Forgiving Myself

I have a little bit of an ego problem. I also have the ability to accept a sticky situation and reach out to make it right, doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong. I thank God that the acceptance is more than the ego. I’ve been in spots in the last some odd months where I’ve just let my ego win all the time. It did win and very well at that. It sat like a smug kid on the porch of my heart not letting anyone in.

Recently, I lost my cool at a close friend in office. I said quite a few things that I felt then and very cleanly slit the harmony between us so that it dripped of sadness. The next morning, I woke up and realised it wasn’t worth it. There is a certain amount of regard he has for me and vice versa so I didn’t see the need for us fighting like that.Our last conversation went something like:
Me: After 2 years, I don’t believe I have to ask you to regard my feelings. We are beyond that.
Him: Exactly. And that is why I find this conversation pretty stupid.
Me: Me too. However, I have nothing more to say.
Him: Fine. Take care and be safe. I’m leaving. Bye.
Me: Bye

Even though, I had realised that the said argument was pretty stupid I didn’t make any effort for 3 days to talk to him. My ego needed to be held high. It did win. I wanted to talk to him, but I did not. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. For 3 days, I had a knot in my heart. It kept bothering me deep down and I let it fester. When this morning, I finally asked myself, “Sameen is it worth it? How stupid!” I agreed with myself and went and spoke to him. That knot in my head undid itself and I could breathe free. We laughed like small kids and went back to being what we were. Just picked up from where we left and moved on. He smiled. I smiled. It made me feel human again.

Then, I picked my phone and called a very close friend I hadn’t spoken to for over a month. Even with her, I had let my ego win. Whatever may have caused us to not talk, could be kept aside. It surely isn’t more important than the person. I spoke to her, felt a little more at ease. I know she won’t call me back though she said she would, but that’s okay. I know she will eventually come around. You don’t just spend 11 years with someone without forgiving each other a lot of mistakes.

After that, I walked into a mall to buy another friend a gift I promised but couldn’t find time because of my “hectic” schedule. Called her, spoke to her, and we laughed and realised that after all these years, we still like the same things!

Now, when I sit here typing this, I feel freer than I ever have in the recent past. Less guilty, more like myself, not caught up in a web, and much more accepting than ever.

So, as I sign off, I want to explicitly thank the person inside me who asked me to go and talk to my friend. Someone inside me said to me, “Baat kar le usse. Dost hai yaar.”

All of us need acceptance and an explicit display of love. After all, beneath it all we are all made of the same things. Talk to people you love. They want to hear you say you love them.

-Sameen

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

 

A Love Affair

First of all, apologies that this post comes so late in the day. It’s as overdue as overdue can be and as important as important can be. Getting straight to it.

This is the story of a love affair. It began a long time ago, when a man named Ranbir Kapoor acted in a movie called Rockstar. This story is NOT about my delusional-love-affair with him. So, hang in there, don’t run away just yet. When the music of his last movie Rockstar released, I jumped at it. Literally, metaphorically, emotionally, and quite-eagerly. This post is about my love-affair with the music, and more specifically, the lyrics of the songs. (See? No Ranbir Kapoor, although I love him so very much!) It’s high time I said, Mr. Irshad Kamil, PLEASE take a bow; a hundred times if you wish. (Irshad Kamil wrote the lyrics of the movie for those who didn’t know!) In equal measure, I also want to mention what a super-fantabulously-fricking-amazingly-awesome job A.R. Rahman and Mohit Chauhan have done to bring that poetry to life! And I am not exaggerating. The music of Rockstar is the soul of the movie, and the lyrics are so unflinchingly honest that they hit the spot! They do. The lyrics describe true love; the highest form of truth possible. The music of Rahman adds grace and beautifies the words even more. To add to it, Mohit Chauhan has sung the songs with so much reverence, it may be as if they were his tended and cared for Garden of Eden. If you don’t believe me, read the rest of the post, with a little faith if possible, and tell me how can one not fall in love with such a beauty.

Snippets of songs that I am in “true-love” with:

Song: Jo Bhi Mai Kehna Chahu

Lyrics: 
Maine yeh bhi socha hai aksar
Tu bhi main bhi sabhi hai sheeshe
Khudhi ko hum sabhi main dekhein
Nahin hoon main hoon main toh phir bhi
Sahi galat, tumhara main
Mujhe paana, paana hai khud ko…

My Interpretation: 
We are what we see around
and we are what is within others found
I’m non-existent yet I exist in you
I’m your right and I am your wrong
I’m all I want.

