.

There are a few though, who linger long enough to leave an indelible mark on our lives, in ways both good and bad. There are people we hold close to our hearts, the ones who have been able to break through our shells and see our true selves. Then there are the ones who, perhaps unwittingly, have caused us hardship, pain and made us hate the world at some point in our lives. But ultimately their actions have caused us to reorient our perspectives, to reflect and grow stronger. And there are countless other people, who are but evanescent to us, mere flashes in our peripheral vision. Yet they affect our lives in unimaginable ways. They are like dominoes, who upon their fall cause a chain of events, one leading to the next. To these we remain totally oblivious, until we are caught in one of these chains ourselves.

Each of us is bound by this law of causality. Of one event causing another, which in turn becomes the cause of another. But imagine, what if one domino from this chain fell in a different way, at a slightly different angle. It would wipe out an entire chain of effects, but would in turn lead to a whole new pattern.  Imagine that your friend gave you a great book and you had decided to read it at home, rather than go to a party. But what if this party was where you would meet someone who eventually became your best friend? What if you got stuck in traffic and missed the train where you ran into the person who turned out to be your first crush? What if you picked a different job, and moved into a different city than the one where you met the love of your life? And what if they had made different choices on the same days?

Our lives would be entirely different without these little coincidences. In a sense, we owe a part of ourselves to this inextricable web of causality, for it has shaped our lives and our personalities. We are not completely enslaved by this law, yet we are never free from it. We are free to make our own choices but no one can predict where each of our choices would take us. Every action we take, or inaction, would have its own effect. These effects would cause further effects, and a chain reaction starts whose end is beyond our ability to foresee. This chain of events could change absolutely nothing, or it might alter the course of our lives, for better or for worse. We can never know for certain, until we tread that road.  

So, what we can do is accept that life is a leap of faith. You can make your choices, but you can’t know for certain where these choices will take you.  When you are at a crossroads you can see where the different roads lead to, but you can’t predict the twists and turns in the road. Where one road ends and another begins, you know not. All you can do is hope that your path and your choices take you to what you truly desire. So have faith in yourself and enjoy the journey. 

I Just Want to Know You Better

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. It was a cool September morning, the summer heat had finally subsided and autumn was beginning. The sky was covered with white fleecy clouds, gently flowing in the morning breeze and the Sun was mellow in its warmth, as if it was just waking up after a long night’s sleep. It was a great day to be out travelling and that’s exactly what I was doing. I had a few friends along and we were in the beautiful city of Vienna, with the whole day ahead of us to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city at our own pace. As with everything, each of us wanted something different from the city, to experience a unique facet of it first, and so we decided that we would part ways for now. I was still undecided on what to do, checking my backpack for a map and taking out my ‘to see list’, trying hard to figure out what to do when I first saw her.

I would have liked to recall this memory as love at first sight, that we knew that there was a spark between us the moment our eyes met, but it was none of that. We were two strangers, in a strange town, in a world that grew stranger by the day. We were people travelling along different paths, paths which were to meet due to some stroke of coincidence on that day. I was taking a breather, to clear my head, and that’s when I saw her. She seemed confused, lost, literally as well as figuratively in the throng of the city, but she seemed to be enjoying it too. Her feet were weighed down by indecision as to where to go, but that couldn’t weigh down the smile on her face. And that made it all the more irresistible, the quiet confidence she had in the fact that she could enjoy the journey, even though she was lost.

Maybe I was staring for too long, or maybe it was meant to be, but she looked up and she saw me. A part of my brain was yelling at me to look away and wipe that sheepish grin off my face, but I was too dazed to listen. I thought I knew what was going to happen next, I was half expecting an angry, indignant look that would say “Leave me alone, ******* “, but strangely enough that didn’t happen. She matched my smile, and for a moment I was the one who was left confused. Maybe she saw the map I was holding up, or maybe she sensed that I was lost too. She slowly walked towards me, and by some inexplicable force I started walking towards her too.

I always believed that the first words between two people were the hardest, but I was wrong. She spoke first, a cursory greeting, I replied. The small talk started, “The weather was great”, “The city was beautiful”, and it ended as quickly as it started. But the conversation didn’t. In a rare moment of intuition, I was left feeling that I could talk to her about anything I wanted and she could do the same too. Maybe she felt it too, and that could be why we couldn’t stop talking. We started walking towards the nearest landmark, a famous waterway from where we had to take boats that would take us our separate ways. But soon enough our words made us lose track of our steps. We lost our way over and over, but we were more lost in each other’s words.

And what did we talk about? Everything and nothing, all at once. We talked about our thoughts, our feelings, about our own lives. We talked about our past, our present and the future as we saw it. One conversation would open the door to another, one subject completely unrelated to the next. We talked about the things we had learnt and joked about the countless mistakes that had we made. We talked, and we listened and we laughed. About books and music and movies. About love and loss. And on and on it went, from the history of the place to World War III.  The conversation went from the evolution of life to its eventual extinction. We lost track of time and our way, but never once did we lose track of each other’s words.

We finally arrived at the waterway and our paths were about to diverge. I knew that it would happen, yet I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of regret. Couldn’t we have taken a more winding road, couldn’t our paths cross for a longer time? We said our goodbyes, much like we said hello, “Stay in touch” and “Enjoy the journey” and we went our separate ways. But can we really move away when our mind stayed still?

From there on I was blind to the sights of the city and deaf to its music. I was lost again, in my thoughts. All I could think of for the rest of the day was the conversation we had, and how much we had left unspoken. I kept longing to hear her sweet voice and the melody it played to my mind. I missed the moments of silence that I enjoyed between the end of one conversation and the start of the next. I missed being able to talk and be listened to completely and unconditionally.

It was one thing to fall in love at first sight, to be bewitched by a person’s pulchritude, to be in awe of their beauty. But it was another to be enchanted by their words, to admire the beauty of their mind and the depths of their thoughts. If you could fall in love for no reason, couldn’t you as easily fall out of it? But if you were to be swept away the force of a person’s mind, by the sheer originality of their thoughts and the honesty of their feelings, then it is likely that you have found something equally precious. You would have someone whom you could talk to for hours on end, but not about trivialities or mere banter. You have someone to whom you could open your mind to, knowing fully well that they have opened theirs to you. And in their mind, you have a mystery to unravel, a treasure trove of wisdom to unearth, an unexamined land to know and understand. And just maybe, trying to understand them might help you find something about yourself that you never knew.

As I sat along the side of the boat, flowing along with the majestic Danube River, there was a mild spray of water cooling my face. There was a soothing breeze, bringing the salty fragrance of the ocean from afar. There was beauty to be seen all around, but my mind elsewhere, littered with doubts. There were so many things that I wanted to know about that beautiful stranger, so many questions that I wanted answers for. I wanted to know what her favorite color was and her favorite dish. I wanted to know what she felt after her first kiss. What was her take on life’s meaning? I would have done anything to know what she dreamed about. There was so much I wanted to know, so much I wanted to listen to, if only there was more time with her.

I was woken up out of my daydream, feeling terribly forlorn, by the buzzing of my phone. I wanted to be left alone, to be washed over by the wave of longing that I felt, yet the buzzing did not stop. I slowly brought myself to pick up the phone, taking my own sweet time with it. “Hello” the caller said in her sweet sweet voice, and there was a long pause. And in that moment, all of my pain vanished. My heart erupted with joy and the smile on my face showed it, and I knew that everything has changed.