Any dream will do

This is a C&P job. Not my words, not by a mile.

Written by someone infinitely more gifted.  

Something that I felt deserved a wider audience. 

Of course, I have the necessary permissions to reproduce it here. 

What do you think?

************

 

The trick is to detach yourself, to become the observer.

Then you watch the tendrils of pain, from their tentative beginnings. Hold it in cupped palms, watch it bloom like a flower. Observe with anticipation as it courses through the body like a lambent flame, till it subsumes the mind in a raging inferno that seeks to blank out everything else. Feel the crimson coloured petals envelop consciousness, smother all rational thought, till one even loses the sensation of pain. When all the crevices of the mind are filled, there is a blissful nothingness. Or an ultimate satiety, depending on how one looks at it.

Like going through a dark tunnel where you can only feel the closeness of the walls around you and emerging into a sunlit plain, the brilliance of nothingess is dazzling. It is at once totally alive and devoid of all passion. It is the white that is the sum every hue and the black that swallows them all. It is wrong to call it a joy; it is a plateau that is far higher than these minor highs of sensual or emotional pleasure.

One seeks these plateaus in different ways. A long run followed by a sprint over the last few hundred yards, searing lungs and muscles aflame progressively building a crescendo of pain that ends in a silent scream of pure release. That last set of weights added to the bar as you hold it above your chest, elbows taut, groups of muscles involuntarily jumping as you lower it ever so slowly. However, these offer but glimpses into that vista of infinite emptiness.

For the true experience is in holding it inside you. Go about your work in absolute, easy normalcy. Only occasionally allow yourself that luxury of feeding the oxygen of attention to those embers that smoulder deep inside, fan the flames till they singe, then burn and finally purify. Wipe away these abrasions of the daily grind. For as noted earlier, fire cauterizes.

And as you do it, the letters on the page in front of you lose focus, and then come back with renewed clarity. The meaningless people pressing cases of varying irrelevance become faceless, then slowly regain identity, and then slowly the disjointed facial movements attain a voice, and then conversation continues.

"Err, could you run that by me again ?", you say.

Exultant, inwardly.

One more hit, one more swig from that bottle of sparkling nothingess. Or an ultimate satiety, depending on how one looks at it.

Purely as an observer, of course.

I think it was the 8th of August, 1994 that it all started. It could have been the 4th for all you know. I'd lost Ma a couple of months before and was still trying to cope with the newly bestowed Lady-of-the-manor title her absence brought with it. I remember it was in early August. How my memory falters! Old age, you see. It is just not what it used to be. I may not remember the date, but I do remember the day. It's crystal clear, forever etched in my memory. (Cheesy lines galore!) 

 

The auditions had begun a couple of weeks before. It was the first year of college. Post college student union elections, this was what we had all been looking forward to. College auditions for various extra curricular and cultural teams to represent the college at  intercollegiate competitions were in full swing. Of course, nepotism and favouritism were rampant even then, I'm sure, but I wasn't this jaded then, so cynicism crept by me.  I was this starry eyed 18-year-old and some of the senior guys were heartthrob material, I'll give you that. Out of hundreds of tryouts, I was in the final 20 and the day dawned bright and clear. We were to sing on stage in front of the whole college and it was my first time. I'm sure all of you know the jitters of first time experiences :o). 

 

The previous day's final selections had given me some sort of courage. There was this girl who was auditioning. I distinctly remember her face.  A round, Bengali girl who sang Kabhi Door Jab Din Dhal Jaaye pronouncing the "a" syllable only as a Bengali can. She sang:

Kobhi door job din dhol joye...

 

She didn't make the cut, but the last girl to audition was this very pretty girl with long hair, in an orange and yellow dress, fair, but with braces. When she announced she would be singing the same song, chaos ensued. The boys had had enough and wanted to leave. But the girl would have none of it. She dashed to the door and bolted it. Leaning against it, she said and I quote: "No one leaves till I finish." That kind of bravado was what I lacked. I still do. But that had given me that little push to at least go and give it a try before I chickened out.

 

Not only did I feel I could do it, I had also made a new friend. V, who sang Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar so beautifully, that I think it's second only to the original. It became our song. He introduced me to Jagjit Singh, by the way. He of course made it to the finals and as luck would have it, he was sitting right behind me, he was in my English class and when he came back, I introduced myself and we proceeded to the college canteen for coffee post tryouts.

 

So as I was saying, the day dawned, (I think it was a Saturday) and the judges were lining up. There were six of them, I think. One of them was a family friend, S, my sister's Veena master's son, so I felt I stood a fair chance. So, one by one, the twenty sacrificial goats made their way to centre stage and gave it their all. Yes, I was the last to sing. The song that I'd chosen? Tere Mere Milan Ki Yeh Raina from Abhimaan. My family and I were Hrishida's loyalists even then. (I'd sung Teri Bindiya Re for the tryouts. Guess I forgot to mention that.) So long, Hrishida. You've given us much to remember you by.

