Showing posts with label secrets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secrets. Show all posts

20/03/2014

"Tamizh is spoken with the tongue; English spoken with the jaws."

- Arun Prakash Samiaiah

11/04/2013

because sometimes you don't know how to say what you're feeling - and that's okay. thank you smru

The White Rabbit's Evidence, by Lewis Carroll

They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him:
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.

He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.

My notion was that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle that came betwen
Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.

27/03/2013

dreaming of you, a letter at a time

Dear You,

Millions of terrible things happen around the world everyday. Sometimes headlines make me wish I could extinguish every tomorrow in store. But I can't and more importantly, that would be running away from problems.

So don't feel stupid if you have faith in people. I cannot prevent the heartbreak that you will experience when your trust is broken, when you are let down, when you are left behind. This will happen often to you with many people, and it might also happen often with one person. But don't feel stupid about putting your faith in people.

Of course, protect your heart. From abuse, exploitation, and sometimes your own low self-esteem. But don't put it in a cage. Don't shield yourself from love. Don't shield yourself from disappointment. They are both wonderful teachers. One day, after the hurt has passed, you might even be able to smile about the sunny days.

You might struggle with this conflict - whether maturity means to stop seeing the world through a kaleidoscope. But please know that the nice thing about maturity is that you can decide what it means. For me, it currently means being able to do my laundry on time. (I'm awful at it.) People around me, younger than me, are doing their laundry effortlessly. I cannot explain to you how easy it is to begin feeling, "Everybody around me has their laundry shit sorted so well. I'm such a fool. I'll never be able to do my laundry as well as they can." I might be biased, but this line of thought only pulls you down, down, down. I cannot explain my faith to you, but it will be alright. Trust me.

Never worry about where you will end up. There is no end, as long as you are alive. There is no race - it looks very much like it, I know. You might go to school, then college, then you might decide something for yourself. And it might seem that everybody around you is huffing and puffing, their breathing choppy, their eyes big and worried. I know I musn't assume things, but I'm quite sure that even when you come into the world, talk of this great race will not have ceased.

As life has taught me, this race is a very sticky illusion. It is one of the many things that many people take very seriously. The choice is yours, of course (but I cannot help declaring that the race seems straight out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland. What was that? Italicisation. All names of texts must be slanted like that when you type them out. That's a whole other discussion. Oh, I do wish I could talk with you sometimes.)

Just like it's a mistake to believe that simply because everybody is running, so should you, it's a mistake to believe that the people in the race are bad people. That's the tough thing about maturity. Disagree with people, it's exciting and often healthy. But try, if you can, to not quickly dismiss something you don't agree with.

The other thing I wanted to talk with you about is my imperfection. I am responsible for you, but I might slip up sometimes. I might do things, say things that will hurt you very deeply. I might make mistakes. You aren't here but I already worry about that sometimes. That I might make mistakes with you. We'll both be learning about each other, you and me. I will have to earn your respect just as you will have to earn mine.

I don't know anything about how to do it right. I will simply trust my reasoning and instinct, and the reasoning and instincts of the people I love. People believe that mothers are supposed to be right, always. Actually, it's another one of those make-believe things that people take very seriously. Tell me when you feel I'm doing something wrong. Don't be afraid. Do it in a way that is comfortable for you, but always know that no matter what, no matter what, my heart burns with love for you. 

I am not trying to excuse myself from the wrongs I will do to you. But you need to know that there is no such thing as an experienced parent, simply because every child is different. We'll both make mistakes. Hopefully, we'll always be able to talk about it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm waiting for you each day. I don't know where you are, but I see your face in every child that I tell a story to. I hope I don't dream of you too much, I don't want to burden you with unconscious expectations when you come true.

Okay enough. I can't wait to raid the fridge at night and have Parle G biscuits dipped in Bournvita with you and her. Come soon.

Love,

मम्मा 

14/02/2012

Blue in love




He is so classy he takes my breath away.

And he is so funny he leaves me breathless from laughing too!

This is one of my favourite songs. You know, the kind of songs which become like friends. They cheer you up when you're sad, or they drink your sadness with you. They skip in the rain when you're happy, they play in the background when you're feeling blue, they tickle you when you feel cheeky. 

I would really like it if someone serenaded me with this song. Thank you.

10/11/2011

   Maula - Free Jam by aroojaftab

मन कुन्तो मौला written by Amir Khusrau, sung here by Arooj Aftab.

05/09/2011

सवाल

तुझसे नाराज़ नहीं, ज़िन्दगी 
हैरान हूँ मैं

तेरे मासूम सवालों से 
परेशान हूँ मैं 

 ~ गुलज़ार, तुझसे नाराज़ नहीं  (मासूम)

11/08/2011

The Silent Descent of Time

Freedom is having your own little laptop. To stay up nights, against the light, and let the dreams talk to you on the screen here instead. Quiet songs that make the tick slowly tock away.


