Dead Poet's Honour

Is poetry only about the structure and meter of verse? Is it only measurable by the importance of its objective? Or does it have a deeper meaning, or a deeper purpose — which is the true expression of the nuances of the poet’s soul? Throughout the history of the written word, there have been parallels drawn between life and poetry. And many have argued that poetry is, in fact, a watercolour painted in honour of the iridescent hues of life.

And life is more than following the herd. It is more than speaking the minds of others instead of yours – it is more than passing judgement upon your fellow souls if only because others before you have done the same. Life is yours, and so are all the perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, fears, prayers and joys that come with it.

Today, I watched “Dead Poet’s Society” again. I would not go as far as to call it an “intellectual” film, mainly because my mother, who falls asleep while watching all “intellectual” movies does not do so for this one. However, the central theme reflected in this bittersweet tragedy — the struggle to find one’s own voice amidst the raucous roar of conformity, is one that is truly understood in all sincerity by very few indeed.

The honour in keeping one’s word, in fighting for one’s beliefs and ideals until the very end, being true to oneself — these were qualities cherished and admired greatly, until even a few years ago. However, I do find myself asking if that is still the case today. There is such a thing as a “false” code of honour, wherein one can simply claim that one is ethical and sincere and get away with acts of stealthy treachery as long as enough people get swayed by the glamour and grandeur of those claims. The trick is to convince enough people, through words alone, that you are honourable, and they won’t notice it when you are all but that. As long as the crowd is with you, it hardly matters whether you stay true to your proclaimed ideals or not.

It is here that those old notions of honour come in conflict with the new. The truth is that we are compelled by the strength of life within us to survive even a shark tank... or at least try to. So can those who go with the herd to achieve the show of strength necessary for survival truly be condemned as shallow? And should those who adhere to their ideals and ethics of honour and principle regardless of the herd be admired for their depth of character or be dismissed as simply stupid?

What would your answer be?

North Wind

Time has been moving forward the way it always does — through both serene passages that let it flow calmly as well as turbulent stretches of wayward storms. Yet, in essence, it remains ever steadfast and ever unchanged. I have grown to believe that nothing that time brings with it, or takes away is something that one absolutely cannot live without. There is always something that is enough to keep you going, if only you look hard enough.

It is with that peace of mind that I have been living out my days. Truly, even if it were in my power to do so, I would not trade this hard-earned hard-fought serenity for all that I have lost. I have, however, been able to enshroud myself in a translucent cocoon that lets me see outwards into the hearts and worlds of people I know without giving them the same luxury. It helps, in a way, for I would not wish them to see me when I weep without tears or exult without laughter. Perhaps I have borne a mask for so long that it has stayed with me out of sheer habit, yet I cannot give it up, especially now.

This new year has indeed carried seeds of hope and happiness with it. And I would like to plant these and nurture what grows with all the positivity that I can muster. There are people in my life who, though few in number, can help me triumph over any adversity that I might encounter. For them, and for all that they do for me, I would like to be sane enough to return the favour whenever the need arises. To do so, I would have to, like a very dear Soul Friend says, wake up with a smile on my face every morning come what may.

Happy New Year everyone! May the seeds of hope and joy be planted in your worlds as well, to blossom beautifully with every passing day!

As The Season Speaks

The morning says that winter may have arrived, or in the least, is slowly creeping towards our lives. The scorching summer afternoon has been washed away by the rains and what is left now is the soft tender touch of the cold about to greet us in the coming months. There is a lot of life to see yet, and as I feel the need to live more strongly everyday, each passing season breathes its own elixir into my being.

The truth is that rediscovering yourself takes time. It does not happen in a month, or perhaps even a year. And at times you do feel that you just hit the same roadblock yet again. Then again, all I have to do to let my soul sing synchronously with the universe is to just let it be... It does not take that much effort to feel after all!

X & Y

Date: 28.06.2008
Time: 00:43 a.m.

I wish June would stretch on for eternity. This childish desire to extend time and stall it has not been left behind the closed doors of childhood. I would still harbour hopes, deep down that a miracle will let this happen, although I know that it isn’t likely at all. This month has given me a lot of things I hold dear, and will do so in the coming months. And yes, I need all the strength that I can muster, and all the courage that I can gather, just so that I can live out twin lives during this time.

