UNTOLD TALES FROM THE BACKYARD

Two cups of Cappuccino stirred with sugar remains untouched. There is a long silence. They both now are looking into each others' eyes. One is accusing, and the other is on the edge of sword pleading for mercy. He then ruefully says, “Look at my last two years. I loved a girl so much that no time ever drove us away. I still love her but I just can’t take the pain of not being with her anymore. That’s why I had to break up with her. If I say I don’t love her that will a lie, that will always be a lie. I do love her and still care, but I have to live without her...”  It’s her turn to accuse him now. “But why? Why did you choose not to be with her, to leave her?” “I have my reasons...” he said, trying to avoid standing in the pleading box.  “So at least u don’t have the pain of not being loved” “It’s worse to love someone and not have them, than not being loved” “The worst is when the person doesn’t even know that you even love them”, her shaking voice murmured.  “  I'll always say she is the best” “Then why the hell did u leave her?  “Like I said, I have my reasons.”  “No reason can win over love. If your reason is working, it means your love for her has long gone. You know what? You can’t tell me the reason, because you don’t have one.” “well guess what, it can and that’s the way life goes on,   that’s how love works, it’s never fair.” “Love is when you love someone, without any reason. Love is always fair, my dear.” “And how do you get the authority to define love? Why should it be same for everyone? Isn’t everyone's thought process different? why should something as complicated as love be in defined boundaries?”  “I’m not saying love has any boundaries. So no reason can be applied to it...Love is simple, humans are complicated. I have not seen one human being who loves without any condition. So all are materialistic. if you had really loved her, you would have not showed any reasons to leave her.”  “Everything is for a reason.If not then why don’t you fall for a Sadhu who has left every earthly possession  and is free? Won’t that be your ideal match after all you are a very spiritual person?” “Because I never came across one. Someone with whom I have ever talked about my personal feelings. Who knows if I had come across one, I would have, may be.” “But no, you like eating in good places, hanging out in CCD, instead of a cheap coffee parlour. So stop exaggerating your ideals when they are so flawed. Moreover, you are still with someone who you don’t love.” “As long as u dont know me inside out,you can’t say this..because I do love someone, who I can never have or can ever go out with.” She looked outside the window, the rain stopped falling. She could hear the loud car honk that couldn’t interrupt the trail of thought that she had had in her heart, and she laughed at her thoughts for at that moment she realized that she was in reality sitting in that coffee shop with that person she could never have. What can only interrupt her thoughts at that moment was only that person’s voice. And he said, “But still you are living with a person who you don’t love, and I guess you are not sure about your own feelings toward that person.”  “I do live with him, I do love him, and I like to take care of him. We are married for twelve years, and we are habituated with each other. I can’t think of a morning when I don’t wake up without his loving arms around me.”  “So you love two people at the same time?”,he said, surprised by the unconventional feelings of hers, from whom he had never expected this. “I guess, can’t I?”  “So why can’t I love her even if I had my reasons to leave her,why does my love have to be confined to your  definitions?” “Because love is universal, my definition was universal too. And  you can’t go beyond it” “So what I feel is not love and what you do is love!!! Stop your farce. You always think that you are in an idealistic world. Well, wake up, u aren’t. How can you define me without being me? Oh,but you can love two people. Wow! Don’t you think you are being biased when you only support your own ideals and negate everyone else's?” “You show me your ideals first then I can think about it, whether to support or to negate.”  “I don’t need to show you anything, but when you keep putting yourself on a high pedestal and try to undermine everyone else and their feelings, that’s when you turn biased.”  “So if you have never talked about your “so-called” ideals, and if I don’t even know them, how can you say with so much conviction that I’m negating your ideals?”     “Well, you “are” saying that what I have done to her, as in leaving her, means I don’t love her, as according to you leaving someone means not loving that person isn’t it?” “According to me, everyone is free to do anything, but they can’t escape criticism, that’s all I believe. You can criticise me as well, I won’t have any problem. And yes, if you love someone, you don’t leave them.”    “Wait. Am I criticizing you?? I just asked. I never passed a judgement, did I?”  “No, but you may think I am criticising you for I always negate you.” “Sure at least I am not in love with two people  and still pretending to be the true lover.”  Now, you passed a judgement. But you don’t know my love yet.”  “Like u know mine?” “At least I din’t leave anyone or spreading rumours that I had some reasons which even God doesn’t know.” “You are doing worse. By leaving that person there is a chance for them to recover and get over you.” “I am not giving the chance to him because he would need to get over me only when he would not be loved or cared by me. And the person I’m in love with, well, his memories are, somewhere buried in my coffin- shaped heart.  “You know the fact is, one doesn’t fall in love practically with someone after thinking and judging it hundred times. I didn’t fall in love intentionally. I pray to god everyday may my love for him goes away bcoz I don’t want to hurt the one with whom I have taken the seven holy steps. I love him, so  I can bear the pain but I don’t want him to take the pain of losing me.” “Tell me one thing honestly; do you love that person now? I mean the other person”  “Yes, certainly.” “Then why are you not going to him?” “Because I can’t hurt the one who waits every morning to see my eyes looking at him with love. That makes his day. I can’t hurt the person who pretends to be not interested in the cricket match so that I can see a show on History Channel. I can’t hurt the person who can go for a roller coaster ride with me, even when his spine aches, just to be a part of my happiest moment.” After a long silence she continued. Her moist eyes couldn’t look at him. “Let my true love remain unfulfilled.” “Are you sure it’s not infatuation...?” She smirked. “It’s been four and a half years. You think infatuation can last that long? You think just for some silly infatuation I am ready to sacrifice my life, my dreams, and my aspirations? Do you think I can spend sleepless nights, crying over him, just because I’m infatuated with him? Rather without being sure whether it’s infatuation or love?” “Do I know him?”   “May be, maybe not. Why do you want to know?    “Maybe I know that this person can love you back.” “If he could, he would have loved me.” I think you should love a person who loves you and gives you time. You better try to leave the person who you cannot have.” “That’s the point. I  can’t love someone for any condition. Whether I’m loved by someone or hated by someone else, the feeling of love cannot change.” “So who do you love more?” She stopped stirring the coffee. The world paused. The echo of his voice, of the question, hit her heart. When she lifted her eyes from the bubbles on the surface of the coffee to his eyes, which were burning her soul, drowning her lungs, helpless, she said, “The one who never loved me.”

