The anatomy of depression

 Sometimes in the midst of a happy moment

The black clouds of gloominess come calling for me

It appears like depression is marching towards me with its black arms spread, aiming to devour me 

I scramble to save myself, looking frantically for that dollop of sunshine I had a few moments back

Scavenging my box of golden moments to drape around me and escape the approaching beast

I try desperately to reason with the cruel mind that what I am feeling has no rhyme or reason

But the heart listens to none of my mind’s shenanigans and the body also betrays me

With time I am learning to be thick skinned and grow thorns

so that unhappiness gets bruised when trying to overpower me

But this hardening of heart seems to harden my soul too

The butterflies in the stomach are long dead

P.S - Not the best way to re-write on my blog after more than two years, but the most honest way I could think. I will never let go of this blog despite FBs and Instas ruling the social media. I hope there are people here who still want to read me.

मैं सारी रात कतिया कतिया करूँ

मुझे मत उटकेरो
बहुत जतन से बुना है मैंने खुदको
एक नहीं, कई बार..

मत उधेड़ो मुझे,
 सिर्फ  अपनी तन्हाइयों को मेरे  रेशों  से भरने के लिए
 बड़ी मुश्किल से दिल  और दिमाग के तारों को सुलझती हूँ मैं ,
 एक दिन नहीं , रोज़.…

रात चिंताओं को बुनती हूँ
सुबह अधूरे ख्वाब
ख्वाब से ख्वाब का सफर
तय करती हूँ रोज

ख़ुशी निचोड़ना चाहती हूँ
अपने हर पल से
बेधड़क हँस के , बेमानी लतीफों पे

बहुत ज़्यादा मांगा था कभी ज़िन्दगी से
अभी सिर्फ इतना ही मांगती हूँ

My one last dance

I am scared to show myself to people
Cos I know you wont be there to protect me from them

I hide myself in layers
Cos there is noone who can understand the "me" without them
Like you did

the roads are empty...the bars are closed
I stand outside with my glass of wine

Tell me who to turn to, for my share of love
Tell me who to run to, for my happiness

And don't tell me I am my source of happiness
Cos I lost myself to you
Long long ago...so long ago
No body knows...how long ago

My new year dance with you..is still unfinished
I have yet to bring it to the climax

Hold on for me..till I do that..please

Stop..renew..play

Boredom is creeping inside me like a deadly snake..snarling and hissing
Pouring its venom on every organ...on everyone I meet

My mind tethered to the sameness of everyday-ness...pivoting around mindless things, things that dont matter yet make me mad

I think its the time that the snake sheds its exuviae..and adorns itself with new skin

Do we better ourselves with time? In any area?
Do we really change?

I dont believe so anymore

With time everything and everyone just keeps getting uglier,

All the beauty, the stubborn-headed believes, the giddy-headed romance is gone

So why do they say we mature with time?

With time we only become shriveled versions of ourselves

Calling it a night

Sometimes  I search for that part of me who would say something stupid which people would find witty or hilarious and burst out laughing

Which made me feel good 

Which made me feel new

As if I had something about me which I never knew and it was something special

Now

At the end of the day after broken cars and idiot drivers and moron maids... I realize with a soothing calm feeling that I CANT FIX IT ALL

so I let myself in front of the the tv  with old monk and rum and decide to call it a day and wait for another one

Hoping all of today can be wiped by tomorrow 

Saturday nights

Saturday nights..some nights when I used to think
"the world is still mine to claim"

Those lonely bus rides to some arbitrary mall..
listening to songs on head phone of some music shop..weird songs
Songs I never heard thereafter

Settling down in some dhaba..feeling like a queen among minions
Is that how it feels when the world seems just a part of you..just a speck
And you feel bigger than the world

Its been a while since I did any of that..a while when I stepped out to enjoy rain and the shiny lights of the city
A while when I was me

Loving the right way

I know my capacity to love
I feel that capacity in the small things
Like how I let go of my anger.... for the worst people in my life
And this teeny weeny bit of residual loving feeling....once you filter all the hatred for them

Little things I am proud of...
....that there is a part of me which can love deliriously, uninhibited
a part of me which without getting an ounce of pleasure goes about doing things for the best of others

Love is life transforming

When someone treats you in a certain way you start becoming that person

If you are loved right, all crimes in the world would stop 

Law of diminishing returns

We keep diminishing ourseves, in our minds and in our thoughts..

We feel that what we were earlier was an immatured, childish , stupid version of us

Oh that maverick thought, that juvenile desire, that frivolous dream..life is more than all that..above that

We killed it all!

Each time we rubbished ourselves, we kept thinking this is the way life was ought to be...

But what we dint realise in the process is that we lost something very basic and beautiful about us

Moments of God

Every morning I like to grab all things auspicious

I sit down with my lemon tea and smell it deep...trying to breathe in bits of pleasure

I savor my son's half baked smile..when he is half awake and smiles like a dream
Sleepy yet trying to return my false exuberance

And I sing for him "Say hello to the Sun..shining down on me"

I pay my attention to Ma's chit chat..Ma who has been with me..my only solace and punching box in the last 2 years..

