Lost in time

Summer's gone by
Fall never came by
Before I could start grounding
I already wish I could fly

Its an unusual morning
With the skies crying again
The warmth of yesterday's gone
Maybe thats why I feel this pain

Its been a confusing time
For me and whom I miss today
Left me wide agape
For I never wandered this way

And of all I miss the sideway smiles
That made worth of all those miles
That told me the best a gem so small
Without telling me nothing at all

But now you're gone
And I'll never see you again
But you'll always be a part of the story
A part that sits down the memory lane

"The broken lights on the freeway
Left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
But haven't forgotten my way home !"

How trustworthy is trust

Trust is one of the most fragile feelings a human, or maybe any living being possesses. It is so prone, that it takes months and years to build and seconds to shatter the same. No matter how simple you keep your life. No matter how strictly you follow the self-rules. One random uncontrolled turn of events can leave you wide agape. The more of these smashes you face, the harder it gets to build it again, and the longer it takes. Sometimes it seems just so unfair. Why so ? Because its important. Trust is one thing that plays a role, even in the simplest of conversations between two strangers. Infact, even without a conversation. Random suspicion is the most starking example. One would argue, those are minute and non significant instances. But fact is, it all builds on the basics.

Friends are a part of our lives. They are the ones who form a big part apart from the ones close to us. Think about the times with any given good friend of yours. The journey from the first time you met to where you are now. Its a monotonically rising curve of trust. And its amazing how it builds. At times, its really slow in its rate. But there is always a positive rate. There are different personal levels all of us have on what we share and when. You cross these levels one by one slowly and steadily. Sometimes, the stories are just amazing, and we overwhelm ourselves with the journey. We meet some great people where the resistance of communication is absolute 0 and things are much much easy flowing. Its a rare event but happens every often. And trust builds fast then, yet takes months and months to climb the steps of the stairway. But, you feel so strong about some of these trusts because the great ease of communication and click of interests is a highly cementing sealant. You end up climbing a lot of stairs. Life is just wonderful having people like these around.

BUT, sometimes, the unexpected happens. Its like falling on your head after the cement has hardened. Hurts for sure. Millions of questions arise then. Whatever might the underlying story be, fact of the matter is, its like playing with fire. Trust is a two way deal, and most of the times, this forms the basis for the unfortunate, at times unnecessary, events. The moment one flow reduces, it creates a hollow on the other side. You feel empty and drained. You start wondering what the hell just happened. At times you're not able to get the explanations. There may be none and you may not be able to justify. The hollow starts draining you to alarming levels, forcing you to reduce your outflow. Rollbacks, are just sad when the reasons either don't exist or are stupid. But you have to do it, to restore fairness and self respect. If you don't find logic, you have to backoff no matter how much you don't want to, and restart the curve from a yardstick that you had already crossed long ago. At times you have to use a different approach. All's good when the balance is restored, but the dip, the unbalanced flow makes you question yourself every time you meet a new stranger hereafter. It makes you doubt your trust in other wonderful people in your life.

This is just one aspect, and there are many more like these elaborating the brittleness of trust. Yet, it remains the most prized virtue, the most clean and selfless deal, because, its never owned by a single person. Its always shared between two individuals, which is the beauty of it ! And hence if you've been true and respectful of it, while maintaining your self respect, you continue to take pride in these strings you've sown over times, and made them thicker and stronger with every passing day.
"Strings sown over times
Strengthened with selfless efforts of two
They are what hold you.
They are that bring color in your moments of glory.
They are the ones that keep you sane in the toughest of times.
They are that will strive to pull you back up when you fall"
(c)Rishi

How many times can I break til I shatter?
Over the line, can't define what I'm after
I always turn the car around

I'm hangin' on another day
Just to see what you throw my way
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I will be OK
The broken lights on the freeway
Left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
But haven't forgotten my way home !

Me who ?

Do you really know yourself ? If you have a confident yes in your head, then I am sorry to give you this bad news, that you know yourself the least. A friend of mine had asked this question to me about 6 years ago, and then we had laughed at the fact about how silly it was. "Ofcourse I know me", was my reflex, and here I am, laughing at my thenself for my kiddish careless answer. Today, after 6 years, when I've been through twice as many years worth of life, I stand doubting myself.

One might wonder, what let me to such a thought. Quite lately, I've realized people around me, people in my life, have rarely understood me, something I thought was'nt all that hard. And the people who know atleast a little bit of me, would know that the first person I point the finger at, is me. But this is not a usual retrospection which we do every often to align the small misdings on the thread. If one carefully thinks about it, its a fairly mind boggling, but a legitimate question. And it turns out, that there are very few people who really know themselves. So what is it that makes such a simple question so deep ?

