Are you in Love enough to understand!

Are you in Love enough to understand!

That there is a sea of difference between,

Holding a hand and tying down a soul. 

That letting go gently and cognitively,

Is akin to sharing the onus of goodwill of a person. 

That our most coveted strengths are,

Also our non-negotiable Achilles heels. 

That the same sun that warms your skin to a happy tingle on a winter morning,

Burns when allowed a tab bit extra access. 

That investing in people is a double edged sword,

Which slashes deep when any such investment goes awry. 

That the only redemption one has is to stay close to oneself,

Because instincts never fail, intuitions seldom lie. 

Are you in Love enough to understand?

#IcarusSays

उपान्त्य - You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" by Rebecca Hazelton

 उपान्त्य (Penultimate) - मेरे अंत से ठीक पहले वाला प्यार हो तुम … 

by Rebecca Hazelton

मुझे बिताने हैं कई,

पर नहीं ‘सारे’ साल तुम्हारे साथ। 

जब ठसक के मैं बोलूँ कि, आँखें हरी हैं तुम्हारी। 

वो आँखें जो स्लेटी के अलावा कभी कुछ रही ही नहीं। 

जब सेक्स इतना मुकम्मल हो, कि नीयत ही ना भरे। 

पर उतना बेहतरीन नहीं जितना हमारे घर के बग़ल के घर की दीवारों से छन के आती आवाज़ों में होता है। 

जब छोटी छोटी चीज़ों में प्यार शुमार होगा। 

जैसे बिस्तर से मेरा गीला तौलिया उठा लेना, 

और फिर एक दिन उठाना बंद कर देना, हमेशा के लिए। 

जब मैं उतना अच्छा ना लगूँ, 

जितना मैं लगता था तुम्हें, तुमसे मिलने से पहले तक। 

और भरोसा जो पहले मुझमें था बेइंतहाँ,

अब मेरे बेतरतीब गिरते बालों पर भी ना हो। 

जब तुम मेरे लिये मेरी मनपसंद वाईन लेके आओगी,

और फिर टोकोगी भी, कि कितना पीने लगे हो तुम। 

उस उपान्त्य में भी कुछ तो है, 

मुझे वहीं उसी जगह थामे हुए है। 

शायद, तुम्हारी, भूरी आँखें ? 

-x-

"You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life" 

by Rebecca Hazelton

I want to spend a lot but not all of my years with you.

I will remember your eyes as green when they were gray.

Sex will be good but next door's will sound better.

There will be small things. I will pick up your damp towel from the bed, and then I won't.

I won't be as hot as I was when I wasn't yours

and your hairline now so untrustworthy.

You will bring me wine and notice how much I drink.

But there's something holding me here, for now,

Like your eyes, which I suppose are brown, after all.

—

(I took extreme liberty to translate in Hindi, few excerpts from the captioned poem as it felt very intriguing and different. Any translation loss is purely due to my lack of skill and craft) 

Love, that’s taken for granted!

Love that’s taken for granted. 
Does not die an immediate, clean death. 
It persists, chokes, gasps and hopes. 
Staring into the dark, searching for a stray ray,
That might show the way through the chasm. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Does not realise that sometimes a star-less gap in the night sky;
Is because of a blackhole. 
That exists in stealth-mode. 
Not letting any shred of goodness get past it. 
Not even of hope. Or destiny. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Forgets that once there were signs and symptoms,
Long before there was apathy and neglect. 
Or excuses and de-prioritisation. 
Long before there were arguments that deserved a discussion. 
And silences that deserved the cushion of companionship. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Has nowhere to go. 
Except inwards. 
And scratch and burn and cut and bruise. 
As it digs deep. 
But eventually rest, with rest of the regrets. 
And emerge never again. 

Love, that’s taken for granted. 
Is the soil on which will grow. 
Tomorrow!

Time & Value

As a kid growing in 90s, one of the most inseparable part of our schooling was this subject on ‘Moral Science’ which while felt unnecessary then but today feels like the most important ingredient of overall personal growth and character building. Spread across several years, it touched upon some of the key facets of a rewarding life, internally and externally. One of them was Time & Value.

