One Liners #001 : Happiness and Dreams

"One Pays for the Happiness of his Dearest with his Dearest of Dreams." 

The Little Big Things

Every journey is a new experience, no matter how often, no matter how short they tend to be. It’s not the journey that matters, not as much as the people we get to meet and life we get to experience. Every dawn and every dusk brings along with it a hoard of experiences that are just waiting to be discovered. This is the story of just one of the many interesting people I got to meet in my numerous journeys that made me realise that life is not something sacred; it is what happens right in front of our eyes, everyday. Don’t for one second think that I am an adept traveller, the sad truth is that I started travelling out of necessity and though I prefer the familiar comforts of my writing desk it has given me a chance to experience life as it is, raw and unadulterated.

It must be in one of those dreary Friday evenings that keep coming up every week, offering a strange intoxicating mix of anticipation, relief and happiness that this happened. I was supposedly going home after a week’s hectic schedule and it was literally killing me that I had to wait further for it to happen. I have had a practise of going with a couple of really goods friends; we have been travelling home together since we were travelling home at all. But today they had to pack and they were late, late enough to let me fend on my own. The necessities of the travel insisted that I find a suitable mode of transportation, an autorikshaw ( for those of you unfamiliar with the word, it is a three wheeled public transport vehicle in black and yellow or either, refer any Bollywood flick to know more . It’s easy to spot and hard to forget, for us it’s just a way of life like taxi is to New Yorkers.) is what I had in mind. It was not hard to find one, certainly not on a Friday.

Okay! That matters too!

Soon I landed a certain driver who was more than just willing to take us to the railway station that we needed to get, but since my friends were still packing I had to wait for them to come. Poor chap readily agreed to wait along with me; I must say he was a jolly good fellow to spend time with. Now just for the record I had to wait a good 45 minutes for my friends to come and hence being late for all the right trains. But then again that gave me this rather valuable lesson in life.

The little ones knows much more about little things than us!

The long wait let us on the streets with nothing much top do but talk, though a practical lover of silence I would always like some company at times. He insisted on talking as he would occasionally blurt out some random question or the other (like does every one speak English in the campus) and so and so. I did take a liking to him. Things didn’t get any interesting till a friend of his dropped by and they got talking. The truth is I never intended to eavesdrop on those guys as I was happily trotting away in my own imaginary world. The startling reminiscence of innocence in their routine chat drew my attention to them and their conversations. He was talking about his luck and I was instantly interested in knowing what lady luck has bestowed upon him, the truth was it was me, rather us. I realised then how much it meant for them to have the weekly trips that we made, our travels were more essential to them than it were ever to them.

In their casual conversation lied an unmistakable scent of innocence that is otherwise unseen and unheard of today. He was talking about how lucky he was to have gotten customers that day and how he and friends were celebrating in their free time yesterday and so and so. Its not what they talked that made it important, its how is said it, how with a smile and a attitude to match he made it seem that the very basic things in life were something else entirely. Its how his words and the sentences they formed transcended what would have been just a ordinary life into a story worth talking about, a life worthy of mention. In the simplest sense he taught me how life is in every little thing we do. And what I learnt sitting under the bright evening sun on a concrete sidewall by a rather crowded piece of asphalt.

Love: A Search for Meanings

Love is still as strange to me as it has always been, in my many pursuits to understand it; I have only succeeded in failing again and again. There was a time that the very search for its meanings made me tangle myself in thoughts, so strange that I myself wonder how I ended up brewing these thoughts in my mind. Strange as it may be, I still search for its meanings, even when it had cost me many a things.

In and out, I went of many relationships. Some were a ship wreck from the very beginning while others just went in through a series of unexplainable and unfortunate events before it could finally settle itself into a sense of awkwardness. But, believe me when I say, ‘ Every one of those relations were a lesson learned’. I should also admit that some lessons were much more than what I could have ever bargained for. The sense of tarnish and humiliation that was inevitable, even when I have done it all to keep it afloat, now that’s a wee bit uncomforting.

