The sunburnt smile

There was once a man who was stuck temporarily in the fallouts of his own choices. He didn't complain and went on living life with the same ebullience as before. He made wonderful discoveries even in the underbelly of his seemingly bleak circumstances. He was living life to the fullest and now it felt even fuller.

As the dull beat of time clicked by, he pushed himself into a plethora of diverse situations. This plunge acquainted him with the meaning of manual labour, higgs bosons, politics, business, bliss and impatience. He refused to run towards the end of the tunnel. He decided to walk towards those lights slow and steady... too proud to break into a run and too impatient to continue walking. He worked his tired body into a work machine... his sleepless brain into a sponge that soaked everything of value around him.

And as the sweat dripped down his brow and his veins swelled like roots across his arms... he looks into the horizon and smiles.... smiles at the sun that smiles back... at the moon beyond and at his tryst with infinity.

Cholula

2 days to Popo

I sit here on the zocalo of Cholula, away from Puebla, closer to Popo with my usual lack of directions other than that of the magnificent sight that greets me on the horizon. The locals here don´t seen as fascinated as I am by the volcano that looms over their tiny town. People in Puebla told me I was crazy to choose Popo over La Malinche (A much safer, more tourist friendly, dormant volcano to the north-east of Puebla compared to the constantly threatening demeanor of Popocatepetl).

The tour operator was too expensive... and i don´t want a tour... Maybe I´ll find a local guide who knows the mountains... I must get to the other side to the town of Amecameca. That´s my only ticket back to Geneva since I´m absolutely not in the mood to turn back to the more familiar town of Puebla.

If only time had no limits, I would not have to worry about getting to Mexico City by a certain time and day. It is, however, critical that I get back... I have plenty of unfinished business and something to look forward to.

So, I will now forget about my semi-recovered body and all my worldly qualms and learn how far a man can go with a strong thumping heart.

Until then... Buenas Noches...

1 day to Popo

Dusty old shoes, dirty jeans, an idle knife dangling by the waist, a crumpled shirt thrown off taut shoulders, lying amongst the rocks, ruffled hair, an unkempt beard and eyes fixed upon the sillhouete of a volcano on the horizon.

It is 7 in the morning and I stand on a little hill towering over the quaint and humble little town called Cholula with the towers of some 50 churches within my range of sight. Maybe, I try convincing myself, it´s the fear of this giant furnace on the horizon that drives them to the seek refuge in religion... Alas, I know better.

This thought quickly drifts away with the sight of my only companions flying north... whle some happily hop around me searching for bits of food... The sparrows remind me of freedom... of ebullience... of life...

My hands are cold and my heart is afire with visions of what is to come. As of this moment, I am confronted by a strange conundrum... The vision of Popo is in front of me while the Sun glows at my back and I laugh aloud with the ecstacy of the choice... by the fullness of this moment.

Buenos Dias... Popo, here I come :-)

A walk into the night

A white spray settling on lush green,
glistening in the soft moonlight.

The sight is like a texture in itself
but my heart could not resist the urge
to touch the soft wet blanket of grass.

I bend over and allow my fingers
to be swallowed by those tender blades.

Enraptured in the sheer luxury of the sensation
I spend the moment in pure bliss...

Life! That's the difference!
A fearless embrace to life!

I see it here.
I just heard its manifestation
in the most energized drumming I've ever heard.

Three men and one woman drumming
the beats of their lives... WIld and fReE

PoWErFUL and ecSTatiC

sYnChRoNiSeD and SOULful

and then the language... Spanish...
it rings out like the beats of the drums...

Tortas Cubana y Moca Frio! Ah!
Perfect companions for this night...

and this is the perfect end to a day in Puebla...
i walk back with a new found friend
walking by me like he has known me for years...
bright eyes... brisk steps... black, brown and white fur
thick and untidy like the hair on my head! :-)

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.

Happiness

Ubiquitous yet surreal. This term has entered the lives of some while evading the understanding of most.

