'Girtey hai sheh sawar hi maidan-e-jung mein..'

Between success and failure there is an important concept of standing up and facing things. Despite knowing that it has all fallen apart and despite the remotest understanding of how it went so bad .... between success and failure there is a mid zone of facing things . 
It’s neither success nor failure but the sheer strange human capacity of standing up with wobbly knees even though it might be apparently or genuinely certain that the outcome is bad. I have been a bookworm ... a workaholic ... and most times I functioned on the all and none principle. I have seen success and I have seen a trail of failures (how I define it). The new thing I learnt that sometimes it’s neither success nor failure that matters it’s just the gut to face it .... to stand by yourself... by your decisions . Trust me it takes more strength than succeeding and failing which actually and eventually would be the outcome. 
Today when I type this I separate this ability to go and stand in the battle field from winning and losing . I honour this strength ... this ability to be there .... to keep a promise... to face the consequences without worrying about the outcome. This is something I learnt today. It is difficult to keep standing when your beaten and bruised and your mind keeps telling you ... you took the wrong path and your heart knows that it was a bad turn you took.... but despite those strong forces of logic and intuition breaking you and shattering you .... if you still walk up to that place and face it... no matter what it is .... I guess it is a divine endeavour.... I don’t deny that the people around you , your friends and family may become your pillars of strength and help you deal with such hard situations... give you moral and verbal support . Truth is it is something within you that would probably sail you through... and not pick the easy option of running away.... it is something within you that helps you choose fight instead of flight... 


This is a note to myself and all those who stood there and fought .... who went there and faced it... with worn out tools... with understanding of ones limitations.... despite a gazillion negative thoughts and fear of falling ... of failure.... This is far above winning or losing .... far greater achievement than success ..... far more dignified than failing without trying.... 


I won’t say that I don’t fear failure ..... a lot of my academic success has been driven by fear of failure.... and I now understand how much damage that did to me and my capacity to learn. I have an inherent zeal to learn to go on.... Today I learned the precious lesson of facing things.....and giving up the easier path ... even though the outcomes in both the cases was same ... 


I do not know if tomorrow my fears overcome me and I don’t let my wobbly knees to take a chance... but today I know I was able to go beyond success and failure .... though it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.... 
I take this opportunity to salute all those who face their circumstances even though they might be the biggest failures in terms of the measuring scales this competitive world devices.... today my heart is filled with immense respect for those who stand up and face things without bothering about the outcome....specially those who do it with a smile !

Spaces...Emptiness...

I read one of Paulo Coelho's books titled ' The witch of Portobello';it was as usual filled with crazy yet heartwarming insights on life and love ... beautifully blended with magical realism. One of the things I particularly remember was about 'spaces' . So many times we get overwhelmed by the gaps.. the spaces ... the emptiness in the course of our lives . They are inevitably there . It gets dreary at times and we yearn for some meaningful motion in our lives ... but the cosmic drama seems to have taken an indefinite break and we try to desperately seek some thing to engage our minds while the lull lasts.... Coming back to what I read in the book... the protaganist tries to find some peace and escape from her turbulent life by learning calligraphy.As she masters the beautiful curves and working with a steady hands ... her teacher tells her the importance of spaces.... Let me put it in the simplest way I can if I had typed the entire paragraphs without bothering to press the space key... you would have gone dizzy reading it ... what more you wouldn't have understood a single word. So her teacher impressed upon her that it is the 'spaces'... the seemingly insignificant gaps that give meaning to every word that is written... else it would be a cluster of chaotic letters lying in succession and teasing your brain.. For me it was more than a bit enlightening... the spaces help the substance express it's meaning.. the spaces lend a helping hand for life to express itself more meaningfuly...so perhaps the spaces give you time to gain clarity... and to perceive things as they are meant to be... It might be true for relationships too. Sometimes you need to move away for a while to understand what the relationship and the person really means to you .... reminds me of a quote ..." Absence is to love what wind is to fire... it extinguishes the small but inflames the great..." Spaces may also help you sort your way out of the chaos and reflect upon your soul . Help you bond with yourself. So perhaps when you feel that you are wrapped up in emptiness and you might die of boredom... think again ... may be it's a gift that might help you find clarity and solace you had been missing subconsciously.... let those spaces and gaps and emptiness help you see the more meaningful things in life .... As I type this I am developing a great affection for the space bar on my key board.... so cheers to spaces !!

The Golden shower tree....

