# 10 beginning

It is time to nail the end, end of a beginning. A new 365 will be up again the next time weekend weaves its way out in words.

Every beginning has a mosey walk: jellylike, unsteady…yet the joy in taking the walk resounds with cackle. That sums up joy. A beginning baskets trepidation, anticipation and stands on watchful grounds but nevertheless it leaps out cracking its shell.

To remain the coxswain from the alpha to omega becomes the mantra.

There might not be over our face new lights flickering right at a time when the world declares it to be a new day, a new beginning. Numerators change people do not, nor do the linking moments. A journey that begins in warm lap toddles out meandering on two feet. Time plays the mediator between change and events. And we wait. There are times when sorry feeling overwhelms us at the slightest pop of saying goodbye and then again there are times when we wait indefatigably for an end to happen. A monochrome voyage of impermanence in the undulant layers of life stretches out.

 The old escorts the new to its throne. With dead foliages the coming becomes sacred: pristine, puerile, worry jammed, worry free. A yesterday molts ushering today and tomorrow thereafter.

Twenty thirteen thus winds up waiting for a fresh bloom in the pot less than half filled and the rest well, not full; or with space.

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#6 key

If we see the moon coming to its full size, we also get to see it gradually disappearing…Its appearance changes and with it changes the view of all that is visible in the open. Sometimes, there is a need of artificial light to see the street we are on and the other times it’s otherwise.

Alignment of grief, happiness and nothingness bring life to full view.

Such are the ways life poses divided: happy, sad, piece by piece sad and piece by piece (in modern language) “okay”. Each of these orbital phases help us evolve, become humble and receptive/ rejective in more than accepted believable terms. With time we learn to train our emotions. There are times when grief overwhelms our friends and family. We see them break through different layers of sunkenness and we find ourselves positioned in a firmer place: coaxing, coalescing, combating a situation hard for the self to retain the sang froid. But we do it,nevertheless. Just letting them know, “I am here”. It is just “I” that can be offered at a time when the waning period strikes the other. It doesn't establish our detachment but our strong steering ability.

Such moments come to us in bulk. And strange enough for us to believe we need no crash course to upgrade ourselves…the steering ability just happens. 

                                                  

With both the lock and the key in our hands we are an amazing piece of creation. There are times we are hemmed in locking our abilities, our emotion, our nature and there are times we are to flung open the doors.

The key unlocks when the judge in us turns it the way we think is right.

©p.db

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What my mother didn’t tell me

                          Growing up isn’t so crotchety when a doting mother takes to hard labor and see her off springs placed a little better than where she has been. Like every other home, there were differences of opinion, of judgments, the weekly “bellows burst” in the home I was born in. But then dinner times we had our share of laughters, our share of sharing the loaf of bread too.

My mother, a meticulous warm cent per cent pure housewife with the strength of a ten armed goddess held up the tent we were sheltered under. She was the door to entrance and exit checking, securing, locking, unlocking all that wanted an access to our layout. Thus most community gossips, society sweet- sour talks never found ways to our ears. There were always these words to guide us: “you mustn’t return home with trouble”. Trouble here meant complains or seeds of it from people we were hanging out with and people who were keeping a tab upon our growing up days. It isn’t easy for girls growing up in India with the kind of mindset spread across. But fortunately I could circumnavigate all the tangy talks. They quite became redundant in my busy life with no room for anything but my own little world with handpicked people to disperse the varied tinctures of emotion. One thing she taught was not to pay much heed to the idle mouth. 

Her words became our gospel.

                "There will always be someone to talk..there will always be someone to spittle loads of discouraging words on you…but you go on, paying no heed."

This pleasant misty world wasn't here forever. The second tenure in an unguided world just opens the door to a sultry clear world. It demands response. It prays for reaction. One’s sweet talk goes through uncountable scans, ifs and buts. Honesty here becomes silent fugitive. One’s politeness is the others’ reign.