Actually, come to think of it, nothing's deep. Everything that exists, or happens, is real ! You gotta take it / bite it / see it as it is. Hiding things, making situations which don't exist, creating stories for easing the moment, might give you a short term benefit, but ends up giving you a long term loss, on a much much higher scale. It makes you uncomfortable at times when you don't want to be. If you keep everything open, the embarrassing moment never gets a chance ! AND, you know more about yourself, with a greater confidence. Its a common saying that all the human emotions are driven by something deep inside our hearts. Agreed, but why do we always want to just say it without asking ourselves what really is it down there ? And thats why when you don't question yourself at every step, you feel shaky later because you never explored yourself before letting yourself go down the road. What is it what makes you ? What is it that you want ? and ofcourse the million dollar question .. What is it that makes you happy ?. One has to first answer these questions, justify them, and then only they can feel confident about their judgment. Coincidences are fascinating, but they go down as memorable ones only if none of those govern our lives. Our lives govern coincidences. If you go after something, if you badly want something, ask yourself why ? Argue your answer and justify it. Once done, you can never question it ever again. And thats when you can claim, that yes, I know me and I know why I deserve this.

Its a process on these lines, which helps us rediscover ourselves every here n then. That's when you overwhelm yourself. Well, not just overwhelm, at times its a lesson learnt the hard way. You may be sitting in a crowd, and the crowd would suddenly appreciate something in you you did not know. The feeling is just amazing. There is nothing better than you overwhelming yourself at the most unexpected time. Sometimes, the same bunch will criticize you. Something you never thought you were, or rather thought was the opposite. Maybe they're right. You get a chance to judge yourself, make changes that you can justify (if there are any), and make yourself a better person in your ways. The dark side of this is, people today dont take others for what they are. Our ego centered minds, are always aimed at proving thyself right. If there is a conflict in the other person, you go an extra mile to prove why the other person is wrong. Consequence, you learn this fact the harder way.

Quite a good number discoveries right along the road of writing this blog .. Fascinating !

2 facts about myself .. and I accept them
The beauty: I dont know myself as much as I might tend to think I do. Or else I wont overwhelm myself every often :)
The beast: Of the number of people I've known till now, and who have known me, the number who understand me even a little bit correctly, can be counted using my fingers on a single hand.... where I've got all my fingers to spare !


There's another world inside of me
That you may never see
There're secrets in this life
That I can't hide
Somewhere in this darkness
There's a light that I can't find
Maybe it's too far away
Or maybe I'm just blind.

Survival of the conqueror

... and suddenly my eyes were blinded by the chill of recklessly gushing water. I didn even get the time snap to inhale my complimentary air supply bonus and all I could feel was complete weightlessness with my limbs constrained on movement. My head was fast getting cold with water rushing into my nasal system chocking life out of me. I tried opening my eyes, but all I could see were fresh rays from the sun glacing the surface of the water, which in all its furry mixed them up to make an elixr. It had gone silent and I was moving away from the shining surface. I could only feel the fury with the virbations caused by the war between monstrous rocks and the furious water. But I could not hear anything. But it was this elixr which seemed like immoratality. I was fading fast. Even though my limbs were frozen, by brain was still working. The sight of this elixr made me think. Then suddenly something ran through my mind.
This thought made me realise that it cannot be over that easily. It powered my body which had totally confused itself admist the furry mamoth water currents. The power to fight water, the ability to swim, which I had aquired a long time ago, was activated. And I dont know how, but maybe some current ran through my veins that started flapping my hands. I stared surfacing and suddenly felt a cold gust of wind flushing water out of my lungs.

If you're wondering what just happened. I just dreamt this sometime back, but a friend of mine just made me realize that this actually gives out a great message. So the puzzle .. find that out yourself :)

Reasons which reason knows not of

The morning cold running through the body
Eyes half shut, the mind wakes
The smell of the tripping water
Sound the rising crowd makes

Trying to sense the present
Thought of the past shakes
Ringing beeps of rising scripts
Mind still mused with midsleep wakes

Quite eventful the nacht was
For the happening, racked up brains
With the build
Rushing hot blood in veins

With a drowning heart
He opened his eyes
Gathering the pieces
Of the happened night

Gazing on the side
Twas a clementful day
Oh sigh the drops of happiness
Gliding down the window pane

The rain gods had finally spoken
But spoken of what they never aver
Coz his mind had wrapped itself
In an uncanny drape of fear

Why the haziness he thought
His power of cognizance had disappeared
The mighty inside him had gone lull
For what he saw, had never occurred

Calm ! He said to himself
For the bad cannot abide
Its your judgment that you demur
But its you, in whom you must confide

With that thought he rose
To the jump into the pool again
For the remains remained unswum
Fighting the meaningless pain

He began to fight the abhorrence
The heart that had sunk overnight
Coz he knew therein lay
His Faith, his Love and his Might

Dumbfounded he was caught
For his elan was unusually missing
A man known for his confidence
Had his nerves coldly shivering