 

What the chapter broadly said could be summarized as – “However busy we are, we always end up finding time for things or people we value”. Value here is the operative word and not love or affection or even desire, which is so profound all these years later when I think about it. People who I truly value; my default setting just embraces them in a capsule where they have an almost unlimited access to my time. Yes I do have my zones that require long spells of concentrated focus on other things such as work or well-being or even vocations but when the call is placed by these people on me, I usually just clear out all the bandwidth intuitively and re-divert my attention back to them. Sometimes this backfires badly but rarely has it not gone a step ahead towards making the relationships stronger and more loving. 

 

Why this line of thought now? Because due to something imperceptible lately, I realized that while this is a shade that’s been ingrained into my subconscious for decades, there are times when either I trip on it or I get extremely uncomfortable if someone else errs on it, mostly knowingly. Somehow, over decades, the tacit value of relationships has gone down substantially and there is a sense of shallowness that has crept-in the very way people engage with each other. Somehow it has become acceptable to not find time for relationships and still call them being valued. This is an anti-thesis to the entire logic of how it should be in a well-meaning world. In a well-meaning world, we attempt to understand people by investing in them and then bet long term on them. The only logical explanation of this aberration could be the fact that maybe people are no longer sure whether if the aforementioned relationship is for keeps or not. Maybe they do not have the concept of ‘leap of faith’ anymore wherein at times we do not have the full journey mapped ahead of us and still choose to pursue that path because as Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena ji said – “लीक पर वो चलें जिनके चरण दुर्बल और हारे हैं; हमें जो हमारी यात्रा से बनें, ऐसे अनिर्मित पंथ प्यारे हैं”. And in my opinion this quest is the most wonderful thing about the journey. What fun in knowing everything about someone before travelling together? Some journeys are more about the road than the destination. 

 

Nevertheless, circling back to the original chain of thought, however busy one is, it is important to find time for those who we value. Life is all about the choices we make and our people; we should choose carefully and then keep choosing them every single day.

इस रात की सुबह नहीं …

इस रात की सुबह नहीं,
इसमें कोई शुबह नहीं,
मैं ढूँढता हूँ उस मुक़ाम को,
जिसमें कोई गिरह नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

सूरज है मध्यम तेज आज,
पवन है सुप्त सेज आज,
रास्ते भी हैं भरे,
देव पीड़ा को हरें,
क्रांति की है निशब्द आहट,
पर मुझे कोई खबर नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

मैं हूँ रश्मि पर सवार,
हर दिक् में कर रहा स्वछंद विहार,
है मन ये मेरा सारथी,
हृदय विनम्र प्रार्थी,
ना रोक है ना टोक है,
ना भय है ना किंचित् शोक है,
ना ग़लत है ना कुछ सही,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

मैं स्वेद रक्त से चूर हूँ,
विश्वास से भरपूर हूँ,
भुजा में अतुल्य दंभ है,
भृकुटि में ना कोई प्रतिष्टम्भ है,
ये महारण का है पाञ्चजन्य,
कोई व्यक्तिगत आह्वान नहीं,
इस रात की सुबह नहीं। 

इस रात की सुबह नहीं  …

—

#IcarusSays

Relationships : Akin to Jigsaw puzzles or Valency

​

The times that we live in are strange. The narratives suited to the world are well ingrained right from the childhood, through movies, books, ‘Adult’ conversations and beliefs. Which is why most of these remain unchallenged throughout our lives, till we encounter a small optional turn in the road somewhere which has a sign that says - Try this route this time, maybe. And that’s when some of the rethinking happens. Like this. 

One of the narratives we have gotten comfortable with over time is that finding a partner or even a friend is like finding missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle from the same box. It is the quest of One who will fit, right there, perfectly, like nothing had ever fit better before. Someone who will complete the picture and rekindle the joy of living and fruition of this very quest. Just that one piece, that will make every thing right from there on. That one piece of our individual jigsaw puzzle. Makes sense! 

Makes sense, completely, but then is this all of it? Is this all that any relationship needs? Seeking a partner who fits? Is that how humans operate in practical world? Here I am not referring to an ideal state but to a more plausible (read practical) state. The actual state of affairs if I may take liberty to say so. And thus my hypothesis is slightly different. I equate human relationships with the concept of Valency and best illustrated through Lewis Dot Diagram, back from our Chemistry days.