I Speak:
By attaining my lover, I shall attain myself. By attaining myself, I’ll attain my lover.

Now, if that is not love, what is?

Song: Aur Ho

Lyrics:
Main hasrat mein ek uljhi dor hua
Suljha de…
Main dastaak hoon, tu band kiwadoon sa
Khulja re…

My Interpretation:
I’m a knot in an unfulfilled wish
Untie me
I’m the knock and you’re a closed door
Please open up

I Speak:
This song, primarily, is about his anguish on not being able to release himself from the web he has created for himself. In these lines, he’s in a tumult and asks his lover to liberate him. A knot in a strand of a wish that is unfulfilled and a knock that is not being answered shows how acceptance is not coming to him.

Love is liberation.

Song: Kun Fayakun

Lyrics:
“Main toh jag ko naa bhaaya
Tune gale se lagaya haan phir tu hi hai khudaya”

“Kar de mujhe mujhse hi riha, mujhse hi riha”

My Interpretation:
This song, in its entirety, is such a soother. Kun fayakun, in Arabic, means “God said “Be” and it was!” It’s about how when there was nothing, God created everything in an instant. (This song is not for atheists and rationalists. Please don’t ruin it by telling me how to look in another direction.)

I Speak:
In this song, he is (according to me) talking about God’s love for him. He says that when no one accepted him for who he was, he came to God and God accepted him.

He also asks God to “free him from himself” which basically means that he’s asking himself to surrender.

Surrender is the highest form of love in my dictionary.

Song: Naadan Parindey

Lyrics:
Kaagar kaagar
Mori itni araj tohse
Chun chun khahiyo maas
Arajiya re khahiyo na
Do nain mohe
Khahiyoo na do nain mohe
Piya ke milan ki aas

My Interpretation: 
Here I have to give credit to a certain someone who made me realise how important these lines were. I was told, “When a man dies and if his body is rotting, the crows being scavengers tend to eat the body if unattended. And when they begin scavenging he body, they eat the eyes of the man first. In these lines, he says that, If I die, o crow please, rip my flesh apart as you wish, just do not eat my eyes as I hope to see my beloved when I go beyond this life I just lost.”

I had goosebumps when i heard it. Still do.

I Speak:
Is that not love? No? No?

Song: Tum Ho

Lyrics:
(This song is my bible of love. However, I shall exercise restraint and just quote a few lines.)
Kis tarah cheenega…
Mujhse yeh jahan tumhe?
Tum hi hu mai kya fikar
Ab hume…

My Interpretation:
I am you.
How is this world going to take us apart?

I Speak:
I have said this a hundred times, and I shall say it again. (To those who have heard it, please bear with me.) We are in a world where acceptance of love plays a major part in helping lovers walk into the sunset. If love is not accepted by society, it does create quite a disturbance. These lines, are like time that you may never be able to contain and bind even if you wish. When the relationship between two people reaches a point where one is another and vice versa, no mighty force in the world can put out that love. It is going to exist, do what you might. And this is why I think, the three words “I am you.” are way much more powerful than the three cliched words, “I love you.”

Isn’t that how love is meant to be?

I am going to sign off with the line that the whole movie and the concept of love is based on:

Track: Meeting Place

Words: Yaha se bohot dur, galat aur sahi ke paar, ek maidaan hai. Mai waha milunga tujhe.

Source: ”Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi

The complete version of this quote (thanks to a friend) are:

“Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.” – Rumi

My Interpretation:
Love is to “Be one”.

Isn’t this love?

Yes, it is.

Thanks for such a wonderful album Irshad Kamil, A.R.Rahman, and Mohit Chauhan. It’s a love affair I’ll take to my grave and beyond.