Silence Broken

I won't charm you with my words. I'll say what I feel.

When your mind and heart works simultaneously, you become powerful, strong and brave enough to take the right decision. You realize immediately how you should act. And that's when I realized that if you can't be the reason for someone's happiness, you shouldn't be the reason for someone's sadness. 

The dilemma of the heart is settled by the mind and the mind provides the heart with flawless just reasons to make you act in a way that makes the complex situation simple.

Apparent wounds disappear with time. Visible injuries turn out to be mere fabrication of our prolific mind....The scornful blame comes from the opposite side, but only the honest one knows that there is nothing wrong in being honest and acting out of goodwill and not selfishness.

Love is not a favor or a kindness. It's a feeling which one can feel any day, any moment. It may not come with an expiry date, but it is not unlikely for it to have one.

“Love you forever” is a mere term, sells well with a 'forever' tag.. But when we humans are not the creatures of eternal survival, with what conviction should we have the right to tag it with a “forever" term?  Rather it would be a mildly selfish principle to wrap the feelings with other obligations like "yours forever", “not anyone's but mine", "tell me no lies", "only care about you", and the list goes on.

Isn't it selfishness when a human being as vast as ocean, the highest consciousness, the temple of kindness and love, confines itself to one person, and is deprived to fulfill the greater human purpose of carrying a badge of humanism, friendship, liberation and compassion?

Just like everyone else, I was born alone, and will die alone, but what is important is whether I could live alone or not. It's not an easy task. I know only of a few great seers and philosophers who have done this. But being alone doesn't always mean complete isolation from the world or nature or knowledge. For it is in there that we realize who we truly are..But in certain critical phases of your life, you need an interval to contemplate  and speculate the course of your life, your spiritual progress.And if you feel that something couldn't help you in the betterment of the soul, but rather in the deterioration of the spirit, you immediately take charge and change the course of your life to the right direction. And this "being alone" as you may call it is not running away  from the stage. Standing alone is not a choice but a decision.  

sometimes you have to "stand alone" to prove that you can still stand.

Midnight Crisis

And now at nights, lonely and  daunting, intimidating and frightening, I'm scared to go to sleep.Scared to think, scared to dream.The transcendence from the waking state to the sleep state has become a tedious job, a temporary abuse inflicted to my eyes, and my mind.I stay awake till my eyes  shut themselves off naturally. But till then I keep on doing something. The idleness of the mind, the isolation  from real world, the withdrawal from amorous and erotic urges, and the deprivation from warm, jovial conversations, has put a halt to my happiness.I take refuge in a book, or music or in a social networking site.

There is a desperate desire boiling in me.I want to talk.The silence of the heart is eating me slowly.Even though I don't have anything to say, still I want to talk.But I cannot. Just like I cannot cry anymore as the tears have all dried up within me.  I have gravely become a cold-blooded creature : remorseless,relentless, and heartless. 

The incurable melancholic person has no place in the crowd. The rejection does not come from the crowd itself, but is consciously chosen by the melancholic person. In my case, I am a radical melancholic person. I find gloominess in every face, despair in every place and constantly judging the lack of glee in them. I criticize even the less taken road for being untrodden by many or for not having too many trees to  accompany them. And most of the times there intense and sombre gloominess seizes my heart and  pours the same into it. And I can feel the clutches of black blood running within me...

