The rainbow at Baga

It’s nearly 0.5-0.6 Km walk from the parking zone to my office in plant area. It’s an often over-looked benefit of working in a hazardous industry where you get ample avenues to use your foot and rest your car engines. Of all the walks, this is the most chattering one since I ride a train of thoughts on my way, about anything and everything. In these five minutes, my mind and heart have their fiercest battles making me as the judge where I submit my failure and it turns out to be an impasse’ every time. These dialogues affect and decide how the day at work is going to be. Since last few days however,after spending almost a week in the Konkan coast of Western India, both these instigators are at peace and surprisingly collaborating to keep alive the powerful moments so created.

Clash of personalities is a very common phenomenon in the society where man has built his own benchmarks,his own securities,his own fears,his own lookouts. In this self made sculpture, he becomes adept in hiding the one who is still a naive when it comes to a conventional behaviour that is often expected when we meet new people. Behaviour where we ought to smile, assess the situation, be smart enough to conceal the jugglery of our thoughts and portray them calmly, in nutshell,try out every means not to expose the real us. That is fair too at times. 

But sometimes,we come across few people where strings get attached without making much efforts,most likely because we could find similar tunes playing inside their minds.

Such groups last long.

It was easy and contemplative taking strolls in the bustling streets and shores of goa alone but it was fun walking miles with these guys, fun having a night out,listening to the ultimate summiteer, quivering at the takes on spirits,dancing on the shack music,whooting in between,drinking for the cheers,hookah-ing, eating,running on the airport till the last call with them shouting aloud and revisiting the college days with the ones who were not back then but each one of them reminded me of some..

We meet some people and get inspired,so inspired that even if we are not them but we feel highly priveleged just because we know them. And we had one in this group. One who was among a group of people similar to him, bent to reach at the top of the world,The Everest. Meeting him, the only thought that crossed my mind was like,"Now I can say,I know someone who has done Everest," His accomplishment, my experience.

Back to our places, we might find these fading away, like a rainbow that in no time vanishes and the sky becomes bland again.

But with passing clouds, seasons change and we get our share of rain everytime. This rain at Goa has drenched us full till the next season arrives....so I shall be waiting...

THE ISLAND

Have you ever felt like an unguided, unoccupied ship whose anchor has been released and it is floating on the surface of the sea. Sea which is unfathomably deep. Sea which has no intentions to cease its horizon. Sea where no island is to appear any time soon. 

The patterns of our life sometimes make us feel like that lost ship. All we need is a resort and some will , not to accept the abduction of our soul. No matter how much busy we have turned into. No matter how much invested we are in our one single life whose time is running out.

There are things to be done. There will always be things to be done. They just don't get finished. Instead, they try harder every time to finish us. It all depends on us us, how slyly we manage to escape this feud. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes our fight becomes mundane.

The relationship between the boat and the sea however speaks of loyalty. Though its path seems aimless, but still it floats, in hope, in search of solace.Eventually it gets that. And the pleasure possibly is multiplied only because of the yearning, because of its lost trails.

So sometimes, plains of consistency play dull and gloomy while discords play the symphony inside the head. With that symphony, we survive till an island appears again....

The undestined

DAY-0     A gaping canvas with expectations unlimited.

I do not consider a blank canvas lifeless. Obstensibly it is full of inscrutable realities. It has nothing to show, yet a lot hidden behind the veil of white. It is smirking at the confused state of my mind...it is proud enough to still have a chance to start afresh...it has a palette of possibilities to shape its life...it is stirring my creative engine to take a kick start and numb the loudness of this impostor.....

For an artist, an unpainted surface is like a mirror, all  set to reflect him/her on his/her canvas, and suddenly you are exposed before your own eyes. It inspires your inner engineering that constructs something which shall always help you in transporting the impulses of your vexed soul to a peaceful resort. But that inspiration takes lot of efforts to come.....it just don't come so easily..... and i am still waiting.....

DAY 1- The toughest part is to conclude an outline sketch in mind to cover a big area and that consumes most of my time.Till it is finalised the nerves of my mind are strained shadowing all other thoughts with this single flux of what to paint. After a week I guess they made a submission. And I started with something like this. The time of union of night with the dawn has powers to cleanse our minds and soul. It is the time moon bids farewell handing over the empire to a completely contrasted entity despite the fact that every chapter of night shall be over turned. This surreal time is for the generosity, for unity, for chastity. So I chose the hues to exhibit how gently night sublimes into morning and we, the people, start our routine as a mark of acceptance to this beautiful timeless event.........

