Freedom On A String

"Any plans for the day?"

"we have all the equipment, lets fly kites!"

"Who flies kites on Independence Day?"
"Just about everyone! Its a symbol of freedom, and all that."
"Yeah, Freedom On A String. Makes so much sense!"

"How was the day?"
"Went well. Did you watch the bhaiyajis flying kites outside?"
"Yeah! they looked so cute!"

These two excerpts of conversation made me think. A lot. About a simple idea to fly kites on Independence Day, every year. And it apparently symbolises freedom. But is it just me, or does anyone else see what our definition of freedom has manifested itself into?

Call it over-analysis, but when I think of freedom, I think of a boundless, seamless entity that strengthens our every impulse and fuels our every desire. But when I think of kites, I only see a manipulated structure, based on the whim of one person, and vulnerable to the harm caused by so many others just like it. How can these two concepts merge to celebrate the INDEPENDENCE of a country?

It only leads me to further questioning about our identity and our stance as a nation. Are we strong in our impulse, fueled by our desire, and yet held back by the whims of a manipulative force? And even if our every movement is controlled and structuralised, how are we still so vulnerable to any external harm? Is our love for freedom detrimental to us, hence the need for a structure to control it, or is our control detrimental to our own flight of freedom, that we cannot fully experience?

These are questions I cannot answer, because these pertain to a country of 1.2 billion people, and I am just one individual among so many. And I have yet to experience enough to even think of answers. But I can raise these questions, in hope of answers.

These questions on a nation's stance also make me question individuals in relation to the same concepts that are being used to commemorate a nation's independence. We as people are granted free will. We have the power to go beyond who we are today. We have the means, the desire, the drive, the passion, the freedom! And yet we succumb to the tugs and leeway of the strings that tie us down. These strings could be just about anything. Hell, the kite could be just about anything or anyone! Are we, as people, despite our individualism, and our free will, and all our rights and duties and everything in place, bound by our own strings, regardless of how high we soar or how far we fly? I guess so. But cut the string, and we land flat on our faces, with nothing to lift us again. So we are free, to go as high as we like, touch each milestone we wish to, and dodge our vulnerabilities, only because of the strings that tie us down, and have our back [literally].

This further takes me to a movie I watched a year so ago - Up In The Air [dir. Jason Reitman of Juno]. George Clooney, who plays the central character, is also a motivational speaker who talks about shedding emotional and material baggage. His talk session is called "What's in your backpack?" and he also asks people to let go of the baggage that builds up due to our familial ties and our relationships with other people. [Spoiler Alert] But when he achieves what he wished to, all the way up in the air, his joy falls flat on its face because he has no emotional connect with anyone to be able to share it with them. At the end of the day, or at least this is what I took away from the movie, we need our relationships to keep us afloat. Just like the kite that stays in the air thanks to the string that controls it.

And lastly, I come back to where I began - nations. Maybe it is true. Maybe we can be free because of the strings that hold our nation - the government, the constitution, our cultural heritage, our traditional [and sometimes redundant] values and the feelings of patriotism. Maybe we need that manipulative check on our impulses, to keep us from being eliminated by another nation. And Maybe, just maybe, I will fly kites on 15th August next year..

=)

I raise my glass

There's enough posts in cyberspace today to describe Friendship Day. Though two people may more often than not express the same sentiments in different ways, the need to express doesn't die and sometimes all the expression in the world doesn't quite match up to the stimulus. This day is one of those stimuli.

They say friends are special and rare, but I somehow have friends everywhere! Its probably because over the years, I have cracked some diamond mine situations that left me rich and replete with this wealth of people.

First off: school. Every year was a new batch of friends and this coupled with the old ones was a happy havoc. Even today, regardless of where they are, how senior or junior they were to me, and how much we speak through the year, the fact that we got each other through the school times is enough to sustain our friendship.

College: its only been a year but my circle of love, as it were, was only further extended with the crazy amount of people I've met! Some of them like me, like people I've known, but so many of them so unlike anyone I ever valued the way I value them today. A lot of water has passed under the bridge and some turbulence has changed things. But despite all of it we still see each other and smile. And that is the maturity that we've gained over the years. I've also moved away from home and I have a group of friends who I can now only see once in 6 months. But one message, one phone call and one small word and we can cross borders to see each other and be there for each other. I don't talk to some of them through the year. But the second i know that none but them can help me or be there for me, i call and we pick up where we left off. To them I owe my life. They know who they are.

