The perfect love affair

I've often wondered what the perfect love story would be. What kind of a demi God would the hero be and how many ships would the heroine be able to set sailing for her. How would the cosmos conspire to make them meet and what would their destinies hold after this fateful meeting. Would they turn into a doting couple who live together and die together, or would they never meet and go down in history as a beautiful thing that couldn't be.

The few things that really come close to the perfect love story are fairy tales. The waiting for the right person to come into your life, knowing at a glance that your true love has arrived, and heroes and heroines who are as good as they look. And then they live happily ever after.
Real life however, tragically happens to be longer than a 10 page story book. And sadly most of it is spent in the "happily ever after". Soon the "happily" goes away. With time the "ever" seems longer than ever before. And all that is left is "after", a period not well documented in most books that authoritatively describe the events that led them there.
The perfect love story would, I guess, not really be a story, at least not in the kind of meaning the word is generally used. It would be a tidbit of life, another day, a lone journey. The perfect affair is what occurs between you and the pretty young girl on the platform as your train draws out of the station. It is perfect because it is impractical and practicality ruins it.In those few moments she can be everything you want and you don't even have to know what exactly you want her to be. And as she disappears into the milling crowd, you can think of the infinite possibilities for a love that could be. One that wasn't long enough to be tarnished by practicalities of making it real, of making it work. That is the closest we get to a perfect love affair. Most of the times, the hero would give in to the way things are, almost always out of control. But sometimes he may be brave enough to get down from the train.. he may be brave enough to chase the dream.. to call out to her in the busy crowd.. to run up to her.. grab her hand.. and make her turn...
But practicality ruins it.

(Disclaimer: Views expressed are solely of the author. Feel free to jump off moving trains or whatever it takes to chase your dream, at your own risk)

Youth

When you live for feeling the wind in your face,
When questions are more and answers are few,
When recklessness is not a decision but a way of life,
When friends are closer than family,
When late nights and indiscipline make you popular,
When responsibility is only about household chores,
When decisions are taken in milliseconds,
When a car and a girl is all you could dream of,
When you are happy to change yourself for people around,
When all unknown paths need to be travelled,
When having fun is the only objective,
When being unreasonable is quite reasonable,
When the only fear is being ordinary,
When music is loud,
When speeds are high,
When love is perfect,
When world is big,
And you are the best.

All that is youth. I know I will suddenly not cease to be youthful starting tomorrow. But I feel the right of being “young” that I’ve taken for granted since the time I can remember would be forsaken. A new phase of life beckons…

The concept of growing old…

I am scared of tomorrow. Tomorrow I turn 25. In case that didn’t register, that is Twenty-Five. By any measure of time, twenty five years is substantial. I mean it is more than a percent of time since Christ arrived and we started counting straight. What I also mean is that the ‘boyhood’ I have cherished for so long, would have to be foregone. The temporal island free of responsibilities, of not caring, of living in the moment, of pure indulgence would have to be left behind. A large number of unanswered questioned would need to be accepted as unanswerable. The dreams of limitless possibilities would need to be crystallized into a bracket of feasible options. No, I would not stop dreaming. Just the dreaminess behind the dreams would decrease.

The problem with birthdays is that they will come once every year whether you like it or not. Whether you are ready or not, come March 10th and you’d have grown up by a year. It is like each year you are running against time to grow as much as your body surely will. And what does it really mean to grow by one year? How do I judge whether I’ve over-performed, under-performed or just justified one year of temporal growth. Have my perspectives broadened enough for a year? Have I gained a yearful of responsibility, maturity and rationality? Have I made these years count in my overall existence? The concept of age doesn’t answer these questions.

I think a time dependent age is not the best idea. It is good for medical science but that is mostly it. It is the experiences that should add to your age because those are the ones that really add to your maturity. In such a world up till some age, say ten years the age would be the same as your biological age. From then on age would be purely based on your experiences. Getting into a real relationship would add a year to your age. Breaking off from one would add two. A selfless good deed would add a month. A first success would add half a year and a success after failures would add a whole year. Fighting a handicap would earn you years and standing by a closed one in his illness would also add years.