DAY 2- Once the background is done,we know that at the end it's going to be beautiful.
The next step was to bring rural skyline to bring into life. For that, I painted few kuccha houses, bullock cart,field fences and some trees. I have a blur vision of my village that mostly has rustic walls and courtyards, lots of cows and bulls of which I was extremely scared and fields....all sort of rich , handsome, proud fields...This canvas village came out pretty well as well..

The main character of my final picture was the bull,fully adorned,festive bull as a companion to the village boy who was out in the morning to announce the onset of Durgamahotsava...They are close to each other,connected with an unsaid bond of friendship..

The entire process of painting involves a sea of emotions...anxiety for the uncertain and unseen....fear of mistakes...ecstasy on the riot of colors melting well...pride of being the creator of something which has a public display.... 

Heart sees what eyes can't see

My niece is studying in Class 9. Yesterday she dropped this line in my inbox and my sudden reaction was like whhooooooaaa....Class 9 students have become so poetic at such an early stage. Well I wasn't. I have fading images of my memory when I was at her age. What I used to do , what I used to think at that time? How was my comprehension? So far I remember, I was mostly involved in hosting annual functions and sports events and my speaking skills were renowned at School level among teachers and in peer. But I doubt my poetic mind was awakened so early. I guess it all began in college when I was confronted towards some newest episodes of my life and my literary soul started getting inspiration.....and it never stopped ....

But even now, some of the topics and contexts perplex me. This one is of that kind. "HEART SEES WHAT EYES CANT SEE" in other words " EVERYTHING THAT YOU SEE IS NOT THE TRUTH"....To comprehend where should I start from? See my eyes are seeing this line and my mind has started juggling for its meaning but my heart is searching for something else like a hidden inference from this.

Biologically, our heart is just a pumping device with no life of its own but still we use it as a metaphor for the barrage of emotional contents within ourselves. Heart seems to be another figurative  being inside us contrast to our logical side. So when a human being thinks about something, he thinks two ways, one using his mind and another using his heart.It is quite clear that our mind receives signals or you can say food from the sensory signals either by sight or smell or touch. Where does this heart get its feedback to react in completely different ways sometimes? That's a difficult question to answer.

We human beings have been endowed with tremendous potential and it takes a lifetime to discover every fraction of it. One of such potentials is power of intuition. And that lays the foundation for our craziest dreams that defy our realities. Newton and Edison belonged to destitute families and were treated as academic failures in their early childhood days. World saw them as they were treated. But deep down, inside them, there was a voice, deafening voice constantly pushing them towards the unseen and undiscovered and they let the world witness some greatest inventions of all times.

With its power, heart can penetrate deeper into the corners of another heart creating the basis of some of the most beautiful relationships of friendship and love. We cannot have everyone in our friend circle, we are also not able to like and love every person surrounding us. It largely depends upon the vibes encompassing the personality which can only be felt and synced with ours to create a harmony. This is also the nub of all social and political issues. We are often influenced and stimulated by the events happening in front of our eyes without entering into the premises of truth by making quick inferences and hasty actions. This way, we are creating huge barriers between our mind and soul and we are allowing our personalities to rust which has the power to shine and do miracles.

It was because of this heart and its power to believe system that we managed to transform from nomads to farmers, from farmers to dreamers when the realities were challenging. Eyes could see endless seas but still, foreign lands were discovered. Eyes could see the brutalities of invaders but still countries won their independence. It was only because they believed they could.

The mastery of seeing beyond the seen can be gained through constantly applying this approach in our day to day activities. By trying to be calm and composed in our every action, we can allow the turbulent mind to settle down and look through all the possible perspectives that might affect our decisions and behaviour. For students it might change the way of preparing for exams, for adults and parents it might alter the way of parenting, for teachers it might transform the way of teaching, for everyone, it might change the way of living. Positive living for high happiness index is no secret. It is easy to adopt once one becomes able to listen to his heart, to its complaints and to its desires otherwise our own potentials and talents which are yet to unleash shall be overshadowed. Because heart and its fancies are connected to our subconscious mind that is the storehouse for all our forgotten memories which crafted our present, we can rely on it.

All these intimacies keep people together under a community or a within a country united, working for a common cause because they feel motivated towards that cause. For illustration, India might be country with more than a billion people with many divides and issues but for every Indian it is more than that. It is a feeling which is celebrated every now and then. For an order to exist for peace, heart should definitely see what eyes cannot.

We are one of the most beautiful creations of nature for a reason. Not only can we think logically but can coat our thoughts with different layers of emotions making them more meaningful and purposeful.  Our entire belief system lingers across this propelling us to do wonders.