Events: I travel enough to various events and I meet a varied set of people who have changed me beyond what i could accomplish by myself. Some stayed in touch, some didn't. But they're friends too. Purely because they created a pace for themselves even if it was within 5 days of our meeting.

Life: neighbours, family friends and people who you just meet. I have a lot of these friends who can't be categorized. And they're people who've been around forever and a day. To them I owe my life because they stuck around. They smiled and listened when I blabber my mouth off! They told me their stories that they've never told anyone. They know me outside in and we go beyond simple things like talking and messaging. These are people who've touched my life beyond anyone else's touch. I won't name them. They know who they are. And their smiles are probably the broadest right now because they're probably going "and there she goes again..."

The reason why i write this is because i know that i value my friends beyond all else. Probably why romantic love eludes me because i have all the love i need! I've just found two friends who've been away for 10 years and yet I feel friends fade away today, despite how long they've been around. Reminding me thus that this too can be terminated. This too is not forever. But while it lasts and while it exists, eternities feel like a small time frame to fill. And to that I raise my glass - the void that engulfs all life and the flood that breaks through all barriers. Those that have been cemented and those that are in shambles. That which is preserved and that which is lost. That which lasts beyond death and that which can kill the living. I raise my glass to friendship.

-Untitled-

The first time I'm publishing Hindi poetry with this much abandon.

Ek raat aisi bhi ho
Jab ho bas khud se baat
Ek raat aisi bhi ho
Jab na mile chaand taaron ka saath

Ho raat aisi bhi
Jab na maange hum kisi ka haath
Ho raat aisi bhi
Jab ho na tanhaiyon se mulakaat

Na khwahishen ho dil mein
Na rukawat manzil mein
Kaash na kehna ko bas mein
Mithas na rahe ras mein

Na soch tumhari
Na Sahara tumhara
Na khoj kinare ki
Na mile raasta tumhara

Raat aisi ho agar
Khush rahenge, magar
Yeh raat beetegi kaise?
Raat beete bhi toh kaise?

Autumn Love

Times like these are oh-so rare
when precious emotions bloom
amid winds of decay and loss.
Times like these are times we share
when we'll upset the gloom
and move beyond to the pure over the dross.

Seasons can alter their course, if they will,
I'm willing to make rules bend
for this time could not be more apt
to make a beginning, in a season of ends.

There are storms ahead, guaranteed.
There are harsh breezes to shake our ground
but we shall withstand it all, I believe.
Winter's white blood shall bleed
the air shall come alive with Spring and Summer sounds,
and thus we return to our season of falling Autumn leaves.

Seasons can try to uproot us, if they wish,
But know, that I will not relent
for we'll remain strong, as we were when we
made a beginning, in a season of ends.
 

-Untitled-

Like a flower in a summer breeze
Beauteous in its evergreen glory
yet unreservedly expressive
shielding, perhaps, from the wind its purity.

Like a snowfall out of the sky
gentle, tempting, blissfully
creating a world of its own.
Waiting to be the cause of glee.

Like a fire of low embers
Only too restless to be gone.
Heaving, breathing, living, believing,
Illuminating and warming, on and on.

Like the air all around -
Simple, untouched, profound.
Like shooting stars zooming across.
Like a soaring albatross.
Elevated like a mountain
yet grounded like the plains,
So unawares of power.
Like a breeze-blown flower.

Wordlessness

Is there a means more vocal than words? Can silence fill every void that wordlessness creates? I doubt it. There is a reason why we were able to develop speech and use it to communicate with, and not deny ourselves that power by employing silence. Because honestly, if silence were a more powerful, more poignant, more effective way of saying things, even animal sounds would be rendered redundant. Words and letters and syllables and sounds and voices and tones and sentences and strings of symbols that can be read and made sense with, are actually things that matter and count for much more than what a few moments of silence or the abstinence from communication can ever do.

