Dark was the Night.

Yearning to hold on, 

but letting go.

You came upon me so suddenly, like travelers to a cave, and you have given me shelter ever since. It seems like you are nature’s promise to me, with whom I can discover plain-spoken truthfulness and a quality of joy somewhere on the far side of despair- the feelings which would never dawn on me even after meticulous self-unraveling. You are the sunlight without which the gaudy leonine sunflower would hang black and barren on its stalk.

Alas! The night had finally arrived. It was eerily uncommunicative and tight-lipped, like it was hiding a secret behind its dejected darkness. There were no stars twinkling in the sky, no symphony of the dancing fireflies, no lightening and no firecrackers breaching the muteness of the night. Like a shrunk sunflower, I felt dismal! It was not just the night, but the clock which harked that ‘it was time’! The idea of you departing me began to grieve me. But the day had only begun and you had just come! It felt like you were embezzling with the happiness you had bestowed upon my tender being.  My heart began to die a slow death, shedding hope and happiness like dry leaves off a tree until the moment you’d have gone and there will be none left!

You cannot say to the sun, ‘more sun’ or to the rain ‘less rain’. So I wish, the sun felt more lethargic in sinking down the horizon that night and it set more slowly, more unnoticeably-like a tree that slowly grows taller, the gradual accumulation of dust or the weathering of rock into life bearing soil. But no, the day came to an end so unanticipated, like caterpillar turning into a butterfly!

My eyes became moist as I saw you slide into the backseat of the car. As it rolled out of the driveway, my melancholy eyes couldn’t contain the salty tears anymore, cascading down my cheeks like a summer spring fall crying out in despondence. They were deep waters!  I saw, you looked back through the window to catch the last glimpse of me that night, as I waved back at you. You disappeared into the night’s dumbness, but my eyes followed you. We have lived miles away, but the pang of this separation was unbearable. However was I to soothe it? The part of me that you took away with you killed out the left one, and all that marked its presence was a loud shriek of silence!

Everything had come to nothing now. I was starting to learn that we must not expect happiness. It is not our prerogative. When the day goes well, it is a sudden gift and it cannot last forever.  With an empty hollowness in my heart, I went inside the house. I sat next to the fireplace and lived that night on the warmth of the sacrificed embers as the hours slowly burnt away, hoping that one day I’ll complete my life with you.

Like the sight of a color blind man, the frivolous slowly blends in the background and only the meaningful glows. The day was short and it had to end but it will always be marked by the candor, gusto and completeness that we shared.

Following Your Heart.

The heart has reasons that reasons cannot know.

Part-I

The Holy Bible says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5) As I understand, this would be the mind of the righteous. In life, no one has been able to decide between right or wrong with aplomb and much ease. Whenever life puts us in such an impasse, we evaluate and calculate the circumstances with great detail, just so that we don’t make the wrong pick. It requires much deliberation and gauging. There is no straitjacket formula, easy answers or quick fix solutions. It’s not as easy as how patients tell the doctors to do their jobs, ‘stitch me up, slap a band-aid and send me home.’ Even if not this, we cannot ride the process of decision-making out like pain where we can simply breathe deep, and wait for it to subside.

Soiled decisions made, have a way of sneaking up and biting us where it hurts most. And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. De Nile! It’s not just a river! It is a grotesquely big ocean. So how do you save yourself from drowning in it? The world of wrong choices is not a cage; it’s a cocoon. You struggle every moment to break free, with absolutely no space inside to fly! If I had to take a guess, I’d say that wrought-decision-making-process has a lot to do with fear. It is the fear of making the wrong choice. What if you made a mistake you cannot undo? It’s the fear of failure, fear of rejection or fear of losing...

This is why, for most, life is so much about making the right choices. I am glad; I’m not one of them. This has saved me from the highly convoluted mental measurement of situations. In most cases, I have believed that choosing between right and wrong is not like choosing apples from oranges where an apple in no circumstance will look or taste like an orange or vice versa. Where if you want an apple, you can distinguish it from an orange and take your pick. It is so much more than this...

