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Finding our own meditation

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We are strange creatures. We can’t just live on food, air and shelter. We need a place for our mind to do its deeds. A space , which each of us create somewhere inside our head, and expand as we grow. This imaginary spaces of each individual are somehow interconnected that those transcended generations as information. Now we have reached a stage of looking at us, as an object made of a tangible physique and an invisible mind.

Our animal instinct had taught us how to keep the tangible component healthy but the answers to taming our mind is non existent. Yes, there are successful stories of people who did. But I am afraid to say, it works for them but not for others. They may have mastered their mind. But they don’t know a single thing about others. Each mind has its own path unseen by anyone else – how can someone else tell us how to tame her?

We glance towards our zen garden and it gives us a momentary calmness. But, it is an illusion our minds want us to believe. But it will burst like a bubble, within seconds. Because, our mind currents are too strong to be handled by a stranger’s wisdom.

Everyone can’t be Buddha. Because, no one can be someone else. It is our duty to find our own philosophy that can create the symphony to sooth our minds. Each book we read, each look we receive, each word we hear and every silence that passes through us is a lesson. But we will be cheating ourselves, if we believe in the words of the wise as the ultimate truth. It may be true for them. But not for others.

We often end up copying others in search for our peace. We simply adopt their methods, their inspirations. We wake up in the morning and create a schedule just like them. We can pretend with ourselves and others that, it is working. But it never will. Because, our mind is not shaped to fit into other’s design. Every answers to all possible questions we have is within us. We were born with an empty mind, which was floating in the emptiness. It is our senses, which filled that void with everything we came in contact with. Therefore, only we can break the code to our mind; we just forgot how. It is up to us to find our own meditation…

Finding Roots

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I closed my eyes in search of my roots. It was pitch dark. I wished I had a candle. I started digging all around my trunk. I had to find the tip of my roots. Now I wished I had taken some tools with me. The soil was hard. My nails got torn off first. Fingers started to bleed. For the first time in decades the soil became wet. But the colour of my blood dripped down away into the unknown. That unknown is where I need to go. Suddenly the earth cracked asking me to climb down. There was no time to spare. I ran down in to the womb of the earth and I crashed into something. It was made of glass. My mind lit up and now I could see. And someone was looking back at me. It was a mirror. “I need to find my roots, please move away”. Mirror gave a sarcastic smile. “Your quest is fake. Look at me. I am the core you are in search of. You need only accept it. You need only open your eyes”.

That’s when I woke up in a room flooded with light. I was blinded by my eyes. I had closed my lids and pulled the cover of darkness over everything around me, whenever I had a chance to find me. I let the society define me, muting my own voice. I was afraid of being an outcast.I let others tell me right from wrong. I allowed them to squeeze my pride. I forgot the basic rule; in order to find my roots I had to be me first.

Little piece of my childhood

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When she blooms in the night, like stars in the night sky , she used to fill the air and my heart with an alluring scent. When I was a child, my neighbour had a Jasmine plant. Her long hands had grown in every direction hugging a dwarf mango tree. Every girl in my locality was an admirer of her. Every day, dressed up like a bride, she will uncover millions of white buds. We were jealous of her beauty and we all wanted to steal at least a part of it somehow. But we could hardly convince our neighbour to let us pluck her flowers.

When I saw the picture of an indoor Jasmine plant in a pot, all i could think was about the beautiful Jasmine my neighbour had. Many nights I had waited just to watch her buds bloom, since her fresh scent was intoxicating. We used to hang around her, for the flowers she might drop. We used to groom her and bend the branches of the Mango tree for her to reach. How devastated we used to be, when many of her limbs get broken during every monsoon. But she would always come out of every trouble, and regain her elegant self quickly.

As I grew, and as she became older and older, it became so easy to forget about her. When I saw the online picture of the Jasmine plant, I tried to recollect “when did she die?”. I don’t know. May be someone did euthanasia.

