Shaam - e - Gham ki Qasam

Life goes on no matter what happens, people find a way to balance their lives.. That's what I penned down last ..

However today I have a different story to say - yes life goes on, but there are defining moments in life that make you a person you are, but this post isn’t really about those character building moments .. this is about those times when , even if its for a short while.. you realize that life isn’t really as predictable as you thought it was.. and sometimes there are no solutions that can make everything OK. This is about situations/ incidents /tragedies that compel you to re-think the way you have lived life, the way you’ve perceived yourself and those around you and bring back the lost humanity in you..

We as humans have an amazing mind that partitions itself so well that your day to day activities completely shut off the realities around the world.. and it takes a 9.2 Richter scale earthquake or a disastrous tsunami that claims millions of lives for us to wake up to the fact that we are slowly but surely being obliterated from the earth.. Whether or not we find another planet is a topic for another day. Whether the earth is just shaking us off of itself or whether its our own doing that has brought us to this stage is a question that has now lost its relevance, what is interesting though is that we are the most advanced form of life on earth and we haven't yet found a way to minimize if not completely evade human loss in natural disasters..

Yet.. this blog post is not about mass scale loss of life either.. its about the little incidents that are more closer.. living miles away from Haiti or Indonesia , earthquakes/tsunamis seem distant , something that cannot really happen or affect me.. What does disturb me though is the news of increasing number of deaths by DUIs, kids being kidnapped, raped and killed , stories of personal vengeance turning to massacres.

These days there is a report about at least one of the gory things I mentioned .. I generally go past these stories, to the science and technology section to see what Apple has got out in the market, its latest weapon to destroy what's left of the rest of the industry. But the day I do read them, especially the ones where kids are involved, I am pushed into a thought process that ends with me being skeptical about people around me, teachers, doctors, therapists, even clergy men - all but friends and family. Scared of future , thinking what if.. I were there ? What if it was one of my own? What do I do to protect the people I love? What do I do to make this world a safer place.. I'm visibly shaken and terribly disturbed.. But then.. I am after all a human, and a few hours later.. my minds calms itself and directs its focus on the papers lying on the desk, half empty cup of herbal tea and a half typed document , minimized on the computer screen.. Yes my mind has at this point successfully found a small partition of my brain where it can push these thoughts into and maintain peace for now.

You might think I am on a overdose of medicine.. or rather Law & Order SVU or CSI.. but no , this is real, more possible than a earthquake killing you, more probable than drowning in a tsunami.. not to undermine any of those tragedies.. but somehow these are happening closer to your world and at an alarmingly high rate. Crime used to fascinate me as a kid, it still does, but it sure can be scary... and its in these moments I close my eyes and am thankful for being alive , healthy and safe.. in all the unpredictability that surrounds the little world I've enveloped myself in.

Tujhse Naaraz Nahi Zindagi ..Hairaan Hoon Main..

The most intriguing part of life is that it goes on.. don’t know how.. right from getting over the reluctance of getting up at 6 to go to work.. to maintaining a healthy life, eating, exercising, to having a decent conversation without falling asleep in between .. everything seems hard these days, everything seems a chore.

I cannot fathom my life without the people I cherish the most, who I love and who love me back.. but the stress, the frustration, the daily agony is straining each and every relationship I treasure. There is a unexplainable distance, which seems non-existent at times but at other times its seems so huge that I am lost.. but life goes on..

I am the most tired, fatigued, exhausted (and all the synonyms you can find to express the feeling of almost dropping dead).. But yet, from an unknown source of energy, I wake up and dress up and drive to the train station, fearing what might be lying ahead in the day that will push me off the cliff.. the cliff of sanity to the abyss of irreproachable miserable insane depression... but then the day goes on, passes by and I come back to sanity of my home and life goes on....

Not to mention the lovely weather that's around these days.. when its not sunny that the skin burns, its gloomy .. gloomy enough to give me a heartache.. and when its not gloomy, its cold.. like the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christmas Carol) .. but then life still goes on , no matter what the sun looks like..

We discover moon has water and mars can be inhabited and so we continue to destroy earth. We discover more and more ways to warm car seats and then make them perishable, we get diseases, we find cures, and then find that the cures give rise more complex diseases.. we get depressed for little things, and then be brave on the face of crisis.. we counter everything that ever happened around us and find a way to still get up and walk around like nothing happened.

Is there anything more intriguing than that? Life just goes on, just like the show that goes on.. that's possibly the only explanation why I take life so granted, I sleep and awake with predictability.. I think we as a human race have found balance in just about everything.. and as I read in a certain powerful ideological book.. "Even if the Sun weren't to rise, I am sure we will invent a substitute" . We will do everything to just make life go on...

Main Thi Main Hoon Main Rahoongi

Relationships - so simple, yet more than three quarters of world can't get it right - why? 'Its complicated' .. I heard my friend tell me when I queried about what she thought about Rihanna being butchered by her boyfriend and she patching up with him and accepting him back into her life... what do people see in their relationships that they decide to go back to the very same person who has hurt you, physically, mentally and has tortured you throughout his life.. its not just Rihanna, its millions of women around the world who are subjected to domestic violence every day and are still with their husbands.. there are men who cheat and lie, and their wives accept their lame excuses for cheating, and the best part is ... this happens not once .. but over and over again... A classic case as I heard on the radio this morning - A girl calls in to the "agony aunt" show - and asks the psychiatrist on the channel - My boyfriend has cheated on me thrice before, and he is has always come back and apologized and regretted it, and then he did it again this time - what do I do .. ?

