The Phantom Room

After a long and epiphanic taxi ride, I finally reached my destination.

I stood in the foyer, studying paper-thin strips of blue gleaming under the shut doors. Unbearable despair and loneliness filled me up. Which one was it? Have I come to the right place?

I opened a door at random. The room was dim and tidy and filled with an enormity of a sea. There was smoke everywhere, through the smoke I saw him sitting on a low bed covered with husk. Just behind the bed ran a nice little river. Was it a river? Or a stream? Whatever It was, many fish lived in it. The fish didn’t care about my loneliness or despair or why was I there. The fish ate the weeds that grew in the stream or the river.

Water was streaming down the walls and gathering in a pool on the floor.

Hernando and Rachael were in their nightdresses. It seemed they had just made love.  

I exhaled them like the human-shaped river of smoke that had leaked into the room.

--

I woke up at three a.m. The moonlight lit up the room and its objects: bed, books, blood-soaked sheets, lamp, and a baby as if I'd turned on a lamp.

P.S. This is an excerpt from a scene where a man is trying to re-piece an event after being under the heavy effects of opium.

Moving with the cosmos

 The idea behind movement is to invoke deep feelings in the soul. The word movement here is not the same as we understand, but here it means to move in a rhythm. When we align ourselves with the way the stars are arranged in a constellation, we move with the cosmos. 

So, the above sounds esoteric, right. Well, to me it does too.  

Here is how I deconstructed these thoughts that moved within me. 

Movement is like music, when there is conscious movement, the soul sings. When there is a semi-conscious movement, the soul whispers, and when there is an unconscious movement, the soul mumbles.

P.S. This post has an informal quality, perhaps, even a tinge (could be a heapful) of what exactly is being said here. Let the question remain and let it float. It will unfurl itself in mystic ways like the way the universe makes us move mysteriously yet consciously if we are willing to listen.  

 

Magic of colors

Disclaimer: This post has to be read by keeping the logical brains aside.

Through these pictures, I make an attempt to understand the relationship between the colors; red, blue, and yellow. And what happens when they meet with each other. When does magic take place?

Imagine that a human being is made of three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Corresponding to these are the colors: red, blue, and yellow. 

In these pictures, when red (earth) meets water (blue), a brown is formed which is the color of the bark of a tree. The blue (water) leaves the earth and meets the yellow (sun or spirit) and transforms into green leaves. It is this balance that leads to the creation of leaves. Similarly, in human beings magic takes place when the physical meets the spiritual. A transformation. If we follow this imagination, then we observe in the other picture, how the green has turned into orange by taking in the red. In this mango tree, the leaves are almost violet and with a lot of red and a little blue. The flowers bloom at this point. 

Are we able to see this magic in nature? A magic outside and magic inside.

P.S. This is a brief understanding of Rudolph Steiner's observations on colors in nature and human beings. It may be esoteric in nature.

 

Coffee beans

Coffee beans roast on a woodland hill,

A melody rose up from a lonely rill;

The kettle whistled only to wither away,

No one heard what the brook had to say,

The drowsy world dreamed on.

Gliding through the curtain frills, a whiff crept,

Till It fell on the bed where a drunk slept;

A murmur and a frown lit his wrinkled face,

nonetheless save the gnomes their enigma could trace,

For the drowsy world dreamed on.

 

Beans popped like corns,

A floweret bloomed beneath the thorn;

The scent of the beans waylaid the sleep,

waking even the dead from their deep.

 

while the charms and joys inspire like the picture of dawn

like the playthings of Nature and Time - 

they gleam and are gone.

On its wings, the morning wafted away

 While the drowsy world dreamed on.

 

Lost to be found

You can't possibly sit and write here

what if I try

He pulls out his phone, turns the audio recorder.

ईस भीड़ में मेरी रुह बह गयी

बहते-बहते गुमशुदा हुई

मैं इस रंजिश में बह गया

कि वो कभी आयेगी कि नहीं

He looks at the Ferris wheels and tries to count the number of spokes. Each one is different, yet when they turn, they look the same. 