- Sameen

 

Journeys and Destinations

In spite of what transpired last night, I managed to wake up on time and catch my regular train. I am generally not a sucker for timelines, so I do miss my trains and buses that provide me free transport for a more customised way of living that costs me some dirty cash. Back to the point, I did wake up on time; thought of the events of the past day, managed to get ready and get to my train in time. In the event that I do catch a train, I take this particular one in the morning (which one I won’t tell you; I don’t want people flocking for it and making it crowded) that has considerable seating space and thinking room for every single person who gets on at Nerul. Considering the state of affairs of the Mumbai local trains, this is a stellar achievement. One that is worthy of worldwide acknowledgement. So, I caught this particular train in the morning, which was late by a good 2 minutes. I got into it, and it was way crowded than it ever is. That’s right, a train being 2 minutes late has that kind of an effect to turning a perfectly noteworthy incident to becoming an ordinary one.
I got my back some rest, some spaces away from the door and I stood silent. The next stop came, some women got in. Another stop came, some more women jumped in. Yet another stop arrived, some more women shoved in. And by the time, it was time for my stop to arrive, I was like a pressed flower in a closet of old gifts. One that was being stamped from all sides with no space to breathe. On the way, I got pushed. I almost got into an argument (which I promptly dropped; I can’t bear to fight in the mornings). A woman gave me a dirty look because I did not budge from my place while she tried her level best to push me into a girl standing next to me. It’s no fun leaning on a girl who doesn’t smell of anything. If it were a good looking guy smelling of, maybe, Davidoff, I might have, might have budged an inch, but not more. When it was time for me to get off, I got down by pissing off quite a few ladies who had acquired the degraded common sense that prevails in local trains which are late. I pushed some because they stood in my way. I kindly asked some to move. And finally, with one lunge I got to my destination.

While I was at all this, the 20 minute ride, had me thinking about my life in the background of my mind. That’s how it all is. There are lots of people. Many shoves. Some kind words. And a destination to get to. You have to hold your own. You can’t take the journey depending on someone to get you in or get you out. Even if you were travelling with someone, they can’t help you get a back rest, or a seat, or help you shove and push around the crowd with your stuff on. You have to do it all alone. The only solace you have in a partner while travelling is someone to talk to, share yourself with, and just…well…be.

That’s what, I think, life is all about. Holding your own stead. If you’ve got a dream destination, you’ve got go get to it yourself. People will help you, but the final plunge? You have to take the final plunge. Your dreams are you. Your journey is you. Your life is you.

So, don’t let anyone change who you are on the journey, because when you’re getting off at a stop, you are all you’ve got. If you lose yourself, chances are you’re going to be left behind in the train; and then you might have to take someone else’s journey.

Life’s not about being someone else. It’s about being yourself. After all,
you don’t get into a train to get off at someone else’s stop.

-Sameen

 

Soulmates

Alone: Caged. Bound to You: Freedom.

-Sameen

soulmates

 

Love’s Cooking

Infusion of romance and a dreamy kiss;
A dash of pressed flowers and embraces’ heady mix.
A pinch of assault she added, and gave it a little stir;
Then waited for the broth to boil, and wiped away a tear.

2 cupfuls of angry letters and a ruby red stone;
She added to the cauldron remains of the love she owned.
And in went julienned “dates”, with freshly squeezed fears;
Then waited for the dish to simmer, and wiped away a tear.

She added finely sliced dreams soaked in betrayal’s wine;
The fire was down, she put it out, and gently folded in it some time.
The dish rest in peace, while she gazed at the embers dying near;
Then she waited for it to turn cold, and wiped away a tear.

She garnished it with silver shavings of her broken trust;
Pulled out a knife to check if hard enough was its crust.
Finally, she picked the vessel, and threw it in a veer
She fell beside it, and it down came; a torrential rain of tears.

-Sameen

Here’s an alternate ending I also came up with:

She garnished it with silver shavings of her broken trust;
Pulled out a knife to check if hard enough was its crust.
She put in the freezer, and said to herself a proverb old;
That’s what I made for you my love, revenge: a dish best served cold!

 

Letting it Be

At times, I don’t know how I am feeling. A sense of nothingness exists within me. I am not whining neither am I elated. I am not down in the dumps neither am I one among the stars. I don’t feel miserable neither do I feel joyous. I just am. Just am.

I am writing…just because. And I don’t have much to say in spite of the fact that I have seen some movies I could do with some chattering about and have finally started reading LOTR which I am into. I do feel like I am with Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam in the Forest and that we are walking (without the distractions). I feel like I am just walking inside my head. Inside my head. There is a sense of placid movement and doing what one is required to do. Not doing what one wants to or doesn’t want to because, like I said, I don’t know the difference between what I want and don’t-want right now. I am just walking.

