The vagabond

There was once a vagabond who lived beyond the realm of masks
He walked into the sunset knowing where he lay his head was home.

He gathered all his thoughts by day and caressed them by night
Embraced by frozen breeze he lay, upon the dusty earth.

Life was simple, the world was quaint and humans seemed alright.
He chose instead the mountains to call his home for life.

Solitude, his only friend whispered into his soul
the sounds of silence deepening the bliss his heart did hold.

Yet, one day, he woke up to find himself alone
Even solitude deserted him in this searing pain.

He hoped for only one thing then
it was a hope against all hope

It wrenched at the deepest corner of his heart
Where peace and bliss had once found abode.

He craved for just a moment shared
as his teary eyes closed to rest.

Rippling into eternity

There are times when I want time to stop, times when I forget about the notion of time and other times when I want time to fly by.

The last feeling is particularly unnerving because it would imply that I’m spending my time doing something I’m not passionate about and every moment of my life is simply too precious for that.

I felt like that a moment ago until I picked up my pen and began writing these words. “It must be my throbbing foot,” I think… No, the answer is deeper than that. Even though every step I take seems like an infinite agony being taken more on the strength of my will than my foot. I make this effort for what is to come.

An orchard of fresh blossoms awaits the demise of every tribulation. The space around me is redolent with the fragrance of my own being (and the wafting fragrances emanating from my sweaty socks). These are the moments that there is more to life than suffering. The fatigue and pain will soon wear off and I shall walk yet again into that mysterious horizon with undaunted steps emancipated from the burdens of convention.

Life is so simple. I strived to understand it when it seemed like a blurry vision similar to what one would encounter in the 10th round of a fight. I’m into my 11th round and my vision is returning, my moves are more agile and I take hits so scarcely that I’m overcome with a desire to self-inflict some shots just to know what it felt like. All this while thinking, “What next?”

Why not try to understand the mysteries of creationism as against evolution? It reminds me of my voyage, not that long ago, into the murky realm of religion to unravel its evasive rationale. I found my answers. Now, I feel like moving on to another question.

There are always higher peaks to climb. But, there may also come a time when I look down and feel completely comfortable with my perch with no stabbing desire to climb anymore, not because I lost the passion for it but simply because I am perched on the highest peak there is. I have realized my true nature, beyond human limits. I wonder what it would feel like to stop and smell the flowers in the lush gardens of my memories of moments that I treasure most. I wonder what it would feel like to lie amongst these and die.

Until then, I climb.

The shit and the flowers

"The world is a fucked up place!", a friend once told me. I quite agreed with him back then and do so with even more fervor today.

The world is pretty fucked up. We have communal riots, wars, corrupt politicians, ecological disasters, cheating traders, lecherous humans, parasites, bureaucrats, murderers, flippant youth, senile old folk, poverty, disease, religion, mindlessness, altruism, ineptitude, wastage, ignorance, the list is endless and i'll spare myself the boredom of enumerating every misery we encounter.

So, let me get on with my world. We have revolutions, change, peace, nirvana, innocence, children, selfishness, science, freedom, knowledge, causes, brilliance, beauty, music, pleasure, strength, action, integrity, courage, skill, passion, hope, individuality and bliss.

We have the Ying and the Yang, we have the darkness and the torchbearers, we have it all.

Every single one of us plays our part. The universe is structured around this single binding principle.

"Life is a stage and we are all but actors". Shakespeare couldn't have put it better.

We are actors indeed. Our roles and our characters are not a dance of divine elements but a result of the zillions of big and small choices that have steered us into this wonderful moment called the present.

I look around me and feel it all around. This dance. Let myself flow? Why not? That is my role... To wander down the alleyways of life smelling the shit and the flowers... Fighting and dancing... laughing and crying...

I catch myself going rigid... and relieve myself of the burden with that wonderful phrase... "Why not!" It isn't a question. It's the ultimate embrace, a bear-hug to life itself. A proclamation that I'm not afraid of being myself and I'm not afraid of change.

I think of the people that matter most... They are islands in themselves not convoluted parasites sucking off the sap from the shrubs that cower from the sunlight ashamed of their very existence.

I'm an Island... I have within me cliffs and valleys, beaches and trees, birds and breeze and wings of my own... I'll rest and I'll fly again... That's the reason I am. I look across into the clear horizons dotted erratically with other islands, some lush green and some dry and sinking. Their fragrances waft towards me with the sea breeze.

Then I come back to where I am... This laptop, the books, the university, the people, the inanities, the facades, the knowledge, the experience, the moments, the challenges, the wastage, the risks... I look at it all and smile.

Why should I let it affect me? On the other hand, why not? Let it affect me... I'd like to see how deep it gets. Kick me in my ass as hard as you possibly can, I'd like to know how much it hurts.

I live in me, and nothing around me can change that. The world is already mine just as it is yours. I'll decide any moment to fly and until then keep kicking and I'll keep smiling.

Stop!

My body says stop... my spirit cries... NEVER!

We set our own limits. We run our own races. We fight our own battles. We bear the full weight of that sword... and when we are done running and fighting, we can look back and smile... smile at the passion, the glory, the sensations, the memories, the connections and then look into our hearts and smile at a life well lived.

I want to smile at death just as I smiled at life not because I believe in an afterlife but because I have been alive and squeezed every drop of life out of this journey. I have lived, loved, shared, grown, fallen, risen, hurt, been hurt, experienced, learned, feared, fought and stand this day facing my own soul, naked and proud, ready to put a full stop to a poem well written... But, not just yet!