Memories are a wonderful way of keeping track of our lives... may be all the movies that grossed on the concept of amnesia ...(Fifty first dates was a sweet!!! one.... momento was an interesting backwards 
watch for me... You , me and Hum.. well leave it.... Sadma was so heart breaking that I never gathered the heart to watch it again) may enlighten us how important memories are. Perhaps how keenly 
we capture moments of our lives through the camera speaks how much we want to preserve and relive the happy moments even if it's through a flat image... 

All old people narrate the olden golden days with a precious toothless smile.... you might mock them in younger days or get flustered by the repetition.... but some memories lighten up and brighten up our days .... far far ahead in time... sometimes silently... almost like a dream.... 

I just bumped into a memory unexpectedly and was amazed how silently it stayed in my memory cells and still can make me happy.... 

The past few days I have been walking down the memory lane and it's been a sudden opening of secret doors in long forgotten past.... when perhaps memory itself was developing.... 

I have a great liking for flowering trees... gulmohars mesmerize me ... but golden shower trees exhilarate me...those yellow exceptional flowers strike a cord in my head every time but I could never sort clearly if it was a memory or a dream... I remember a walk through a road studded by trees on a long lost evening.... I remember I was tiny but I walked with confident steps... I remember being accompanied by an elder ... but I could never identify that person... but I remember walking a long distance and we stop at a tree and I look up and its studded with yellow flowers ... like a bunch of grapes ... so beautiful and the sparse green bringing out the yellow more profoundly... it was like a zillion suns dangling down one odd tree...I did not think of this frequently but like the neurons randomly ignite some old links ... it did flash a few times.... mostly I thought it was some dream I may have seen.... but everytime it occured to me I couldn't fail to see that it was the most memorable walk of my life... specially cos a bunch of those sunny mesmerising flowers were lovingly picked and handed over to me .... as the road got darker I was the happiest ,most amazed child walking back home.....with a prized possession of shining yellow bunch of flowers... 

I thought it was a dream for a long long time... but a few days back as I looked upon a golden shower tree from my balcony and the thoughts flooded me again ... more clearer then ever and overwhelmed by that lovely memory I just told my mother about the memory and why I have such great affection for 
a golden shower tree.... My mother said smiling that it may not be a dream cos .. when I was three there was such a road near my home that lead to a guest house .... it was starkly beautiful and 
hardly had any traffic.... and she said probably that elder who accompanied me was her uncle.....I was amazed how a memory can stick and make me happy over and over again... it was hard to believe that I retained a memory when I was just three. 

But what I felt glad about that even though life has shown me unkind times ... I have managed to retain memories like this mesmerising walk and the happiness that was imbibed in that bunch of flowers...reinforced a faith that a single good memory is like a thousand splendid suns that can burn all those unpleasant memories that stick to the mind like leeches just paralysing you from enjoying the present...... 

The Puzzle called 'Life'

My mother has a great fondness for solving crosswords, puzzles and riddles. Her latest project is a block puzzle gifted to her a few years back. It’s a particularly difficult one and the first time she saw it she was overwhelmed by the difficulty level. So the box with the puzzling pieces lay quietly for a long time till she finally thought of giving it a try. 




The box was opened , the pieces released and spread on the table and the picture to be assembled was keenly observed. She wisely constructed the entire boundary first. So a while later there lay a rectangular frame. The most striking and dominant feature was a castle. So the construction started from bringing the castle to form by finding the right pieces. It took her sometime and the castle could be seen forming . Then the job became tedious and she put it to rest again. She kept coming back to it and everytime a few pieces found the right place. Sometimes they just fell in place magically and sometimes she kept scratching her head for long without getting results. So there were moments of getting 
things right and the feeling of being stuck. But patience has been her greatest asset ( which I sincerely want to develop to the level she has ) , she did not give up or put away her effort in any of the stuck up moments. It’s been a month now. The castle is complete .The patch of sky above and the sprinkle 
of greenery below has started revealing itself. 


I am amazed the way the insignificant irregular pieces have fallen together. I looked at it this morning feeling happy that it would finally be complete in sometime .I wondered isn’t life like a box of a particularly difficult puzzle. The only difference being we do not get a the final picture to tally later. Everybody gets to put there pieces together. Sometimes they fall magically together and sometimes they just refuse to fit in , stagnate and frustrate. So many time while you try to put them together 
and take time to look at what has already been placed , almost wondering if anything in life holds a meaning. Whether whatever has been put together is random or comes with a cosmic meaningfulness and a pre-destined frame work. 