How we forget about things that mattered the most to us? Broken glass bangles used to be treasured by us and now we dump them in a trash can without a second thought. Remember those days, when we used to keep the peacock feathers in our notebooks, for it to give birth? Though, we knew we are being stupid, it didn’t stop us from dreaming about beautiful colourful little feathers born out of her. Today, we plan our dreams, using calculators. Sneaking out of house, from the watchful eyes of mother just to play in the rain used to be our fun. Today, we curse our fate for leaving home without an umbrella on a rainy day. We have changed .I think, growing up is synonymical to losing touch with who we used to be. We let our little self die inside.

The little kid in us used to be happy about the little things we have. Even a torn cloth was enough to built a castle. Now we have more than enough but nothing is enough. Because we feel nothing is going as planned; missing the beauty of uncertainties. We need some reminders in our life, to keep in touch with our childhood, so that, we don’t stress out about the unwanted things we need.

So I decided to bring a small Jasmine plant home to get a piece of my childhood back.

Writer’s Block

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My brain is exhausted thinking about completing the unfinished write -ups. They keep popping up randomly, and I just can’t focus on one. So when I sat down to write, between my fingers and keyboard, words went missing. I just can’t find them. I think they took my imaginations and ran. Here I am, hitting nook and corner of my keyboard and I just can’t formulate a meaningful sentence. So, the number of drafts grew and piled up like non-degradable waste.

I opened my window and wished for something inspiring to happen. Nothing happened. How strange it is, that sometimes we have allot to say, and our mind starts to buzz with so many ideas, but we end up confused and say nothing? I think, we need to just throw all those ideas in to a dust bin, so that there is a clean space for us to think.

So I started reading all of my unfinished drafts, one by one, to decide which one has to be thrown out. It was a bad idea. My intention to declutter and my self, cannot work in harmony. Each draft gave me new ideas. They multiplied like virus. They infected my mind. When I was about to choke to death, a new realisation hit me; words are not workaholics. They don’t understand schedules and plans. They are free spirits. They will only visit, when they feel like. We need to vibe with the words. It is a genuine relationship that can’t be forced. Pretending to be someone does not attract them. It scares them away.

So I selected all my drafts, and pressed Delete. If they are strong enough, they will survive. Now I am waiting, for the words to come back to my screen.

Hibernating memories

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Another Eid came and went. Entire world celebrated it during the lockdown. For me, Eid is only about family time. We have never celebrated Eid in an extravagant style. Due to the relaxations in lockdown conditions in Kerala, I was able to visit my parents. Therefore, it was as normal as, and as beautiful as, last Eid.

Lunch was followed by heated debates on politics. Then, we all got lost in our solitude, for some time. I went to my old room. Apart from some new cardboard boxes filled with unknown items, it remains the same. But it is tidier than I remember. I sat on my bed, where now the prayer mat of my mother is kept; neatly folded. A silent smile escaped from my heart, thinking, how I used to hate anyone else entering my room. The room was filled with a mysterious feeling, like a painful happiness. My brother, who was passing by, asked me, “oh! Sitting here being all nostalgic?” Yes! That was the feeling; nostalgia. It has been 2 years since I have sat in my room like that. This room is a witness to my life and a trustworthy secret keeper.

The room knows me in and out. It was place I go, to shed my emotions. I had sat on the floor next to my table and cried silently. I had lay down on the bed placing my legs on the window bars starring aimlessly at the fan leaves; vegetating. I would message him at late night hiding under the tent made out of my bed sheet. I used to laugh pressing my face to the pillow, so that others won’t wake up. I built my secret little castle of love inside my room and filled the gaps in my drawer with his gifts and hid my diary behind the wardrobe. My room was not a mere spectator. It always held my hands; sat next to me. We painted a dream world together. A world, which often gets attacked by my over pouring emotions.

There are so many secrets, we share only with our room.  Our bed room is a visible version of our space. I ran my hand through the books on my shelf, pen on my table and the wardrobe filled with my cloths. My parents have kept everything like the same, as if, they want to feel that, I am still living in my room.