Sometimes, while walking, I feel like I can hear a train passing somewhere in the distant inside my head. It’s like a train is in my head which zooms in and zooms out snapping me to a world around me. Now there, now isn’t. And then I go walking again.

I am not sure if I make any sense to you, or anyone for that matter. For someone else to be able to get you and be comfortable with this sense of tranquility and nothingness with you would require a whish of a magic wand, I think. Which brings me to something that I haven’t been able to shake off my mind since I saw/heard it recently:

Mia: Don’t you hate that?
Vincent: What?
Mia: Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?
Vincent: I don’t know. That’s a good question.
Mia: That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

- Pulp Fiction

I do think it takes someone “very special” to be able to be able to do that.

Here’s to me “letting it be”…and…keep walking!

-Sameen

 

Love in the Time of Cholera

I recently finished reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While he is very well-known for his work One Hundred Years of Solitude, I happened to chance this other book of his at Landmark. It has a mango-coloured cover with worn out drinking steel glasses and a stark red flowers in a concavity of an off-white painted wall. It makes for a solemnly pretty picture. The abstract of the book says that it is a tale of a man, Florentino Ariza, who waits for over a decade to be with his childhood love, Fermina Daza who is married to a certain Dr. Juvenal Urbino. After Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies trying to retrieve his pet parrot from a mango tree, Florentino Ariza tries to reclaim the love of the woman he met when he was a tender teenager. This is all that the abstract says; and honestly, there is nothing more than this that the book really says to you.

GGM’s writing is very instinctive. It’s like you are sitting with a drunk man at a bar who would be narrating a story to you in a disconnected fashion. He says what he wants when he wants it. There is no pattern. The drunk man beckons to you to hear a story and begins with telling you about a certain Dr. Juvenal Urbino he knows and then he tells you about his habits, education, and career. He tells you of his marriage to Fermina Daza and the affluent lifestyle they have. He tells you of his achievements in medicine and his kids with that woman. He tells you of his unfortunate death while retrieving his pet parrot. The drunk man is one peg down. He orders another round. Then he begins narrating the story of a woman who lived, a woman who loved, a woman who left her childhood love—Fermina Daza. All of this while he’s reminiscing the beauty of a time that was once a reality and seems nothing more than a fairy story kids used to once hear. The man’s eyes sparkle with the recalling and he has a shy smile on his face. He tells you about the love letters once written and the shy glances exchanged between Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. The music in the bar stops just when he tells you how Fermina Daza rejects Florentino Ariza’s love and marries Dr. Urbino. The drunk man has now ended his drink; and the “happy” part of the story is over. He yells at the bar man for another drink who takes a while! He throws some things around and while you’re trying to get away he calms down and makes you sit. He pacifies you saying it’s okay when, in fact, he is pacifying himself. And then, over another glassful he tells you how Florentino Ariza has lived all these years in a sentence he pronounced on himself. How Florentino Ariza has lived with nothing but just one goal in his life, that of making Fermina Daza his. He might have fallen in the arms of many women but how he has “loved” Fermina Daza alone. The drunk man slurs, and you’re not sure where this story is going. You see his ashen face and wonder if it’s a real story or is he just reeling under the influence of alcohol. You want to leave but you want to know if Florentino Ariza really did get himself that love story that one would be amazed at. So, you buy the man another drink and ask him to go on. The man is now disconnected, he tells you of a lot of things you could do without, but you still stay. You wait till he comes around and tells you about how finally Florentino Ariza does start communicating with Fermina Daza after her husband’s death. You look at the man’s glass and hope that he lasts through the narration. You hope you could finish his drink for him and get to the end of the story. Finally, he does come to the part you’ve been waiting and he does not pass out before telling you that Florentino Ariza won his love “Forvever.”

You then take the drunk man home, put him to bed and wonder for some part of the night whether a man could really wait for over fifty years to be with a woman he loved. And that is it possible that a woman would repress her feelings for fifty years hiding them behind societal norms and her idiosyncrasies? You wonder if such a love story is possible. And then you realise that an inebriated man said that to you; you’re going to have to find out for yourself. You just wonder how.

- Sameen

Image Source: http://bookmust.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/love_in_the_time_of_cholera.jpg

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Happy Doomsday Year!