The truth is whatever we do and whatever decisions we make , we are actually putting together the pieces of our life . Trying to reveal our purpose from an assortment of irregular meaningless pieces. There are bound to be moments when we get stuck and the particularly difficult puzzle called life may overwhelm and frustrate but the key is to keep at it. To keep the faith that this particular piece which is refusing to fit in now will eventually fall in place and play a significant role in revealing the final picture of this puzzle called life. 

Keep the faith. Keep at it.

Snakes and Ladders

Remember that board game with ludo on the opposite side... all you needed was a dice , an opponent and those flat colored dots to represent you on the board. Well it would be hard to believe that somebody of our generation didn't play that one. The game had a start and a finish point with a 100 steps ... lots of ladders and as many snakes... colored , spotted/striped snakes with fangs and that forked tongue ready to gobble your dot and shift you through there long tortuous body to a far far lower square .... eating up all your lucky dice throws. The ladders were the high points .. I loved the one which took you straight to the nineties row... Snakes and ladders was the more adventorous version of the Ludo game which is also was about reaching the destination. You raced your opponent without being eaten up by the snakes. Anyways in this video games era the little ones would give me a look of disdain if I suggested a board game like that and would be labelled uncool for sure. But somehow today the game flashed in my head as I tried to see it through a different looking glass. Life sometimes is like that game of snakes and ladders. A twist of luck and you achieve the unexpected though it happens as infrequently as the ladders in the board game. The Snakes are more real in this harsh competitive world today. All your hard work can turn to dust in a second and you are back to square one. But what is the game all about... to my eyes it is all about rising up after falling down...but in totality it's about rising .... ladders are the obvious means but snakes are the hidden ones.... cos once you fall you rise .. it's inevitable...but you have to be willing enough to throw the dice again...
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Another Prayer ... of Gratitude...

Dear God,


I said a prayer when I was losing faith
When I failed to gather the strength to take the next step....

I decided to call Quits and said my prayer ...


But I forgot that little story of footprints..... 

 


When I thought there was nothing left in me...
You made it happen .... You didn't call quits....

Through my loved ones you gave me courage
and strength and lifted me to my 'Karma'
and once I reached there you made me
realise that I could face it all....

I almost witnessed a miracle and I
do not know how things came to this point....

But dear God I am grateful that you proved
the story of footprints in sand for me....

The beautiful messages you sent me through
unsuspected means which I am now deciphering
slowly while I do away with burden of my ordeal....


Sometimes when we call Quits .... dear God you
keep your faith in us and never call quits...

Love you God ....for carrying me in this trying time...

Bless me with happy thoughts and take care
of my loved ones as you took care of me...

Amen....

A prayer...

Dear God, 

Kindle hope in my heart ... 
gimme strength to see all the dreams crumble 
and turn to dust.... 
but bless me with more dreams .... 

let me learn not to regret... for whatever decisions 
I make.... 

let me embrace life as it comes.... 

let me slow down and be free of what the world 
might think of me.... 

or how lonely or silent things may become ... cos 
I decided to quit .... 

let me understand that quitting is not always a 
sign of weakness.. 

let me experience all the good I can do even 
with all the broken tools... 

let me understand that those who love me will 
love me no matter what and those who change 
according to my success and failures 
are not worth a thought.... 

let me feel the gratitude for all your blessings 
without feeling the fear of losing them... 

let me find ways in the darkest of times... 

help me stand on my feet again... 

I know it will be a slow change and the suffering 
would not end just now ... right now....even miracles 
take time to reveal themselves... 

but help me learn to like myself even when I falter... 
when I fail to be what I ought to be... 

But let me believe most of all that you are there 
with me in every decision I make ... even the most crazy ones... 

let me believe that when I say 'I am on my own' you 
are there as an integral part of 'me'.... 

let me understand I am human and help me 
stay 'human'.... 

let me imbibe the positivity you have scattered around me 
like a sponge... let me soak it up to the core that there 
is no space left for the opposite charge ... for negative 
feelings and pessimism.... so that even when the hard times 
squeeze me out... all I exude is positivity.... 

let me find joy in raindrops and sunshine and not 
be bothered about what others have achieved ... 
save me from jealousy.... let me find sweetness in 
whatever you have blessed me with.... let me shun 
discontent... 

let my eyes see good in every event.... 

At this moment dear lord let me understand ... 
calling quits is a not a weakness and life will 
show me new ways to find meaning and purpose... 
let me believe that you are an integral part of me 
when I make this decision..... 

Amen!