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!  

   

A deconstructed aubade

A crack in the window let in a piece of art. A waking up child peers at it, trying to understand what could it mean. There was a mystery on the child's face, he did not know whether this was created by fairies or God or it wasn't made at all. 

In his attempt to make sense of the aubade, he went on the black board and used up all the sticks to create what he saw. He travelled, his imagination travelled, he mixed up imagination boldly with his reality, breaking off all closed walls in his mind and soul. His heart beat faster as his strokes touched the board. His allicient movements were being watched by the butterfly sitting on the window rail.

It thought to herself, "it is me who this child is trying to squiggle."

The child went on with his movements without knowing what would emerge from the board. Image was a reflection of his inner movements, his inner life had caught fire with the drifting art.

He stood before it, watched it, reworked on it, darkened the shades, erased a few lines, took a couple of steps back and gave the widest smile of his morning.

"Look at us, we are on the board, look at our patterns, our colours, we look different and we look beautiful. He has changed us into who we wanted to be. Our realms have been interchanged. Should we go and thank him? How will we tell him anything because he doesn't speak what we do." 

...the butterfly careened down the crack with a twig hidden in it's wings.

   

Am I raving mad?

He walks around bare chested, looking forlorn and wanton. His walk resembles a gait which seems to have faded away with time and it's strictest measures. Vehicular traffic, dusty roads, patches of carbon, normal people and such mundane-ness refuses to budge his madness.

His other brothers dot the steps by a water body. One blackens his face while the other slowly paces up and down while constantly looking down at the scathing sun. The burning floor on which he moves his feet absorb the blistering beating of life gone by. Their respites are these lonely, brooding trysts with a darkness that beseeches them even though the sun is screaming at their despair.

They walk their own sorcery, their vowels and consonants bring to them a magnesium-bright flare of memory. They stagger through these pages along a crack of a moon and a forgotten sun. There is a creature living in their souls wolfing down in the flames until it is also singed!