Spaces are created. With the liberty of time they flow out into the open when we conduct the sounds of our mind. The waters stir, the ground deepens, the sky widens.


The moment smiles over me and I take a picture. Dust covers the still surface of my sunken jasmine tea. It feels good to have time to yourself, time to reflect and see it descend upon you.

24/08/2010

5 - Melancholia

I walked into the river
with a line from a song.
I wore my black cape
and I put on a frown.

I can't deny I want my
happy ending.

The smoke curled slowly
in psychedelic gloom.
The first time went by
in sadness for Haroun.

He can't deny he wants my
happy ending.

20/05/2010

Going, going

 'ले लीजिये', Piu's parfoom, Chikan, चाट, भूतनाथ, Hazratganj, Jo's इमामबाड़े के कबाब, Royal Cafe, पलटन बाज़ार, Sunrise Bakery, Ghantaghar, मेरा पुराना देहरादूनी घर, Malbabu, फकीरे की दुकान.


निगाहें मिलाने को जी चाहता है..
                                                                     ~ सहीर लुध्यान्वी, दिल ही तो है

21/03/2010

re: pale blue dot

The comment would have been too long and too confused. Thanks.


My first reaction after reading the commencement address was to think, there must be a rare creature which takes itself more seriously than the human does.

Reading about what's gone by sometimes makes me wish I could visit some places at particular times. This list is so long and so varied that it would be hard to put it down here without being compelled to keep editing this post as long as I'm alive and I keep learning more. If you were given the chance (and if things could be suitably fast-forwarded), wouldn't you love to see the evolutions of some countries? Wouldn't you like to see if our superhuman understanding of the evolution of the world and life actually happened or not? Add to that trajectory people, languages, arts, cultures, behaviours, beliefs... now, come back to the pale blue dot.

I wonder if we've made living life a contraption meant to serve a higher purpose. Living for now has gone somewhere into the future, which is the most exasperatingly abstract thig (yes, thig. The 'n' sound gives the original word substance) that exists. Damn it, does the future exist? You know what I mean. Life seems to be like a flight of stairs, which leads to something bigger, brighter, brighter, like a nib constantly scratching forwards across a page. So much so, that the act of running up those stairs or writing those ideas takes a backseat. Something tells me, unoriginally, that this is the root of all our sorrows.

We have something in our hands that is ours to create, ours to savour, ours to take care of. And when I look at the picture and see how the vastness of space fills up everything, what is made insignificant is not the fact that we exist or have existed for so long, but all the pain, suffering and negativity that we have developed over the course of this existence. There may or may not be a point in our existence; we may or may not be creating a dent in the cosmos because we breathe. But do we need to?

I feel it's wonderful to be here, now.  When I saw the picture, I couldn't believe that I was a part of that dot. Somewhere, in a space so microscopically tiny that it wrings my head to imagine, I live on that dot. I'm writing this on that dot. Everyone I know or will ever know, everything that inspires me, everything I want to do, everything I feel passionate about is on that dot. For some reason which I wish not to examine, this thought brought me inexplicable happiness. There are so many beautiful things in this pale blue dot. Butterflies, water-colours, laughter, light and darkness, imagination, water, music, cotton clothes, memories, fresh earth, tears. It's all here, with us, around us. That pale blue dot is not part of a history that I can only imagine visiting. It isn't a forgotten memory or a lost planet. I live it.

This picture fills me with silence, like when I'm watching a gradual transformation or listening to a moving song. Any limitations exist in our mind, not anywhere else.


07/02/2010

Free part VI

Don’t let anything swallow your leap
Because glass and stones build a lonesome house
With bread, water and fourteen words a day

Don’t let anything carve your stride
Because graphite echoes may knock your head
And mark your dreams with asterisks

Don’t let anything touch your silence
Because the colours may all go to sleep
And draw the blinds around your world

Breathe your words as you say them
Taste your strings as you play them

As long as you are on the roam
The locks will rust, the birds will fly
You will be free to live, to die.

02/01/2010

AAAAAAAA!!! :D :D

http://education.nic.in/scho_announcements/UKComm-2010-Result.pdf

IO5TNU4389U29200277RTKJVO;ERIA;OIURIOU!$&e&^?hBKLJ!!!!!!&*)we%^&)ohmygod(itynuspr8o76p8ninroyublsdu43857389n5hfjkghfiladu$%@!!

"Words are very
Unnecessary."

                                                  - Moriarty

27/12/2009

(Actually) reading Season's Greetings cards

Sometimes life fancies something and runs it in your background, like a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w virus scan through your entire hard drive.

I lost mine. It just decided to get lost and I never found it. Actually, I think it just got whitewashed. It was heart-breaking, "why me?!" and existential. It was weird, trying to figure out the songs and albums which I'd downloaded, some just for keeps because they are never too far away from who you are.