I’ve noticed that it is easy to forget how the days fly when you experience those rare moments of bliss. The nights can be equally agonizing when blankness stares at sleepless eyes through the clouded dark sky… this transpiring when the days that don’t seem to end saunter to a close after many hours of harrowing nothingness. Somehow, I can’t seem to get used to this, and find myself marvelling at it in philosophical moments.

Even the scent of an ended day can bring mixed feelings with it. A well-spent light-time calls in restful sleep, while the jittery restive daylight moments bring with them equally peace-less nights. I’m certain that this is another whim of nature, designed to trap humans into the web of their own pondering, just so that more such fruitless hours are wasted thus.

My life has taken some interesting turns and I’ve ventured into unexplored paths I never thought myself capable of finding. I’ve always had to pay some price or the other for most things, but usually, I haven’t minded doing so. I don’t quite believe in nostalgia, and although regret is a usual part of morose existence, there is one part of my life, at least, that shall not be tainted by it. I refuse to allow such thoughts to enter. It’s a case of going scarce on butter for a while to be able to taste wine later. And I am most certainly not giving up when the going gets tough. Not for this, at least.

I still wish June would last longer though. Somehow, the thought of facing those months that loom before me does not appeal much to my imagination. The scorching heat may have parched my lips and throat, yet it has also dried the murky water surrounding me, replacing it with the fresh fragrance of rain. Long, calming walks have helped put my mind at ease and I’ve got a taste of life in my mouth. I would miss it if I were denied it for even a short stretch of time. My soul has been drenched in peace and it longs to cling to this state for as long as it can.

The rain-soaked earth before me is slippery in many places. I know that I must be careful while treading these. I can hope that I have the skill to cross this stretch before I can walk into the beautiful steady grounds of the awaiting future.

End: 1:15 a.m.

Fix You

Closed channels never help anyone. It is a pity that it is indeed the first line of defence for most when faced with a challenge. Whoever said that life is going to be good? It isn’t. But that doesn’t have to necessitate the shutting of all doors leading out of your own head. It’s still possible to live. And anyway, nothing is permanent and there is no point clinging on to moments simply because those were times you felt secure. Nothing stays, and there is no choice but to evolve, and to go with the flow.

Why am I suddenly harping about this? It’s mainly because I feel the need to let myself know that all is not lost when something doesn’t come about the ideal way. Of course it isn’t pleasant, far from it actually. I don’t expect to feel high on chocolate at these times, although, I suppose a bar or two won’t hurt. Still, the truth is that life sucks. But that doesn’t mean that I have to stay moping, brooding or sulking, or wasting water as tears. There are good moments, and I plan on enjoying them as they come, and yes, letting go of them when I need to. Do I have a choice? In a way, yes, but the alternative involves sinking lower and lower into depression, which I’m somewhat bored of by now. I’ve had enough. Now numbness helps. It helps quite a lot, so again, I’ll go wherever I’m being taken and try to look at everything objectively, almost as though I’m witnessing someone else’s life.

Let me see how this arrangement works out. Heh.

“When you try your best, but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse...

Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones,
And I will try to fix you”

— Coldplay

Drowning Metaphors

Date: 26.10.2007
Time: 11:10 a.m.

When you are drowning while trying to cross a violent and turbulent river, you don’t really think of, say, famine victims in Ethiopia, do you? You are somewhat preoccupied with the abundant water that is rushing into your body — into your lungs and choking you and smothering that fiery spirit of yours. At that point of time you are too overwhelmed as you flap your arms wildly to stay afloat and not sink down to a watery grave.

You haven’t reached the stage where you’ve successfully crossed the river and are now looking back complacently and condescendingly at those who haven’t yet done so. You’re still too busy drowning, right? So how can you possibly know that your struggle against the raging waters ‘was’ not as difficult as it had appeared to you back when you were suffocating?

The trials one faces in life are a lot like that, aren’t they? People, presumably ‘adults’ or ‘grown-ups’, who have ‘seen much of life’ claim that teenagers dramatise everything. Perhaps they do. However, quite often, these ‘grown-ups’ refuse to realise and acknowledge the gravity of many situations. They forget the intensity of their own perceptions back when they were teenagers. Perhaps it is required for them to move forward in life. But then, it doesn’t quite help that drowning teenager who is left to save herself without any support in sight. Again, maybe it is the best way to grow up — being independent and surviving without ever asking for help.

End: 11:25 a.m.

What Kind Of Love Are You On?

