A Love Untold Of

On a hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to see the progress in her bone repair, lying there with her hair disorganized, with one foot seemingly reduced and apparently abnormal when I glanced at mine to confirm, and the other, in a dressing gauge, was a woman in her 50's. A few other acquaintances of the various patients, my mother and I sat across the lady's temporary bed and I started to wonder how she must have damaged her foot. I got acutely engrossed in observing every detail of her and comparing myself with her on every possible ground. Her face was dark, wrinkled, and spoke of a sadness nobody except her could comprehend. Her eyes were closed and didn't give an impression of her being asleep. After all, who feels the need to sleep on a hospital bed. 

A little while later, I felt shattered. I could see her crying. The world, at that instant meant nothing to her because her pain kept her reluctantly occupied. Her weeping got my vision blurred. She made another movement to adjust herself in a way nobody could see her, for, there is no market of her sorrows in this world, she better not advertise them. What happened next was the sole driving force of me writing this post. An old man, probably in his 60's, got up from the second chair on my right and went to the lady. He was lean, wore a simple shirt and a pair of trousers, big glasses, had dirty toe nails, as if he is so busy earning his livelihood, he can't remember to clip them. He carefully wiped her tears with his old hand and said something to her. It was not audible to us, sitting just a short distance away. He moved his hand once on her right cheek, then left and then again right to reassure me that love can actually exist. I could see the lady stop crying and become motionless once again. The old man came and seated himself. 

I was so comforted by the gentleman's act, I could not have been happier for the ailing lady. Sometimes, more than medicines and rest, we need an assurance that we are wanted; that there are people praying for our well being and that we cannot disappoint them. Being totally touched by this happenstance, it didn't just restore my faith in love, but also made me thank the Almighty for my condition. I was much better than her by all means. I longed for her betterment and then came my turn to see the doctor. It was as if I was destined to witness what I had, and as if it were meant to convey my emotions here. I now think love is much more than those lavish dinner dates and cliched magical words. It is probably beyond every explicable feeling and so- called romantic sentiments. I feel it has to offer a greater deal of self- confidence in oneself. If it has to be something, it is about standing by the person at all times. In place of love making us weak and dependent, it should always be our strength and a constant source of encouragement to help us become better individuals. Love should constitute small, meaningful things to be proud of. Love should be the comfortable silence between people that need not break.  

If merely opening doors and pulling chairs for someone is what the world calls 'love', then I cannot help but happily disagree.

Feedback is welcome. Thank you :) 

A Candid Commentary

As chauvinistic as I might sound to you in the next 10 minutes, let me tell you that this is serious stuff. If you're not into it, you’ve not wasted much of your time. The rest of you who happen to “know” me or even slightly relate with me, please go ahead.

Yesterday I thought of catching up on a movie to compensate myself against the week’s exhaustion and ended up watching a recent one- Holiday.
The movie as the trailers suggest, pertains to the lives of the soldiers of the Indian army. Having known that, I was dead sure that it is going to contain plenty of action sequences which is certainly not my taste. Owing to the freedom of stopping the movie anytime in between and switching on to a seemingly better one, I gave it a try.

As the movie began, my overactive mind kept on imagining what would happen in the next 2.5 hours that would not make me discontinue it midway and I may have a good word to talk about it.

The movie, in a nutshell, revolves around the rationality, wisdom, honesty and dedication of the protagonist, who is a part of the Indian army. He has his ways of dealing with the terrorists and has it all in the end, after going through a LOT.

The film, apart from accommodating patriotism and cheesy Bollywood romance, also provides a room for effective thinking.

I remember being a part of an educational trip in my 9th grade which included visiting a BSF camp. We, a bunch of notorious students, were warned against demanding the soldiers to take us across the border before unloading the bus. What we were also told was to not to ask them anything about their relatives. Yes, these were probably the only Indians who hated talking about their families. The reason being, that remembrance would only bring melancholy and heavyheartedness to weaken them. The reason also being, there is a love greater than, much greater than the hatred they are subjected to face when they are reminded of their families whom they get to meet in ages. As we sat there in front of their tents asking naïve questions (we were not allowed to ask mature questions, remember?) and still getting them answered, there was this unfamiliar biting silence uniting us which we were all helpless about. There must be so many things they would have been reminded of. On seeing us, they might have recalled their own children; on smiling back at someone’s smile, they must be struggling to fight back their tears, and that they were, trust me.

The trip now remains only in some of our photographs and temporary memories and the movie shall also meet the same fate. However, what keeps me going to back to it now and again is the fact that our generation has failed to realize the necessity of those people who happily compromised on a comfortable life and chose to dwell miles away from the cities.

We crib about momentary issues. We only like to “like” stuff on Facebook that demeans our nation and projects a better picture of other nations. We are simply fond of sitting on our couches and cursing the nation for what has been printed in a daily. We only like to loathe our country for its downfalls and we are 24*7 available to debate about them on any given platform. We can never appreciate something unless its absence makes it essential. And this absence, I suspect, is going to be very awful by all means. I wish to make a small but meaningful change in our mentalities by incorporating my thoughts with real events. There is no offense intended personally, or to any group of people, but if I rebuke your arguments and challenge your conscience in this context, I am happy doing so. For there are humans like you and me (or not much like you and me), keeping up all night, in order to shield us, irrespective of our likes and preferences, religions and languages by sacrificing all of what we usually take for granted. Next time before you go ranting, put in a little more thought and you will be compelled to thank for your state of existence.