For me, to begin with, what is right or wrong is simply a sensation, an emotion, a sentiment, or maybe tender-heartedness towards one of the choices, if one can say.  And once you’ve decided your course; it becomes what you construct or make of that course. This is why, in most cases when I am in a fix like this, I close my eyes, think for three seconds odd, and choose either, believing that it is right, hoping that it will turn out right, or at the least give me an illusion that it will so. I see what I want to see and believe what I want to: that I have made the right choice. It works! It is not being in darkness or in denial. It’s about having faith and confidence. Consequently, I save myself a sizable amount of mental scraping.

All that has really mattered to me is to appreciate small victories and admiring the struggles it takes to simply be a human. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to stand upright is a reason enough to celebrate. Doing what is right than wrong, good than bad, fair than unfair has seemed rather mosaic to me than simple.

Yes! There have been moments in my life when sudden surge of emotions have overtaken me. I am familiar with the feeling which takes one over, when heart appropriates matters of the mind. When in a war between the mind and the heart, the heart wins, hands down. At such times, I have considered it absolutely absurd to even care about what is the right thing to do! What is the point? I’ve known that the heart is going to rule, no matter what, and irrespective of how rational or sensible the mind may be.

The human body naturally follows its impulses, over which we do not have any control. At any given moment, the brain has 14 billion neurons firing at a speed of 450 miles per hour. When we get a chill we get goose bumps, when we get excited, we have an adrenaline surge. If our body can follow the impulses without our control, where is the harm in our actions following the heart? Moreover, the heart has a knack of always making the head, its fool.

Life is not a surgical theater where emotions make the surgery all messy. It’s not necessary to tuck them away neatly and step into a clean sterile room where the procedure is simple: cut, suture, stitch. When the world of adamance, steadfastness and being in control stops spinning, you will realize that the shiny little scalpel used in a surgery is not going to save you.

I think, the heart plays a massive role in decision making and sometimes, there is no harm to let it dominate. The human heart can feel things which the eyes cannot see and knows what the mind cannot understand. After all, there are times when you are faced with a cut that will not heal! A cut that rips its stitches wide open! What do you do then? The scalpel will reduce to the stature of being a metal made of surgical steel, and nothing more! Sometimes, life is faced with conditions where the heart won’t back down. It will be stubborn enough to have its own way! If by chance, you shake it or drop a pebble carelessly into its depths, it will split and overflow on the ground like water which can never be gathered together. What can the rigidity of the mind do then? You cannot be an incessant control freak, ten-feet tall and bulletproof! It’s not a sign of weakness, of not being up to the task. Because when the heart assumes governance, all that perfection, all that beautiful control, just falls to crap. All you can do is follow the heart quietly like a kid.

It is however amusing that for most; the heart provokes to cross that thick red warning line on the floor. It is called the ‘line of danger’ which marks the point where the premises go from ‘accessible’ to ‘off limits’. Crossing the line unauthorised is not tolerated, and this is what the righteous-mind instructs you to do: to stay within limits. The mind understands that these lines are for a reason: for safety, for security, for clarity. That if you choose to cross the line, you pretty much do so at your own risk. So why is it, that bigger the line, the greater the heart’s temptation to cross it? Maybe it’s the thrill of trading the familiar for the unfamiliar, a sort of a personal dare. Maybe, it is in believing that pushing limits might actually be fruitful.

Thus sometimes, crossing that line takes you to larger avenues, and you don’t want to come back. Crossing the line and going the extra mile, however intolerable it may be, can really turn out to be the right decision. But the rider is-you have to dare to cross it, to find out. Everything else is merely an assumption.

Part-II

Yes, I have felt this stormy emotionally. My heart has made my head its fool!

Innumerable nights of sleeplessness passed without you. I thought you would finally come one day, but you never did! I tried so hard to persuade you that night, but I failed!  In the face of what we could lose in a day, or in an instant, I wondered what the hell it would take out of me that would hold us together. Everything else felt so feeble then, and all that really mattered was just having a singular glimpse of you. 

My mind told me to give up, but my heart did not let me. My mind told me, letting you go was the right thing to do but my heart had its logics, however absurd. So, I finally decided to travel across miles, the very next morning, only to look deep into your eyes, hold your soft hands, kiss you gently and let you know how much you’ve meant to me over the years.

I did just one thing-followed my heart. It felt like it was the perfect day to save our lives. Today, I’m glad, I made that decision. Something’s just feel right, however insensible. But then again, all is fair in love..

You know who you are!