I must have been 6ish this morning that I followed the compulsive and habitual ritual of checking the phone, for email, WhatsApp, Facebook and whatever else that would have happened in 6 hours of my sleep. The first news I stumble upon is Suhel Seth's wedding plans, Arjun Kapoor pictures with Malaika Arora and then Sushmita Sen's newfound whatever. I am usually not a Bollywood follower, my firm belief has been that Bollywood has very little to do with "fine" art, it is more a Diwali Mela of Jugglers and painted faces. I realised that the reason these three hookups were in the news because there was a considerable age difference between the two partners. As I switched to music, my first and last soul meal of the day , coincidentally it played, Kuch to Log kahenge , Logon ka kaam hai Kehna. Since I hadn't blogged for exactly a year, on Purpose. When people asked me why, my answer was, my blog is about what "I" feel and this "I" is not the "I" of Ego that I said "it". It is "I" of my original thought. Whatever I read, hear and watch these days is so "recycled" that I sometimes wonder why don't we think and write the real stuff we feel. Life is a cinema screen with a random script. I love a Shah Inayat verse it says...
Ilmoun bas kari oo yaar, Eko Alif terey darkar
(Enough of learning, my friend! An alphabet should do for you)
Ilm n awey wich shumar, Jandi umer, Nahi aytebar, Eko Alif terey darkar, Ilmoun bas kari oo yaar
(To it there is never an end, An alphabet should do for you, It’s enough to help you fend, Enough of learning, my friend!)
I relate to this verse a lot, sometimes too much information and Knowledge kill the innocence of our actions, we become theatre artists acting for the audience and we can't dance the way we feel like. Two years ago, around the same time, I had quit social drinking, because I realised, I didn't want a beer or scotch to stop acting/ pretending, I needed to stop acting, that's it. A lot of people I know need a drink to " be themselves" and even then they are just being a recycled version of a stand-up comedian, a character in a movie and an image their work or family expects them to be. I told someone I met for Chai on Thursday, In Bangalore, there is Ban on Plastic bags but not on Plastic personalities. There are so many "Tupperware" personalities around us. These People are colourless, odourless, scratch-resistant and just indestructible as Plastic. Nothing sticks, nothing stays. Going back to Suhel Seth, He isn't Plastic, he is like Mitti, we are all Mitti, I get drenched, I break, I absorb, I absorb the smell of what's in me but I am earthy. There are two kinds of People, Plastic and Mitti .. Suhel has always said what he felt like, some of which is under fire now but nevertheless, Happy for you Suhel Seth, You are a maverick.
Another related thought, One of the reasons why we are so "Selfie" obsessed as a civilisation is because we have three fault lines, One, We always have a superior image of ourselves, Two, We constantly seek approval of others and third, Humans acts like they are the most superior race on Earth. Yet unknown to mankind is the fact they act second to an entity elsewhere. All three convictions are absurd. Man is the biggest fluke of evolution and is on the path to self-destruct. Missiles won't kill them, Dengue will. On Point 1, I feel, Comparison is Cruelty to oneself and to others. There is No right and wrong, we always choose the lesser evil and that's it. We are still Hunters - Gatherers- Warriors and will remain so, what are people to people, if not co-travellers? Don't compare your journey with a co-traveller. On Point 2, Why do we seek approval? A songbird sings and ascends for himself. Joy fills his notes and elevates his wings. No other life form seeks approval of another. We ape more than apes ever did, in my view. On 3rd, how many life forms we rule, we kill animals for food, clothes, for fun, torture them to test medicines and cosmetics but don't forget to get a mosquito repellent or a cockroach spray. Just like mobile signals are real but unseen, their pain and suffering is a call to Universe. Every time I pour milk in my coffee, for a nanosecond I feel, how much pain this milk may have caused. We refuse to unlearn the conviction that we need to kill to survive. A lot of people ask me if I pray too much, to me, Prayer isn’t a feeble consolation. It’s an honest dialogue with the universe. That's it, sometimes I am heard, sometimes I am not. I do have strong faith, Faith is the bird that makes one soar even with clipped wings. To me, Humility is spirituality, Gratitude is spirituality. That's it. God is an abstract living being. He embodies the universe yet we relegate studying him solely within religions without seeing his omnipresence in daily life. I see him/her everywhere, in rain, in clouds, in kids, in ghazals, in tears and smiles.
But I do believe in a new thought, Timing is divine, there is divinity in serendipity, there are no coincidences in life. If people love me, hate me, curse me, there must be a divine reason for that and I leave it at that. Life is meaningful if you look for "wonder" or divinity in everything. My interest in life sustains its essence. We, for some odd reason, always wait for a better time ahead forgetting that ‘Now’ is all the time you have and in your control. Life isn’t about a single moment of ‘Eureka’ or a great realisation. Life isn't 11 mins of orgasm, it is cultivating a sustained release of happiness. Many trivial and significant moments come together to create a hype called ‘life’. Many useless incidences in life lead me to where I am today. Even though when I look back, they might have appeared to be really dreary, mundane and lifeless. I had fear and I realised that the fear was a figment of my own imagination yet I gave it fodder for survival. Fear wasn't real but seemed real.
I always used to wonder, which is one singular purpose of human life, is it the production and consumption cycle? A new simple thought has stayed with me. Let's be good tenants, to earth, to society and for the people around. The purpose of life is fulfilled if we leave people we meet in a better state they were in, emotionally, intellectually, socially, financially and physically. This is a simple yardstick, sometimes it will seem oversimplified but yes that's it.
Today's blog post was just a collation of trivial random musings, thoughts of a Melancholic Mind. I am learning to write again. I thought the quest in me to write a blog was dead and over, but I guess it wasn't over. in 48 years of life, 30 years of adulthood, this 28-year-old romance with Ghazals and Urdu Poetry, this last one year was unique and left its own mark on my persona. Its been a time to experiment with new, relish the old and in some ways, take a new turn. I experimented with " Fursat" met a few ghazal lovers like me, made some new friends and made it possible for some old friends to turn into foes. I finally started to take poetry writing seriously, wrote 2 nazms and some 30 plus couplets. A few days back I did an exercise, how many friends I have known in Life, listed all, "Ab Tak Gyarah" and what each one of them left me with. This post is a Thank you note for friends with a Capital F, You were awesome.
As always, one song/ghazal ... the lyrics below are NOT from the video or same as in Video...They are my version :)
गलत निकला जो बचपन में सुना था , सही किया लेकिन सही हुआ नहीं
ज़माने भर को मैंने गिरते देखा ,मगर वो नज़रों से मेरी गिरा नहीं
मुझे लगता था वो अपने ही जैसा , मगर वो राब्ता ऐसा हुआ नहीं
अगर कुछ कह दिया है तो बता दो , कहो क्या रह गया है जो किया नहीं
दुनिया भर की बातें उसने कह दी , जो सुनना चाहता था वोह कहा नहीं
अगर पढ़ने लगो तो फ़राज़ पढ़ना , बहुत शायर पढ़े , वैसा पढ़ा नहीं
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