Feedback is welcome,

Thank you.

The Friendship Business

Hello people! Yet another long stretch of no blog entry, I admit. But I am not grumbling about not having sufficient time or thought to scribble about (or perhaps I am). 

So here we are on the first Sunday of August, better known as- International Friendship Day. The day was proposed in Paraguay in 1958 and since then has been creating a great amount of delirium all over. The spirit of the day is refreshing and manages to drown us in the pool of nostalgia and sentimentality. What I recall when I hear 'Friendship Day' is the Fridays and Saturdays prior to the D- day back in primary section when all our minds had to concentrate on were the belts in our bags and on our lower arms. Studies and everything associated with it were absolutely secondary then. I have memories of the well- planned outings meant for purchasing the bands for our so- called friends who would probably be denied oxygen in case we fail to tie a belt around their wrists. Girly chains, fancy belts, decorative stripes, masculine bands and what not! We hardly ever bothered about what would happen to that useless trash before decomposition. I also get reminded of the physical agony we gladly chose to undergo, courtesy: more than a dozen bands clung to the wrists extending towards the elbow.

The joy we experienced in flaunting was magical. The pride we took in moving around with them- immense. And the pleasure we derived out of all that in entirety was simply irreplaceable. 

Be that as it may, now that we are a little more competent, I retrospect upon all those events and pity those who still believe and follow the tradition religiously. The whole idea doesn't please me. On the contrary, a friend would avoid inflicting pain (which he/she is precisely doing by means of that band) in any possible fashion. A friend would genuinely lend a ear when you need to share something. A friend would be a part of your ecstasy and even be the reason of it. A friend would usher you through darkness to the best of his abilities and hope for nothing in return. A great friendship can take years to build up and a single day is just not enough to prove our friendly feelings to anyone. 

Why don't we pause for a while and give this a thought? Over the decades, has our sensibility been so lazy as to not even allow us to think rationally? To all those crazy fellows wasting the time of their lives exchanging belts and cutting cakes and flooding their Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram profiles with countless snaps, i honestly think you should 'grow up' in real sense.

 Having a few quality friends, with unsaid promises that they will be there for you no matter what, is going to add more substance to your life than congregating "likes" of total strangers and gaining their adoration.

Is It All So Worthless?

Few days back I was insisted upon by a group of friends to visit the nearby riverfront to enjoy the pleasing weather. I, sans an objection, agreed because it’s good to watch the wrathful waves and the soothing evening sky with a little less cacophony than usual.

You might be wondering why I am I up to all this but let me tell you- stop thinking so much as you have a lot more coming up to keep yourselves busy.

As we parked our vehicles, what caught our attention was a huge crowd gathered near the parapet. We smelled the obvious, one of us blurted ‘suicide’!

Now, possessing an overtly active human conscience, we ran towards the crowd (and no stopping us then) as if we were to dive inside and come out with our foolish fellow beings (hopefully alive). After gathering some piece of information from a sincere follower of the ongoing activities, we got to know that a couple travelling in an auto, pulled over in the middle of the bridge and escaped (safely) into the water. There was a boat anxiously looking for a life worth saving and the ambulance anticipating its inhabitant and some media officials with a bunch of policemen.

Having known this much, I quietly drifted away from the rather concerned sympathizers and those that occupied themselves by mockery.

I wonder what must be so strong a reason that led someone to end his life in this manner.

Why are we all so scared of the inevitable failures and the unfortunate events of our lives? Why do we suddenly become so selfish and think about nothing else except relieving ourselves of our troubles? Why does the happiness of someone else fail to encourage us to keep moving? How can we forget those who count on us for a great company and love us the way we are? How can we overlook the simplest of pleasures that life has to offer us? What makes us pass over all our cheerful moments and the innumerable reasons to laugh for some silly issue? Most important of all, why do we not realize that the life we are leading is also a dream of millions and appreciate our existence?

We all have our share of problems and life was never a bed of roses but self- slaughter is not the real solution. Let's, for once, act our age and confront our predicaments. Plus there is no guarantee that the grass is greener on the other side. Unfortunately, being patient is not something our reflex is very good at. However, we can still try! We never know what’s in store for us unless it is served. It’s time we stop grumbling and start adoring our imperfect lives. 

Feedback is welcome.

Thank You :)

Mixed Bag

Hello there! Yes, the debut post is a mixed bag. A bag of multitude of emotions, rants, complains, thoughts, and contemplations in consonance with a little less or negligible expression in some cases. A lot has been going on in here which has now, thankfully, paved its way to the screens before you, dear readers.

Before I go about ranting, I genuinely thank a few friends for inspiring and encouraging me to do this.

To begin with, I am not particularly very excited about the current headlines that our newspapers publish. It still seems to me like a horrifying nightmare but since even nightmares are to end someday for a beautiful morning to take birth, I like to reassure myself with a hope that whatever happens is a part of His wonderful master plan and holds good for everybody.

Likewise, we all have our share of woes, don’t we? Be it our excruciating educational setup which requires us to merely pass the examinations by all the possible (un)ethical means; our relationships which define us, make us and break us; our weight issues; our psychological apprehensions; our social enigmas; our career dilemmas and what not! In response to all of these inevitable affairs, I tend to hope of a better morrow. With an ounce of optimism and gallons of imperfection, I like to embrace my shortcomings and wish to witness a great fate. :)

Comments are welcome!

Thank you