This is how our lives are, we are going round in circles, I need to find myself before I find us.

He turns and gets lost in the labyrinth of people.

P.S. I am continuing to post some words written based on the picture prompts given.

Picture prompt 18 

Write 100 words on the picture. 

Vantage point

The vantage point I had chosen, wasn't just conscious, it was an act of conscience. I could see him soaking up the mixed hues of the sky. I took an aim right between his eyebrows. All I need is one clean shot. And he can bid adieu to his life, his life of conceit, deceit, and an irrevocable redemption lay on the other side for me. 

Why is this hesitation? Why are my fingers not able to get the clasp, the grip I want. 

you've been brought here to carry out your gift of destiny

The voice in his head reminded him, his clasp gets firm, his mind clearer but a shred of doubt.

Fuck it. I am going to kill him. 

And he takes the shot, piercing through the glaze of the pretentious landscape.

P.S. The prompt is below

#Day17Prompt

Today we have a picture prompt.

Prompt: The attached picture

Rules: Write 100 words (prose) or 15 lines (verse) on the picture.  You can describe the place, the mood, the emotion, the place from where such a view is afforded... your imagination is the limit!

Free souls

 Free soul, that's what she called them. They were everywhere, patiently waiting for the opportunity to grab some unclaimed bit of matter.

Should we go for the table fan oscillating and droning, or those wires, gaunt wires, under the light of the bulb?

The free souls spoke in sepulchral voices.

I see those stitches laddered down on her face, a big bloody piece of cotton sticking out from her mouth where her teeth had been broken.

There was nobody else in the room. They gazed intently at the walls riddled with bullet holes, grey colored, paint worn out, and fallen like pieces of soot.

P.S. The above is a piece written for the prompt below.

#Day16Prompt

Today we will try something different.  

Prompt: Describe a place

Rules: Prose (100 words) or verse (15 lines).  Describe any place - it can be indoors / outdoors / fantasy.  

Delta challenge: Try the Implicit method (#3 below) to describe the place.

There are 4 ways to describe a place:

1) News report style: It was a large airy room with large windows, painted pastel blue.

2a) Very explicit: She liked her room.  The high ceiling combined with cross ventilation from windows on opposite sides made the room cool.  The large painting of a fall scene somehow was calming.

2b) Less explicit: She twisted the doorknob and the door swung open.  She had to shade her eyes with her palm as sunlight reflected off the citrus yellow walls and assaulted her eyes.

3) Implicit: "Why don't we get an electric chimney?" she asked.

"And where will the money come from?" he asked.

"Ok. At least, let us put ceramic tiles no?  Otherwise... scrub the wall too much and the distemper peels off... don't scrub and the wall blackens like this," she pointed.

"Why to spend so much money on a rented house?" he asked.

[Information conveyed: kitchen, messy walls; rented place; they are not very well off so it's a small kitchen]  

Forgotten song

 I feel an old familiar pain

As if snippets of a forgotten song remain

I feel a constant dull ache

That leaves me numb in it’s wake

I feel an emptiness surround me

Memories of what could’ve been hound me

I feel so much

And I feel nothing at all

NMJ

 When I first heard the term, NMJ, I thought it's a tribute band. New Michael Jackson. I was completely wrong about it. 

NMJ: Neuro muscular junction is a highly specialised synapse between a motor neuron nerve terminal and its muscle fiber that are responsible for converting electrical impulses generated by the motor neuron into electrical activity in the muscle fibers (frontiersin.org). 

With this definition, I scratched my brains to understand it in the context of Anthroposophy.  In one of her talks, Dr.Lakshmi, a Paediatrician, an Anthroposophical doctor, my mentor, had said, when we are feeling low, sad and we don't understand the reason why we are feeling the way we are. Then when we decide to change that state by doing an activity like, listening to a piece of music, a conversation with someone, a message exchange, a movie, and after that activity, we feel better. The reason we feel better is because there is a shift in NMJ, something has entered through that gap and made us feel better. 