Now this epiphanic outburst, as I like to term this piece, is a result of the combined action of multiple things that have happened in the span of the last 7 hours - I was denied my booking and thus denied from watching Madagascar 3, which led to a failed attempt at driving practice [not a crash, but a lack of volition], combined with watching "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" [watch it, please] and "The Terminal" and just the crazy weather and the idea of it being a Sunday with a whirlwind of a week ahead of me. Now, the movies actually triggered most of it off. Movies where characters couldn't communicate or didn't want to or had chosen to abandon their ability to verbally express in return for a lifetime of silent and inward discovery. Movies where all the characters wanted was to be heard, to be understood, to be spoken to like they were understood, to understand, to process verbal messages, to give voice to their thoughts and to bring out the voices of those who had been put on 'mute' for a really long time. The weather gave more room for gloom and barely any for any kind of sunshine or starlight to peek through, as if a bright idea or a brilliant thought was clouded over by the inability or lack of volition to let it out. The idea of a lull day before a stormy week constricted the spaces within me to even bring myself to say how it made me feel. The silence gnawed at me from within and it was happening to people around me too, except when the time, place, opportunity and words came to express ourselves, there was a wordless void. All we wanted was to scream [at least I did] and yet there was not a squeak we could let out. A simple hug and a shared cup of tea was all we could manage.

Silence is so devastating. I don't remember when this was, but I was in a workshop once and we were all asked to use a word, one by one, to describe silence and what it meant to us. I said, "destructive". Now, my reasons then were different from what they are now. Purely because the rounded mature understanding I have of that word today and how silence destroys in my life, was lacking a couple of years back. A point came, in the course of the time that has just gone by in my life, where I was able to manifest a bit of this tumultuous state I was in and still am in. I could do so by opining about the movies. And I burst. I couldn't hold back on every emotion I was feeling and let it all out - word for word.

I felt a sense of relief and yet a greater sense of confusion that I was unable to make do with body language, a language that goes beyond the spoken word. I felt inadequate in my ability to express, and yet whole in my expression because I had just realised what words meant. Not their dictionary meanings or their implications, but just the use of them. I thought back to Tom Hanks in The Terminal [the first hour of, mind you]. If only he could have made more sense to the people he was surrounded by. If only he had the power of words, the power to question what he was going through. He could speak alright, but not alright enough to be heard or to even be taken notice of. Was there no one who could, even if for a moment, comprehend what he was trying to get across and hopefully give him some relief, instead of making a mockery out of him by showing their helplessness and eye him through a camera, speechless enough to be unable to comfort a man in a pathetic situation? I thought back to The Rentor in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He wouldn't speak out of choice or the effect of a psychological trauma. But were there not more than a moment and a half where he could just bellow out every single thing he had been trying to give voice to for years on end, instead of restricting himself to the use of paper and pen? And I thought back to moments in my life and the moments in other's lives that I have known of or witnessed. Was there no way that there was nothing we had to say when we had the chances, the ability and the need for it? What stopped us then and what stops us now?

I question all of us, as people, today. Does silence do us any good? Because if it does, why is the sound of every key I punch on this keyboard so comforting to me? If it does, why have we graduated from silent movies to talkies? And if it still does, why were we ever meant to speak at all?

-Untitled-

Yes, I'm fat, I'll admit it,
but I let myself be beyond my body.
And I can feel your stares, like a chill down my back
As you eye every morsel I eat.

"Don't eat that!" "Don't pile on the fat!"
Is that envy in your eyes, that I see?
Because you're honestly only making it worse
The second you caution me.
Some say it out of love,
and others out of disgust and spite
but to it sounds all the same.

Don't you think I've tried?

I've tried to treat every thing I eat
like dirt, and suffered still.
I've tried not to poison my blood stream
with drinks, against my will.
I've tried to hear you patiently,
I've tried not to hear you at all,
And yet I disappoint you
every minute, every hour.
but don't you see? your words to me
turn every sweet thing sour.
Your thoughts on this and that which I eat
or drink, and how I should watch my weight
Make me believe there's nothing beyond my figure,
Which I know isn't great.

But consider this, have you ever
seen me glum after a good meal?
Or can't you simply spare a thought
for how hurt you make me feel,
When you curse my food right before I eat?
And consider this, that all these years
of being fat, must've made me hate it too
That despite my every attempt at
losing weight, it all falls through?
So stop and think, if you were me
and were held in contempt for what you choose,
Would you take it lying down
or just simply refuse?
Because honestly, I love my food.
I know my limits, though I look like I don't.
Your frowns only keep me from being
healthy and happy and shining and smiling, and being so much more
of the girl you think you've known.
And I've grown, literally, but it doesn't bother me
Yes, I'm fat, I admit it,
But please, like me, let me be beyond my body?