The Silence of My Voice

Another BlogMas comes to an end. I don't have a lot left to put into words. I'm quite spent from all that I've shared in the past twenty four days. But there's, undoubtedly, one thing I want to say is to keep an open mind. Through all the crazy rides this year, the one thing it taught me is how all of us are so clueless and ignorant to how differently beautiful each one of us is. People are what shock people. People are also what surprise people. Open your heart a tad bit. There's a million things holding a person together a certain way, or not. And all of that is unique and incomparable, all the same. There's something to be taken from everyone. Make sure when you're on the giving end, you're selfless about what part of yourself you're cleaving with. Give them something worthwhile to remember. Be unforgettable. A very Merry Christmas, everyone. And have a banging start to 2019. I'll see y'all on the other side Until then. ...

I believe no matter how much you practice patience, there'll always be a situation that'll stop you short with anxiety in your shoes. There's no novelty in unrequited love. It's okay for you to be hard to let go. I think people almost always never truly admit to what they're feeling. They also never surrender completely to whatever they're feeling, to let it through thoroughly. I think we all have the scales tipped with bittersweet memories than sweet ones. I think everyone needs to read at least one fiction book to know how easily you can be lost. I think nothing triggers a memory more than voice or smell. I think everyone is torn between going back to who they used to be and who they want to be. I think women are stunning creatures. Some of our best memories are the haziest ones. I think no one is special. We make them. I think no one really wants to fathom the intensity of who they really are. Going head-on first at something you w...

Don't obliterate the memory of you being someone you'll never again be. The smallest of things have you gaping wide open, feeling all that air gush through you. But don't forget the person you were when you won something for the first time, no matter how significant or not it was. When you realised what you were meant to be doing with your life. When you felt giddy from finally realising what made you passionate about something. When you had your first kiss. When you slept next to someone for the first time. When you were there holding your best friends' hair back while they threw up all the remnants of all their heartbreaks ever. When no one ever told you why you had to go through with certain things; just that you had to. When you knew you were about the make a wrong decision, but you made it anyway cause you wanted some grave mistakes in your story to be told. When you promised yourself to never post that poem ever for the world to read, but you did i...

Everyone should live alone in their life once. All of us should once in life be unattended to, and isolated from human touch. Distance, I've realised teaches you lessons faster than even deprivation. Distance yourself from everything you've known all your life. It'll tutor you well to know how to really live for yourself. And there's a stark difference between living selfishly and living for yourself. We're social animals. Living alone or away just prods that button harder than anything else. We all try to recreate familiarities wherever we go. All that it does is puts us opposite more people than ever in our lives. It's a little shaky at first; though we get used to it. There's a certain novelty in opening yourself up to someone new so often. I feel it gets you more in touch with yourself. After a point, we're all going to question if our own introductions really are in tandem of how we verily are. It takes awhile, though, to really learn to be a plea...

This year if I've learnt something is how positive hopefulness is. Not just for us, but for others as well. It's just plain, good energy is all. Hopeful to start your day with good coffee. Have another cuppa midday to keep the humanity in you going. Another hot one to erase the day. Coffee is like having a masseuse for your emotions constantly around. I think the world will stop being angry if everyone just buys any stranger a coffee, at least once a week. It'll just be so much better. The only wars in the world will be between tea and coffee fanatics. Coffee is also very situational. For instance, now. It's probably enhancing my torpor, at the moment. It's not so much of a stimulant as we make of it to be, really. I think the thing with caffeine is, it affects only a mind thinking that it will. No matter the nature of the roast, I think coffee is weak on a bushed mind.  Surprisingly enough, most people are like that as well. How spurring people are always depen...