The instances where I feel low, or anything that is demotivating, an activity like watching a show or listening to music, I let NMJ do it's magic. The magic that is created by the spiritual forces. Some may dismiss it as some sort of mumbo-jumbo but the truth is even modern neuroscientists have not been able to completely understand what goes on in that conversion of electrical impulse to electrical activity.

P.S. Through this post, NMJ's magic worked.  

     

A Johnsonian

 Imagine you are in the middle of an intense conversation about a relative who is not liked by your spouse. She walks away in her room when the relative is present in the house. Now, in such a conversation, the partner, instead of being empathetic and reasonable, points out an error in spelling or grammar, and makes an error herself, you say, she was being Johnsonian. 

That's an example of eponym, a word coined after another person. 

There are so many words in the English language which are coined after people who stand out, noble or not so noble. So I thought, let me look at my circle where I could meet these eponyms.

Bajaj: one who is known to disregard the poor

Usage: I am not a Bajaj, I am an egalitarian.

P.S. I think one eponym a day should be fine!

 

  

Anger!

 The following post is something I wrote in the diary yesterday.

He bangs the door, hits his hand against the wall, avoids looking in her direction and makes a face looking up. Finally, he storms out of the house. He walks at a fast pace, arms swinging like a pendulum fixed on both of his shoulder blades.

The skies are scarlet with hardly any clouds. There is a gale which is a pale imitation of his walk. His heart is pumping hard. Nothing seems to disrupt his determination to just walk.

P.S. This was written as an exercise to write a prose (100 words) without using the word, anger, or its synonyms anywhere.  

Sobriquets for one belief

 This is what I had written way back in 2007. Now what do I remember of that day when I wrote it, what day of the month, what date, what time, what I was doing. All these things are amiss from memory. However, the writing says it all. 

Khuda ke liye, bhagwan ke liye, in the name of Christ; several sobriquets for one belief. Very strange yet beautifully remarkable.

P.S. I am doing a blog catch-up, four more to go!

 

Musical morning

There was a calling, a musical one at that. I felt some drums, some tabla, some saxophone and bass guitar should be heard. 

Obviously, I didn't pick up any of these instruments and began to play. But I listened to some afro-beats. The assembly of sounds was incredible. It beat right within me. The pulsating melody increased my heart beat and I stopped it, realising, something mellow, something quiet was more the flavor of that calling. I switched to playing tabla. Between the dha-dhin and tirikats I was lost.

I felt centred and knew that's what my post will be today.  

mausiki ne rooh ko awaaz di

rooh ne suna aur kaha

kareeb aa kar apna jadoo dikhao

mausiki ne kaha

kho jao meri jadoogiri main

aur khud to bhool jao

     

A scribbled musing

 I found this musing written on the last page of a book I had carried along with me to London.

07th July, 2015

Primrose Hill, London

It's one of those days. Sun is skidding in and out of the clouds, the wind is singing a song  with the trees in chorus - swaying, swinging, dancing to the mellifluous music. It's like an orchestra. The notes are high, pitch is a sweet melancholy, and the aloofness is warm company.

P.S. it must have been some day and I must have been in some mood! 

Meaning in Meaningless activity!

It took a call with a couple of friends to reconnect with an anthroposophic exercise I had long forgotten.

Exercise

Do a simple act without purpose at a fixed time each day. The goal of this exercise is to act on your own initiative and direct your will.

So I decided to pull my ear lobe at 9:00 A.M. each day. The idea of pulling my ear lobe at 9:00 A.M. during online yoga sounded hilarious. But I had to act on my own initiative.

The class is halfway, I am in the middle of raising my legs (an asana) and wonder, Is it 9?

I turn my head towards the clock and have caught the long arm resting at roman twelve. There is my moment, with half a breath of a pause, I tug at the left ear lobe. Was I seen by anyone? 