Imagine how useful the concept of age would be in this new world. A world in which age does signify maturity and being young is all about energy and passion. It would be much more meaningful in this world to let people above eighteen drive and people over twenty-one get married. The age becomes your guide, your motivator and measure of a way of life. Where the age of your death really tells you how you’ve lived.

And it would be fun as well. More so because this would require some people would actually get younger with time. I mean Britney Spears would certainly get a year knocked off her age the day she shaved her head. Careless drivers would become young enough to get their licenses revoked. And Bryan Adams for all his youthful exuberance and his undying belief in true love would finally remain eighteen till he dies. It also leaves you with a tantalizing fantasy- if we all forgot our ages would we still grow old?

So this is my idea. A ‘meritocratic’ concept of aging. It would not be practical I agree. Such an age would not be easy to discern and I know it is never going to be feasible. But it is one thing that would keep me from turning twenty-five. Till then I will try and find solace in the aphorism "You are as old as you think you are".

He stopped loving her today

He was in a hurry. He knew he had little time left. Five minutes at most. The bed sheet was already rife with blood and there was always the risk they might come back soon. Beside the bed was the lovely face of the only girl he'd ever loved. Too bad it had to end like this.
But there was no time for regrets. Infact, he really didn't feel any regrets. He was just surprised that there was all this time to kill. The waiting and the anticipation was really painful. He wanted some music to take the gloominess away. He went through the CD rack and smiled. She always stacked her music so well. He switched it on. Coldplay. Coldplay always meant Coldplay "yellow" to him. It was always their song. “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you”, it began. He looked at her face again. She really was beautiful. Even with the blood smeared all over, she looked heavenly to him. He wished he could go back in time and change things. No, not 15 minutes back. He wished he could go back in time to the point he stopped caring and she stopped loving. Like all hopeless romantics, he sincerely believed he could have controlled things. If only, he had talked sooner after their first fight. If only, he'd visited her more often at her mother's. If only he'd said more times how much she meant to him. If only,…
He went around her room. It had been almost 10 years since he was here. But it was strangely familiar. It was painted clearly on the page of his life he never turned. He remembered the little things. The peach and greens she loved on the walls. The chiming clock still stuck at the wall. The names of the teddy bears that now probably belonged to her son. Even the smell. That delicate mix of perfume, cream and herself, still filled the room. He didn’t like the mess he had created. He started stacking back the things on the shelves. He always made it a point not to let his love for her disturb her normal course of life. Well, always except today.
Suddenly his head was full of a buzzing sound. Loud and clear, killing the silence around him it went around the room. Round and round. Reverberating. Growing louder. And the floor started shaking. Thud. Thud. Thud. The room itself was shaking now. He realized it was time. He went to the other side of the bed and picked up her blood-sodden photograph. By now he had grown pale and fell down on the floor. He kissed the photograph with his white lips. The band was singing "for you I'll bleed myself dry". "for you I'll bleed myself...". And there was silence. Except for the footsteps of her returning from dinner.
He had finally moved on.

Disclaimer: Inspiration: The song lyrics of "He stopped loving her today" by George Jones

Of simple joys and sorrows

A word of thanks to Sudatta, a little known friend from Orkut who inspired me to key this down :)
Hidden behind all the macroscopic joys, achievements and losses is really a string of small small things that make up your day. Here are a few of those things in my life !

Likes:
sleeping, dreaming, typing lyrics of good songs, pizzas, planning my next purchase, being the center of attention, good jokes, witty quotes, smell of rains, driving on long empty roads, my ipod, travelling alone, thinking, night outs, perfectly blue sky, kids when they are not crying, home, mom's food, advertisements, hot water baths, honesty, speaking my mind out, Cadbury's 5-star, hot coffee, singing along with the songs, being funny, yellow light, sounds in a temple, learning something new, meeting old friends, laughing loudly, walking barefoot on cold floor, moments of dawning comprehension, creating, charging things, talking about myself, Hobbes, extra sugar 

