Night-gazing

Wrap me in the silent night
the moonlit winds, the night-blue skies...

The night calms me down, soothes me. It doesn't require words or logic or analysis. Just gazing at the night sky while an occasional bat flits across the sky with a screech, and the wind makes the leaves crackle and rustle in the background. I wish there were more stars to be seen; I can just see a single one overhead...

The night lets me have a slight inkling of the vastness of the universe; the vaguest idea of the emptiness and the silence inherent in space. A mirror to the emptiness and loneliness we carry inside us at times. Sometimes that reflection terrifies you, at other times it calms you down...

My soul feels free leaving behind everything mundane, everything depressingly human; the anger, the disappointments, the never ending plans, the questions, the answers, the misunderstandings, the apologies, the helplessness, the sadness, the doubts, the memories... Like shedding away the outer skin of the soul, leaving everything somehow cleaner, purer. I'm free to let my mind wander where it will, unchecked; to let myself just feel without needing to categorise everything, to let things and feelings be unstructured... Yet so very aware of yourself, with the senses unfurled...

Maybe this is what meditation feels like.. I wonder if this is what people meant when they talked of their souls/hearts being stolen away by the night or the moon...

So impersonally beautiful, so grand, so terrible... So godlike?

And from outside of me, I look at myself, and I perceive my frailty, my flaws... At other times I feel blessed that I can see and feel and think and wonder.. The world is so very beautiful after all... And at yet other times I feel so utterly insignificant, like an insect scurrying about its life, so totally unaware of the utter meaninglessness of its life in the grand scheme of things...

It's not just the night though, there are so many avenues of mental escape if you really wish to do so.. These flights of spirit, the senses, and the mind are a need that I cannot deny for long. Neither would I wish to do so. For without them I feel that a part of what makes me uniquely me, begins to wither away.. And who would want to be somehow lesser than what they are...

Listen...

Listen to them, the silences speak. What they say is for the heart to hear and understand, and not for the ears. Their whispers, songs and screams fill the spaces between the words, for no words can tell their stories… They offer you the deepest truths, the deepest needs, the very soul, if you can but understand…

Listen to them my friend, coz they sometimes yearningly wait to be understood, and sometimes when you turn away, they weep…

Rainy memories...

It drizzled mist this morning. In fact drizzled is probably a little too strong, since it implies that the drops actually fell :) These tiny droplets on the other hand paid almost the bare minimum courtesy to gravity! They floated, swirled and generally made merry with the wind. :) It gradually intensified into a drizzle by the end of the hour of course, but it was delightful while it lasted...

There are so many things, events and memories that I associate with the rains, both pleasant and annoying...

As an example, I remember discovering a six inch plant with a cluster of tender, dark crimson leaves peeking out from the overgrown grass, the result of a mango seed I had planted on a mere whim that summer... I remember playing on the porch with my sister while it rained like there was no tomorrow... I remember the droplets on the broad, glossy, dark green leaves turning into silvery pearls and go rolling off in all directions as soon as I tilted one... I remember the bright, soft, velvet green of the moss...

I remember the smell of the first rains, the sound of ever present thunder... I remember sudden showers as a branch was suddenly shaken over me... :) I remember walking (splashing rather :) ) in all the puddles I came across as a child and the feel of the water swirling about my ankles... I also remember the mud spattered legs and clothes and the scoldings those resulted in :) I remember the innumerable times I lost my footing on mossy pavements, slick mud and wet stairs. :D

I remember the vast hordes of moths and other flying insects fluttering around the orange of the streets lamps. I remember the fevers which my brother would invariably come down with as a baby... I remember the insects, the frogs, the grasshoppers, the earthworms, the snakes and lord knows what else creeping, wriggling and hopping everywhere they could manage! And I remember the annoyance of having to walk in wet footwear... And the times the roads turned into canals and it was risky going through unfamiliar roads because of the possibility of open manholes... I remember the impossibility of keeping our all-white school uniform clean... I remember wishing that the sun would show up and the sky quit being overcast and grey all the time... I remember the afternoons spent sweltering in the humidity because there was not even the hint of wind.

But then I also remember the countless paper boats, the hot snacks and the lovely weather :) I also remember the sudden dashes made in an attempt to escape a bad shower... I remember the fresh, intense greens, reds, pinks... (you get the picture :) ) of the greenery and the flowers nestled there in. I remember getting drenched on various occasions (both by chance and design :) ) and the music being played at full blast...

Heck! Seems this particular post has turned out to be almost entirely a private walk down the memory lane... Oh well... I suppose my muse has taken some time off from providing me with new ideas or inspiration, and decided to present me with images and memories instead... :) So I must make do with what I have been provided :)

Till the next time...