I try to do my part of the work in the morning, trying to keep my heart light
Pumping in energy by trying to steal it from Aaru..No No..not steal, but multiply

Then we all sit down. Aaru eats, Ma feeds and I sit on the side having tea and whatever is left of the morning's beauty

I call these moments of my life now..moments of God..
When s/he is holding me upright to combat the rest of the day

Who knows what the day would bring in?

Nadir

I feel like I am falling down in an abyss daily
It's not a free fall, a free fall would hurt less

But with my eyes wide open I am getting rubbed against each debris around me
Gathering all the dirt and pain
The lies and deceit, the web of master strokes people weave around you
Catching you off guard

People who were supposed to protect and shield you..

Sometimes I wish I could blind fold myself and have a free fall.. 
At least have the exhilarating sense of speed

But that's not a luxury I am entitled too

So I watch and get hurt... Knowing well and sure that one day I am about to hit the base
Not sure anything in me would remain by the time I reach my nadir!

We are epics..if we choose to be

I am a scavenger
I like to dig into people, know them like no one else could have ever known them

Fears they lived, stories untold
Laughter brazen...shyness unfold

The magic each of us is, the epic we all are made of

We were born with souls of lost mermaids
And the spirit of sea ghosts, we never ever saw

Though at times...the mermaid and the sea ghost lives in me
And in those moments
I want to hush the sound of every other being

And close my eyes to those sounds..from far away sea..
A sea whose waves splash inside me

My beautiful

Are we meant to feel stupid and frivolous for the smallest bit of euphoric feeling we have had in our lives

Feel silly for those pockets of our moments which felt like dream..or like a feeling we knew we would cherish forever!

Just cos it was not meant to last..or it did not last in-spite of our efforts to make it last?

I love the small in all of it...I yearn for such tiny things in people that I could die to just hear "are you home?" said in a way which makes me feel as if home is all around me..home is in the person who asks me that question in the most delicious tone

I feel we all bask in something special we did in our lives...something which could not be part of us forever..even if the person we experienced it with is part of it all

Its not just a lover

I feel the big in the night I spent with a close cousin getting high on rum and coke till 7 A.M
I find the beautiful in my birthday that my friends in B.I.T spent some 20 years back for me, just me blowing the candles

The beautiful, the grand is just a sparkle..in the canvas of life
You just got to recognize seek and cherish it

Master piece

The way you remember yourself, no one in the world does
And the one who does, is the one to be with

The one who would weave you back,
Putting your most beautiful pieces together..

And make you the masterpiece you were born as

Rain rain...dont go away

It was raining heavily yesterday..and I wanted to get drenched
The desire to get soaked and just let myself be in the downpour was so intense

There was a time when I used to do it back home, every year on the terrace..at the onset of monsoon

But this time, the posh apartment, lack of my own big balcony or terrace..the people around stopped me

I wanted to hold Aaru and let him experience this beauty of rains..the amalgam of heaven and the earth..me and him.
But his ear infctions..him small nose and ear passages which make him prone to lots of disease , stopped me further

I just wish a time would come..when mt inhibitions..his ailments mean nothing

And I can just hold him under the sky...with the rain dropping on us

From sanity.. to insanity ..and back

It has been a long run

From sanity.. to insanity ..and back

It happens with me every day now
The absolute power of the unknown to destroy me
And something hale and hearty within me which stops it

Marriage...yet again

Marriage can be an enriching or a debilitating experience

Before you realize what it is..it gets too late
Then you are left trying to find a balance between the 2 extremes

But that can never be done..not a possibility for a human with passions

If you have passion for yourself, you would find the debilitating in something which is not enriching
You would find disaster in something which is stereotypical
You would find doom in something which is moderately OK

Who is to be blamed, what is to be done?

Pause, rewind, replay...please

I wont let everything in me go waste, I am just waiting

I feel there is a pause, I am living a pause..life will get on accelerated mode again

Cos someone like me can not be part of mundane

I have decided on one thing..I will say all the things to myself that I wished someone else would say to me..someday..sometime

How does it matter that the words you want to hear are said by you and noone else

So somedays I tell myself..you are strong as hell, noone can touch the fire in you..I am like Dagny Taggart from Atlas Shrugged(someone had actually once said that to me) or Maya Angelou's phenomenal woman

Or some days I revel in my own mystery, and fall in love with my own slightly kohled eyes..
I feel like embodiment of all the secrets a woman is made of..like Binodini of Choker Bali, like Anna of Anna Karenina, like Tess of Tess of D'urbervilles

And on another day when I feel defeated, I feel a nothing, I feel like a wind in barren land..I still presume there is some beauty in that, must be..cos someone like me can not be part of mundane

Yes its just that one last thing about me which keeps me going, that I feel like that about myself..always..forever

Epiphany

There are bits and pieces of us, scattered around in those places and people where our are hearts have found something new, exciting, enriching

when we revisit those places, we revisit ourselves, , we revert a little to the old, feel a little more than usual that we felt off-late

As we try assimilating all that we were..that assimilation gives a little high..to know ourselves as we used to be..to realize there is a faint chance of us getting back to that

But all we do is go in circles around a mass of colossal sadness, making every memory of ourselves ..solidifying that what has been will never again will be

Yet, I hear an old song..and sometimes in midst of all the chaos..I find myself anewed