Romance

What does this word do to you?

Do you think of love, bollywood and glitz?

or of a world... flushed with color and life, a world where the sky is a deep blue, interrupted only by the ragged gray mountains beckoning to your spirit, you look down to see a lush green welcoming you into its soft and endless bosom. The trees around are flowering and strong... You look down at your feet... just as strong, your arms... craving for action... you feel the breeze brushing against your naked brow, teasing your hair... the grass pushing through your toes and you realize that this is the moment you have been created for, this moment of ecstasy... just before flight... like a fountain that breaks through the rocks... like a child who learns to stand... like a moment of life multiplied a hundred times packed into a single instant.

Your pulse races as your feet lift off and you fly..... fly towards that endless horizon... a horizon blurred my seamless stretched of peaks... a horizon crying out with promise... the cries echoing in every corner of your soul... cries of delight, cries of victory, cries of passion...

Romance is wonderful!

A large part of the world would view it as baseless and fanciful. My question to them is this... Is the condition of the human spirit not a base? Isn't creation of a parallel realm of life a simple manifestation of the colors of your own soul? Why treat reality as a purely normative phenomenon?

The gift of expression is irreplaceable! Most importantly to understand yourself.

I Believe

Why believe in that which has no evidence?

I find this a profound question. Why do people believe in the irrational?

I have dealt with this question in one of my articles on religion. People are eager to brand the darkness as divine. For example, one belief I commonly encounter is about the creation of the universe. Some believe in intelligent design... that is, some “intelligent” chap up there carving out the intricate structure of this wonderful universe. Others believe in the Big Bang. What do I believe in? … Neither. My reluctance to believe in this regard stems from the inadequacy of either theory in answering certain basic questions like what existed before the Universe? Nothing… my father once said. I remember being dumbstruck by the sudden omnipresence of NOTHING. “What is nothing?” I remember having asked him as a 12 year old. I am still fascinated by this concept! I do not understand it yet and don’t pretend that I do.

That brings me back to the question… Why do others want to believe so fervently and so urgently in something at the cost of rationality?

It could be a feeling of insecurity at being surrounded by mystery. A few might ask… “Aren’t we always surrounded by mystery?” Others will say… “That is the mystery of god”. I feel this feeling of insecurity grows from a deep feeling of inadequacy with one’s own existence. The fact that YOU exist doesn’t give you enough courage to embrace life with all its mysteries.

Another possible explanation for this could be the reluctance to shoulder the responsibility to face all these mysteries with a sense of curiosity… that I feel is natural to any life form. One must find an answer to every question! We don’t stop until we do find our answers. When they don’t… they make a grave error… They create an answer. People will enthusiastically believe this fabricated shred that I see as an excuse to mask their lack of courage.

I am a dot on this world. My existence may not make any difference to anyone. What is most important is that it makes a difference to me.

I believe in many things. Every one of these beliefs is founded on reason and open to challenges and change. Sometimes, I must admit, I crave to be challenged.

Siddhartha *

What is perfection? What is a balance? What is the essence of "me"? As I begun forming words to express my thoughts, i felt a strange sense of history reiterating the words I was creating in the present. Siddhartha.. Of course! He is the only other person who spoke these very words to me as I would to another.

These are my words through his mouth... a privilege I don't get to use too often.

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"Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha--and now see: these "times to come" are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is nor possible for any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was, is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sinbvery much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.--These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind."

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"Bent down to me!" he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear. "Bend down to me! Like this, even closer! Very close! Kiss my forehead, Govinda!"

But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him. While his thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and veneration, this happened to him:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void-- he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds--he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni--he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of then died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda still stood for little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations, all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.

Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears, he knew nothing of, ran down his old face; like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to him in his life."

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* Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, 1992

My direction

There are moments in life when you see a vision so clearly that it pierces through your being. I saw it today, too clearly to be a passing fantasy. I saw evil again, human evil, coldness to life and everything associated with it.

I saw visions of gunfire, blood, screams and tears as i felt my own soaking my palms. Men, women and children being killed. Cameramen, soldiers and civilians being massacred.

This is the essence of humanity. This is my world. This is where I belong.... On the front lines of hell.

From then to now

Looking at my reflection today, i scan the lines drawn tighter across my body. It took me back momentarily to what I had seen in the mirror 2 years, 4 years, 6 years ago. I think about the variations I have seen looking back at me from the silver surface.

From a lofty, soft and ashamed boy to this! I like what I see...

I think back to the condition of my mind and body back then when mobility was only a dream, sometimes so hopelessly unrealistic. I remember going to bed those days seeking comfort in the darkness... weak, alone and insecure. I remember those first steps I took in the athletic stadium. I remember collapsing after 100 meters. I remember the shame that pierced my heart and the pain that seared across my flat feet. I remember what it felt like carrying all that useless weight around like a liability. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Body and mind, in my case were and still are in perfect synchrony. My thoughts and emotions were just as lofty as my steps. I remember the burning desire to change, to run, to question. I remember the struggle and the anguish and the ecstasy that I felt finding my answers and breaking my own limits.

1 km, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and still counting... From a closed, scared, ashamed boy to who I see today looking me in the eye. I won't stop.

I won't stop loving life, embracing myself each day, placing another limit in front of me and watch it shattering to dust. I feel the tendons, harder against my skin, the veins emerging like a river that is gushing with life. I feel my smile.