The shrinking realm of happiness

We are born with our own definitions of happiness. What makes us happy, is an individual thing.
But we all have a sense of something impending in the future, something which will bring us home.

Might be gorgeous places visited,  vague kisses in dingy bars...or just roaming around aimlessly
A beautiful love story of our own we would write,that which gives us a sense of wholesomeness

And those images are always in the periphery of our minds, we see it being enacted in some movie and we bond with that..we see a glimpse of it in a person and we are drawn to him/her
Its those images which keeps us true to a feeling deeper than our subconscious

But gradually the definition of happiness starts eroding, and we start thinking that maybe our definition was wrong to begin with
Walking on the thin line between practicality and dream, we assume being practical means letting go of these images
We think we grow wiser, each time we kill one of our defining happiness parameter

We start shrinking, in our personality, in the way we interact with the world, in the way we love and the way we want to be loved back

Sometimes it has shrunk to such a level that it chokes us, we are unable to find any source of happiness cos we have completely forgotten what made us happy in the first place

We are banging our heads in the dark, trying to find a way which can lead us back to our un-lived moments, moments we were so sure would happen to us, moments which were the driving force behind all that we did, worked for, strived for!

And we dont know what went wrong where, was it our naivete or our inability to stop those things in life which made us forget our happy quotients

We then redefine, smile at our stupid abstract definition and go on with life, living half life, half dreams

But our earlier, pure shining description of happiness stands untouched somewhere
It exists, ready to be unraveled and  owned by you
That definition of happiness is what sometimes you feel in your sensations sometimes, life a melody or like a rush of forgotten song..and somewhere feel..maybe something of the original is still possible!

The parallel universe

We are here and we are there too, somewhere else in a parallel universe
Where we are someone else
There are bits and pieces of us, atoms and molecules, in another universe, maybe in the same time OR a different era

There we have forgiven many, we have settled lots of scores

We think we are but inconsequential parts of this universe, billions and trillions of us
But I believe each one of us & every single thing we do , affects the universe in a way which changes its course in seemingly minimalist way, yet remarkably

Universe is like a deck of cards, a piece goes astray, a part of it distorts, collapses
Maybe not all of us feel the decay, the collapse, but for a few it is a catastrophe
And that means something, in the larger picture

In that universe, which we are mostly not consciously living, we are avenged, sorted, at peace
Cos I cant believe all that we want to be, we want to have, if gone wrong, has no place anywhere

This feeling is very important for me to believe in, this theory I created
To be at peace with many things, as they are, in this universe!

Orchestrated happiness

Do you recall the last few minutes of you in bed, just before you fall in the arms of sleep, the semi-slumber state?
That unguarded state of you, when there is a slur in your diction and abandon in your words.
You say stuff to someone close to you, things you would not utter otherwise in senses.

You are drifting away, or maybe catching up with yourself
The part of you, you lose in daylight, comes to sense

The smell of the entwined words, of you and the one close to you in the bed, holding both of you in its mysterious embankment

The richness of your being is in it true and full form..in the abyss of the night
Thats what they call bliss

A bliss you never knew existed in such moments
A bliss you remember to miss, when you cant remember when was the last time you felt that

And then you wish to recreate that, you dont even sometimes know you are searching for such trivial moments in your life

A dear friend of mine once told me "R, these moments that are passing us while we laugh, roam around in oblivion to all that has gone and is yet to come..this is true happiness. And once this is gone, for the rest of our lives, we can pretend to be happy."

Some words of wisdom from a guy I thought could not think deeply.

है मेरी  दुआ की जब हम मिले, तो देखे मुझे मेरे दोस्त एक बार यूँ ही
जैसे मिले अजनबी
हम फिर से चले, तो फिर से हँसे, मैं फिर से उड़ूँ ,पाऊ नयी ख़ुशी
जैसे मिले अजनबी

Rebuild me..from scratch..you(who does not exist, only in my mind now)

I surprise myself at the contradictions that I see in me, and the way I deal with different situations with contrasting attitudes

There are times when in the grimmest of grimmest moment, I have acquired a happy disposition, I am actually acting better than before, not panicking, just trusting and believing in something good.

But then comes some other times, I just break into pieces, scattered, not a bit of me knows how to arrange myself in a recognizable fashion.
Those things one might consider very small, and find an outlet to dispose off the garbage, but I find all my outlets clogged and the feeling forming a stench and stinking within me

Sometimes the small things that I wanted in life..they look so big now..
Anything unfulfilled becomes a disease, a nagging pain, an all encompassing feeling pervading every bit of you

Probably those are something so core to you, so abstract, so fragile that you had never known how to deal with them

टूट के बिखरना मुझको जरूर आता है 
वरना इबादत वाला शऊर आता है 

I, for sure, know how to break and get scattered
Otherwise I know the beauty of praying

(I think the translation is not great, and I dont know the best words to do it)

The decision to have a child

I love kids, its no secret. Its a fact well acknowledged in my family, one of the things that defines me.