My understanding of the world is broadened by the scope of my experience and deepened by my understanding. While sitting back and looking inward, molds the shapeless mounds of knowledge and observations, leaning forward into this magnificent potpourri called the world is the other part of this little jigsaw puzzle called life.

In one of my previous blogs, I had written about the one thing that binds every single human on earth. His or her pursuit of happiness.

Trying to establish a uniform definition of this term is the most illogical act one could indulge in. How can there be uniformity in the experience of a sensation that is common to such a heady diversity!

In the field of politics, for instance... Everyone is trying to make someone else happy so that, somewhere down the line their own happiness is ensured. Is it?

Most of the ambitious people around me want to change the world. I find the world perfectly fine. Though I have absolutely nothing against their perceptions or existence, I wonder what drives them to desire changing the world then? Do they honestly believe that the world could be more peaceful, less bloody, more rational, less complicated, more happy, less tragic, more predictable, less exciting? Well, I don't. Call me a hopeless optimist, if you like! ;-)

So, what is this evasive concept of happiness? wrong question.

So, what is my concept of the pursuit of happiness? - To be.

It is this concept that connects people, builds understandings, nurtures relationships, breeds beauty, transcends conventions, unfolds passion and sparks new life.

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.

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.

---------------------------------------

"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."

------------------------------------------

"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."

---------------------------------------

* Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, 1992

Fire in ice

My eyes open to a dull light from a Grey sky through my window. No bird chirping, no leaves fluttering. The birds have migrated and the leaves have all fallen and here I am, waking up to another morning in this cold neighborhood. A Sunday morning and I feel like starting my day with a bang!

"How about a run?", I ask myself. Something inside my shuddered with the cold that my body would feel if I stepped out and something else inside me smiled.

I step onto the desolate roads while the city slept to greet the day. 30 minutes and my hands are painfully frozen, feet sore with the blisters I earned the day before. It's amazing how the thoughts seem so startlingly clear and fluid, when one is in pain or being tested. Visions begin to cascade like the road flowing beside me. Visions of cliffs, heat, ice, rocks, the sky, my hands, a sword, intensity, love, war, peace, memories, Michelle... My feet keep thudding under me, protesting and performing nevertheless.

Time flew by like a gentle caress. Without realizing it, I had broken yet another one of my records... 1 hr 20 minutes!

Back at home, the hot water burnt my skin... I felt like doing it again. Running into the city, not knowing where, not knowing how, just running. It felt like a constant battle between the fire inside and the frozen air hitting my body from the outside.

:-) I'm sleepy now!

Metamorphosis

As the day of my departure draws closer, I've started realising how much I love this city. They've been the most fruitful years of my life, the seven years I've spent here.

Thinking back to where it all began... Before Bombay, life at Pune was quite calm and unflustered (now that i think back). A failure who thought he wouldn't be anything else in his life being transformed to a performer setting new records for himself on a daily basis was only the first personal transformation I witnessed in this city. For most of these 7 years, I haven't looked back and now that I do peek into my past, I feel a tremendous amount of happiness in the present. A satisfaction that helps me face the shadows of the future.

From a boy who was so uncomfortable with the torrent of adolescent whims, there emerged a feeling of pride in existence and after a journey of love, hate, anger, anguish, desperation and bliss, came the knowledge of the stuff I am made up of.

There have been numerous people who have flowed in and cascaded out of my life. So far, none have stayed forever. With the transformation in me, there was a transformation in every one of my relationships. Love, family & friendship didn't hold the same meaning for me any more. However, each of these people have left an indelible to my life. Each and every one of them helped me learn and grow. Some more than the rest.

However, I often felt those all-invasive feeling of loneliness. I learnt how important it was to share and how difficult.

Now that the moment of departure draws closer, I feel the strain wrenching at my very soul. Another phase of my life that I'll be leaving behind walking into the darkness of the future, into another metamorphosis, with nothing but my own vision.