Different logics

There are always tales that require us to put our logical faculties on hold. There must have been enough incidents in your own life when you can’t help but say that this is all utter nonsense, there’s no way such a situation can arise… (This is particularly true of certain types of movies as one of my friends so recently mentioned :) )

However, sometimes the tale, the movie, the story is better enjoyed if you shut down the part of you that keeps whispering snidely about how improbable or plain impossible the situation unfolding before you is. Those with some exposure to literary jargon usually call this ‘a willing suspension of disbelief’… :)

However I often think that all these improbable tales etc are just other possible worlds with their own logic. It might not be so readily apparent to the casual observer, but the story must run true to the logic of its own world, if not our own. Otherwise it is just a senseless mishmash of ideas, not a world which entices you in.

The best example would probably be Alice in Wonderland. The world down the rabbit hole has its own logic, which can only be appreciated if you willingly let yourself be drawn in, if you refrain from mentally ridiculing the story as utter nonsense. I liked the book when I first read it, and found it full of delightful humour, sometimes outrageous, sometimes whimsical or plain absurd, sometimes satirical, but always without malice on subsequent readings. Nothing could probably sum that world up better than what Alice says... "Curiouser and curiouser!" :)

A new world is like a lake of spelled water. You look in, you see a world... It is initially a reflection of your own, but gradually your gaze gets caught, and you begin to see beyond the reflection and get drawn into the depths... There's a moment when your mind resists, and then you step in.. and the world laps about your feet... it swirls about you while you take comfort from the solid ground you are standing on and then you take another step... And thus are you drawn in.. though still dimly connected to your own....

(This must sound like utter nonsense hmmm? :) )

I used to get the same feeling while gazing in the puddles formed after a rainy day. I must have been young... I remember once that I was thinking about what the term सातवां आस्मान meant. I looked in and saw the intense blue of the sky reflected in the puddle... There were clouds and everything... I remember wondering for a while if this was the "roof" of another world... (actually remember getting dizzy for a few minutes... :) ) And if there's another world above the sky we see... And then I got sucked back to this world when I noticed the gravel at the bottom of the puddle... I get that flash of dizzyness occasionally to this day... maybe because I am quite willing to suspend disbelief in the usual scheme of things :D

I was quite a silly child sometimes :) and I don't think I'm much better now. The only difference probably is that now I retain a firmer hold on this world while taking a dip into another...

This post somehow got on another track.. I was thinking of taking it somewhere else altogether.. but no matter... It ended up on an interesting path afterall...

And to all those who are too rooted in the logic of this world.. I'd just like to say... try tasting the logic of another world, another tale, another movie... you might actually become addicted.. :D

Walls and buildings

There's a frequently heard saying... "दीवारों के भी कान होते हैं." In other words, walls have ears :) When I first heard it, I was of course explained the meaning behind the saying... but say purely as an exercise in imagination... or more precisely, as a "what if..." game, let me go beyond giving walls mere ears, let me imbue them with something more...

What if walls, or rather buildings were to be actually seen as chroniclers of the events around them? What if not only could they hear, but also witness. Not every little event of course... but say, the general impression.

It is after all said some buildings possess a soul... at least, they give off auras. Some buildings instinctively make you feel at ease; others make you feel stifled, or depressed. Now the scientific explanation would probably include phrases like "the subtle influence of interrelating spatial and physical elements in the architecture" or "an unconscious projection of the knowledge or expectations regarding a place" :) An architect or an interior designer would very adroitly explain it all in terms of the significance of a particular brick column, or a stone arch, or a certain mural, or a crimson wall at a subconscious level to most humans.

This explanation is most likely to be true; however, it is kinda uninteresting :)

It's much more interesting to pretend that certain buildings are, not alive exactly, but aware. Or if that is too much, I'd probably settle for them being passive receptors of impressions or events, however taking them to be aware gives your imagination more room to soar. J

I could not with much confidence say that I’ve ever personally experienced such an aura with any degree of regularity… However, it is true that the ruins of old palaces, forts etc that abound in and around Delhi have always snagged my interest. I never could manage to explore them up close due to many different and at the moment unimportant reasons. Yet even the occasional glimpse of huge blocks of stone lying almost half buried among the grass and scant shrubbery of the ridge is tantalizing.

It almost always makes me want to mentally recreate the building as it must have been in its heyday. The walls might have crumbled, but the very fact that they still stand after maybe a half odd dozen of centuries, is somehow fascinating.

