Blood screams "Enough"... Give us Peace

No more, please no more. 

The voice within screams as my eyes go through pictures of the gruesome massacre in Syria.  The blood loses its colour, the limbs are like wood. Were the people who perpetrated such an act on innocent children and women, zombies who had no heart or head? How have we, the people, come to such times? 

The anguish is unspoken and deep, as if snake venom had been smeared on the skin; as if somebody force fed me some disinfectant cleaner. The putrid vomit erupts from within, yet I am unable to spit it out. My eyes refuse to shed tears of any kind, be it pain or horror. It is marble and opaque. 

When faith is shaken, one often feels like a discarded piece of furniture, lying in a corner of the garden, rain and Sun, both tearing down the last bits of its dignity. Today, as I sit on my bed, with the four-walled enclosure I sometimes refer as "My Room", a sense of abandonment washes over me. I feel orphaned; discarded by my own fellow beings, just like they butchered their brethren mercilessly in Syria. 

We are a bunch of living oxymorons. We are cowards who run for our lives and keep numb when devastation strikes our neighbour's home. At the same time we are monsters, who devour everything including infants that may come in our way to appease our shameless greed.  

We can cry hoarse each day that we want peace, that violence shall not be tolerated. Yet, it is us, who have once again sown the seeds of violence and blood bath in the psyche of the world which stood helplessly, watching the massacre and in the lives of those who lost their kith and kin to such a diabolic act befitting Hell, if the latter exists.

It can just be a nerve rattling irony that innocent infants, children and women met such a horrific end to now rest in eternal peace.

Is this the lone, elusive chance to peace we have today? Our death? 

Think before you think... Think before you speak

At times the heart dares to think. It visualises, it objectifies, it rationalises. Someone once told me, "The heart is just an organ. It is the head that thinks or even makes us experience love". He was not incorrect. However, the area above the heart pains when something hurts us, disturbs us.

Several times, I have been at the receiving end of somebody's ill-formed ideas and opinions. That made me go back to the moot point - "Think before you speak". Rather, it should be inquire and get the facts correct before you speak, because you never know how your words may be twisting the life of the listener.

Our mind is a sensitive part of our being. No doubt, it controls the whole of us, yet it is like an oyster. Even a speck of sand can kill it and eventually a pearl may take form. The oyster goes on excreting juices to get rid of the grain that is stuck in its soft flesh. I have felt this excruciating pain when I have been subjected to such venomous words and gestures.

People have ample time to shop online for shoes and socks. Yet, when it comes to the use of their most essential and by far the most used faculty, they stutter, they falter. It is widely misused and the ill use is performed with much aplomb.

I was once taught that there is nothing wrong or right. It is our perception that changes the equation. My right could be someone's sin. Trying to keep my faith intact in that idea, I would still say that just because the tongue has no bones, does not mean anything that slips out is right. There has to be a check imposed by our intellectual refinement on our power of speech.

The rational part of my brain refuses to accept this argument. Tongue alone cannot be adjudged the culprit. The mind is the mastermind.

Our ideas are, till a large extent, governed by the conditioning which our mind and psyche has undergone since our inception. The biases have already been laid and that is where our education comes into play. Books, the hunger for knowledge, the desire to understand, widen our horizon. We explore and we deconstruct our notions. We need to feed our mind constantly for it to achieve a certain level of refinement and maturity.

However, the fact that disturbs me the most, leaves me disheartened, is how much we lag in intellectual improvement in today's time. We dress ourselves in the costliest and the most fancy labels, we move around in the sleekest of vehicles. Despite, the exterior undergoing radical renovation, the mind is caught in the domesticity of cumbersome lethargy. It is caught in the abominable stench of redundant, age old biases and misconceptions. Each passing day, I am shocked to see how we return to the bottomless pit of stubborn dogmatism to stick to some garbage like notions.

Till the time we do not overcome our tendency to fall for the easy and generic opinions on matters, be it social, political or even personal, we shall come across as vague individuals, who care less about themselves and the least about the social system we are a part of.

A dear friend is fond of saying, "It is all about the get up". Perhaps he also means the mental and intellectual beauty of a person. Else, we are no more than clothes horses and no less than a donkey, trudging foolishly to taste the carrot.

My dear friends, there are no carrots. There is just you and your reflection in the mirror and on the society. So tread carefully, speak sound and think like you know how to think.

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” 
― Albert Einstein

Raindrops on my Paper

It rained the whole day. The dust was wiped away from the face of this ruthless city. Trees appear green, the earth seems appeased. Then what is the restlessness that arises within? it is like a gradually developing cyclone, sucking me into it. The lightening lit the evening sky and flashed across the memory space inside my head. Images and more images came hoarding the void, as if it was raining long forgotten excerpts from my life.

I sat in one corner collecting these random moments and compiling them in a dusty file cover. "Did I have a good life till now?" No adequate reply comes to my mind. Twists and turns and straight highways, I have been on almost all terrains. The journey shall continue, show me the days, nights and twilights of various realms. I am a traveller, I am aware of that. Yet, a stopover is sought where the heart can get a good night's sleep. Else the quest is one.

Another such evening may come when this evening would be neatly folded and preserved between the yellow, tattered pages of an old, forgotten novel and my mind.

Ice cream Sund-ae

What is it with ice-cream and human emotions? The very sight of the dessert evokes strong and often caricature-like expressions on the visage. 

The cold and sweet combination is not just a treat to the taste buds and gastronomy senses; it lights sparks of undiluted glee in the eyes of the onlooker too.

A couple of evenings back, we were lazily sauntering in the local market for a random puff. The brightly lit pull-cart displaying the icy delights smiled furtively at us, beckoning us to her fragrant coven. Chocolate layered, chocolate filled bar it was for us. 

It dripped, we licked, it vanished in our greedy mouths. The chocolate felt like satin sin, the cold balancing the richness of the brown devil. We slurped, we bit and it tantalised. Broken images from childhood days flooded our minds. Through mouthful of molten wonder, we spoke gibberish to relate our respective tales. From nicking mother's piggy bank, to sucking the ice-candy colourless, we had so much to share over a bar of ice-cream. 

The cream was now gone, the lone, white softwood stick bereft of its prized awesomeness. Yet we licked on at it, hoping the last ounce of sweetness would not be wasted. At that moment, she sped past. A sedan. A head popped up. The eyes sparked a brilliant shade of chocolate brown. The were like a pair of shooting stars, flashing across the sky in search of immediate emancipation.

The joy was evident, the desire stronger felt. Had the car been at a slower pace, she would have lapped up a few pieces of the sweet fantasy and gulped them down.  The car did not stop.

We looked at each other, the sundae remains at the corner of our mouths, yet their hues brilliantly etched in our eyes. She was a 40-year old who stopped short of drowning herself in the carefree splendour of a harmless, calorie-laden ice cream. We smiled into each others eyes, promising ourselves to stay in touch with the child within and outside. 

Sunshine and rainbows, at times, dress our night sky too. We dreamt satisfaction that night.