Introspections – Young Adult, Old Soul

Happiness is a mango

Happiness is a seasonal fruit.

Last summer, I would return home every few days, excitedly hauling watermelons, to no one’s surprise. Sometimes it was humongous ones that you had to hold like a very fat baby indeed, sometimes two or three smaller ones that you rolled around for fun. And oh, every moment was delicious. The small thrill of opening up the watermelon, the crisp cutting, wondering just how red it would be inside, hoping there wouldn’t be too many seeds. And the juices dribbling down your elbow when you cut the watermelon up in small pieces, to be chilled and enjoyed later at night with family, when the cloying heat would become too much to bear and you would seek some relief from it.

And when the bowl was empty, when I downed the remaining juice — cold, refreshing and sweet — I would always go out to buy a new one. To replace it. To repeat the experience. To have more, more, more. Every single time, because I could.

Watermelon season usually lasts from mid-November to mid-January here. But a miraculous harvest made it so that I was able to find watermelons in the city streets up until beginning of March.

And then eventually, even though it lasted months past its season, even though it went counter-current for a while and surprised people with how long the season lasted, watermelon did go out of season.

And this — this is happiness. A seasonal fruit.

A fruit going out of season.

The thing about happiness is I couldn’t write about mine.

Whenever I sat down and began to put pen to paper, to consider the warmth of the happiness enveloping me, all I wanted was to dive back into it. All I wanted was more of it. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to write. I just wanted to be happy.

So I set the pen down and went running to savour happiness, like a fruit going out of season.

(And it did).

Note:

Title: Happiness is a mango

Subject of post: Watermelons.

I realise the absolute irony of this. But while watermelons are my favourite, I have a nostalgic connection to mangoes that I can never shake off. And here’s a photo of my very exciting watermelon season, I say casually, as though it’s not the first time I’m sharing a photo of myself here 😂

Write it right.

When my inner world is in disquiet, I like to come back to pieces I’ve written, to that moment of calm, of revolutionary stillness when my thoughts align with my words — and some clock somewhere in me is set right and sighs in relief to be finally, finally in tune with itself.

I don’t love writing.

I love words. I am fascinated by creativity.

But writing?

I don’t love writing.

It’s part of my nature, that’s all.

Writing, for me, is survival. I am driven by a need to set the world right, to give back to things the real shape of them. I write to right a crooked reality. I write with an obsessive need to correct and say: “No! This is how it is, this! The sunlight isn’t random, it isn’t something you can ignore. It’s there, a caress, a kiss in a troubled world.”

Writing is like the need to drink water: do I love needing water? No, no.

But do I need it all the same? Yes. Yes, I would die without it.

Note: Please excuse the extreme paragraphing. I’ve been writing for LinkedIn way too much. I hope you are doing wonderfully ❤

Big details.

There is something to be said about the aching tenderness with which the afternoon light layers itself on the tops of houses, with what fondness it settles there, tired and warm.

I am in quiet awe of such end-of-day scenes lately, caught up in these little love affairs that are there for all to see, should the eye but linger a little, just a little. Life becomes a picture, a post card in these evenings. As we melt into the summer and humidity clings to us, the sunsets also grow more colourful, the sky painting scenes that might seem fabricated were they not so overwhelmingly, achingly real. One sky, dyed the colour of daydreams, summer loves and the tunes of youth. Pink and lilac, purple and fiery orange, yellow and peach, all blooming into the wide open sky. A spectacle, a feast, a homecoming. The essence of our beings. Mostly ignored. Forgotten.

How essential it is, how absolutely essential.

It was just a few days ago when I was telling him — as we pulled up in a parking lot, reclined our seats and watched the sun lower behind the mountains — how endlessly important it is to take one step back, to feel small. Problems too quickly seem insurmountable, too easily become the point to which our lives and consciousness are moored when we focus only on ourselves.

Step outside of yourself, understand you are small, so small in the vastness of this universe and if the sun can move, if the colours of the sky can change, then will your pain last forever? Will the sadness never pass, when even clouds and seas shift? Is there no hope in a world that everyday revolves around a ball of fire? Though our routines lull us into a sense of stability and stagnancy, should we ever forget that there are greater powers at play? Should we ever forget that we are moored not just to ourselves, but to each other? That our lives and selves ripple across time and space, and there is always, always more to us than what we limit ourselves to?

It is vital to get lost in the details of life, to follow each one until one forgets, until one’s own self becomes a point in the distance, small and surrounded by so many others, part of a much vaster picture.

Art by: Alexandra Levasseur

Note: So I guess this is where I give up all pretense that I will regularly maintain this blog (?) It’s been a strange, healing, bad, no, actually good year. And even though it sounds too good to be true and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, I’m officially a business owner! (WHAT). Ahh anyway, I hope you have all been doing beautifully.

Interstices of time.