December and deadlines go hand in hand. So, we consequently write blog two posts in a day. Joke. December is always the last one. One that makes us wonder about things we already know are going to happen. Christmas. Year end. It's sort of a funny mix of feelings people have - anticipation and dread at the same time. We're so busy trying to make sense of time ahead of us,  don't really think a lot of people are actually actively feeling. Think of a song you can possibly never grow inattentive towards. The moment it comes on anywhere, your life halts for the next four minutes. We're all just looking for ways to halt our lives every now and then. And the worst part is we're planning it, instead of looking around. Do yourself a favour.  Put on that song twice a day. You'll realise why. Until then. AlBoardMan Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. A.

"रात में और दोपहर में, आब-ओ-दाना ढूंढता है, आशियाना ढूंढता है" "Please don't say I'll never find a way, And tell me all my love's in vain" "घटा उतर के आ गयी ज़मीन पे, रही यही लगन तो ऐ दिल-ए-जवान, असर भी हो रहेगा एक हसीं पे" "Singing in the old bars, Swinging with the old stars, Living for the fame, Kissing in the blue dark, Playing pool and wild darts" "ज़िन्दगी धुप तुम घाना साया" "Burning all my money on the dashboard for the record, Don't need it where I'm going, And I can't admit, no way of knowing, Is it cold outside, no way of knowing, Will you be my guide" "ग़म ख़ुशी ख़ुशी छुपा लिया, दर्द को भी दिल बना लिया, ज़िन्दगी ने आज़मा लिया, तुम तो न लो इम्तेहान" "Don't let the hurdle fall, So be the girl you loved, Be the girl you loved" "तुम मुझसे, मैं दिल से परेशान, दोनों हैं मजबूर, ऐसे में कौन किस को मनाए"...

All of us have a compulsive need to make a handful of things categorically perfect. If it's not, it sets off a trigger. There are also some of us who are brilliantly oblivious to it. There are also some of us with the neurotic need to frame everything like a picture within a box, the folds of which were urgently erected by our minds' obscure need for anything to look like something.  Madness is intriguing. Obsession, even more so. Maddening levels of obsession, out of the world. And I don't mean that in a way that demeans the adeptness of  idée fixe. And I feel the greatest thing we can do for our brains is arrange our lives around us, the way it likes it - to keep it at peace, if not happy, to say the least. Because it's stunning, to give a portion of your life to making anything so perfect, it demands to beheld. For when we really reach that point, be it with anything - work, or sitting, or walking, or talking or even the tilt of the last book on the shelf - you f...

Just slightly over a week to Christmas. And eventually, the year end. We learn a lot throughout a year and by the end of each one, we're ready to make changes in ourselves we thought were not so appealing. But do we ever really change? We're all a complex mash of some rather logical and illogical ideas. It's just that some circumstances or people unknowingly our layers, which, for all we know, might show up again after the next ten. As people, do we ever really change? Or develop habits out of the blue? I feel we always possess the tools to be a certain way in life. We all just find them at a sooner or later date. And that's just how all of us function. Evolving as a person through our life is organic. It's not something that needs approval. Yet we constantly resolve to change something about ourselves all the time. And even worse is how we seek validation for it. Change, to me, is a very personal process. It's nothing to be proud of, it's nothing to be as...

My day doesn't begin without music. It doesn't end without music. Not that hard to predict, but I'm an absolute sucker for lyrics and voices. My father has always had a massive role to play in my music taste. Somewhere in between his massive collections of Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, S.D. Burman, Rafi and Jagjit Singh, Gulzar and a lot of Pakistani plays, I created my safe place. That's where all my rides with nostalgia take me. I remember running through Deer Park back home with my father every Sunday morning, with him sharing trivia about his favourite musicians and singers and actors. And oftentimes, while mapping our way through the forest back home, he'd stop amongst a bunch of trees playing with the light of cold December sun which he thought of nothing less than beautiful, with the birds chirping, he'd hum a tune or two. And that's still one of his favourite things to do - sitting in his living room with a strong cup of masala chai, his newspaper, earl...

