Musings of the Wistful Wanderer 2.0

Cruising over the South China Sea rather uncomfortably( like being driven on the roads of Bangalore, replete with potholes, by an irate auto rickshaw driver) I start to pen down my experiences of what I believe is my most adventurous holiday. 

Now, why I should be inspired on a bumpy plane, sleep deprived and kicked continuously by a "little beast"(brat, devil's soldier or just a kid) in the seat behind me is logic that eludes me.

My musings begin with the strangeness of the situation, that for someone who is always writing or doodling away, I have not even scribbled on sheets of paper to check my expenses( on day 6 of my twelve day vacation). Have I been that happy, content and in control? Or has it then, killed my creativity? And then suddenly, it hits me that neither of these situations were true. I have firmly believed that documenting anything removes you from the experience and makes it impersonal.

The art and the stories are still there, more potent than all others and maybe, right now, all I am supposed to do is relax, soak up and feel the vacation on my skin, in the sharpness of the air against my tongue and in the blankness of my mind. The stories and the doodles are biding their  time, they will come and bring with them a different surge of happiness.

14th August, 2016

Why Does It Bother You?

What do you see?
Does the lack of explicit expression bother you?
Is it the fact that the fire I carry within doesn't need eyes, a smile or even an arched eyebrow to be felt?

What bothers you the most?
Is it the joy that doesn't fit into boxes you understand?
Is it the spirit that refuses to die?
Surely, it bothers you,
For you seek explanations in words
So you can chain each movement, cage my soul
Put it in a box, nice and neat
Dim the colours and label them
Red,Blue, Green, Black and White

Why do you need to know the secrets my veiled eyes might hold?
Or what my smile really means?
Surely, it is not curiosity
For I am every colour of the wind
I am everywhere, I am everything
My spirit fills the air
You can feel my soul reach out to you in the goosebumps on your skin
In the colours, in the blur, the tunes and the beats
Everything in and around me echoes my spirit
And yet, all you want is a face, a quantifiable entity
You overlook my truth because it is brave and unbound
It bothers you
What is it though, that really bothers you?

Why does it bother you ?

Of Fears and Cynicism

I am afraid the fear and cynicism that lurks in the deep dark corners of my heart will eventually pervade the rest of my being.

I am afraid my fears will turn me into a weak, meaningless caricature of myself. Surely, the fears are now an entity of their own, feeding off each other and magnifying in the presence of my insecurities. They must have turned into a strong, rotting mass that is rotting everything around it.

The fears make me don many of the masks I put on. These masks I believe are protecting who I truly am. I am afraid I will forget who I am sans the masks and pretences, or that I will lose the ability to wear the right mask.I am afraid there will come a day when I am no longer hopeful, that the sun will not rise for me any more and that I will not find my strengths.

My biggest fear however, is the realisation that no matter how hard I try, I am not and will never be self sufficient. My happiness, despair, hope and strength lie in me, and just as much of them lies outside of me.I exist outside of my being and carry the universe within and I have enabled it to strengthen, weaken and destroy me.

 Despite my vulnerabilities, I move on, treading deep waters and miraculously surviving, and finding the strength, confidence and vanity to display the best parts of me, for the world to see, validate and judge. The being within and the person spread across the universe must be very, very special, for it is a gloriously scary world out there.

http://mymeraki.co.in/?portfolio=shackled
http://mymeraki.co.in/?portfolio=narcissism
http://mymeraki.co.in/?portfolio=strength

Wanderlust : travel Diaries

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Cruising at 35000 feet, a glass of Moet, some chocolate fudge brownie, an episode of Friends in the background makes for the most perfect white noise; looking out, I can almost make out the geography of the landmass down there, almost tell what part of the world it is. And then, somewhere over the Thai and Vietnamese airspace I am enveloped by the feeling of exalting joy, of absolute happiness. For a glorious fifteen minutes, I experience pure bliss, a happiness so intense, it is almost tangible.

I love travelling, I love every aspect of it - the detailed research and love affair with Lonely Planet, blogs, Tripadvisor, ticketing and travel websites et all. Booking tickets is almost sacred, an affirmation of my intent to set out.

It is a wonderful feeling, setting out. It is amazing how each destination has a story to tell, every town, village and city is an intriguing,large , feisty, quirky living  and breathing organism, wordlessly expressing what it has undergone over the ages, how it has changed, and how, sometimes, it has , like a petulant child, stubbornly, refused to change.

I think I become a slightly better person each time I travel. With each getaway, I fall in love with the new stories, and with myself. The new landscapes, alien cultures and yet something small that makes me belong in every city, the feeling of how things change and yet remain the same is intoxicating.

However, while each holiday is a wonderful experience and a revelation, even if it were not, I would save up, scrimp, plan with care, over and over again, for those fifteen minutes of perfection.

Of Candles, Light, Warmth and Hope

I light a candle for you

For every time your heart breaks

And for each time mine does

For each time I lose hope

I light a candle

Another when I am frozen, paralysed with fear

I'd light a candle

When I hurt with you, my friend

And one when we heal

When I find strength and confidence

And when you do

Each time I find reason to smile

Each time I find success, each time you do

I'll light a candle for me

I'll light a candle for you

I'll hope the light and the warmth chases the monsters away

Thaws our cold hearts

Mends our charred, broken souls

I will always light candles

for you, for me

Till we need the strength

And later, so the light and the warmth never fades away

Strength 2.0

As dramatic as this post sounds, it really is not. Each one of us has met with depression, failure and heartbreak. So this post, is dedicated to all of us, for staying strong, changing, facing our fears, failures and pain, and emerging victorious.

To have loved the way she did

And to have lost it all

For she took that leap of faith, and bore the fall

And she fell

Into that bottomless crevasse

It loomed darker than ever 

She struggled, she couldn't breathe

And then, the pain that had enveloped her

Became her strength

The fire that had charred her heart

Caressed her feet playfully

She was golden, she was steel

She was all the colours of the wind

The eye of a raging storm

A lake of calm

A brutal war

She was everything and nothing

A whirlwind of excitement, sanity and madness

Emboldened, she rose 

To find strength, in her shackles, in the fire, in the fall

In pain she found strength

In strength, she found freedom, she found herself 

Of Perfect & Imperfect Little Boxes - An extension of Colours

Why is it that we strive so hard to box and pack things, to be stacked into black and white boxes?Why does the lack of conformity feel like an existential crisis?

Every emotion one feels, is represented by colour. A lot of them, are a blur of colour, are entities with ragged ends, jutting out, overflowing or not quite filling the boxes, or the black and white.  

So, has the fear of involvement and vulnerability taken over so thoroughly, that we cease to exist beyond that feeble caricature of black and white emotions, our real selves?

We are more than the neat little boxes, so why not live like the we are? We are meant to jump, walk, skip, fall, stumble, pick ourselves up and dance upon the perfect, imperfect, open, unopened, tainted, even the most un-boxlike of boxes. What we need, is the idea of conformity, the boundaries to understand what we are capable of, that we fit in, and we stand out. 

The boxes are not to imprison us, they are to show us how truly spectacular we are, and that we make miracles happen, we weave magic.