No matter how much he told his mind
The heart had delinked from the wit
The mind knew the elucidation
But the heart refused to accord with it

Twas not a new time for him
Man is so weak, he thought no more
No matter how strong one's conscience is
There is always something that melts the core

With this thought, he looked up again
Felt proud of his feelings for a change
The aplomb started to reappear
For heart was listening with a mindful ear

He was never wrong with his heart
Nor will his actions be a fart
Coz he trusted his thoughts
And believed in his heart

The night was just an unknown stone
In the bed of a sea with depths unknown
He's got to swim it all to see
To believe in his heart, to see the deepest stone

Suddenly his heart had connected
To the mind that controlled his fear
Intricacies dont exist in life
Making himself and people around him happy is all he cared

With this thought, the mush in his brain had cleared
The raindrops stared smearing his face
His favorite smiles, and beaming faces
Started reappearing in his mind's grace

Twas clear to him, that it did not matter
If again he bumps his head on the ocean floor
Coz it made his unknown a known
And passed him through yet another life door

The more doors he opens and goes through
The more he knew whats in the depths
Of his life, his desires, his faith and his love
And most importantly he knew more of himself

Right

I guess I'm phasing out of a publicly expressive mode, in which I used to share my heart on my sleeve. As times change, situations call for more work and less talk. As life progresses, the sphere around us becomes intense, and require a perpetual attention from us. As time progresses further, this perpetual attention becomes a habit and we consider ourselves mature to tackle these intense times. Thats how humans grow stronger and bolder, not just physically, more importantly, mentally and psychologically. The number and intensity of experiences vary from individual to individual, which honestly is a random distribution. There is nothing like why a person faces more harder times in the same time as compared to another person. Thought about it in the right way, a person who has not had to face some brutal moments like you, has consequently lesser experience in facing them, which leads to brutal times later. You would be perfect at the game of dodge-ball, flipping the tables with a wink of the eye, and they will be sitting scratching their heads about what just happened. It all equates out in the end. If that was not the case, we would not have a sane world to live in today.

You must be wondering where the hell am I going given the funnily uninteresting title I gave to this post. Honestly I don't know either. But its a thought process that I wanted to write about. Of hundreds of things we do everyday, there are always instances, when we are made to think if we are right about something. 'Maybe' is our most commonly used / thought word in our day. Reason being, what happens is not always governed by rules. If the rules were known, the word research would be kicked out of English dictionary. And often, the research we talk about becomes useless when it comes to observing our everyday lives. Research in science is good for the long run, but in the short run, infact the shortest possible time context I can think about - the present, which is all that matters, whats the rule to do the right thing ?. There is no and will never be a generic answer to this. And thats why having a good sense to judgment, the ability to figure out, analyze and thinking through situations, is a major factor in making a person. Some say our actions make us who we are. True, if thought of in the right way, but if you think about it, its our thoughts that govern our actions. And you can start digging deeper and deeper here. The only way one can have sane thoughts, is if the mind is clear, ready to think and most importantly, aware of the facts. A simple rule of life, a person does its job best if and only if its fit and happy doing that job. Same goes for the mind. It does its job right if and only if its happy. So it all boils down to keeping your mind clean, happy and sharp !. Easily written, most people would agree with me its one of the hardest things to ensure. At the same time, be careful, this fact has both good and bizarre consequences. And this demands a choice, a decision that will seems right. A path that feels right going down. A path that's worth it, no matter how hard it may seem. If its right, it WILL BE worth it. And the worth will show by the fact that when you make the right choice, it will become easy, and you will be amazed. That is the only way you leave the mobius-strip.

Use your luck, but dont let the luck use you.
Its a choice you make. Thats the choice that will make you. -(c)Rishi

Never again shall I hanker

(Yet another, maybe) false new year resolution in making. I am not sure if I made any resolutions before, but this one, I have to make to survive with sanity. I still remember last new years eve, for an odd incident that happened that night. I was home, and was very unfortunate to witness some unwanted incidents to mark the beginning of 2008. It was then itself, I had feared, of what was coming. Well, I am the least superstitious of all, but here I am at the end of, what I should say, the quickest year of my life yet. Its flown by like a rocket, and at the same time influenced my life so much, that I feel like a totally different person. I've achieved things I wasn't expecting, seen things which I never imagined, felt things that never existed and heard things that were never said (there is nothing spooky about it).

In January, I was just another grad student striving to break even to accomplish the goal of completing my grad school. I used to be a loner in Madison, for my own reasons. I liked it that way. I am not complaining about what I am today, I love it even more, but with more ties, happiness is not the only part of the deal. If things were that simple, one would get cookies and brownies all day without moving a single inch. Everything has a dark side, and the trick is to suppress it. Thats where I faltered I guess.