Most people outside our mother’s nest would wait, watch and hunt for troublesome moments which bring us a step or two down from where we had been. It’s a world where we are being predated upon. All our education, our degrees fail when it comes to facing real- life challenges. It isn’t warm out there, its skin burning hot! It has very few incubators to pamper us and certainly has no red carpets spread to welcome our niceties, our boisterous belief and Jane Austenian ironed out principles. We are out and out absolutely on our own.

Falling, flipping, fidgeting and picking ourselves up come on a rotation. Each of which teach us the ways and means to be in and out of avalanche in front of us. They make us strong, they make us go- for- it people.

In no way am I saying that my mother failed to teach me, she just did not tell me that there was a dark, dim always challenging one’s wit and patience kind of world out there preying outside her honeycomb.

People in the open enjoy belittling the other. They salivate on fermented tell tale. They take variety as their spice of life far too seriously and those who cannot be a part are made the sitting duck.

My mother did not tell me... there were society scumbags I should prepare myself for. Instead of nurturing a coconut, she jealously guarded a rose from the sun. But that was my mother. Life did not as it does not.

Life is full of storms: fierce or dwarf and so are the giants and demons all over. We just need to armor ourselves with the warmth our mothers have wrapped us with and become seasoned beings if nothing more. Rowing the boat as expected till we are timed-out.

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Talk

“I quit!” He scribbled on a plane paper and jumped off the building. He died. “loser,” sniggered the world. Life went on as before.

Quitting got no solution. It never does.

I have lost a student, one of my best friends and one of my colleagues' turned friends' teenage first born son to it and let me confess, it isn’t easy to bear the loss and to confront the losses in the faces of the we never knew family members, especially parents. While again, there are also those kinds, the eraser-hearts who can move on. 

For me, my observations, my memories remain static, irreplaceable.

2 decades past...

My best friend attempted suicide due to parental pressure of scoring full marks (this was the talk of the town when he passed away) in physics/maths. Born to a genius family and a withdrawn person in nature, he quite made the subject to be on a suicide watch. But no one cared. Not until it was too late.

My student was grappling with his own identity conflicts. He was a women cased in a man’s body. You can’t be so in the hinterland of India. Tongues were wagging all around, no one gave him the space he needed to know himself, not even the ‘artist’ parents he was born to. He too quit.(sad, he was just about to begin his soon to follow career after working under an acclaimed fashion designer)

3 years back

My colleagues' son was an adolescent, full of hope, a creative genius and struck by cupid. A simple refusal was all it took for him to quit. He left behind some lovely hand-written poems.

These three people lost early in life had two things in common: they were au fait and sensitive. In this modern society, this is a lethal combination that works as a catalyst to suck out the marrow of life.  

Marx underlines this narrative of a conflict in our ‘modern’ society: “having shown up the contradictions and unnaturalness of modern life not only in the relationships of particular classes, but in all circles and forms of modern intercourse.” 

While most battling out life’s war, pre- positioning themselves on suicidal radar, would say, “easier said than done.”I’d be a bit optimistic in saying: “Life is not about giving up, it’s about living it up…”

give warmth

  Too many youngsters resort to self end owing to "abused friendship, deceived love, frustrated ambition, family suffering, repressed rivalry, dissatisfaction with a monotonous life, suppressed enthusiasm, are indubitably the causes of suicide in more generously endowed natures, and the love of life itself, this energetic driving force of personality, very often leads to putting an end to a detestable existence ( Marx's note)." Most younglings I have come in touch in person with confessing to attempt haven't given new reasons. BUT! But I have heard an echo in their voices, "we want to talk to someone, someone who understands us, not make fun of us or ignore us".

We have grown in number but so in our lethal deafness. Our purchasing power has gone up and we have conveniently replaced warmth of relationships with goodies. Expensive mobile phones have enhanced connectivity but severed connection. We rarely now connect with each other!!!