I beg pardon from all the ladies that had to read these words, and I do accept that not all the women are of the nature I may be discussing. I would also assure you that I have always thought highly of women, but these are a few that I had to face in my small life. There were quite a few women in my life that had come at me in ways that I myself could have never envisioned. The fact is they had in me vested interested that either I have not seen or have cunningly enough hid from my eyes. I have to say this that second one was of higher probabilities. The way those things turned out were particularly humiliating for me for one simple fact, they were not of my doings.

Those were events good enough to make any reasonable man lose faith in love and I do consider myself a reasonable man indeed. The real thing I had no more trust in anyone any more. All that I loved turned out to be more of a wreck and less of any help. The one factor was common, the one thing I could no longer find in any of romantic relationships were ‘Romance’.

Magic do happen when we are least expecting it and it did itself to me. It took me over a dozen years and a couple dozen relationships before I could see it. There it was in all its glory presenting itself to me, an offering from the gods. May be the heavens had enough of my little whining that they finally decided to show me the way. There was a  new day break and there was this girl nothing special , nothing profound, simple and natural. I will tell you made her special, it was not me and it was not love, There do exist a thing called a good heart and I could see one for the first time. She touched me in a way none has ever had, her touch was not of lust nor licentious, but it was of care and it was of sincerity and guess what I was in love again and I still am.

It would be a lie if I say I have not thought of any other girl since her, but this is true no matter whom I saw and whom I fancied and the end of the day she was the one whom I wanted to go back to. She was the only one whom I would care to care about, other were just beautiful to watch but she was beautiful to live with. And hence here I am happily committed and no longer in futile searches of meanings of this that I now believe are meant not to be understood but to be experienced.

Breaking Away . . .

Severance is a pain that we all invest in. Every day, every hour, Year after year we live in its shadow. It’s not something we choose it’s something that’s forced upon us. Yet chose not to rebel, we conveniently forget to fight, we take it on our shoulder and bear with it with finesse. The matter is delicate often so delicate that acknowledging it in itself is a herculean task in itself. The pain and anxiety that it causes is great, yet we decide it’s not time to give up hope yet.

It causes immense pain, but why do me, you and everyone we know prefer to live with it and fear the freedom the lack of these chains offer. Why does freedom, boundless and absolute, of colors more vibrant than the rainbows scare us? Why do we prefer the strong yet ephemeral fortitudes to the wonderful world of boundless possibility?  These are not the questions we ask ourselves every day; these are the question we come across in those times that we are truly left on our own. These are question we ask when we truly at our weakest. These are questions we ask when we lose those things we endured all those torture for. These are the questions we ask when we actually realize the transience of our ‘Perfect World’. The questions are harmless in a way, but they are the ones that truly know when to strike.

But no matter how many time we come across, other than those few who turn unacceptable to the society finds their way back into the cobwebs of comfyness they have already knitted for them. They find their way back as the lost ant finds it way back into the swarm. The allure and pseudo -opulence this world offers seems to surpass the many flaws it seems to possess.  We never even bother to ask ourselves whether this is what they want. Is there heart to torn open again and again? Is the abyss the best place they can ever afford to have?

Then again, is that the case? Even when you feared the inevitable, there was hope, there was pleasure and there was happiness. The little things in life that many preach, Aren’t they the ones that make life worthwhile. Life many not be perfect, in fact life may not be even fair, yet there are those moments in life that gives joy sans boundaries. Aren’t we living for those few moments, aren’t we working hard in the day so that we could return to the loving families. Don’t those weekends with the family make as pray every hour for the week to get over. Be it the sip of coffee or that one game, Aren’t they what we live for? Yes there are perils, there are dangers and there are evil lurking in every corner, yet don’t we live for that all these, these few little things that make life worth living?

But remember one thing dear friends, There is a better; life out there, there is a life where we can have the best of both worlds. There is a life were we do not have to make compromises and yet live the life that we dream of every single day. Believe me when I say there is a life where you don’t have to make up excuses to keep the family together. There is a life where love and fear, pleasure and sin, happiness and crime and Life and Lies do not come in pairs.

A Lone Man’s Journal: Rupertt Aryeen WInd