Even if I move on to rather well known buildings as compared to the obscure ruins I’ve been talking about, doesn’t it give you slight shivers… Take Red Fort for example, it must have been the residence of the Mughal royalty for a number of years. The outer walls must have been worn by the feet of countless patrolling sentries, traders must have held markets inside for the pleasure of the nobles in residence… These same sandstone walls, windows, and balconies which look out towards the traffic roaring past them today, must have looked at a different scene in yesteryears… If only they could speak…

What, I wonder, must have been the thoughts of the Berlin Wall as it looked over the remains of a war torn, defeated city; the physical symbol of division of a city’s peoples. How many deaths did it witness of people trying to cross it; how much blood, how many tears? Would, I wonder, had it been capable of thought, it have welcomed its destruction at the hands of Berliners?

What does a jail building think about? Does it find meaning to its existence in holding the criminals of the society? Or does it brood over the injustice of innocent lives wrongfully confined within its walls?

Moving on to lighter matters, I wonder what these tall glittering buildings of Gurgaon think about… What are they chronicling? The malls most probably are chronicling the human desire for luxury and fine living… The apartments? The offices? Are they soulless? They certainly feel that way en masse… But hopefully they will manage to capture some good things, a good atmosphere…

I have taken the game a bit further than I intended, but no matter. Perhaps it is as well that walls can not speak even if they can hear. Perhaps it is as well to not dwell about what the voice of the brick and mortar would be had it the power to whisper…

Of hauntings and ghosts

I feel I’d not be wrong in saying that all of us have had some experience with ghosts and the phenomenon of hauntings. And before you roll your eyes and tell me very patiently to stop believing in ghosts and that reasonable, rational, scientific people don’t believe in ghosts as a rule, much less have experience with hauntings… let me hve my say.

What exactly is a ghost? I know that the question would be absurd to a non believer… but let us just pretend to be believers for a moment… or rather, let us put ourselves in the role of an open minded cataloguer of phenomena. What are the various beliefs regarding ghosts? You might have heard of many different ones, but let me just put down the gist of what I have come across about these partcular creatures… :)

As an aside, assuming that ghosts are the imaginings of a fevered mind, or the projection of our personal fears, (though there are proponents enough that would try their level best to refute this particular theory) isn’t it amazing that the concept of ghosts exist in one form or the other across cultures of the world? The various scientific (or pseudo scientific) explanations for this conformity run along a handful of lines. (As a note, I’d add that I’m not putting forward anything new at this point of time, and you would probably have come across at least a varation of this stuff at least a million of times :) )

One of the prominent ones among them is that of the eternal quest of humans across all cultures to come to terms with their mortality. Cessation of your life, your individuality, is after all a chilling concept once you confront it. That thought, by its very nature, cannot be culture specific, and is the reason for the development of so many theories of what happens after death. The fear of the unknown is the most terrible, and what can be more unknown than what comes (or doesn’t come) after death? Conveniently there is nothing that can prove or disprove the many theories, they might be all equally true and might be equally a bucketload of moonshine.

However ghosts are a different matter. They have crossed the boundary between life and death and still operate (or at least are believed to operate) by rules similar to the world of the living. As opposed to the soul, ghosts are traditionally assumed to have personalities bearing relation to their living counterparts. Most cultures opine that the personality of the ghost would be essentially similar to what it was while alive, barring circumstances of revenge, regret, penance etc. However another interesting theory is that as in all things, a personality must be balanced. If a human was essentially “good” while alive, his ghost would be essentially “bad” and vice versa :). Anyway almost all agree that only those personalities take the ghostly path (if such a one truly exists) that have strong attachments to the living world. The variations arise as to how these are resolved… One path leads to ghosts, the other to rebirth. :)

Anyway that wasn’t the direction I actually wanted to go in… I was thinking that it’s almost agreed that ghosts (if they exist) are people who are particuarly attached to something in this world, which doesn’t let them move on. Just as an intellectual exercise, consider the implications if we extend the concept and look beyond mere people.

What if we consider ghosts not just of human beings, but also of ideas, situations, dreams, desires, ambitions; not just those which are dead or no longer exist but also which are just without a concrete existence… I’m fumbling for words again… I mean rather that all the things or rather entities that existed once upon a time, but somehow got divorced or disassociated from their realities. They are all ghosts.

The idea being that if we dream a dream, it gains it’s existence from the amount of energy we put into it, the degree of desire for its fulfillment that it is associated with… in other words, how real it is for it’s dreamer. Then if that dream is suddenly abandoned for some reason, even if it was not through through the death of the dreamer… wouldn’t that dream hover ghostlike till it found another being who could embrace it and try fulfilling it? I believe that dead dreams, broken dreams have their ghosts as surely as people do.