Love makes you a different and a better person, as they say.

It could be any kind of love, the key is, it is unadulterated.
Even love for a kid. You learn how to give and not expect, you love to pamper and even if they ill treat you at times, you can not give it back and keep loving. You become a slave to their effervescent blabbering, incessant questioning and baby smell.

I have felt all this with my sister's kids. I have been their favorite mausi (aunt) as I spent maximum time with 2 of them owing to the fact that I was single back then and stayed with my sisters when they had their kid.

But after marriage when I started thinking of having my own, I have no idea from where some creepy thoughts made their way in. I recall, I was a few months away from getting married, was waiting for my bus at the stop and I had the wildest thought at that moment.

"What if I hate my own child?"
In-spite of being a lover of kids, I had this disturbing thought. And I tried analysing it, right there at the bus stop.
I felt it stems from this apprehension as to what if you child is a replica of all that you hate in yourself?
Your insecurities, your weaknesses, your lack of judgment and clarity at times, your inability to take risks, your folly of trying to fall into the line with what society wants you to be.
To top it, what if this baby is also made of the things that you abhor in your spouse as well.

A worst possible concoction of a human, I must say.

Yes, I would want my child to have none of that, to be free from the ordinariness that defines most of us. To be a soul whom I can admire and probably rediscover and unlearn the ugliness that we all learn in our lives.

But what if s/he only reminds me of all that more and more, like no one else could have done otherwise?

I would be scared for her/him, love and at the same time loathe all of it, all at the same time!

It will be like reliving and dealing with all your own childhood issue/teenage tantrums..once again.
And it occurred to me that I would not want to love my own replica.

Something I dont like in myself, I can not bear someone else bearing the cross. And that someone else is someone whose whole persona I would be responsible for, while I would not even know from where all anomalies would seep inside that child. Genes and all.

I was contemplating if this is how I felt with surety about having a child or not..

But the very next moment the thought of something born out of your own flesh and blood seemed captivating to me. It must be overwhelmingly joyful to look at a small creature and find a hint of you in it.
Maybe the same eyes, or the smile, or hair..or mannerisms.

The toothless endearing smile, and the way s/he would find solace in me and only me. I would be his/her whole world..at least for a while.

I guess one can forego all the complexities of rearing a child for such irreplaceable joys, a zillion times.

Your child is probably a way of reliving the good, the bad and the ugly, once again.

A weird dream

Yesterday I had a dream which left me wondering.
I get into these phases of dreaming a lot, and then blank nights.
So right now, its a lot of dreams every alternate days.

And the craziest part is, I remember its detail long after.

I dreamt that I had gone to some exotic location. It was India, but looked like out of the world.
I dont know who I was with though, it was a male for sure.
A friend, a brother, a lover...identity of that person isnt something I grasped even in my dream

We are near a huge water bed, its a river with strong currents, not sea but river.
And afar I see a beautiful caravan on a boat. Its something I have never seen before. Lights, music, and I hear laughter and gaiety of people on that boat. Mind you, its a boat and not a ship. With an architecture not common for a boat, its a sight to behold.

I see it moving down with the current towards us, its still far.
 Its full of some hidden happiness, a forgotten possibility and I so long to be in it, at that very moment.
But its still very very far and I wait.
Suddenly I see that the boat is right in front of me, in my reach and I just have to take one small step to be inside.
My partner, whoever he is besides me, asks me to take a leap and be a part of the whole charismatic show. I am all set but suddenly I recall that someone had told me long back that this river has mirages. You see something in front of you which is not there. So don't get fooled and indulge in it.

I tell the same to my friend, but he says its all a myth and boat is right there and we should go in. I turn back to jump into it, and the boat which was closer, suddenly loses its color, from dark brown to pink and then to ashes and smoke and its gone as if it was never there.

I stand crestfallen yet thanking God that I waited for that one moment, when the reality dawned. I shudder at the thought of my plight, had I fallen into the traps of the beautiful mirage in front of me and washed away by the torrents. There is a deep sense of loss and disappointment in me, yet a brooding calm that I was saved.

Yet the beautiful real boat afar is still there and coming towards me, so I still have the flickering hope that someday I might get in.

And I wake up with an after-taste of this dream, mind clogged with various interpretations.

You don't fear being your worst in front of someone with whom you can be your best too.
Someone, who has seen the best in you, makes you comfortable to show your worst, without worrying about the pitfalls and dynamics of the relationship.

There are only 2 aspects of being your worst in a relationship : Either you are too assured of its strong base, or you really dont care about it, since its not giving you anything.