I keep boarding passes. Always. Even if it's a day trip. This has ended me up with a book splitting at its spine with congruent pieces of paper. It's trivial, really, if I think about it. No matter how many times you've been to the same city, through the same route, doing the same things, something about travelling away creates shifts in you. Tags from fancy restaurants I want to try, coasters from breweries, sketched coffee cups on uncleaned tables. And, I reckon a lot of it has to do with how all of us take to nostalgia. Almost like reading. Almost. And you never realise how much of yourself you knew until you're hit with something unsettling. This, to me, has always been the best part about being alone most times. It's splendid to experience this with people around - people who still see special and mundane just all the same. But this is where I get selfish. I believe it's very important to save a plethora of experiences all for yourself. You have your vu...

I miss driving. Back home, I used to drive all the time. It's a fairly simple thing. To operate a machine that has been simplified enough for your comfort. But, my God, the independence it lends you. And that's the funny part. I'm still depending on something to feel independent. The day I got my license, I could be anywhere, for howsoever long I wanted. Even through late nights and juries, the sheer joy of driving back home is still incomparable. It was always me-time. No phones (which would, of course, be the smart thing to do), good music and the occasional display of fingers. Taking longer routes. Impromptu abduction of my friends. These are all very trivial things. And oftentimes, while talking to my friends, I realise that that's all everyone ever talks about. The puny stuff that most days makes no sense existing. Which is plain atomic in front of that days almost all of us have everyday. But it's these puny things filling in the everyday gaps. Exactly the...

Yes, a couple of days late. But as is the ritual of December and deadlines, so is of the BlogMas being late every year. Here are some pictures through this year. Some places I've been, some things everyday things I just saw differently.  Until then. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. A.

Living away from home makes you realise how ephemeral your relationships with people can be. One thing it undoubtedly teaches you is that time might have a limit on itself, but never on the intensity of your relationships. The easiest thing to feel firsthand with anyone, even a stranger is laughter. Just good, free laughter. The tougher bit is to feel safe enough with someone to make a punching bag out of the other person as well. Last year, Christmas was both something, and nothing to write home about. I shared it with someone who I fought with without fighting, helped without showing, laughed with crying. And out of all weightier days when we were vexed at the rest of the world, but only had each other to uncloak it in front of, there'd sometimes be an Affogato awaiting me in the evenings.  At times, we love listening to some people; not because they're talented enough to even paint Keats in a different light. Mostly, for just how insanely preposterous their thoughts ar...

Sometimes you meet people in life when you're hit like a ton of bricks with insurmountable admiration and the will to be like them someday. And it's because of people like them you never seem to forget how easy it is to believe that how much good breathes life into this world. Moms are everywhere. Sometimes in the most unexpected of places. But the funny thing about them is they're versatile like always, to mould themselves to befit any relationship you need - teacher, mentor, friend, confidante, supporter, critic or guardian angel. Today is Mythili. Who taught me just how important it is to step back when your part has been played, because if you keep filling a glass, it's bound to overflow after a point. She taught me that we're all in some way the gist of something, we just need to intuit and let things unfold. She taught me effortlessly how people can be unabashedly be the most unadulterated versions of themselves if you just let them be - she let me always ...

Some people are like old songs that we were under the habit of listening on loop for years, or years ago. At times, we're able to hold onto these people, the others, not. I've found it amusing how some people can manage better than the others to impeccably conceal what's going on in their mind. I wish I could master that considering my expressions have always been supremely transparent. And, at least for me, I've always associated people to certain songs that are always on top of my playlists. I don't know how many of us do that, though; and I deem it very personal to bracket people within a fixed set of octaves and a rigid array of lyrics written by someone else. I'm always curious about how people see others, as well. It's almost like an amateur Austen cataloguing her characters. And I wish it were as simple as characters being plain good or bad. Instead we're in a myriad of emotions we feel even for one person. There's not one relationship you h...