Post the completion of the exercise, I am happy to have had made a commitment to myself and fulfil it. 

banda khud se kare wada

banda khud se bole pura kar apna wada

jab ho bande ka hausla buland

toh kyon na ho poora 

koi wada

  

Turtle and their eyes

 There is always a long wait at Doctor's clinic. Now, one can twiddle their thumbs, or, watch the two turtles squashed against each other in a tub of water. These turtles have been kept there for people to not get impatient and watch the turtles.

Vivaan decides to do the latter. 

He notices that when their heads are retracted, their eyes look ahead, and when extended, their eyes look sideways. My interest is piqued at this observation and when I observe their eyes, they were sideways, not like human eyes. 

I began my research and found out that even though turtles have their eyes on the side of their heads, they are able to process optical information as if their eyes were facing forward. Fascinating!

With this new found information, we enter the clinic, after being summoned by the gentleman who keeps a record of the patients. Once inside, I played a game in my head, who has predator eyes, and who has turtle eyes. After a few minutes of scanning people's faces, I concluded, with an evil grin hidden by the face mask - Dr. M is the turtle amongst humans! 

I could see his head move like the turtle, seeing everyone in front of him, in side of him and even above him, nobody could escape his sight.

P.S. my ramblings continue...

Passport heebie-jeebies

The bespectacled woman, looks intently at the glass teat in front of her, changes her expressions every now and then while I stand there like a student, waiting impatiently to be reprimanded.

Yes, I had a passport before this one. No, it wasn't lost.

She swallows my words by making some changes on what only she can see. 

I stand and wonder if she will impound my passport, or, more dramatic, ask the guard to catch me lest I run! I can feel every cell in my body pulsate and my vessels throb with an anxiety which she has planted just by asking that question.

After tinkering with her machine for some more time, she looks at me again, this time, giving me a hard look. Then back to her machine. I wish I could turn the glass teat around and see what is she so concerned with.

Are you sure, it wasn't lost.

Yes, i am.

I doubt my own answer, hoping she wouldn't. 

The wait continues. I stare at her hair. It's wavy and dripped in oil.

Take your passport. It's done.

I want to thank her by bowing down like a performer who didn't expect the audience to love his act. But I stutter a broken thank you!

     

 

Riyaz

 The word riyaz means to practice an art form at a given time everyday. It is usually associated with music. 

But riyaz can be done with anything. 

I can practice writing a daily post. 

I can practice yoga every day.

I can practice Tabla every day.

I can practice to be quiet for sometime, observe a deep silence, everyday.

I can practice to review the day, before sleeping, every night.

The list can be endless. To me, there is a development of an inner will that takes place when one does riyaz. In fact, one can do riyaz to even embrace death when it invites to take us on another journey.

So, in my endeavour to do riyaz, I will write a post everyday.  

riyaz zindagi main ek lahar laya

riyaz ne rooh ki mausiki ko jagaya

tassavur bhi samjha

bina riyaz uska kuch na ho payega

riyaz zindagi main ek lahar laya

riyaz ne rooh ki mausiki ko jagaya

Life through analogies

 This blogpost comes from the following analogy:

Picture this as a day in a human's life: A car is going uphill, the driver is at it, unflinchingly at it, keeping up the momentum through the pressure on the accelerator, the timely release of the pedals, the gear at it's utmost virility, engines supporting the whole endeavour. 

Now, when I heard this analogy, it made me wonder how we have to be at life everyday. We have to follow a rhythm, a daily rhythm to go through the day, breaking it down into hours, minutes and further and further. Exercising our will forces conscientiously. It is like that car and it's driver steadily going uphill, relentlessly. One slip up, a crash is inevitable. 

Now, is the choice to slip up in my hands or not? It is. Because it is about breathing freedom into these choices, a whiff of awareness, a wisp of availability and a whisper of consciousness!

P.S. A short post, a short one to begin with. 

sire, are you preachy?

hath i known i am, i wouldn't be told

sire, you are!

so shall i know!