i fear oblivion.. i fear it like the proverbial blind man who is afraid of the dark....

I just finished reading "The Fault in our Stars' by John Green.. maybe its he inherent selfishness in me, but the words that touched me the most in this beautifully written tale of pain and love is the quote from the "book" Hazel and Augustus fall in love with...'The Imperial Affliction'..

"There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. there was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be a time after. and if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

 I too fear oblivion sometimes.. have to wonder if anyone at all will remember me when  i no longer exist, whether my existence in this world has changed anything for anyone anywhere, even if only as the proverbial flutter of the distant butterfly wing, the first, minuscule domino... And then there are times when i wonder if anyone will remember me the "right" way... and not just in the superficial way of people who brush past you in life and yet think they have touched enough of your essence to claim that they KNOW you..
.
.
.
.
and after reading this book, i wonder if there has ever been any moment in time, or will ever be such a moment that my existence, or someone's existence in my vicinity, has changed life so indelibly that whatever short time we have left in the world will forever MEAN something simply because you have had some time where you really lived and loved and your life wasn't just the endless flow of days but time paused and you really KNEW that you were on the cusp of having an experience that will change you....
.
.
.
.
I will write you a sequel.. finish the unfinished story that means peace to you... 

Jalal ad din Mohammad Rumi...

sometimes the words that others have said long ago resonate in your soul so well that you don't need to think anymore...



The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!”


“You try to be faithful
And sometimes you're cruel.
You are mine. Then, you leave.
Without you, I can't cope.

And when you take the lead,
I become your footstep.
Your absence leaves a void.
Without you, I can't cope.

You have disturbed my sleep,
You have wrecked my image.
You have set me apart.
Without you, I can't cope.”

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”


The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”


“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”

“I want to see you.

Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
"more”

“Do not leave me,
hide in my heart like a secret,
wind around my head like a turban.
"I come and go as I please,"
you say, "swift as a heartbeat."
You can tease me as much as you like
but never leave me.”

“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make sense any more.”

Because I cannot sleep- Jalauddin Rumi

Because I cannot sleep

Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one
whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The stars and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe
is getting tighter and tighter.
The moon says, 'How long will I remain
suspended without a sun?'
Without Love's jewel inside of me,
let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone.
O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine
into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces,
O Love, You who shape the faces
of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris,
give me a glass from Your bottle,
or a handful of being from Your Branch.
Remove the cork once more.
Then we'll see a thousand chiefs prostrate themselves,
and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
Then the addict will be freed of craving.
and will be resurrected,
and stand in awe till Judgement Day. 

what happens to a sleep deprived brain at 4 &$^*&%$ am..

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond : e.e.cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands




Poetry is usually not my thing... but this just was too beautiful to not share....

There are a million things happening in the word that i should be writing about.. the proposed divorce law, the proposed change in the 'age of consent', the upcoming exams and other stuff in my life.. hel i could very well put up a post about family and the brats' latest antics.. but lately i find myself unable to put in words what i feel. or maybe i don't have any words because my mind is quiet..
its nearly 4 am on a friday.. and my exams start in less than a week.. but i had to share this poem that i just came across...

i just watched Dhobi Ghat. and i'm still recovering from the sheer beauty of it..

There’s an incredibly familiar feel to the movie. This sense of being lost in time, in the middle of a room full to overflowing with people you know and people who know you.. and in the midst of that bustle there’s a sudden hush in your ears and you feel like you’re living someone else’s life, in someone else’s body, and you’re really all alone.. and then someone bumps into you and makes you feel real again...

Thats what i saw in the movie..

Its like a painting, the artist’s hand paints what his mind sees, your eyes see something different... i don’t know if that poignancy and that sense of belonging to nothing and everything was what they were trying to portray but that is what i saw.. the dialogues were amazing.. the opening sequence...  the handheld videocamera captures the hidden girl’s voice and shows us the rain as she sees it.. the movement of the windshield wipers, the drops sliding down the windowpane.. its like the rain and the city itself IS a character in the movie, the cars on the road are a part of the story, not just props in the background.. the camera itself is not a mere tool, its the narrator, of yasmin’s story, capturing every nuance of expression... her makeup, her clothing, her entire demeanour changes subtly through the narrative, just like munna and arun change.. the only unchanged character is shai.. who is the one trying to unravel the story around her.. capturing places and people she would never meet in her own life, who welcomes everyone into  her life with open arms.. she’s as comfortable inviting the dhobi in to talk to her as she is in a fashionable art event with the rich and famous.. her mannerism doesn’t change with anyone, she’s equally loving, naive, accepting and careless with everyone.. she is the one anomalous character in the entire movie full of real people.. but she is real in her very quirkiness.. she’s the NRI who doesn’t care about social classes and is equally happy eating pao bhaji in a fly-infested restaurant as she is at a posh nightclub..

The most incredible was the ending.. which is really not an ‘ending’ at all.. its a stage where people grow up, change, let go of things they held inside and take a step forward.. munna lets go of the crazy love he has, as does shai, arun finds his muse in the memoirs of a dead yasmin..

The pictures and the paintings involved in the movie are equally beautiful.. the series shai is shown to have done on the people.. portraits of everyday life so mundane taht you never see  the beauty of the scene.. the crowd, the market, the wrinkles on the face of the rickshaw puller.. the yards and yards of clothes hung out to dry... ist a deeply visual film.. its everyday life seen with a hidden camera.. showing things that you would never otherwise notice.. the neighbour aunty packing food for her husband and kids, the surf on the sea.. the tired smile on the face of a dejected young wife, the shy bravado on the face of the boy-man taking time out from a crushing life to dream ..

Its the everyday things that one never notices that create the whole picture... its people who touch your life in places that don’t even register unless you look closely and find how their life meshes with yours... a conversation on the phone while cooking a meal, a downpour that you run through, a walk on a road that you take every day and never notice the road or the people who surround you.. its life...

Its a must watch movie..

..................................................................

On a completely unrelated note.. I got Amir khan’s autograph!!!!!!! YAY!