 

I remember what I was wearing. It was a white salwar with pink and green dots and a pink dupatta. I closed my eyes, mustered up whatever courage I could find and sang with the slightest of tremors in my voice. Inside, I was shaking like a leaf, but outside, I wanted to make it so bad, that I left most of my stage fear backstage. V was silently encouraging me from the sidelines, God bless him.

I finished with: "Thanks for listening. And not booing."

 

A minute of the most deafening silence and then applause. I don't think it was thunderous, but I could see V clapping real hard with a big smile on his face. And S gave me a thumbs up sign. I walked off the stage in a daze and bumped into S who said the booing comment was not at all necessary, for I'd sung really well. He said if it were up to only him, I would make it to the college team, but he felt that I did stand a good chance of making it anyway.

 

And make it I did. I was now in the college music team. We represented our college at many cultural festivals and won many prizes, but my favourite reward was V. He and I remained steadfast friends for 10 years, even though I lost touch with almost every other college friend of mine. The next two years, we were the judges for all college music team auditions. He balded, I ballooned, but we remained close. Two years ago, I lost him to life. He's somewhere out there now, I don't know where, but he remains one of the nicest people I've ever known.

 

Miss you, V. I was listening to our song today. Thank you for the music.

Tujhe bhi apne pe yeh aitbaar hain ke nahin... 

 

End note: Next up on College Chronicles, My First Proposal...

 

Single people have a lot of time on their hands, who, if they are brainy like me, will use it judiciously. By single people, I don't necessarily mean those who are not (yet) hitched. I mean even those who cannot stand the sight of their spouses or better-or-worse halfs for reasons only they know and have mutually decided to take a break. But for simplicity's sake, we'll take single to mean single, as in unhitched. We the single belong to the lowest stratum of acceptable society. And by acceptable society, I mean the one that hasn't yet heard of six degrees of separation. I mean, it's just five intermediaries standing between Gorg Clooney and I, going by the six degrees theory, right?

 

Coming back to singledom, we are either shunned by our well-meaning friends or invited to dos out of pity or downright ignored, as if to convince themselves that if they ignore us long enough, we'll perhaps slink away to get hitched somewhere somehow somewhat somewhen. Even worse, when we are invited to dos, it's because they've come to know of another single Sad Sack (all necessary references to straight, gay, bisexual, trisexual, etc. are left to you, the reader) who's kind-of-but-not-exactly-looking to get hitched. It's worse when you're older and they want to hook you up with the next available single guy or girl they meet. I mean, don't they know at least by experience that two potbellies do not an ideal mating situation make, pun intended? I'm not being a bitch. Really, I'm not. It's just my way of telling you how I spend my spare time, which I have loads of. I mostly spend it overanalysing people's attitudes and actions and how they adversely affect my chances of getting, um, hitched.

From different windows

We look at the same moon

Together, apart

Okay, I can't rhyme for nuts

 

Single people write crappy poetry. Most of them, at least. I mean, anyone can write about 'waiting for the day my inner demons meet yours' or 'invisible ghosts lurking somewhere in the shadows that follow me around'. But how many are brave enough to write about living amidst the people that they have to for as long as they're alive? They overlyricise sometimes, I feel. Why am I writing this? This is to tell you that I cannot for the life of me write a decent rhyme anymore. When I'm bored with overanalysing, I spend my time blaming my shortcomings on the world and its ways and generalising it till I convince myself that I'm not the one who's lacking in anything, it's the world that is.

The moon's shining bright

My love's taken flight

And there are a million stars

All aglow in the sky tonight...

 

Along with getting to the point of being totally jaded, reaching the pinnacle of cynicism, going through catharses galore or at least pretending to, finding, losing and regaining my sense of humour,  and still waiting for an ideal tomorrow, I seem to have lost my ability to easily spot the lesser of two evils everytime I have to choose between two. I mean, which is more overwhelming? Too much too soon or too little too late? Yes, when I'm not doing the first two, I ask myself these inane questions masked as introspection. Two-bit philosophy, if you please.  I mean, why should I be scared of the moon one night in a year when I spend the rest of the year marvelling at it? Yes, there is a rabbit inside it. I'm convinced of it. And I'm sure it's made of cheese. Cheese should at least be reason enough to want to look at the moon every chance I get. And it is tonight that it will be at its most beautiful. But would I rather look at the moon tonight and chance an unpleasant episode in the next one year or would it be better to sentence myself to house arrest post noon?

Of rabbits and shimmer

And warm, melted cheese

And tiny little pieces  of romance,

If you please... 

 

I'm sorry, Mr. Moon. I just can't see you tonight.

Tu bhi akela iss duniya mein

Main bhi akela(i) yahaan

Yeh bebasi ab hum dono ko

Le jaaye jaane kahaan...