The Last Glimpse

It is harder than anticipated. It is more precise than the wildest guess. It has become too painful for preparedness you have developed to face this ugly truth. All the efforts to comfort this blow have turned out futile.

“It is never too late!” Not entirely true is it? Now God punishes us for the things we deferred. Here come the moments that make you realize they are the last ones. It is like trying to carry home the sands at sea shores. Silently those cute little particles slip out of your clench. And by the time you reach home, you learn that you are alone; the sands abandon you.

Man is such a helpless animal. He boasts about being the smartest species on earth. But in some corner of his brain’s counterpart –mind; he knows he cannot live alone. He finally understands that the blood was just keeping the brain alive; the mind was thriving on emotions and feelings. All these years you spent your life painting a masterpiece. The picture was almost getting complete, when God stole your colors away.

These are some moments when you turn to God. Praying to him to bring back the time to complete that unfinished dance step on the DJ floor with your friend. Requesting to bring back the situation when a sitcom made you laugh so hard you thought you were going to pass out from the stomachache. Kneeling down and begging one last rain when you don’t care about the mobile phone and the cool drops make the feeling of freedom re-surface. Pleading to slow down time because you haven’t yet framed the sentences to tell that girl how much you love her.

Relationships are like jigsaw puzzles. You are one of the many pieces. All the while you strived needlessly to make yourself perfect. Life teaches that all pieces are imperfect for a reason. Their irregularity is what makes easier for them to accommodate each other. It is another of the nature’s miracles when it shows that these unshaped pieces take shape into a beautiful picture.

Things are ending like a sunset. It looks so beautiful that you promise to stare it forever. But the dusk is waiting for that slight eye-blink to subtly take over. Eyes are welling up. I don't know whether it is because of staring-strain or emotions. But I don't want to miss this Last Glimpse.

Friends

Life’s a journey and you are baffled at some juncture when you have to decide which way to tread. Since the day you were born you had been made to travel this way of life with no destination even past the horizon. You haven’t even realized that your endurance has been truly indefatigable.

At all these crossroads you want to look back, and see the past in the eye. The same old feeling comes rushing back in the heart. You irritate yourself for trying to remember when was the last time this familiar pain had surfaced. It happens too often. It happens too often to shrug it off as a déjà vu. It’s like building a sand castle on the beach. You work so hard to make it beautiful. But in the ruck of abeyant experiences in some corner of your mind, you know that at any moment the sea wave will ruin the fantasy you had been tirelessly devising.

It reminds you of the train journey. You bid goodbye to the fellow passengers who made the journey so memorable; you wished your destination be same. But it is disturbing when life teaches you; the journey has not even come to an end and one of you has to alight, to start another expedition. You stand at the doors of the slowing down train and you can actually see the passage of the “T for time”, re-living the life you spent with your friends.

You felt so secure among your group of friends! Life is a thin lariat, and you have your share of falls. But every time you fell, a friend was there to lend you the helping hand. Your friend had always been sunrise of the day. The bunking of lectures together, the numerous bites you grabbed outside college and rated all the eligible girls you thought were girlfriend type. You enjoyed the life so much, you never let go a single opportunity of being with your friends. You partied hard at your friend’s birthday but before that you smacked the posterior of all friends light enough to be carried by 4 persons. You never visited the nearby picnic spot during the day, but waited for a black out so that you can take the bikes and explore places in the night. Even if the place is outside the city premises.

You planned the innumerable “mazze” time you shared with the friends, enjoying it every time. It could be a trip to a far away place or a silly but prestigious cricket match. You tried all the sledging you heard on TV in a losing match. And collectively lamented the defeat. You enjoyed being the part of the games like Table Tennis and carrom you weren’t even good at. You watched movies together and ridiculed the horror ones and cried hiding your face during the emotional.

You laughed at the jokes on anybody in the group. You were teased for all the funny posts on the community forum and even the way you dressed. You had hated them then. But now you are surprised to see yourself smile at your own fiasco. You cried when you failed and shared your sorrows and relationship problems in life. Every time, there was a shoulder to cry on.

Friendship is in fact a recondite relationship. It is a travesty to be a “Dostana”. It is indeed platonic and close to the heart. I spent so many great moments with my friends. Right now I am seeing that “T for time” outside the slowing down train. I think I want to change my decision about alighting down the next station.

The Thing Called Love

You always shrugged it off as an infatuation. But a part of you knew it can’t be. For the first time in your life you so often realize that there is a Heart just under that over-smart brain of yours. It pounds so hard you start wondering “what’s up?” with this small organ inside your body, which was obediently pumping blood since the last 20 years and you snubbed it since so long.

You try to dismiss this frivolous demeanor of the heart. It occurs often to remind you there is something wrong with yourself. You smile for no reason when you are certain about the subtlety that’s hanging in the air. It takes some time to understand the reason why the heart was acting “conspicuous”.

All of a sudden you find yourself helpless without that person, even when you had boasted about how brave and cool you have been. You feel the heart again the same way it felt yesterday but each time it seems heavier than before and the rest of the body lighter. Feelings have indeed their own weight. As a science student you are amused of your discovery. This is how it feels like when that person actually lives in your heart. It was this; the stupid Hindi songs were talking about! Couldn’t they be clearer?

You catch glimpses of her when you get an opportunity. The mind goes crazy. It doesn’t understand how to react to this problem of yours. It’s happy and depressed at the same time. The dreams of spending the life with her make you happy. And the same mind evaluates the chances of losing her. Her presence completes a part, you had been deprived of. The smile comforts your soul, which promises you everything is beautiful and you will never cry out another tear. Her words like the zephyr which caresses the leaves of a tree assuring that it will always be there for them; that there is no fear.

All that literature about love you denigrated every time you had a chance was true. With 385 words and still counting it is not possible to explain this thing called love. Every time I ask this question about “what is love?” there are no definitions ……. Only feelings! Feelings answer this billion dollar question.

I can really Feel the Feelings Now

Since the past so many days, I was thinking about why the mind is so obsessed about its own feelings. I personally believe that mind has nothing to do with the brain. If it’s the blood that flows inside out of a brain, they are feelings that flow inside out of the mind.

Since childhood I have always tried my best to control my feelings like what I think about my friends , what I think about God and what I think about myself. Every moment I had strived so hard, I hadn’t allowed the feelings to enslave me. You adopt certain principles in life, which aren’t even taught to you. No one gives any hint or an idea. They just occur to you, and you make those an integral part of your identity.

I always tried to hide my feelings. Not that I was afraid, but I believed feelings were for the weak.  And it has taken some time, to realize that I was wrong. Circumstances teach you, mould you to a different person. You wonder why you had been that way. What good did it do? You have a dilemma whether you should give up and appreciate that you had been stupid, or just hang on to whatever crap you believed – only because it was yours. Testing your endurance as to how long you can sustain, how good you are at advocating your principle and justifying at the same time.

But when you learn life’s lessons you get used to it. You get fairly acquainted with what life is really about. And suddenly you are different as a person, as a friend, as a child. Every time I learn that I had not been right, it reminds me of a turtle. No one had told it to stay inside the hard shell. It was the turtle’s decision. It seems that it had tried to harden his feelings, blot out all that made it look weak and feeble. But the world always knew that within that shell there is a softer and sensitive part which couldn’t harden for some reason even after an aeon.

Feelings really don’t have a pathway as the blood has veins and arteries. It’s like when you are standing and it’s raining. The feelings are the rain drops. You believe there was never a necessity of an umbrella. You hadn’t cared to look up and acknowledge. The cloud above was always one.