Hello! And it's good to be back. Of course, things here will be changing but when did they never?  Not never, always ever. I've always found understanding negations the hardest bit in grammar. It's hard to connect the two meanings.

I was talking to a good friend of mine, and I told him that sometimes when you try really hard to search the meaning of something, it's like dipping your finger into an absolutely tranquil pond of water. There go the meanings, questions and their answers, all the very self-important semicolons, calendar markings and saved ice-cream.

Strawberry, but I am yet to try Baskin Robbins' Chocolate, so I'm keeping it open. This is also a not-so-subtle hint for a treat this festive season.

Season's Greetings, everyone. Read the cards!

26/11/2009

/

words prevent conversation. eyes. breath. hands. or leaving?

Conflict Free

that one thing i was scared of is eventually happening.

sometimes its a cursor blinking forcibly. easy glooms settle around, like folds of cloth. boredom pales the light into a smoky opaque whiteness. and an invisible monotonous writers cramp, affixing itself on your elbow and dragging the night. loops are longer, dots are fainter, commas are listless.

tired of rhyme, tired of reason.

14/09/2009

.. and things that are not overrated

  1. Colon spacing and indentation
  2. Turmeric
  3. Honesty
  4. Satyajit Ray
  5. Space and air (Reference: 7-11 am and 5-8 pm, any Bombay railway station)
  6. Feminism
  7. Sunshine
  8. Intuition
  9. Perfectionism
  10. Desires
  11. Hearing clearly
  12. Freedom
  13. The night sky
  14. Shoelaces
  15. Pink Floyd
  16. Eye-to-eye contact
  17. Love
  18. Freshly shampooed hair and waxing
  19. Selfishness
  20. Modernism
  21. Laughter
  22. Optimism
  23. Time
  24. Ignorance
  25. Odd numbers

?

03/09/2009

On the promise of eternity

There are no roads left to walk on,
no day left unwoken to.
Caged in the fire of a slow, dying light.

Fixed between a shuttling echo,
the crackling embers of your life.
A blunt knife piercing the passing days.

You are caught as the light in your photo,
fixed, with gazes impaled upon.
Not a sharpness, a streak in sight.

No reckless desire, no drive, no power,
molten with hurt and sigh and pain.
Lost in need, glittering in the dark.

Choked in stillness, in quiet refrain,
"remember when you were young".
Mystery marksman, never to die.

12/08/2009

The Night Perseus Tricked The Moon

I love staring at the night sky. If I had my way, I'd spend half a year at the North Pole doing nothing but staring at the heavens, night after night. Till then..

And thus this little celestial circular. Fellow night-sky lovers, do not forget to open your window tonight. Every year on the twelfth night of August, the earth enters the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. A stream of the debris from the comet streaks our sky across the constellation Perseus. That's why this beautiful phenomenon is also called the Perseid meteor shower. The lunar shine usually gets in the way of seeing any meteor showers in their entirety, but the Perseid meteor shower is special. If you see the sky tonight between nine and eleven p.m. you will know why.

"Earthgrazers are meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond," explains Cooke. "They are long, slow and colorful — among the most beautiful of meteors." He notes that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole night worthwhile.

(Source)

03/03/2009

I think I've officially lost it

I think I've officially lost it. I was told this unofficially, around four years ago but this time it has finally sunk in. For the past three minutes of having lost it, it still feels as great as it did that precise moment when I realised it.

It's not that I haven't lost it before. I have. I have lost it, I have seen myself losing it and I definitely see myself losing it in the future. But this epiphany, while drinking coffee and studying the Direct Effect of Emotions on Interpersonal Attraction suddenly came to me and left me surprised, despite having subliminally suspected my self of having lost it for the past four years. For some time now, I suspect. Or even longer, I suspect (even more sublinimally now).

I'm not sure about losing it - it feels like an uncapturable, strangely ephemeral feeling - but having lost it feels quite peaceful. Like I'm finally agreeing with this voice inside, which has been incessantly trying to make small talk with me for such a long time now, till about nine minutes ago when it suddenly grinned at me and disappeared, nevertheless to come back and wink at me.

Yes. When you will have lost it, you will feel like writing some good old undiluted nonsense right in the middle of quite sincerely studying something. You will also, quite sincerely subliminally suspect yourself of an obvious truth (that of you having lost it) and then go ahead and become sublinimal about it. You will hear voices in your head, indeed, this voice will try making small talk with you and not just that - it will also grin, and then rush back to wink, at you. You will also, find a quiet satisfaction in endlessly repeating and reiterating and resaying and retelling and finally in a flourish of rehashing, recapitulating it all.

I think I've lost quite a bit of it now.

goodness.

 My first response to reading this blog again was, seriously, a post on parenting - that was what I last posted about? I can't help but ...