But to begin with what is Valency and Lewis Dot Diagram. The combining capacity of an atom or group to form a compound is known as its valency. So the valency of Sodium is 1 and valency of Chlorine is -1 and thus they can combine to form a stable compound NaCl, more commonly known as Common Salt, stable enough to to consume. Lewis Dot Diagram is how this combination is represented pictorially. 

Image Credit : Off Google search

To make it clearer, Super-active Sodium with 1 extra electron in it’s last orbit gives it to Super-active Chlorine which has 7 electrons in the last orbit which makes them both have 8 electrons each in their respective last orbits and the combined compound NaCl is thus Super-stable. 

Quite straightforward to understand and put to practice if we draw a parallel to relationships. In most relationships, where we seek that one missing piece of jigsaw puzzle, the problem is that it is too specific a quest and too momentous a burden on just that one piece. The expectations are unreal and so the outcomes rarely live up to them. Also pictures formed through a jigsaw puzzle are stable only till they are on terra firma. In principle they are still individual loose piece which are meaningless individually. Not a great feeling at all. Mostly is relatable also. 

That does not hold true with stable compounds that are formed with exchange of electrons. The responsibilities are shared and so is the gravity of partnership. The stability is at the highest because the very reason these were formed in the first place was because there was an innate desire in both the elements (or group of atoms) to lose hyperactivity and be stable. And while doing so, ensuring that the outcome is more useful to world in general and them in particular. 

But at the very beginning of this text I also asserted that this is also a more plausible approach, a practical one at that. This assertion is because it does not ignore completely the influence of external forces. Change in circumstances such as heat, electrolysis or polar solvents can break the bond of NaCl for that matter, though it is a Super-strong bond, even from chemical standards. H2O, i,e, water, breaks down much more easily. Depends on the strength of the bond and external circumstances mostly. 

But this theory allows for the provision of some bonds getting weaker and open to reacting with other elements or compounds over time. Which is when the strength of the bonds is tested. Some elements fleet through their life and still do not end up finding a partner with who they can form a long lasting stable bond, some settle down quick, some flip from time to time. I have come to believe that all human types are covered well within the Mendeleev’s table. 

But then ofcourse this is one way of looking at it. I am sure there are numerous other ways to look at relationships and no one one way is right. Somehow I relate much better to Science than Heresy and thus the need to put this blog down for me to keep coming back to it and refresh if there is a change in how I feel about it many decades later. Having said that, if you are reading it right now, do ping up to discuss your viewpoints. Would love to know your sentiments on this.

~ #IcarusSays 

चाय

 चाय!

मैंने चाय की तासीर को बदलते देखा है। 

ग़ुस्से से बनायी गयी चाय। 

प्यार से बनायी गयी चाय से अलग होती है। 

आँच का फ़र्क होता है। 

बाहर बाल्कनी में पैर रेलिंग के ऊपर रख के पी गयी चाय,

अंदर AC कमरे में सोफ़े पर क़रीने से बैठ के पी गयी चाय से अलग होती है। 

ताप का फ़र्क़ होता है। 

अलग होती है, चुस्की लेके, बिस्किट डुबो के पी हुई चाय,

जिसमें कब बातें घुल जाती हैं,

और कब बिस्किट, 

पता ही नहीं चलता। 

शायद जज़्बात का फ़र्क़ होता है। 

और फ़र्क बता देती है चाय

Litmus Paper की तरह। 

क्षारीय और अम्लीय तबीयत में। 

क्यूँकि चाय में सिर्फ़ हाथ और साथ का फ़र्क़ होता है। 

Lets Travel!

Lets travel. 

But not the way travellers do. 
Or the kind sailors prefer. 
Not even the kind that philosophers choose to. 
Lets travel. 
The way birds do. 
Oblivious of the route. 
And sheer disregard towards the destination.  
Just for the pure joy of flight. 
Because that’s all they know. 

Lets travel. 
To clear the head. 
And sanctify the soul. 
To let heartbeats catchup with cerebral scintillations. 
And breaths slow down to the pace of an ordinary life. 
To help rediscover the life that we claim to store within. 
And repent having lost somewhere over past few decades. 

Lets travel. 
So that we uncomplicate, untangle, unwind. 
The threads that bind our sanity to our consciousness. 
And allow the strings tethered to the ground be snapped off. 
Lets do all that and more. 
——