SAPIENS

When it comes to reading I am finicky and a turtle because it takes me through ages to travel till the end. I think my residence time with every new chapter is too high because my mind is too much analytical to let it go and grasp it without any argument. "Sapiens" is one such book. But this time I am taking long time since with its every new angle I get transported to the era it talks about. From a four legged animal to forager, from a nomad to a cultivator, from a farmer to modern man...well slowness is in our genes as he says.....it's not my fault but inheritance.....

Anyways, this book is a keeper. It just fires the hay of curiosity to let it burn till the figment of our imagination reaches its limit. Without much of a fictional drama, it has connected so many dots that validates our existence and lifestyle. It explains what must have happened back then that led to biological transformations in different periods of time with reasons behind our emotional and social behaviour, our cravings, our desires, our nature...

We are the evolute of a female ape that delivered two daughters one of which became the ancestor of Chimpanzees and the other is our grandmother ..... who became the first of first men to write down the history.....

Well these theories of evolution based upon the research and samples obtained from  the remains of history have tried to visualise something that happened millions of years ago...it's definitely beyond our power to believe and construe but the author and his depictions assist us in following...He talks about the co-existence of different genes of Homos at the same time in different parts of the world but see the travesty Homo Sapiens managed to survive these centuries in such a way that today no person of any different general code is available on this big planet. Now whether their survival was due to their resilience towards natural challenges or due to their cataclysmic instincts that erased the existence of all other kinds is still not proven......But somehow it explains the inherent snobbish behaviour of humans were they treat themselves to be at the top of the world ..the greatest creation of nature....despite the fact that when we started off....we were among the bottom zones of the food cycle.........We do not compromise...we do not adjust...we do not share....we stand alone.. try to be above all.....that led us to be away from our past...in the jungles of concrete land..but we are still unable to defeat our cravings to walk on the grass, touch a green leaf, be in the aegis of Savannah.........Now that doesn't sound weird now........

If I continue writing bout the topics and angles he has tried to put in his book, I would certainly fail.....I have so far enjoyed the company of SAPIENS..it helps me in teleporting...in connecting with the Realities of reality........

Feed me, she says

I am famished, says my literary soul and I have no idea how to feed her. I am truly clueless, completely under the control of external forces. 

The only thing to which my true spirit is connected is her and not me who is just a medium......to survive.

Every personality has its own light, however it easily gets shadowed....and intimidated in the company of other personalities and cloud of daily events. The moment one understands and discovers his subdued light, he outshines every other and that is where his penny is dropped....and he becomes unstoppable. My light is in the words I use to ink my feelings, in the strokes of my brush that I use to paint down my mind... Time and again, they need to be de-dusted .......to drill out the flair that is pushed everyday a little bit towards the rock bottom.....

Today is the last day of the week, Saturday...Sunday is gaping with lots of expectations from me to make it fulfilling and rejuvenate my inner me for enduring the next week...I hope it ends well...with a contented heart and a lighter soul.......

One seat

Train anxieties are intriguing. They discover some of the most mysterious sides of us which remain hidden in our daily chores. They are of  many kinds. Lets have a look on some of the most common feelings(I guess) everyone of us must have experienced while travelling in Indian trains which carry not only humans but stories......many interesting stories....

Suppose you board a train in your reserved compartment, eagerly searching for the allotted seat numbers and finally when you find it,you see,it is luxuriously being enjoyed by some stranger as if he was born on that seat. And you ask,

 " Excuse me where is your seat?" 

Sometimes they smile, sometimes they don't rather accuse you through their looks for encroaching their freedom of sleeping and basking. But usually they reply back with some unsaid or fumbled or entwined words leaving just a portion of our very own seat. Even in cases where the unwanted person tries to be friendly, genuinely, our instincts say it is for their interest to borrow some more time there. And many times they succeed in doing that because we fail to move them out. But until they get up because of any reason, my mini me keeps pestering me, 

" Is it okay to be generous and let him be for the sake of humanity? Or Should I rudely ask him to switch or get away because I am not interested in socializing? Should I be humble and polite or authoritative to get things done? " This small and trivial incident instigates my entire personality for what kind of person am I? In that short period, that one seat becomes my prized possession like a life time earned property on which I cannot bear any share. 

It all depends on the situation, the type of person he is and the type of person I want to play with him/her. It all comes spontaneously. But in every case, at the end, it proves one thing, we humans get attached to any thing very easily and for the sake of the attachment that makes us comfortable we often forget who we truly are...........One seat and all this fuss in mind...well this mind deserves better...