I have been accused of hating love and not understanding other people’s notions of love. Perhaps it is indeed true that I do not understand other people’s notions of this profoundly perplexing human emotion and their expectations of it. However, I am certain that I do not ‘hate’ love. How can I, when I fall in love with so many things around me almost a hundred times each day?

When I watch the sky at different points of the day, I feel gladdened to see it in all its unwavering beauty. There is always some aspect that draws my soul towards it and makes me love gazing at it for endless hours, staring intently at the ephemeral clouds, the graceful birds and the innumerable shades of colour that I see. Aye, I do call it love, for it is what I feel: boundless joy at being one with the world around me, just like the boundless sky.

I love music. I love art. I love good literature. I love the fact that the human mind is equipped with creative energies capable of giving rise to such monuments, such tributes to intelligence and thought, such testaments to the freedom of creating such ethereal forms of self-expression. It gives me so much joy that I feel inspired, motivated and driven to do the same and live up to myself and all that I am capable of.

I could go on endlessly about all the little things that I fall in love with everyday. Yes, the feeling is love, for I feel happiness, hope, despair, fear, grief, anguish, ecstasy and pain all at the same time. It is intense enough to overwhelm me and leave me gasping for breath, yet I enjoy every moment of it, even the pain of feeling stifled or choked by its power … and its beauty.

However, I may be asked why I have left human interactions out of this proclamation of mine. Why have I not mentioned any people? What are my views on ‘relationships’ between people? In a word: ‘confusing’. For instance, I find people speaking of certain ‘standards’ that they have, standards that they have set for themselves with no pressure from other people, however these standards are hardly, if ever maintained. You say that you believe in something, but your actions state otherwise. You say that you have set certain ethical boundaries for yourself, yet you do not hesitate to cross them the moment you find them uncomfortable, testing or difficult to live by. You say that you love, but you don’t truly mean it. For you it is just another word … a bit of ‘fun’, nothing more. I do not understand this at all.

Without wishing to sound judgemental, I must mention that I find behaviour of this kind incomprehensible since it is something that I personally would not do. Although I have learnt that it is unrealistic to assume that people are truly what they present themselves to be, I find this deception bewildering. What is wrong or quite so difficult about being truthful about yourself? Why would you say something if you didn’t actually mean it? What kind of satisfaction does one get from lying when it is certain that the façade put up by lies is sure to crumble one day? I find no rational answers to these questions of mine.

Considering a different angle, this entire concept of ‘declaring’ how much you love a person to the whole world, indulging in what I often call ‘mushy-ness’, going to great lengths to show other people how much you care by stating that you would die for a person, is something that I find odd and also somewhat illogical. I find it odd since I don’t understand why one would want to let oneself be quite so vulnerable to the world at large, leaving one at the mercy of a world that is simply waiting to steal something away. I am a very private person and I find it unfathomable why someone would want everyone to know of something quite so personal and make such public displays of ‘sappy’ behaviour. The logical part of me asks how one can know for certain that the relationship will actually last long enough to be boasted about to all and sundry. I have seen people constantly talk about their love-lives only to have their relationships end after a week or a month.

I have nothing against love itself neither do I judge people who are in love by categorising them as ‘bad’, ‘wrong’ or some other adjective. It must be nice to be able to open up to that extent to someone else. It’s just that I am sceptical about it as people often don’t mean what they say (and are sometimes unaware of the fact that they don’t). Life isn’t all about fairy-tale endings, neither is it a replication of a clichéd romantic comedy. Speaking from a practical point of view, I must say that looking at life through rose-tinted glasses will only result in one’s vision being flawed. While I understand that it is only human instinct acting when people feel ‘attracted’ to each other, I think that it would be foolish and illogical to assume that any sort of relationship can be based on lust alone.

At the risk of sounding didactic, I’ll venture this: at the end of the road it is all about companionship. Lust and attraction do indeed fade after some time just like the hormone levels of humans tend to fluctuate. However if you’re comfortable in the presence of the person whom you profess to love, and find his or her company soothing and calming even in times of distress, then, I feel that it’s a relationship that has the potential to last, provided that both parties involved are willing to work at maintaining it. Call me foolish and idealistic, but I think that love should be long-term if it is to be worth all the effort. In the end it’s about being with a person whom you can sit next to or lie with ‘and just forget the world’.