And haven’t we all been haunted by memories of a past gone by, a situation, a person? They are memories, but are they any less ghostlike? And what of the paths not taken, the decisions not made? They haunt us often enough. They are probably more worrisome than human ghosts!

I know this is a nebulous theory which needs more work for it to be halfway articulate… It is not in a shape for it to be understood effortlessly :) But even if no one feels that way, I believe in the existence of these ghosts more strongly than human ghosts. And afterall, a century or two hence, ghosts might turn out to be a commonly accepted “natural” phenomenon! :)

Happy hauntings...

Echoes...

Have you ever met an Echo?

Now what sort of a question is this, you might well ask… Isn’t an echo an auditory effect… how can anyone meet an echo? Perhaps you meant to ask have you ever heard one…

I know, I know. They are all valid doubts. But my question still stands. Have you ever met an Echo? What did it look like to you?

Before I go further along this road, I suppose I should perhaps provide some context. I first made their acquaintance through the works of Enid Blyton I suppose… Her Echoes were one of the many mischievous little folk she populates many of her tales with. They were some kind of fairies I believe, with deep glens and subterranean labyrinths as their living place, (though I believe I heard of one who lived in an old well :) ) They were delighted with (what else) echoing back everything the other folk called out. They were not the main characters of most tales though… I found scattered mentions of them in some of the stories I’ve read over the years and each of the authors inevitably added a little bit to their reality.

As an aside, isn’t it almost wonderful how we draw upon so many sources when we move to beyond “definitions” to “knowledge”? (I feel language becoming inadequate as I try to make the thoughts wear the garb of words again! :) Nevertheless let me see how far I can succeed…) What I’m trying to say is that I’ve found that if someone asks me the meaning of a particular word, or phrase etc., I almost always start fumbling for it... (Unless it’s a very simple word!) Upon reflection I found that this was because it was difficult to convey all the shades of possible meanings succinctly enough. You come across so many references to the same phrase/word, with each reference adding to our knowledge of the meaning that when asked to define it, you can’t help but fumble for how to put all that into a bare bones definition!

That brings me to another point… “Meaning….” Now there’s another fascinating concept. Words are mere labels. At the very dawn of language, they must definitely have arisen from meaningless arbitrary sounds. It is usage that has imbued them with a perceived meaning. And they might well mean different things to different people, or to different times. A tree, for example, might instinctively give me a mental image of the Gulmohur tree, it might mean the eucalyptus for another, a coconut tree for yet another. As for times, I came across an interesting article while surfing quite a while back about the history of the colour "purple". Among other things it talked about how the word “purple” meant a different shade of “purple” a couple of centuries earlier than what it commonly means today. So evidently, talking about “meaning” in the absolute sense is perhaps not exactly correct…

Ah heck! I digressed like crazy again… Shall I delete the last two paragraphs? No leave them be… It’s not a test after all! :)

Anyway turning back to Echoes, an Echo to me meant that creature of sound, an echo meant the reverberation of sound resulting from an obstacle in the path of the sound waves which could be distinguished only if the obstacle was some xyz distance away… (I forgot the exact distance we used to go by… :))

But over the last few months, I’ve realized that I have actually met Echoes. And they were not the creatures Ms Blyton introduced me to. They met me in the guise of people I knew; close as well as not so close friends; family; and utter strangers as well as mere acquaintances. I glimpsed the Echo in them through a chance comment, a thoughtless gesture, a shared vision, an unexpected meeting of minds, a moment of perfect understanding.

It still gives me slight shivers (sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant) to realize how closely another’s thoughts, way of thinking, reacting or gestures echo my own. They never do that for more than a few seconds, or rather that’s how long the feeling of having glimpsed an Echo lasts.

Maybe that’s what was meant by the term kindred souls, or mirrored souls (some people even translate the term as soul mate)… They are people who find their Echoes in one another so many times that it is no longer a matter of surprise to them. If the Echoes provoke a pleasant reaction, it might be pleasant meeting such a one… if unpleasant… well I suspect one of the two might well go insane or murder the other :) Well that’s just a random whimsy… I don’t think even I myself would believe in this concept in my more rational moments.

As for Echoes, they might have gained human flesh, but they still retain their mystique and charm for me. I might feel deliriously happy on having talked with one, depressingly chilled at having encountered another, been delighted with yet another, and been very suspicious of yet another… However, it’s tough to just ignore them.. at least for the moment they are there. I have not yet made up my mind as to how should I view them… They are undoubtedly not me… but for the moment that I see them, I recognize them on a subconscious level as being in resonance with a part of me… And that realization is what delights, intrigues, saddens, scares, or plain creeps me out.

That’s why the question… Have you ever met an Echo? What did it look like to you?