My little possessions in the room; they are not mere objects. Those are memories. The magnets on the wardrobe door, folded pages of a novel, cap less pen, broken pencil, rusting tiny trophy, and coffee mug; They are all memories, which I forgot without meaning to. We cannot take all of our memories with us wherever we go. Some memories, run off. But some get attached to the objects we leave behind. They live on those little things, and hibernate, waiting for us to return.

I wished like a muggle; if I could do the extension charm on my little pouch like Hermione, and take all those little memories wherever I go; as a reminder of my past, as a companion for my present and as a souvenir for my future!

wanderers

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Travelling is liberating; from the usual meaningless daily routines; from the gender duties imposed by the society; from the accumulating files on the desk. May be that is our reality. We were never meant to settle down.

We were meant to be wanderers. We were meant to follow the seasons. We were meant to migrate like birds. We were meant to swim with the currents in oceans. But we chose to settle down; like dust. We enslaved ourselves to the systems established and evolved by us. We became prisoners in the fortress built by ourselves.

When we travel, we get this unexplained feeling of fulfillment. We have realized, that we can’t live without those bike rides. We know how much we miss opening our car windows when it is drizzling. We want to travel towards the sky, take a dip in pristine waters, play on sandy beaches, follow the trails in a forest or may be create one ourselves, sleep under the stars. I don’t think we are supposed to travel towards our destiny. Travelling is our destiny.

This is why , this lock down feels like an imprisonment. We can’t wait for all this to get over. We can’t wait to visit all those destinations in our bucket list.

The truth we hid

Hiding is in human nature. We hide from the people we hate; hide our emotions; hide reality from ourselves. If each of us has so many hidden secrets, I wonder how much this world has hidden from us. Others, including our long lost siblings, Neanderthals, couldn’t keep up with us, because of our ability and hunger to unearth these hidden secrets. The more we found out, faster we moved upward of the food chain. After conquering the kingdom from other animals, unquestionable barbaric rule of the Sapiens race was imposed upon other subjects of the earth.

We emerged as the only species which can create, rewrite and change the course of the history of this world. But have you ever wondered, whether the real history of this world is still buried deep to save the faces of some, to keep some always oppressed and to keep some always fighting, to keep on exploiting the nature? The history as we know must be the biggest lie built upon the grave of the truth, buried deep in between the lines of our history books. History of opponents contradicted and fought with each other and the one which got wounded always was the truth.When the past hid the truth from the present, the present also hid the truth from itself.

The old saying goes, “truth can never be concealed for long”. But it remains as the longest concealed ever. When we are in a race, hiding from ourselves, burying our inner voice to achieve the target set by the power centres, it is very convenient to hide the truth and give ourselves the sugar coated falsity we desire. We would believe anything which feed our pride, boost our ego, and make us belive that we are superior. We will kill each other, wage wars, destroy dreams, and annihilate other life forms, so that we can thrive. So we lied to us, that this world is for our luxury.

Now we all had to retrieve to our safe bunks fearing an invisible and (so far) invincible enemy. Now there is time to contemplate the worthlessness of all what we have done. The deeply buried truth in all of us, that we are not here to rule the world and this world is not ours to ruin; that we are all one – this reality is the hidden gem we should hunt for.

Silent you weep


You stay silent and wide awake.
Under the starless roof
You keep wondering,”what went wrong?”
You no longer know why your eyes are wet.
The tears flow down;down to your heart.
No one ever sees,what’s beneath your laugh,
how you hide your pain?
You don’t know why you are sad,
You are a burning charcoal without smoke.
And you stay silent
And wide awake
Your vision is blurred.
With a heavy chest,
you can hardly breathe.
When your thoughts explode,
you want to scream.
But you struggle to weep.
Then he reaches out,
Imbibes your pain
Small kiss on eye lid,
That’s all you need.
You stay silent,
and wide awake.
In his arms.
That’s all you need.
****

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