The grip of darkness brings desperation in my inmost soul. And the only solution comes with the end, end of it all. The end of this amusing incongruous body.

  

I try to shrug off this melancholy disease that consumes me everyday, slowly enough to keep me alive for a long time, but spreading itself everywhere to grow, spread and reproduce. Each generation is like a new sorrow. With each new generation of melancholy, my moods change colour and I fall prey to their hungry hearts.But all my relentless efforts  exhaust and fail. Depression wins over high spirits, and despair conquers the throne of bliss.

Morality comes with many relatives

Just like our relatives are relative, short,tall, lean, fat, geek, genius, retards, morality is also relative, based on customs and a long tradition of selfish endeavor to preserve ourselves. What is right in one community, might sound horrible to another. Today our reason might say, killing your boss is wrong, but after a few years, killing your boss can be the ultimate test for your survival in a corporate office.

Well, the important historical  story that I want you to know goes like this : Emperor Darius, the king of Persia once, summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the presence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so that they could understand what was said, he asked some members of the tribe of India called Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing.

So, if I ask you today what is so wrong in eating the dead bodies of your parents, after all scientifically they are just nothing but atoms ? Well, seems like a kind of habit decides what to do, in us. What we have not seen before or done before, neither have seen others doing it, becomes a moral principle for us to some extent. Yes, I said to some extent because other things like our mental constitution, power of reasoning also plays some role. But reason itself is relative and can be faulty too, for reason is based on our experiences. 

Killing animals might seem wrong to you, but uprooting plants(who are scientifically alive too) might be wrong according to me.And there can't be any sufficient reason to prove the other wrong. 

While morality enjoys the status of relativism and roams around in different clothes in different places, communities and cultures, our reason try to create a universal moral principle. But unfortunately even a universal moral principle cannot be created because we are confined only to a small world. When each human being  cannot be a part of every existing culture, morality too remains confined in the darkest depth of our mind.What was once a long history of tradition, now became somewhat an imbibed instinct in us. We kept what suited our life, dismissed what we thought might harm us our happiness.

So, how much should we judge our actions as right and wrong, moral or immoral, is a question of concern which our reason fails to answer.

Autowallah's Advice

Slide your jive, I won't mind as long as I'm entertained. I got in an auto whose autowallah was very talkative. The guy sitting next to him was a patient listener, as if he was lured to hear all that shit from him. Sometimes he nodded and reluctantly would say a "Hmmm"  But I can't blame the autowallah too, for he might be a lonely person without any friend. And as I can't control my senses, I sincerely put my ears at his service(without his knowledge, of course).Moreover, the loud pitch he was using to express himself would have required two pillows for me not to hear them. 

But before I got down from the auto, I heard one wise advice from him :

Always remember while driving,that the whole world is insane, the road before you is full of mad people, and only you are the one who still has his sanity intact among them. Any moment, any man, any car can come in front of you , so you gotta keep your eyes open and drive with  absolute focus.

Wondering why my driving school never provided me with such nice precautionary advices.

Silent Birthday Wishes

I know it in my heart, no matter where he is or what he does, he will always be happy, content and prosperous in life.Whether it's my misfortune or my incapability to wish him on his birthday today is not known to me; but what I know is that the helplessness that I'm going through at this moment is monstrous. It is not that he would really love it or be extremely happy to hear from me, but the question is not about him, but me. For my love is "useless" to him, and by keeping and accumulating that love within my heart for a long time, strained the heavy heart; heavy with the burden of love. The love grows on me like a parasite, but there is no sign of him. What is visible is only the love that is kept aside safely for him.

The consequence of not being able to (give) love is worse than the consequence of not being loved. 

As I'm denied of this liberty, I can somehow feel a sense of the meaninglessness of such beautiful days like today. Whether I wish him, or don't wish him, his outlook towards me would not change, and the irony is that he might feel disgusted, for being suffocated with the forbidden love of a woman who he extremely despises, whose mere thought might afflict him with a poisonous resentment, a kind of venom that ruins many lives.

However,God knows, that we human beings are not evil by nature, but just misunderstood.

The Notebook

I had heard frequent countless praises about the 2004 movie, The Notebook, which finally I watched today on DVD. There were two most beautiful scenes that touched my heart to a great extent. One of them is when Noah, takes Ally in a row boat to a lake which is flocked by hundreds of swans and suddenly rain starts to fall; it was then that their love ignited again.

And my second best favorite scene is when I saw them, the old Noah and Ally, at the end of the movie, sleeping together .....

It is one of those rare movies that reminds you that love is still the most beautiful and the only true entity in human life,and that true love never dies..