Letting go.....

There's detergent and filthy clothes in my bucket when I opened the tap water to create lather. Initially, there was absolutely no movement of my clothes but then as the water level increased, I felt what those clothes must have felt; the stress from congestion loosens up as the water enters them and they slowly seem to relax and float as if they are yawning and stretching out of weeks-long wait to be cleaned. I presumed that that's how letting go must feel, at least initially. When was the last time you had to dig some soil and leave it like that for air to seep in? When was the last time you looked into a mirror not to get ready for the day but to read your own face? Have you ever read your own face? Did you like what came as a reflection? Were you able to see the truth of your deeds in your eyes?... There are many ways to look at yourself; the mirror is not the eyes that behold your reflection but it does hold some truth because it lets you see your eyes. I adore my eyes, I absolutely love them for how they allow me to see the world in my mother's-hearted way. Many get the eyes, few hold the vision for a fulfilling life. We have accumulated so many memories in our heads along the way that it's no longer a problem to live unfulfilled. It seems fine to just behave like a calendar, the dates just change but the day is hardly new. All the lessons that I had to learn and was required to learn in the future, I learned this year. All of them in one year. I have to let go of this year in a way a lizard dislodges its tail when hit by a block and wait for the regeneration. It took a part of me; as a fee for experience and wisdom.

 I have never been more relaxed and comfortable and a bit happy about myself as I am now, probably because I have some air in my lungs after digging the soil of the perceptions around me. The year had been an excruciatingly exhausting soul-wrenching chain of events finally gifting me the peace I always deserved. The kind of peace that can only dawn upon the dignified players. I think of myself as a bird, my favorite animal kinds. Small and cute, chirpy and playful and make a home out of dry twigs. The twigs that are crunched and smashed by feet and vehicles, doomed as of no use for the plant world. Birds build their homes out of wrecked twigs; they create meaning out of dry and ignored beings. In turn, the twigs in unison give them the most secured place on earth; "a home". A home where the birds begin a new life, a life which propagates forging meaning out of dry twigs. I sing a lot, not as a routine custom-like bird but I sing when I want to hear the sound of my dormant agony. Music has a unique nostalgic way of keeping you attached to the abstract view of life. You imagine life to be kind, filled with the warmth of the monsoon mellow and scorching heat of a French kiss. You do imagine it to drown you into the high tides and you sail through it eventually. But life turns out to be an extremely boring unadventurous trail of rides here and now. The here and now's in hindsight may connect to fulfill the meaning of the word adventure but it seldom matches the imagination we put under our pillows every night. When I was in Mumbai traveling to work in local trains, I use to look at everybody's eyes and rate them based on how much imagination I presumed they could have. I could do it because I myself had dreamy eyes; I had the eyes of a child trying to gauge everything, in combination with those of a movie cameraperson trying to capture everything in the lens to create a story out of it later. I realize that life is not supposed to be easy, it's not a cakewalk, and that it's unfair by all means. But life shouldn't be unnecessarily hard. Nobody wants a cake to walk and to be fair it should contain challenges that make you think and expand your imagination. It should make you celebrate humanity and not question it.