09 May 2019

In the interstices of time, the forgotten minutes of the day, I sneak in a few reflections on my phone. In a corner of one greying office, imagination blooms. It takes over my desk, growing like vines of voluminous flowers all about; every curling vine can be traced back to me, back to my pen where the words flourish and new worlds are born.

But that is all in my head.

In reality, it would be too conspicuous to even draw out a sheath of paper or my white notebook. So I quickly jot down a few thoughts, passing musings like clouds in my head that are inexorably moving away…

Tap.tap.tap.

It’s not quite the same experience though. There’s traditional writing: balancing a pen between my fingers, a notebook laid out before me, anticipating the gush of words, the opening of new otherworlds. Then there’s this, a rectangular black device with a keyboard already filled with letters, where penstrokes give way to tap tap taps on a writing app. It’s useful and practical. Simple, as it should be.

It’s different, though.

It’s less intimidating, for one. Nowadays, my brain stutters before a blank page, feels the weight of expectations before pen touches paper. There have been times when I’ve opened my journal, poised to write and empty my heart out, only to close it moments later, pages still blank, the pen discarded.

Here though, as with anything related to smartphones, there is a sense of urgency (I’m already stealing time away from my work as it is), to pin the slippery idea down asap. The inclination to delve deep stays away. Sometimes it is just the beginning of an idea that makes it to the app. I type it down, and wait for the idea, a sapling, to grow until I can transplant it in my notebook.

And yet, I am so grateful for it. So grateful that thanks to technology, there is no season to writing. No predetermined creative hours. The door to imagination is open at all times of day and night. Even in the business park where I work, the smartphone and writing app lend me this inconspicuousness, making me look like just another head in the crowd.

Binary.

I am currently processing difficult things, and finding joy in others.

Is it terrible of me to not simply be sad?

It’s a terrible, sublime, ecstatic experience to be able to hold both grief and joy so closely to my heart. To have a current and a counter-current running their own separate courses in one vessel, never being in the other’s way. Maybe this is the most authentic I have felt. Being able to hold both with grace — to not be keeled over with grief, to not be carried away by joy — perhaps this is the way inwards and outwards, closer to the universe pulsing with hidden life.

Listening to: Welp, YouTube videos are currently refusing to be shown here. But recently, TikTok (yes) has brought me some of the most soulful Indian and Pakistani music and it’s just 👌

Where we belong.

Suspended in what Banana Yoshimoto calls the ‘cosmic darkness’.

Humans cannot be let free to roam. We cannot be untethered. The image I have in mind is that of an astronaut drifting in space. Free, by all means, of all bonds. But she is left alone to wonder, to gaze upon the cosmos, to reach the ends of time and space, and ultimately to surrender.

That is how I feel now: adrift in loneliness, unbound by responsibilities or impositions. I stare into space, conjure a bit of it wherever I go. It’s deep and dark, like the bottom of the ocean, where I’m walking. I wish there was a lamp in my hand, one of the old ones fueled by oil. Something heavy to weigh me down and help me feel the comforting Earth beneath my feet. To bring me back.

Who knew there was a balance in this too? That too much freedom is a curse, and we were all meant to belong somewhere.

Cut off a kite string and it is lost, forever. Pull it too tight and it never fulfills its purpose. To fly, while being planted in the ground. To be a tree, rooted solidly in place, but with flowers that dance with the breeze.

Note: A few years back, someone on this blog kindly shared some book/author recommendations. Among them was Banana Yoshimoto, who I started reading just a few days ago. “Kitchen” was the exact book I needed at the time to make sense of myself. Totally recommend it.

Free your will.

Stills from the movie “Whisper of the Heart” by Studio Ghibli

As surely as the water must meet the shore, and the seed must rise from itself to greet the sun — as surely as our destinies are written in the stars, this was ineludible.

That I should struggle against my restraints, try to dislodge myself from the mould of pre-made decisions. It was meant to happen. It was either this, or a life like drawn-out death. A death that would look like success but never feel like it. What is success if you’ve lost your spark? What is success if your most violent passions, the ones lusting for fulfillment, have dulled into what-ifs that punctuate the daily routine? Days that are different, surely, but all look the same… What is a life if April 23rd and November 16th are one and the same?

It is no easy thing to seek freedom.

How much simpler would it be to sit back in life and bear the drudgery, the grating injustice and follow the path? The congratulations would have flown in, drowned me. The awe and the envy would have made it all utterly delightful.

“So young, to have reached this far at this age?”

“How did she do it?”

Like expensive cocktails, I would have sipped on these words delicately…

Even now, I am still drawn, hypnotised by the path, like a fly to the light. How desirable. How endlessly pleasant to knock yourself out for the day, and emerge after-hours and in the weekends? How delicious would it be to fall in the ranks and make no hard decisions, to flow like water in a stream.

It’s madness, a form of insanity to leave that safe mould.

