Are you there yet?

The clock is ticking. When you look back, your childhood days look eons behind, you look into the mirror your face looks a lot different, your body almost sags and aches. All of a sudden you start feeling old. When you look ahead you don’t know where you are going. Yet you run. You run from your past. You run towards your future. You run from everything you have known till date. You want everything around you to change which hasn’t changed in years. You don’t know what you are chasing yet you feel something is chasing you. What is it?

You want to stop it and you “Take a break”. Yet you do not know what your break is all about, only to feel that the entire world has left you behind. Are they actually running? You don’t know, yet you think you HAVE to run. You run with full steam pushing and shoving people around as if they will never catch up with you. You don’t have time to explain to anyone. Coz you know you cannot Stop coz they are still chasing you. Who are they? You still don’t know.

You look at the clock it’s still ticking. You feel when you reach THERE you will get a better view- It will all be OK. You don’t know what it looks like yet you want to reach there. You have left most of them behind now or rather derailed them. But you still aren’t there. You only know you are somewhere close to THERE. So you start compromising. You start compromising saying it will all come back to me. You want it all to come to you. You start hatching new schemes to reach there with people you never knew before. Coz now you cannot stop Running. You are hooked on to it.

When you reach THERE you find the view is not what you expected it to be. Now you want to see more since you see the clock is still ticking. Now you want a NEW THERE. So you run again. This time with all your past and self confessed learning and wisdom. You no more want to be with the people you were with before. Every time you want a new costume and a new stage.
With lots of wear and tear you reach the NEW THERE. It’s good but not appealing as the next THERE. So you compromise & run again with the same people you hatched schemes with. This continues till you reach a spot where you see that people are no longer the same. All of them want to OWN the new THERE. So you fight this time with all your might only to find that you have been pushed and shoved around this time. So you go back to the OLD THERE since you find yourself incapable of moving ahead.

The OLD THERE no longer exists. Shattered you go back to on a reverse Trail to find all your OLD THERE. With much anguish you muster all your courage and go back to the OLD THERE only to be disappointed again. You still run. Finally you reach a terrain that looks familiar. You see familiarly unfamiliar faces. You feel you know them yet you do not know them. What kind of ambivalence is this? Finally you find a mirror that beckons you. You look into and this time you see a perfect stranger standing in front of you. You almost scream with tears rolling down your eyes. Everything comes back to you in a flash.

You hear a distant voice. Someone is shaking you. You wake up and find the same mirror in front of you. You look a little old, some wrinkles are there on your face, you have put on weight, you tummy shows, you sag. You look positively ghastly. But when you look around you find some questioning eyes? It’s your family. You feel relieved & jump out of joy. You smile & hug every one of them only to realize that you had a nightmare.

You continue on your routine and this time you don’t run. You sprint with joy coz you don’t need any more nightmares to tell you how to reach THERE coz You are already THERE.

That thing called Love

L.O.V.E- This 4 lettered word can mean so many things to so many people. She definitely is not easy to find these days in the purest of forms. Everything has gotten commercialized.

Was speaking to some colleagues today. One was dead against love marriages and had surrendered to his family to get married to a girl of their choice. On the other side of the spectrum was this friend, who was marrying the man of her dreams, but had very clear cues from her family that they might not be able to come to her rescue if something goes wrong with it, since it was a love marriage. I do not have much of an opinion about marriages or love. But should one deprive oneself of such beautiful feelings or should a cost benefit analysis be done before getting on this adventurous path?

On speaking to this fellow I understood that he must have been madly in love considering the kind of fun loving and adorable person he is. God Bless him & may he find what he wants. But then why these restrictions? People talk about all kinds or crap like short term and long term view but isn’t love and marriage more about your commitment, faith and trust in your partner, that no matter what comes they’ll always be there for you?

With the little bit of knowledge I have I am assuming that it’s going to be one in a million case if one finds their sweetheart in their own community. If people cannot cross that boundary called family’s happiness or society’s view (Samaj) or have the gut that they would be able to maintain that fine balance, then why do they fall in love? May be that feeling is so alluring, blessed, complete and fulfilling that in that one moment one is ready to forget their own existence and give into that moment. It’s tempting or sheer peer pressure.

Is it just the experiment that they like to try and see if they get favorable results and make it to the finishing line called Marriage or satisfaction? How many of them get to the finishing line with the blessings of their families?

At the end of this life all of us want to look back and see that we have spent a life well lived with someone who has made it much easier for us, than we ever thought it could be. Then why these doubts when you find that eternal part of yours which the supreme power separated from you in the beginning and tested if you could find that part of yours in this lifetime.