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

Surviving Today

Days are moving on at snail’s pace and to live through them is the most horrifying proposition to live with. The acts are not measurable in anything worth and time spend is not things gained. The methods are questionable but the object is clear. This would have been a better case had not been that the objective was to survive the day.

There are things you could do with your life that the whole world may deem as wastage of one’s time. But there are things that the world is yet to learn of you, there are secrets that are buried deep within you that the world doesn’t know exists. But one thing is there, one should be convinced of ones stand at the very least. It is difficult to convince others of a school of thought when one himself is in self-doubt. This conviction is what differentiates an action of need from an action of passion.

Passion has driven, and will drive men for many more years to come. It is this passion that has made the space and tech possible. The world when refuses to see you as someone, it is up to you to succumb to the marginalized life being proposed or you could rise above them and break free. You could do things with life that would show them that you are more than just talk. The world has ways, ways to kill of the things that it sees as competition. It is not a reason to not to try, it is but just one more reason to try harder and succeed.

Even as all that is said is said, there are time you become powerless, so powerless that you are confined to some mediocrity. There are places you find yourself, where you have to live through it, even if it is fathoms below your level of performance. To live through them is a horror for some. But for some it does something even more sinister. It kills them. It kills their skill and eventually they realize they are just that good. They refuse to see their potential that they once knew they possessed. They suicide to the demeaning life.

It is at this time, I stand. With thoughts creeping in like weeds. Thoughts that can take out the mighty and get them begging on their knees. The evil ones, the bad ones and the crippling ones. I know I am good, I know I am better than most, but to hold on to that single haystick in the polluting ocean of thoughts. Now that is a challenge. I can rise above it and be crowned the next king of France of fall below and drown to the dark depths of misery and monotony. The melancholically of this life is evident, Sun neither rises here nor the moon basks us in its radiance. The eeriness of a graveyard and the loneliness of the dark forests. With nothing but the skies to guide. To live through today… Hmm that’s the task ahead.

A Lone Man’s Journal: Rupertt Aryeen WInd

Mommy! Why can’t I have a Dog?

There is no surprise here, it’s not the first time that I have asked and It’s not the first time she said no. That doesn’t mean I can’t keep on asking does it? Even I wonder why I just don’t get a dog and not keep asking; surely I don’t get an answer for that too. There you have it, A question that I have been asking for so long and an answer I am as accustomed to as the question.

It all started way back, when I was in lower grades. There was one particular advertisement by the mobile company ‘Hutchison Erikson’ or Hutch then. They had a particularly cute dog chasing after a boy in it. The dog was so cute, cuddly and friendly, that I wanted one ever since. So the same evening my Mom came home and I asked her “mommy, mommy can I have a doggy”. She didn’t even looked surprised, maybe she added it to the long list of things that I usually keep asking. And of course she gave me an instantaneous no for that.

Somehow, over the years the idea of owning a dog stuck with me, I always wanted to own a dog and always kept asking my mom for one.  There were multiple times I asked her why she would not give me a dog for a birthday present or a Christmas present or something of that sort. But anything but doggy she kept on saying ‘no dog’. Then as I grew up I decided to take things on my own hand and said I will get a dog. She kept saying ‘no doggy kiddo’. Since she was always against the idea of a dog, I was particularly interested in having one.

So not us!

Other than the fact that I am a getting older by the years, I never got myself to get a dog. Every time I watch a dog on screen, I want a dog in home. My girlfriend had a dog in her house which she was terrified of, I wonder why they kept that dog. She has some kind of a phobia towards dogs. To tell the truth even I have no hope of owning a dog, whenever I decide to go get one I get goose bumps. My mom’s voice starts playing in my head. ‘Having a dog is huge responsibility, you have to feed it, you have to wash it, clean it, scrub it, you have to vaccinate it’ and so on. She makes it sound as if it harder to own a dog that to send a rocket into outer space.

Anyhow! Even I can’t see myself owning a dog in near future. With a dog phobic girlfriend, who will be my fiancé in less than a couple of years and if god permits my wife in another couple of years and a overly cautious and anti-doggy mother’s voice in the head. I can’t see any possibility of having a dog. After all breaking up with a girl just over a dog is not right, is it?

The Death of A Nobody

It feels ridiculous that I write about it. it is completely insane that you have to mourn about the death of a person whom u barely knew. In fact her death didn’t even get me thinking in the cliques. I had not thought of the afterlife, neither have I thought of the reality of mortality. In fact it hasn’t gotten me thinking at all. That’s why I most certainly must write about it. It does bother me that her death didn’t bother me.

And who was she? I am not keeping any surprises here; It is not a thriller, it just a true piece and I could get myself to write a literary piece. It’s not that I don’t want to, I always wanted to but eventually they turn up something altogether different. But of course where were we. Yes! Her, she was my neighbor, and that’s all. She was my neighbors, whom I hardly saw and I hardly talked to. There she would be most afternoons sitting in patio, staring at the evening sky. I always thought she might be waiting for her dead husbands return, I always thought of it to be very romantic. But, I suppose she didn’t have anything much to do than stare at the afternoon sun.

