The Consuming Friday

It's been a while since I found myself tired--physically, mentally or both. Over the last six years, there had hardly been anything in life that could generate exhaustion. To add to that, things could easily be tagged had-to-do rather than willing-to-do. Every day passed with a mild yet false hope that the next day would arrive with work that I would cherish doing. The next day, almost inevitably, used to be same as the last one. To my relief, the last Friday was one different day. By the time I reached back to my place---that being 2 am and hence, technically not Friday---the body and the mind were sweetly consumed and depleted. As the body lied on the bed, the feeling of being spent doing something meaningful over the day was much more gratifying than I had envisaged. The sleep that followed felt heavenly.

The Internal Conundrum

We are usually so busy finding logic, looking for particular reasons in our day-to-day decision making process that we fail to give our instincts a chance to display what they are capable of. There are times when our mind and body align precisely and we just know that nothing, absolutely nothing can go wrong in that particular moment. But the cruel habit of mistrusting our own instincts doesn't allow us to reap the benefits of that esthetic opportunity. All we are left with is a mixed feeling of joy and sorrow that arises from being capable of knowing the right path but not walking it. We often find ourselves as our biggest enemy.

The Hunted Ostrich

Ostrich is by far the fastest running bird. So fast that it can easily beat the race horses, let alone human beings. But when it senses a hunter lurking around, it digs a hole in the sand, buries its head in the hole and feels safe assuming that since it can't see itself, neither can the hunter. The hunter, meanwhile, gets the bird without using any of his lethal hunting equipments.The fastest bird, the hunter quips, happens to be the easiest prey. The ostrich, however, keeps wondering how the hunter managed to hunt it down.

Creation, demolished

Rome wasn't built in a day but Hiroshima was sabotaged in minutes.

It's amazing how one incorrect decision, one lose comment or one moment of insanity can literally demolish what took someone years to prepare and create. We can try our best to avoid that but if that happens, I can only think of Rudyard Kipling saying:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

May we all acquire the strength and attitude needed while enduring the toughest of times.

A Matter of Time

When one craves for something for long and eventually achieves it with one final effort, one looks back wondering what took him so long. There are times when we give our best effort and the task appears to be insurmountable and then, sometimes a mere caress moves the seemingly immovable rock. Time has a knack of playing strange games. Trying to enjoy its playful nature is sometimes the best thing we can do.

The Art And The Artist

Robert Frost is my favorite poet. Every time I feel that I am in need of a little stimulus, a small boost, or may be, an immediate change of perspective, I readily know what to look for. The ridiculous ease with which Frost carved his words is, if simply put, delightful.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

These are unarguably the most popular and inspiring words that one can find in the world of poetry. The manner in which these words evoke the deepest of feelings is soothing and at the same time, intense.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

The subtle joy, the unabated beauty associated with his words continue to enliven my senses all the way. That is indeed what art is all about.
On another note, I often wonder what I would do if asked to live with either art or intellect for the rest of my life. I would perhaps go with art.

Lost

Yes, I used to blog on blogspot. But for some reason still unknown to me, I stopped blogging altogether and since then, even after several attempts, which couldn't be considered Herculean by any stretch of imagination, I had failed to revert to blogging. It felt as if it were a proprietary of the distant past. Now, after being accidentally introduced to few blogs, I feel like bringing those good, old blogging days back to life.

My life has been not so jovial during the last few months. I have seen my peers sailing from college life to their respective coveted professional lives. But I, for one, seem to have stuck somewhere between those two arenas. Without any apparent movement. Static. Neither here nor there, as they say.

New events seem to have abandoned visits to my life and I have, beyond doubt, developed a faint yet distinct hate towards this monotone behavior of my life. Over the last six months, people, things and seasons have commuted with scaring haste in front of my eyes and the sight of their magnificent ride has, rather conspicuously, germinated seeds of forlorn emotions. I find myself standing alone, as a silent witness to a myriad of events that don't even remotely concern me. And the wait for things to change in my own life is threatening to be eternal and to be honest, that feeling doesn't sit nicely inside me.

The sudden loss of direction and purpose in life has made me a bit deplorable and perhaps desperate as well. I eagerly look forward to that proverbial spring being just around the corner.

"If you are going through hell, keep going." -Winston Churchill