Journey

When you are walking by yourself, lost in thought, you often forget about your destination. You’re so absorbed in your thoughts — those little imaginary conversations (with yourself and others) that you get a slight jolt when you finally arrive … when you have to stop. It is not a very pleasant feeling on most occasions since it makes you feel as though you are leaving a part of yourself behind — a branch of the steadily ageing tree breaks off and is lost to time forever.

I have often felt this way while travelling. It is serenity that comes upon me as I quietly watch the sky, the family of clouds drifting across it without a care, that proud eagle circling and searching at one corner, soaring high purposefully at one moment and gliding down nonchalantly in the next, the numerous shades of blue that streak across nature’s canvas ... I feel as though I am that eagle flying majestically in the sky. I can feel myself blending into the blue. I find myself floating on a cloud, heading off to visit distant dreams. My reverie takes me to faraway reaches of my mind wherein I find myself speaking to many facets of my nature, and accepting them the way they are. It hurts when I am called back to earth by the jarring sounds of voices that had been hitherto forgotten. It is painful to be wrenched away from that peaceful calm, back to the roar and din of mundane existences.

Dreams offer much comfort at times. They take you away from things you aren’t ready to deal with and give you time to grow, time to heal, till you are ready to face them. A journey gives you time to dream. You are saddened when it ends as it signals the end of the dream — another closed chapter. However, it is not possible to cling to every dream that flits before your eyes and transports you to your personal realm of peace, quiet and solitude. Dreams also have their own period of usefulness, after which they simply tend to hinder you from moving forward. One journey cannot continue indefinitely, which is why, it must end, just so that you are free to venture forth on another quest, and seek out new avenues that will show you what you are yet to see. You keep travelling and find new dreams to keep you alive during the long road ahead and longer roads to come.

One Shade Lighter

Date: 31.08.2007
Time: 2:00 p.m.

It’s funny how much life changes with time. You think that you know yourself — the kind of person you are, how you react to situations, how you react to people … But then, one day, you might just spring a surprise on yourself. You let a certain thought enter your mind, let it incubate for a while, and then voila: you find that your point of view regarding an issue has changed! No longer do you have the same stubborn opinion. You don’t dismiss an idea as absolutely wrong. You open your mind and your eyes to consider other options. You’re willing to try out something new — you’re willing to change.

Life always brings with it, a multifarious meld of situations which make you re-think the way you live. Sometimes, it involves being at the receiving end of a string of disappointments. You feel anxious, worried, worn-out, stressed, torn and at a loss as to how you should proceed. Often, if a great many such incidents occur together, you feel as though you’re being pushed to the very edge. And at this point, the slightest nudge is enough to have you lose your footing and fall.

The more you are denied what you’ve been longing, the more you feel that the whole world is conspiring against you and you find yourself gripped by a heightened sense of paranoia, coupled with a cynical distaste for the people around you. You stop trusting people, even if it is against every innate instinct. And this is not precipitated by disappointment alone. It is brought on by repeatedly having your immaturity, innocence, faith and naïveté taken advantage of by shallow ‘second hander’s who have nothing better to do than feed off others and derive vindictive satisfaction from it.

Well, that is life. And you learn to take it in your stride. You have to, in any case, since you lost your choice to do anything but that the moment you decided to inhale the first breath of air the instant you were born. You have to survive. You have to live … no matter what happens. Even if people are snatched away — young, healthy people, people who remembered to wish you on your birthday after a long tiring day at work, people who had no business to die all of a sudden, leaving others behind in a state of shock.

This is actually where time surprises you. You think that there isn’t the slightest chance that you will heal. You’re convinced that you will continue to wallow in anger, despair, grief, self-hatred and pain, some of which is even self-induced. However, one day, you simply wake up and find that the old wounds don’t hurt all that much. You’ve forgiven some people for hurting you. You’ve stopped re-living some emotional wounds. You’ve learnt to accept a few ‘facts of life’ with sporting grace. You’ve lost some inhibitions and learnt to ‘loosen up’. You’ve learnt to understand, accept and allow certain attributes of the world and its people. You have stopped shouting and yelling and rebelling about every little thing. You grow up a bit, and stop being that petulant twelve-year-old brat for a while. And then, you realise that life is one shade lighter.

End: 2:35 p.m.

P.S. : This sounds a lot more positive than how I was actually feeling. Nevertheless, writing rot instead of paying attention in a certain professor’s class is the better choice any day.