Was That You Or Me?

I am sitting across the external for my PSM viva, answering his all-important questions about life and its prevention, and all my mind registers of the situation is: Hey! Doesn’t he look like Payal’s husband from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi?

2 years I’ve spent trying to keep Park at bay. Every time I read the lame opening lines to each topic, I controlled the urge to bang my head against the wall or mutilate the book (hard-bound nonetheless). Yet I noticed it as it changed colours and told me surreptitiously about all the greed, incompetence and cultivated stupidity that went into the failure of social programmes in the past 60-odd years.

All that ends well may be well. But my normal curve finds PSM outside the ‘confidence limits’.

The only end to it is its prevention.

Everybody's Waiting For Me To Arrive

5 quick things I like about the view right now:

1) The Trees: They have been there before me. They have been the constants in my life. Many have grown up with me. They teach me about nature and her ways: new leaflets always grow toward the top or the periphery. The sun's full energy concentrates on them. The freshest rain molecules greet them. Taking care of newborns is a basic instinct in all life forms. We, the most progressed of life have made it optional. Babies are thrown away like garbage, cared according to their gender and left at the behest of maids, baby-sitters and PSPs.

2) My Piece Of Sky: It is not much, but it is enough. The rest is obscured by trees that are also maturing into adults like me.
I saw a little bird at sundown. While all the other birds were making their circadian trips back to tree-homes, this lil punk was flitting about in random irregular spirals. Its wings flapped like they were still learning to fly. But the birdie was relentless. Sometimes soaring, otherwise doing air-pirouettes, it stayed aloft throughout. The crescent moon had just risen and the bird seemed to do a little revel-dance performance. The sun had its breath ready to be held under water, but the bird was not afraid of the darkness. In my open window, I sat quietly formulating sentences about the chidai, while a medicine exam awaits my absent memory in a week. Maybe it too, like me was on impulse or brimming impatience waiting for calamity to befall him because he dared to stand and stare.

3) People: Of all kinds: those that are thinking about work, those that are working, those that want to lose weight to gain a narrower perspective along with narrow hips, those that are looking for words to fill the silences so that they don't have stop to breathe, those that carry the source of the sunset within them, those that are going to have to fend for themselves, those that are hungry, those that are angry, those that are...other people.

4) The Center Of The Earth: The sky from my perspective, I realise is ever moving. I have seen all of the sky. Every space that passed around the world, over events, people, and time, has passed over my head too. The earth I stand on has remained unmoving. My values, my thoughts, my principles will always be the ground beneath my feet even though the sky over me may slide by. I feel like I have a centre of gravity now, something that holds me down. I know I am not hollow within. What ever I have gained has filled up parts within me and what I have lost is still mine in the only way it ever was. I don't feel light and I know I won't float away. I feel fine.

5) Memories And Music: The cotton tree in the distance sent cotton seeds riding on fluff in the summer wind to an 11 year-old me. It told me that soft beds were a privilege and not a metaphor for life, but I had the latent capacity of a warm hug within me.

The Core

My idea of heaven is where all the answers lie...a court of science...where all 'why's' and 'how's' are answered...a place where physics resides with reason and integration is patiently taught :)

A place where past, present and future meet to form the Big Picture and it all falls in place to make sense.

So, what is your heaven like?

Noisy Interludes

It is fun being an observer. How can people not be interested in being aware?

In knowing the subtle ways in which our ever alive and kicking instincts peer from behind the masks that we wear throughout our interactions?

We are the most evolved of life.

But do we realise how much of natural life we've carried along with us?

We've created language. Modified, simplified, exemplified it.

But what have we forgotten and suppressed of when language did not exist?

What of the non-verbal languages? We know how to express in them, but how much of it can we read or understand?

There is a meaning, a message, a call, in every sound, every touch, every glance, every life...every movement.

All we have to do is observe. Learn. Respond.

I swallowed my dignity and killed my hunger

I am a student of Third Year M.B;B.S and I am currently posted in the Ophthalmology(i.e. Eye) dept. for my clinicals. Now, this O.P.D. sees a lot of elderly people coming in for cataract-related troubles.
Cataract is a degenerative disorder of the lens in the eye that progressively dims vision and is common in old age. So we have these aged persons walking in daily, who are having trouble seeing clearly, and along with that a host of other debilitating illnesses that render them slow and hard of hearing. And then they are scared...for one, of the world around that suddenly seems to spin too fast, and secondly, like most, of being in a hospital.
To get their eyes examined they have to sit at a couple of instruments/machines that help better illuminate and magnify the eye for the doctor. Most have never been to an eye O.P.D. before and are naturally confused with what they have to do: where to sit, how to place their heads,what and where to see...and they are invariably curtly told off by the resident doctors for not understanding, for being 'confused'...These are not erring kids. They are persons who have known, perhaps created the ways of the world. They just need a little help. And they are trying to get it by causing the slightest possible discomfort to the doctors.
The doctors are over-worked, under-paid and impatient. I get that. But is it the patient's fault?
Or do they just get some kind of awful kick out of berating persons who they know will not retaliate?
The patients are old, they need assistance at times, sometimes a louder repetition, a softer reassurance. Shouldn't they be used to that by now?
Why instead do they chose to get used to their own impatience?

Long time, Mr.Bukowski!

When you hear a song for the first time, and are mesmerized by its every beat, every verse, every dead sound, you know you have a favourite.
Then you realise that the song is a classic.It was around before you were.
It was played on instruments not loud enough to reach you. It vibrated air waves to its tunes that perhaps gushed as the wind around you.
But when you hear the song for the first time, it sounds heard...like its existence is not intriguing but obvious.
Like its essence was within you, only now it manifests in the the guise of music, just as it did in dance, in a book, a poem, a quote, or a painting. Or a person.
It is there somewhere. It is there right here.

It's so weird to see him like that, na?

They need our sanction. Amongst all the persons they've run into or been surrounded by, they chose each other. Two different beings trying to hold on to one common interest, one common need.
It is never easy. There are pitfalls...it is not a natural order...it is out of volition that two individuals from a multitude fall in love. And as much as they may wish, or even try, love, cannot hide. It is there in the midst of all to see, observe, and react to...
They are not committing a crime...all they are doing is taking a few moments, a few glances, a few touches for their own. Making a few secret memories and giving a few unbreakable vows...but their fruition requires our help...That we wish them, and their happiness...that we let them be...that we help them tide over the rough and sharp edges and bends as they walk on each others crossed paths...that we wish their tribe grows...

Starting Over

Extremes, the experienced in time say, are bad. I know they are for me.
Beginnings and endings confound me no end...they keep me up at night. Yet, I don't believe in them.
I don't care much, for or about, first impressions. Goodbyes are a farce. Unless someday I learn to let go of my memories.
Eyes size up; ears eavesdrop. And we haven't even been introduced...
Across walls, glances, water bodies, atmosphere, and many brushed-againsts, lives go on. Even if we don't know of them. Yet. Or ever.
The world was never a small place.