Does not like:
bargaining, studying before exams, exams, being rushed, being told what to do, saying goodbyes, waking up early, being lonely, working very hard, missing some-one, failing, hot and humid days, pimples, pompous people, ipod with low battery, earphones that keep falling, being taken for a ride, being thought of as street smart, impression management, forgetting important things, my indecision, missing out on a good joke, puzzles i can't solve, memories of my mistakes, fights with mom, wet socks, told to switch off my laptop

The beauty of incomprehension

The task of searching for the right word for "how a train journey makes me feel", turned out to quite difficult. As I embarked on my homebound journey at term break, I mused over how I have always been happy whenever I've travelled in a train. One reason of course is the journey itself. Any journey promises a change- from the city, the people and the current way of life. And it offers hope- of a new place, new people and a new way of life. Change and hope are together a potent recipe for happiness. But this source of happiness is common to all modes of travel; my search was for a word that makes a train journey unique.
In planes and ships the surroundings are far too homogeneous to make you feel you've moved very far. In trains however, the limitless expanse of distance gets registered through the way life changes across the journey. The landscape changes, the language on the signboards changes, people's appearance changes, and even their "busy"ness changes. You cross a lush green field where the only thing that moves is the scarecrow swaying, cows grazing and a farmer walking across the field. It appears as if the time is standing still. After half an hour you cross a busy and a noisy railway crossing where scooter riders would be honking their horns, eager to resume their lives on the other side of the railway line.
You'd cross rivers brimming with water- tributaries and distributaries that you cannot name. And you'll cross gorges where unknown rivers once used to flow, that now lay still with the parched soil cracking under the sun. I felt I wanted to know the names of these tributaries, the story behind these dried up rivers, the history of the distant mountain ranges, recognize the species of beautiful trees and pinpoint the location of the passing village. That is when it hit me. The beauty of a train journey is that it showcases a world you don't understand. A world that due to its distance has become distant from yours. My desire to know the name is my desire to place it within my existing models of things I know, but it will kill its magic. It is the incomprehension that makes it wonderful. In a world that is fast running out of mysteries, every element outside the rectangular window frame is mysterious and unknown. You cross broken pathways to invisible destinations, cutting across carpeted fields and disappearing into the horizon. You cross buildings and huts and yet more buildings, each one a passing reminder of the thousands of lives, beyond those mysterious walls that you'd never know. Each dweller is a complete and unique human being and also a complete stranger. You cross platforms that appear to be forgotten, where a few people wait but the train never stops. It is as if the platform has been wiped off the railways map, and when you look beyond the platform and peer into the dimlit huts, you wonder if the town itself has been forgotten. And at last it is the incomprehension of the engineering behind all this . As you cross bridges and rivers, overpasses and underpasses, canals and tunnels, you can't help but wonder at the marvelous human effort that went into stamping a path across the landscape.
Having said all this I have still not figured out the word to describe the feeling. I've narrowed it down to two strong contenders though. I think the word maybe "overawe"- the train journey overawes me with the realization that there is so much I do not know about people, places and the vastness of my country and so much I will never know. On the other hand, the word maybe "promise"- the train journey promises millions of hidden treasures that await the one who cares to search. But then again, perhaps I should not try naming the word. It may kill the magic. I hope you get the point.

How to kill a tree

A poem i had read in school. Just found it on the web. I love the way he describes "killing" a tree and the way life tries to hold on...

How to kill a tree
-by Gieve Patel

It takes much time to kill a tree,
Not a simple jab of the knife
Will do it. It has grown
Slowly consuming the earth,
Rising out of it, feeding
Upon its crust, absorbing
Years of sunlight, air, water,
And out of its leprous hide
Sprouting leaves.

So hack and chop
But this alone won't do it.
Not so much pain will do it.
The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again
To former size.

No,
The root is to be pulled out-
Out of the anchoring earth;
It is to be roped, tied,
And pulled out-snapped out
Or pulled out entirely,
Out from the earth-cave,
And the strength of the tree exposed,
The source, white and wet,
The most sensitive, hidden
For years inside the earth.

Then the matter 
Of scorching and choking
In sun and air,
Browning, hardening,
Twisting, withering,

And then it is done.