Alright! So, doomsday year is here! *wide grin* Before you start thinking I have lost my mind to the ghosts of 2011 that don’t reside with us anymore, let me tell you, I know that the whole theory is crap. However, I do like the whole idea of assuming that the Mayans were right! So, if one considers the possibility that the world IS coming to an end (Ah! Such fun!) there is no need to make gilded resolutions, no need to tell ourselves that we’re going to be better than last year, no need to save money (this one’s come is from a friend’s cerebrum), no need to pretend that we like our job and stick to it, no need to stay in an abusive relationship and torment yourself saying it’s going to be fine, no need to walk with the herd (‘cos I’m guessing the herd shall be going wild too), no need to do anything you don’t “want” to do. What freedom! Ain’t it?

However, we can hold the fun horses, because, (yes, you sad bozos) the world isn’t exactly coming to an end this year. The thought of which makes me a little sad. I was really hoping we could all die together. I mean, imagine living your life to the fullest this year and then having die together with “special effects”. What’s more, we can spend some fun time in the queue at St. Peter’s door. (It’s going to be a loooong queue honey!) Life would be merry, death would be exciting, and after-death would be an Indian kirana shop!

So, how do I go about living this year to the fullest? Well, for starters, I didn’t make a single resolution! Hah! (Not that I had any last year too. But it just saves me some time to do more constructive things, like ACTUALLY doing something!) So, here are the things I’ve wanted to do before I die and hopefully, I shall be doing them before December 21, 2012!

*drumroll*

• Read The Lord of The Rings trilogy by “The Great” J.R.R. Tolkein. (Ordered on Flipkart and they shall be processing it as you read this.) – Work in Progress (WIP)
• Read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – To do
• Take a trip to someplace ALONE! – To do
• Have a library of my own – WIP
• Get a job I absolutely love – Check
• Write a book of poetry – To do
• Attend a close friend’s bachelorette party and wedding – Friend’s wedding plans WIP
• Love someone and take that passion to the grave – Not sure whether it is under the category ”Check” or “WIP” or “To do”; will need to work on this one
• Take my family on a vacation – To do
• Get an Apple product – Check
• Study Literature – To do (This is where I am relying on my rationality telling me that the world isn’t coming to an end.)
• Deep Sea Diving – To do
• Blog regularly and make all my works into a hard-copy manuscript so that if we die, it gets buried somewhere, and if someone lives later on, they can find it during an excavation. (I swear this is one of those things I really want!)

Apart from all of this there are some things that I want to get done but I don’t want to mention it here. (This is also where my brain comes knocking saying, “The world is NOT coming to an end, you fantasizing idiot!”)

Happy 2012!!

So, here’s wishing everyone a fabulous “achieving-that-bucket-list” year! If we die, see you at the kirana shop! If we don’t…ummm…we will have time to make up for all the things we don’t manage to do this year in 2013! (Laziness thy name is optimism!)

Happy 2012 everyone!

- Sameen

 

Love

Ever seen a sea when it is calm? The vast sky above it, countless lives inside it, and throbbing entities around it. Sometimes it has populated beaches around it, sometimes it has a pulsating city; sometimes it has nothing but sand to go to; sometimes it washes the feet of a quaint settlement. Yet, ever seen the calm sea being bothered by anything but itself?

Surrounded, surrounded by everything that one can possibly think of, does a sea ever have a sense of insecurity? Of being subdued? Of living under the shadows of the clouds? Or living at the mercy of the colonies inside it? Never. It always is what it is and what it makes itself to be. A calm sea is never angered by a stone thrown at it, neither it is irked by sailing ships that seeks its refuge while they wish. It lived on and on and will go on forever. It meets the sky where no one can touch them. Try as we might, we’ll never be able to be where it is with they sky.

Men may do anything they might, they’ve never been able to conquer a calm sea. They never will. All the barricades and armies; all the rule-books and blueprints; all the walls and bridges will never be able to take a calm sea head on and win. Conquerors will always lose. They may wish to win, but will always see the losing side. A calm sea is at no one’s mercy, is never full of pride, is not what men have built that can be owned. You can’t own a calm sea. You have to let it be.

It is what it has always been, and what will always be. It is understanding and all-encompassing. A calm sea is liberating. It does not own anything but itself, and it does not wish to be anything that anyone else wants it to be.

A calm sea is unconditional.

Love is a calm sea!

Love is a calm sea.

- Sameen

A happy 3rd blogoversary to my blog!