 There are days when the lump in the throat feels like a heart attack and when the eyes pump some tears out, the attack seems to loosen its grip from my throat. I feel that I cannot be this unclear about myself, especially in adulthood to the level that I fumble speaking even the simplest of words even when I am around somebody I call mine. It occurs rarely, but it does occur. I realize it's part of living but I really feel extremely weak and fragile when it happens. I feel like those soaked papers; easy to cut and tear apart. I have had many soaked papers-like days; so many that I find it hard to remember how I came out of them. I just remember those days like sounds being reflected as echoes when you say your name on top of hills; you only hear the echoes when you yourself make a sound, I only remember those days when I try to remember them. Maybe it's a sign that I have gotten over it or maybe that I have grown up to acknowledge life and forgive it for what it held for me. My mom always said to me "Nikki ladkiyon men ladkon se zada himmat hoti hai". I mean my biology does not render me a choice of not enduring the pain a woman is doomed for all her living life. But her statement goes beyond my biology and my gender. She says it to give me strength, to make me realize that I can withstand what's ahead of me. But she does not know that the strength pumped by the very heart I inherited from her is a very underestimated quality in the real world. The quality is unbelievably rare but it's not glamourous. If you ever find yourself in a place where you are perpetually painted with a monochromatic view of life, make sure to see if you are in a well or a cave or among crabs in a bucket. All three would make you feel like there are no rainbows left to see or reach out for. But nature is never devoid of colors and therefore you do not have to remain gray about life or people. Many concepts of courage swirl around us as lightweight popcornish anecdotes while many stories of sympathies are fed to us as caramelized corns of struggle-filled crap. One can survive an unfair life with sympathy. One can live a dignified life with courage no matter how unfair the world gets. Courage is a very subjective concept, it exists in an inverse proportion to the ego. Many think of courage as an innate quality that makes you dare fearful things. Think again and ask yourself what for you means courage? To me, having courage in its highest and very fundamental form means "to care". Yes, the greatest form of courage is "the courage to care". I know it sounds very soft and seems too simple to consider but that's where lies its sophistication; in its simplicity. The courage to care gives you the strength to overcome the comfort of ego which breeds fearlessness. Since most of the world seems selfish, it's people who got the courage to care are ones who form the gravitational pull that sustains human life. We will never be fully satisfied, we will never have ample time, we will never achieve permanent peace, we will always be busy, we will always have fear of the future and we will always think of the bad more than the good. Only death brings permanent peace, living always sucks; no matter how old you get. But there is a paradox, only living beings can know and feel peace not ashes. I feel most peaceful when I give hope to others; when I remind them of their present wholeness and encourage them to fill their empty parts. I value encouragement more than bare advice. Almost all the people sitting in the stadium watching a cricket match would have something to say about the strategy for winning; but no matter how brilliant their suggestions might be, they are not in the arena, they are mere spectators. They would always have something to say and nothing to do with what they have said. The world is not short of ideas, it never will be. It's always short of execution. Everything in life demands your care. From your indoor plant to your working desk, to your family and relationships, to your own ideologies of life.  You cannot live a happy life at least a relatively happy life without being caring. The care demands your attention and intention to serve yourself and others. You eat your lunch with a friend and you feel thirsty; never bring just one glass of water to the table.  Keep the truth to yourself if you think it would affect the listener; time has a unique way of diluting things. Have more faith and trust in your loved ones than the love itself; because what else love is made of, if it does not contain belief. Try understanding the source of tears than judging the vulnerability of their quantity. Try being bewilderingly happy for your friend's win as well as laugh at each other's misery together. Have an old-fashioned mind but always keep it open rather than having a modern house with closed doors. Be careless when you fall in love but careful when you fly in it. It takes strength to keep the entropy of care stable because it might seem like work. It is work. It is a work of art to lead a life of a caring man and woman. And a great art always stems from a volcanic color of pain. The pain of heartbreak, of ignorance, and of loss making us believe that there's no courage in care. 

                                It is not our fault too if we aren't caring. The world is not a place to shower care and it seldom acknowledges character let alone appreciate it. The reason we remember the bad more than the good might also be because we have been hurt more than we have been loved. We have been made loudly aware of our inefficiencies than our budding potential. It is not wrong and in fact very natural to not care for some time. In a world where you have to mourn your originality every once in a while just because a majority is busy sniffing perfume out of plastic flowers, it's natural to dislike your own scent for a while. You may not be fragrant all the time but you would always contain the nectar; you would never run out of honey. It's okay to not care, to be irritated by your seamlessly useless simplicity but it's your moral obligation to protect your nectar by all means. You need to protect it because the world will try to adulterate it with sugar. And hence you need to remind yourself that you don't need a sweet life, you need a meaningful one. A life filled with the purpose of making a sweet home out of dry twigs and singing songs that invite love. Let go of the fact that your nectar is a badge of honor. It's not because originality never begs validation. The garden may be devoid of flowers but that does not make bees sit on synthetic ones. You lose your nectar, you lose the bees and the honey. You lose your scent and that above everything is a real tragedy in life. 

There are many ways to shine other than the golden rule of glitter. There are many ways to say "I love you" without actually saying "I LOVE YOU". There are many ways to appreciate your beauty without a mirror. There are multiple ways to avoid the mundanity of life; try an embarrassing dance move. There are multiple ways to make someone happy without cracking a joke. There's more than one way to say the same thing; for example "you are not good enough" vs "you can do better". You can answer a question by asking another question and you should always question an answer that does not fulfill the purpose of the question. No amount of security can keep you safe from the road not taken; what lies ahead depends on what you choose every day. I really like one of the dialogues from Peaky Blinders that says; "Everyone's a whore, Grace. We just sell different parts of ourselves". No matter what you need to sell to sustain the uncertainty of life, do not become a buyer of others' perceptions of living. Let go of all the preconceived notions you have been bestowed with. Let go of the pandemic of quality in the world. Let go of your efforts to be understood. Let go of the masks that revealed truths. Let go of expecting life to be good or bad or anything you wish it to be. Let go of all your expectations from the world and let go of all the expectations the world has from you. Just be careful. Be careful enough to not let your body suffer from physical and mental ailments. Be caring enough to let your loved ones achieve the same. Rest everything revolves around a ton of letting things be and then letting it go. People might come and go, what remains in them is the way you made them feel when they were with you. That says a lot about your nectar, that says a lot about whether it had a lot of sugar or scent. That says a lot about whether you have the courage to care. 

The dignity of a battle fought with your own hands is much greater than a bystander's howling because only you can know the smell of withered grass when the ball scoops it from the ground and only you can know the sound of that ball hitting the bat when your try a strike. At last, whether it's a mere one run or a six, you have to let go of it as the next ball awaits your attention to care for the game......Let go of the well played with the keep playing......Let go of the keep playing with the well-played.....