My Long Love (His) Story : The Tale of January

‘The Beginning’ or as I like to call it ‘The Tale of January’

There are no preludes, no forwards and certainly no prologues. But maybe, just maybe I will add an epilogue. Sure I will add an epilogue. How hard can that be? Right? So here is my little long love story from the beginning, I mean from the very beginning.

The first time I ever fell in love with any person or got anywhere close to being in love was at the age of ten, eleven perhaps. But even before that I was associated with girls but that can only be classified as the ones I liked or the ones my friends liked to associate me with. The problem can be rather simply be stated as I had no idea what it was to be in love. What can you expect out of a boy whose age is less than ten and all the ideas about love that he has ever had has been fuelled by movies. But when at the age of eleven I met this girl (let’s call her January), I knew it was something different and altogether ‘out of this world’. But things with January where not that easy and not to mention that I was totally an amateur in the matter of relationships. I must confess that the years that were to follow where enough to realise the rather accomplished stalker in me. But it took me over four years of conscious effort to gather the courage to speak to January. Even after that I was scared to hell of losing her by my one off handed remark. Things looked good or at least from my perspective it did to me. At the end of the fourth year I was so much into January that I and January was like… Hmm… Republic Day and January perhaps.

Then came the judgement day, the day I was to propose to her, I am not going to give you much insight into the way and manner of my proposal for the fear of being prosecuted and thrown to the deep pits in hell by the other sex in general and may be some rather too romantic males. But I did propose and I did it as sweetly and charmingly as I could, given the immediate circumstances and the strange and unaccounted seismic activity that persisted through my body the whole day. But through broken words and longs sighs and a trembling hand I did propose and was in elated to a land beyond heavens when January accepted it with the sweetest smile I have seen on her beautiful face. But fate has other plans and trust me it makes twists that makes most fighter pilots throw up. The next when she met I knew that something was wrong and she came to me, stood next to me looked me in my eyes and said “My mother says I can’t and so I can’t”. It took me some time to gather what she meant and before I could say anything she was gone and thus In a matter of less than a day my love life had experienced both success and heartbreak and with that ended the month of January and the first love of my life.

I can’t tell it was a total mayhem, but there were lessons that I could take from that one experience, of course I was too heartbroken to see anything at first and I imploded into myself for a long time and trust me February was not such a short month as it would seem to some people. My life from then took a lot of using to for my friends, but these days are the sole reason I started writing. I would never have risen had I not fallen that badly. The lessons from that one day took me over a year to learn and as each time I relieved that which is still do but with significantly less frequency, I learned a lot and I will leave it that.

The epilogue as I promised commences. One must understand that if I took the initiative to call my first girlfriend as January then there must be others to follow, Hence you need not look furlong for this long love story has a marvelous ending , one that ends in its own merit. No matter what happens and what angel one meets in his days to come the first love of his life shall forever be remembered. The days I spent dreaming of our future, the hours I waited for her sight, the seconds I spend with her and the whole world that danced to the tune of my romance. I remember each with a gratitude that is unassertable. If this story does has a happy ending, it is she who made me see it and if I never had loved January I would never have realized the love of my life when she came in friend of my eyes, I would never have understood what her smile signified and what her manner conveyed. It is with the sincerest gratitude that I remember our days or rather my days and our half a day.

What came after January.

Unfinished Chapters

There are some chapters that are never meant to be written, some words that are too heavy for the quill. There are things that one cannot write no matter how much you have to say and how much you intend to write it. But often these are things you will remember life by, often these are the things that make life bearable. When you feel the sand under your feet wash away may be these are things that would make you want to live and forbid losing hope, simple things, small insignificant things that would make more sense when the whole world starts fading away. May be that's what life is, may be that's how life is meant to be.

Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything. 

Muhammad Ali

Mindless Bickering

At Very few times do one find himself at the precipice, times when his tenacious adherence to all things decay invariably leaving one bare, naked and vulnerable. The truth about these times are simple, they are times of great conflict, times of great understandable commotion. That's the truth about though it may take shapes and forms that are not immediately perceivable not even noticeable by common observation. It would often take great pain and lethal amounts of persistence to find the simplicity of most of humanity's troubles. One has to stop and ponder without bias to realize the simple things.

But where so we have the time for a little self-enquiry in this supposedly busy world. In fact the numero uno item one must ponder is what is that they are so busy searching. Most of the pleasures of life that most people seek can be found where they already are. Again looking is the problem, we are so happy and satisfied by search and pursuit that we invariably forget to look.

Then again as I was saying before being carried away my irresponsible stream of thoughts or thoughtlessness, when facing humongous and humbling crisis we cease to search and we start to look and hitherto we find. It precisely because of this simple reason that we remember life as a sequence of great events and not as a continuous stream of divine motion which it is meant to be. Why do we feel not one bit impulse to document these great personal feats? why not write then down and stop bothering?

I believe that these moments are often deprived of meaning and devoid of sense but to the person of its origin, almost like my mindless bickering that you are by the pure merit of your tenacity is reading through. When confronted by truthful delirium one reacts not on accord of one's training but by merit of one's nature and by it alone.

If you are looking for a conclusion of any nature, I go out to remind you that as the title of this particular essay ( of sort ) goes this is just a mindless bickering, it can't have a solid conclusion nor any reasonable reason for its existence.had it had one it would have become a traitor to its on end. Wouldn't it? I would just leave it that and leave you to pick up the pieces.

The New Year Prayer

These are bad times gentleman, the world seems to be to frail a place to live in. For a second it did seem that the Hollywood proclaimed Mayan prophecy was right after all, with impending social doom resonating from all cardinal directions. At times we feel bereft of all sanity, such is the hope and happiness of today, jaded and desolate. 

But every year is a new year, every beginning a new beginning and though the horizon looks bleak now we can hope and we can believe that a time of bliss will unfold. We can hope for a day the world's women can walk freely without the fear of cannibals, we can believe in a day when the children of Haiti can eat a full meal and smile their innocent smiles. We can dream of an era sans guns and bombs where all men can sleep peacefully. We can believe in a tomorrow that is worthy of humanity and is bright and colorful as the world of fairy tales  This friends is my wish and prayer for the year to come.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS

Simple and Sensible : Once Upon the Tracks of Mumbai - Rishi Vohra

The candid caricature of a bereft man, a man in the cusp of manhood, his dreams, ambitions and his frustrations. When through purely accidental circumstances he turns out to be the super hero that the metro was craving, it means an opportunity for him to express himself for the first time in front of a society that has for so long ignored his existence. Rishi Vohra's Once upon the tracks of Mumbai is an inquiry into the mental dilemmas of such a man.

It is only true that occasionally we discover ourselves and rediscover ourselves in this master work of his. The truth being that Railman is just as identifiable to me as I am to me. Every teen who has had his heart long for justice in these troubled times has a Railman inside him who goes around kicking the ass of those villains. But when Babloo finds himself becoming Railman, he experiences an acceptance the society was unwilling to give his true self, making him believe that being Railman was the reason for his being. The fall of his ideal being causes much confusion that poor Babloo finds baffling.

The story of how Babloo deals with all the problems of his life, from love to social acceptance and the moment of clarity that he experiences teaches us more about us than about Babloo. In a way Once upon the tracks of Mumbai is more about self than anything else. A good book, simple and sensible is a book worth reading and has a small feel good factor about it. Hence Rishi Vohra's Once upon the tracks of Mumbai is an official Rupertt wind recommendation.