Spring was quick, semester flew by in a second, but with interesting developments. Not long after I had returned from home, I got a chance to visit the lone star state. Perfect timing it was since I had to face the brute force of snow blizzards on my way back, but the trip left a mark in my life. I presented by main work for the first time to the industry, but little had I known about what could be in store for the extra day off I took after the meeting. Lake Somerville will always testify it ! It all began there, but again, I was still in Wisconsin, so had no idea what I was playing with. And it so happened, that the meeting itself led to calling me down in Texas again, and this time for 3 months. I was overjoyed, half because I saw something coming finally.

Oh well, the story of Texas was scripted in the last blog, but in essence, I was quick to realize my mistake. And honestly I am proud of it. There is nothing wrong in attempting what you think was right, and then realize in time that it wasn't, and back out. Thats the game called life and why every moment of it is worth living. I still remember the last week in Texas when I was highly depressed about leaving my friends there and coming back to the lone life of Madison. Again, the year wasn't over and so wasn't the long list of surprises. I met so many amazing hearts on coming back. My impression about Mad-city life completely changed. Diwali night 2008 was probably the most happening of all the 3 nights I've been a part of. And it took of from there. Life took a U-turn, and I now find it a little hard to believe that I wont be here on New Year's Eve. Just 3 months back I used to tell eveyone that Summer 2008 had been the fastest 3 months because I was so involved in so many things. Everything from being literally arrested to being hurricane routed happened to me ! But it just gets better. Past 3 months of my life, feel like a year worth of events. I am so glad to know some of the most amazing people in Madison. All my facebook tags testify that :). The best part about it is, what all of us have known each other so much in such a short span of time. Its just unbelievable. I am going to embark on a journey to my favourite place on this planet, and for the first time I feel like I am going to miss Madison for a month. Friends make life so easy. There is no other statement that can do justice to what our friends group is all about.

Among all this, I've been like Harry Potter - the chosen one. The fact that I came to know so many people in such short time, had its somewhat bitter consequences on me too. But again, I am to blame. Its probably my still immature thinking, or maybe its just human nature that makes you face these things. For the n'th time, I'll quote one of lines I quote in almost all my blogs "Life is a journey in which you come accross millions of faces. They come by and go away. Some remain and become a part of our lives. Some come, stay and go away. But then there are some which cross by at the most unexpected time. Just when you are busy doing something, and then one face gets your stomach popping up. Thats when, you stop for a moment and think."

The year would be marked for the fact that I was made to think, after 4 long years. And not just once, but twice. The first time I thought, the decision was delayed but became easy. The second time is now, and I've thought about it. I've even reached a conclusion, but irony of the situation is, the decision looks so hysterical. It makes sense, but at the same time it doesn't. Probably because I am still in the process of getting over, but you know, of all the times, this time its different. What happened this time, has never happened before, and it exceeded the limits of my dreams. It left me wide agape. This face wasn't just another one. There is something angelic about it. I know I've been through a similar situation once before, but there was no coincidence of thoughts there. The number of coincidences this time has blown my mind, and my benchmark has been modified. Its something very hard to put in words, but I can talk hours and hours about it (some of my friends have had the bad luck of patiently listening to me). Rest assured, no matter how much I never wanted it to be like this, I have to confess, the limits of like were crossed for the first time, and I felt it. I felt it deep. I've had the most colourful 3 months of my life yet, and now, on this day, I feel, that since the fact remains that I can't fool myself for long, even time would be helpless. I was told to leave it to time, but the way things are going, leaving it to time and keeping a lone ray of hope alive would be costing on you which isnt gonna pay back. I am confused for sure, but at the same time, the most remarkable feat is, I am not very sad. Reason being, even today, I value my friendship with the angel more than anything else. The coincidences in our thoughts count so much towards how we know each other, and what makes us good friends now from being mere acquaintances 3 months back. Its a mixed feeling, but I am so proud at times that I at least have the sense to keep the right path in sight admist the hurricane of thoughts I experience all day. Yesterday was a pretty dull day at work with a little less work to handle, and in these times, the mind is hungry for idle times so that I can start thinking again. Putting the facts together, it was clear, that the road is going to harder ahead, even though I did everything to avoid it.

Never the less, at this point, the year is ending in a mixed note. But I am happy with the way things have happened. They are just a blessing in disguise. My life in Madison has been lit up by some of the most amazing hearts, including one of an angel, who is the most beaming face in our group. I will strive for the goodness in our friendship, because its the most precious thing, and what deserves to get stronger by every passing day. As for me, as usual, I shall (hope to) move on, move on with the resolution, of not to give myself away, and leave it to fate. Goodbye beautiful 2008 !

See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you
Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait without you
With or without you
Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all but I want more
And Im waiting for you
With or without you
My hands are tied
My body bruised, shes got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to lose
And you give yourself away
With or without you !