I was really shocked, so shocked that I started laughing aloud - much to the misery of the people who were riding with me and took that show seriously... But that is the truth - the ridicularity( if there is a word like that in English ) of the issue was beyond all limits. How can a girl not see through this person, who is just using her! Good Lord I thought to myself, these people are so insecure that they are not willing to let go of the person who abuses the relationship, abuses their esteem, abuses everything that defines their existence... and all for what? So that they have someone to talk to? someone to give them company.. exactly what is motivating them to stay in there?


Now I agree in every relationship there are ups and downs , pluses and minuses, you can't have someone perfectly stitched for you, you kind of work around somethings.. and sometimes it does happen that you give something up , especially expectations or opinions those can be given up sometimes (I stress on the word sometimes) or if you are not the very opinionated person, you probably deserve to be bossed around... but I swear no one deserves to be cheated and lied to.. and definitely not beaten .. Of course there are people like me who are total high maintenance, so I need people to give me attention all the time, anything otherwise is sacrilege .. But given that you have defined your limits of patience, if someone goes past them, you react, retreat, scream shout , fight, win your stance back or at worst case let go of the person and get your freedom back... I don't know why anyone would want to hang on to years of abuse and ridiculing just beats the sense out of any human logic.. except may be insanity!

For now .. just a small message to all those people in abusive relationships .. there is a world out there that you can explore, all you have to do is just step out - go beyond temporary conveniences, step into a world of opportunities. Stand on your own and see the difference it makes in your life, 'coz afterall your life is at the end of the day about you and your existence!

Palkein Jhukao Na ....

This time around , my title isn't just titular it is the very content of the small blog -

I recently stumbled upon an old CD that had collected dust in my huge rack of cd's ... It had some really offbeat songs that I had picked and burnt apparently when my taste and mood was better than what it is today .. One song that featured in the CD was Palkein Jhukao Na from Sehar - a movie about gangsters vs police.. and you must be groaning saying "Oh no not one of those again .. .but not this was not one of those meaningless action movies where all you can hear is gunshots throughout the movie and end up with terrible ache in the head after the movie says "The End" .. no not this one - This was a really clean cut movie which had a bit of everything - it was about a good, honest police officer facing not just a criminal genius who want total absolute power over everything , but also the bureaucrats who really dont know which side they are on.. and over all of it his own traumatic childhood .. does this sound like a complex plot of emotional drama with the side of blood and gore? Nope wrong again this is by far the least emotional Indian movie I have seen - a well thought of and executed movie .... absolutely no nonsense stuff and has more depth than Sarfarosh - which is the only other cop movie that figures in my police favorites ...

... but movie apart - the song -reallyy delightful one .. picturized on the ever delightful cop (played by Arshad Warsi) and Anamika (played by Mahima Choudhary) his object of desire (other than the famed don 'gajraj' that is!!)

Adnan Sami's deep voice rendering the slow tune with soft beats, and the easy lyrics - the lover asking the the lady to confess her love for him .. and ofcourse doing the same himself.. Oh and does Arshad look sweet or what! Especially with the dimples when he blushes somewhere in between the song! Sweetest of the songs in the recent times.. The song has no surrealistic picturization - it has no dreamy stuff and definitely no large opulent sets - yet it lingers in your mind much after you've heard it or seen it...

....On this note - hear to the song and adieu till later!

Chup tum raho.. Chup hum rahe..

Words are the most beautiful things when said in the right way at the right time.. words are the most powerful if they come from the right person in the right tone.. Words mean a lot when they offer comfort to someone down and dejected .. and yet words are the most inadequate when it comes to expressing the most intricate feelings, especially that of love and sorrow.. I have increasingly noticed that people are the most quiet when they are in pain or they are with someone they really love and they just want to spend the time absorbing the presence of each other.. It does remind me of a song in Swades movie where the hero and the heroine are sitting inside the car with the song running in the background and they are not talking , not looking at each other (that would be too cliched eh?) not doing anything, but just reclining on the front seats of the car and ... thats it.. just feeling each others presence.. ain't that romantic? I think its amazing what silence between two people can convey..

Having said that.. I don't want to take the romance away from poetry and I definitely do believe that words play important role when communicating ones feelings and ones thoughts, its useless if one speaks too few words and then goes into some kind of a misunderstanding mode where all is lost to the lack of words..

But getting back to the silence.. there is a strange kind of understanding that develops when one stops speaking and just "feels".. I guess it has something to do with the development of some senses when others are shut down.. you are more sensitive to movements, to heart beat, to even the breeze whizzing through your hair.. It simply has an ethereal feel to it..

Although .. I doubt how long I would survive in the "silent movie" mode .. despite all its romanticism .. I have a trifle too much energy to stay quiet and unfigety for too long! But a stealing a couple of minutes of silence to truly experience the surroundings .. (whether it inculdes someone or not.. ) ain't a bad idea.. ain't a bad idea at all...!