(Yet I have.)

Another comfort zone smashed.

Another state of weakness, back bared to the world.

I still ask myself what I’ve done, what I think I’m doing, what I think I could possibly achieve this way.

But it’s too late for all that now. The only way is forward.

Note: I really said New Year, New Me 😂 I hope you are all doing beautifully 💕

Listening to:

Twenty twenty too.

Even now, I almost write ‘2020’.

Like everyone else, I think, I am still living somewhere in the past, finding no noticeable distinction from the present. Roaming the dark tunnel of these past two years has made me lose my sense of time. More of the same everyday. And the next day, and the next. Is it today or is it still yesterday? Ah, it’s already tomorrow?

But again, summer is upon us. And not just any summer – a December summer.

Sticky days with a punitive, skin-burning sun and sultry nights that have you tossing and turning, unable to sleep from the heat, the airless atmosphere. Still, summer calls us to it, in spite of all its inclemencies. It is a summer that hides a lot of pain — not the summer of love or discovery, but the summer of time lost and adventures unhad. A summer of grieving all that could not happen, and all that did.

Still, and perhaps most cruelly, life goes on. On the remains of yesterday, the seed of the present grows.

Our other freedoms cut short, we partake in the remaining rituals of summer… We grab on to ripe mangoes of different varieties: some round and firm like apples, others mushy and fibrous, with that signature curve. Then, we hunt down laden branches of plump litchis at the best price, we pick sweet-smelling pineapples and haul heavy watermelons, the kind that have juice dribbling down your chin.

Here it is, another summer of hanging on, worse for wear.

And yet, and yet, we are lost if we do not believe.

If we do not believe that tomorrow will be better. That, like the summer, this darkness is a passing thing.

Beautiful days come if you believe in them, so believe.

Note: Merry Christmas to all those of you who celebrate and Happy Holidays! I’m going to stop saying I’m back to posting more regularly because I feel I’ve been jinxing it 😂 (And now I am going to pretend like me not writing is the result of some jinx and not, you know, me making excuses not to write 😬)

Listening to:

Polaris.

A blue night suffused with warmth.

There is only me and this Truth I’ve been rubbing shoulders with. It’s been keeping me company, engaging me in conversation — a faithful little light. I don’t know it and yet it feels altogether familiar, like Polaris, the North star: almost swallowed by distance, and yet also home. How can you feel so close to something that is so far away?

Still, still.

A hush falls on the room and I would say that in that moment I grow silent, but rather, it is in silence that I grow. Like leaves leaning towards light, my consciousness reaches for the stars, my inner self grabs for the many secrets the Universe keeps.

Reveal yourself to me, I ask.

Tell me who you are because I suspect that if you do, I’ll know who I am, too.

Note: Just me writing weird, semi-sensical things again 😂 But hey, self-expression.

A kinder sentiment.

Trigger warning: death ideation.

Odd and contradictory as it may be — in moments of joy and beauty, I have often found myself thinking I could die then and there. There are other times when I have wished against all reason that the moment would never end, that I be allowed to spend the rest of my mortal years in it. But inexplicably, there has also been this.

It usually happens when I am at the right distance from everything: the people in my life, my daily routine, the names I respond to and all my attachments to this world. No longer am I the name on my identity card, the colour of my eyes or even the madness of my hair. No longer am I a girl in the bus, a vision or a tangible thing. My soul instead flies like a kite into the boundless skies, and the string keeps tugging, pulling, unraveling from the spool, like a scarf endlessly lost to the wind, dancing an infinite dance.

In these moments when I am so far away that all I know are the brushstrokes of clouds, I become the feeling I am experiencing: the blueness of the sky, the golden quality of sunlight, the faint rustling of leaves… I melt and become a mere mirror of experience and sensation, an echo-room for the beauty of the world.

I’ve often mistaken this feeling as a desire for death — a longing to stop existing beyond this point, having achieved the purest form of existence.

But it is not that, the Truth in me supplies. It is a kinder, softer sentiment, a freer one.

Yes, I echo, gentle and honest like a tired child.

I do not want to die. I want, instead, to dissolve into the sky and become the material of clouds. I want to be taken apart, memory by memory, and come undone like a tangle of threads until my soul is free to join the ether.

Like foam to the sea. Dust to Dust. A breeze in the infinite sky. That is my soul, a grand mystery solved, a stuffy room now breathing with light.

It was never about dying, it was always an unbecoming, a journey back home. But there are no words for that in the common language. The closest approximation has always been ‘death‘, but it is not that.

My soul is this feeling of light. Light in both ways: weightless and honeyed, like that one spot of light that falls on your desk one afternoon and in which particles of dust or matter rise, rise, rise as if called to some greater purpose.

I do not want to die. I want to be this, I’ve caught myself thinking.

Quote of the day:

“You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!”
— Pablo Neruda, A Song of Despair