Right things at the right moment don’t happen all the time. One has to have patience. Patience and life dive deep. On a very serious note, family, friends, siblings can keep a slightly off the track being engaged in mundane, frivolous talks. Tagging along or giving time to that suppressed enthusiast will let him/her battle out the internal conflicts. Who doesn't have an internal conflict? Everyone does, but we don't self end our existence! Do we? Don’t die. Please! At least not by choice!

Every suicide breaks me down. They smack our failure as individuals, as society.

Talks really help.

So talk…just talk!

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Peace, be yours

This is the first year he missed …wishing me on my birthday. And this very year I don’t have him around …to complain.

For a street in Hyderabad it was just another road mishap that killed an august young man, for me, it was the sudden shut down of my Confession box. My buddy was gone. Aakash as he supposedly nicknamed himself was an ‘anytime friend’ you could call up/open up to. A great human being, a superb friend (a true ‘yaaron ka yaar’), a caring son& a protective brother.  I was fortunate I had a sneak peek to all the faces he put on as we journeyed together since the time I had actually shunned the social world. His famous line still guides me: “you have to gamble to test the pros and cons of a situation”. What a gamble!

People he spoke to will take some time to brush aside his masculine voice. His pronunciations, his sentences loaded with practical solutions had been awe striking. 

It takes a lot of pain to write about one of your best friends in past tense!

I met him through a friend of his who happened to be my poetry buddy. While three of us often engaged in collaborative poetry writing, we enjoyed our walks in a busy Laitumkhrah –Beat House street(Shillong) churning out our collaborative poems, laughing, pulling words from here and there, thinking of a title for the poetry. That’s where and when Aakash and I bonded fast. Poetry led our hands and unlike the popular belief of ‘going around’ we had our friendship blooming in our respective poems and collaborative too.

Spending wintry afternoons at his luxuriant home with his gorgeous mom around, I had the privilege of knowing some great people living in the gigantic three-storied building, otherwise left gazing at by the passers- by. Listening to him was no doubt a pleasure but to his mom was a treat! A wonderful cook with good taste in interior decoration& a mother who reminded me of Gertrude (D.H Lawrence’s Sons&Lovers) investing her emotion on her children especially the scion of the family- the only son. I never got to meet her other child: a daughter. Time swept, one fine day, I break open the marriage proposal I had from a man known well to him& he was as any friend would keen to know if I was sure. While I couldn’t at all give in to a hundred percent consent, he kept reminding me I must consider it with seriousness and that for a while must keep aside my professional workloads.

Soon in few months time I was married. Both of us left Shillong. While I headed for Ahmedabad, he for Kolkata. We were in touch. Gradually he became my confession box bearing all the secrets, listening, suggesting, guiding me in ways very practical. He was not much into holistic speech or quotes but reasoned out practically. There were times I was certain our paths would never meet for each of us had our careers to be hooked onto. 

Call it fate, call it fortune. My husband handed over a transfer order for Kolkata & there we were. He became a constant star. Like any other friend he’d be around. We had great fun: travelling, talking, picking up best writes etc. He loved food but for medical reasons he could never have a tummy full meal. He appreciated the daal-bhaat(Pulses-rice),potol tarkari(Pointed gourd curry) I cooked , he relished them as “barir khawa”(homemade food). Destiny: it was a dinner away from his room that took him away from his family& friends.

For not very long time, we managed to be together in Kolkata. He left for this city Hyderabad while in a month’s time we had a transfer back to our former location. Since then Aakash resumed being my draft, storing chapters of my daily life.

Today as his sleeping body reaches Shillong, that lane would mourn the death of a wonderful boy with golden heart. While his parents are yet to know, my heart sinks at the imagined sight of seeing his mother, my Gertrude.

Like me, many other friends of his have lost a confession box and the mother her young son. Dreams held in her eyelids today shall give him an eternal shower.

Rest in Peace my friend: (28/11/2012), you know I miss you…

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