It’s been eleven years now, since I moved in. The neighborhood has quite and passive, it did not have the great athletes or the outlandishly gorgeous girls in it. It was an ordinary neighborhood with ordinary people living in it. It’s an ideal place for honest people making honest living, and the one thing that I adored the most since I moved in was… ‘No one cared’. But then there were some who did their bit and she was one of them. She never pried but she always inquired. In the eleven years of being neighbors she came calling hardly twice, once it was with the invitation for her grandchild’s wedding and the second, I can hardly remember why she came the second time. Most of her acquaintance was my mother which was on a strictly ‘we chat on the street when we see’ basis.

She was there ever since I remember my new home, she was there when we had the moving in and she was there when my granddad moved in nearby. Of course I never cared enough to enquire. But I do remember her; I remember seeing every day sit in her patio. She would be there watching the birds and the trees, feeling the wind and the air and when she had a couple of children in her household, she had herself an upgrade. Now she used spend her time watching them play in their courtyard. I know those punks; they were naughty and way out of their minds. They were so themselves that they could drive any man so crazy that they would want to change their permanent residence to St. Claire’s. Oh! For those of who don’t know, that’s an asylum. If u still don’t know what I am talking about let’s just say it’s a place where they keep people with very serious issues.

It’s understandable, on second thought not even worth thinking twice, it’s just obvious why she would just sit and watch them run in circles as they were orbiting some imaginary planet. But, that what she was and that’s all she was. She was the woman who sat by her patio every evening watching her grandchildren play. And then she dies, just like than one day, I get a call and my mom says she is no more. Oh sure she didn’t put it that dry, She called in and said “Dear, Do you remember the old lady across the street? She just passed away”. She said it subtle and simple, but still the same thing.

I don’t miss her and I could care less. But to tell you the truth, if that was all I wouldn’t be writing this anyway, would I? The fact is something feel void now, Come on, till a couple of days ago she was there and now she’s not. Every time I look at that house, it immediately strikes me, it’s not just something misplaced, and it’s rather something missing. The event and the relation might be much less stronger. She is dead and she is not going to comeback. It’s not hard to accept that, nevertheless I did just finish writing about it. I had no idea what I had to write when I began and I have no idea where I stand now, but I did write and I wrote it all. May her soul rest in peace.

                         

Remembering my Great Grand Mother

There was a picture hung by the wall of by old countryside home, it was a gray scale picture of three young girls and a grandmother. At first I wondered who they would be and I kept until one day when I asked my grandfather who those girls were? He held me up in his arms and pointing to the picture with other hand. He told me that, it was my mother and her sisters. I was so shocked for till then I definitely believed that they were born that way and they will remain so for all eternity. If I recall my grandpa’s version of the story I cried, but mind you, I never accepted his claims what so ever.

Years later I came in terms with my mother and her sister who are so big now being so little then, The thing that still caught my attention every time I  looked at that picture is old lady in the picture with silver hair and a grandeur that was there in her face. Her stance had a stature that I seldom saw in people then and before. By the time I procured all the courage to ask who she was it was then again years later. This time I asked my grandpa who would be by then asked all kind of stupid questions by me, who she was. And He said she was a grandmother and I was confused. I already had one grandmother and extended him the same enquiry with an ‘innocent smile’ (in his words). He smiled and said of course you have but she was my mother grandmother so my great grandmother she was!

From then own I heard a million wonderful stories of her and her life, she was never a stereotype and she was always a person I grew up to respect. I never knew her and she was long gone the time I was born. But still I loved her and I loved the picture of hers. There was definitely something special about her and it was evident in the picture. My mother told me many wonderful memories of her’s. She told me of her times with her grandma and how wonderful a person she was. All these stories I used to create for myself the great grandmother who was truly great for me by them. Great as in life as in day dreams she was.

Born in the dark times to a wealthy aristocratic family, she was never the one for stereotypes. When education and profession eluded women, she showed the courage to step up and break down the barriers. She learned and exceled and then became a teacher, the first one from anywhere in her area. But that was not all, my mother always told me how she used to manage her carrier and the large paddy fields she inherited and all her children all alone. She was the most respected one of her lands and the local folks used to come to her for permission. She loved her men as they loved and respected her back.

My mother used to tell whenever gypsises came to the lands near hers they would come ask her permission before they would go anywhere. This is just one among the many stories I heard of my great grandmother. There is one another story that I always loved. My aunt told me once that whenever they went to hers for the summer breaks she would have by then plucked all the mangos in her plantation and hid it neatly under the hay stacks so that they would be ripe and the three of them would go scavenger hunting for mangoes.

I do wish I was there to witness it all. Bound in these concrete jungles of modern times, these little good times are for memories alone and any one who dares to dream of it as anything else is bound to disappointment as always. Those are the good time that will never be back upon us and they are special people who will be born once and if u missed them then you missed them. There is no going back. Yet I wish that was not true.