Sweaters. Mountains. Snow. Walks. Coffee. Winters. Continents. Time zones. Airports. Goodbyes. Doors. Streets. Movies. Projects. Swimming. Old friends. Dogs. Coffee. Sickness. Cabs. Late nights. Phone calls. Stalking. Pizza. Idli. Long drives. Guitarists. Hemant Kumar. iPod. Blogs. Frustrations. Blast from the past. Surprises. Vanishings. Birthdays. Disappointments. Breakfasts. Awakenings. Diwalis. Alcohol. Dance. Madness. Sophistications. Flashbacks. Designers. Theatre. Books. Diaries. Falling leaves. Lessons. Apologies. Nights. Wonderment. Solitude. Haiku. Bookmarks. Waste paper. Water paint. Brushes. Dried flower. Cars. Smiles. Water. Promenade. Balcao. Black tea. Sorries. Octobers & Novembers. Abundance. Clarity. Laughter. Sarcasms. Jealousy. Absence. Presence. Love. Desire. Gifts. Patience. Gratefulness. Addiction. Dictionaries. The Art of the Novel. Cuckold. Maggie Cassidy. Soulmate. Aretha Franklin. Manna Dey. Soul. Autumn. Adventure. Forgetfulness. Intelligence. Cookies. ...

By some freak of nature, I wish it were possible to write your younger self letters. Like congratulatory clues at checkpoints in a game. Because nothing can wear you out like waiting for your compass to respond and point to a direction when you feel every now and then, a preset societal threshold has been championed. I reckon all of us have a different kind of relationship with ourselves. However, I do wonder if any of us have a selfless one. We're all an assortment of personalities put together haphazardly and clumsily wrapped, with the twine never knotting. And often we meet ourselves at various crossroads. One running along to catch a flight, the other awaiting for roots to grow. The real issue is we freely appreciate efforts others make for us; never, though, the ones we make for ourselves. Our exchanges with the outside world are incomprehensible enough - they're impossible to be drawn under our reign. And, every now and then we add in the metaphorical cherry on top by ...

I've scarcely experienced fluidity in my relationships. One that changes face the moment a scene changes. Imagine a train changing stations, and looking at a new place every single time. Noticing some, loving some, hating some. Never did I thought it possible to take on a different guise with the same person the moment life changed scenes. It's like locationism in a bond, only more akin to heart than the mind. The reason I love meeting new people is you never know the chord you'll strike with them. It's like Scrooge. Same guy, different place, antithetic personalities. And just like that, it altered how I look at the same lane I pass through every single day. There's always a person you meet who lights up the room (or lane) just by being in it. And if I may boldly say so, recapping a part of you, you thought was gaping wide open from you busy growing up. From studio to bars to cheap month-end dinners to 'heroine gali'. She taught me how essential it is to ...

Conflicting identities attract. All the time. We don't recognise this until we crave the same badge, we found irksome initially, by someone who wears it all the time. And unintentionally, you end up making each other's life just slightly more beautiful. Sometimes you find the indescribable valour to be a person you're needed to be for someone else, but never found the strength to do it for your own good.  One of the most innate quirks about people I find unendingly admirable is their skill to achieve and stay in the shadows. Some come out freely and prefer to shine under the spotlight, and there's nothing wrong with that either. But the propensity to be centred, and move from a thought to the next, one milestone to next while unassumingly to do better of yourself is exquisite. There'll always be a tonne of conversations we have with people where we know the same things, we speak on the same things, but rarely when you talk just to be able to listen to what the oth...

It's laborious to begin your life in a new city. The prospect of creating your life anew from the ground up is thrilling. But I reckon the exhilaration dumbs down when you need a safe place. Over the past two years, home has come to mean a lot of things for me. It's safety, and security and comfort and everything else in between. And I reckon that's when home stops being a place. In all of the theatricals your life goes through, there's always that one person whose guts you hate on the spot, but you very well recognise their vibe. For more often than not, your escape place is the same(read: Carter's). The reality of being lost in a new city hits you every single day, and continues to ruin you. All we crave amidst the madness is some quiet. Or, a walk along the sea.  My best days are with myself - snuggled up on my couch, some popcorn to fatten me up and a soppy movie going on. It's that warm, fuzzy feeling you have. Bliss. One such night was with a dear frie...