Series of Freudian Slips

This is my Blog Post number 163, but just the second and the last one for this year. When I started blogging, I couldn't place my finger on what I wanted to write and why. I just wanted to write ...that's it. About Life, my experiences, the music I listen to, The poetry I read, The ghazals I live with.  It started in 2009 but somehow could preserve posts only after 2011. Anyway, today's blog is about the Freudian slips in this year and thoughts which have been bubbling in my head. The one reason I didn't write many blogs this year also is "Fursat". I started this Poetry session last year and it did give me a very different perspective into the poetry I read and write. I did write quite a bit of poetry this year. A lot of my Freudian slips did find their eventual outlet in those ill rhymed couplets. Blogs, do however have their own charm. I try and weave my thoughts with some poetry and one song. As I do every night, I feed my ears ghazals on loop till I get to sleep. Last night, these lines by Farhat Shehzad, made me think, why am I not writing anymore...

अंधे ख्वाबों को हकीकत का तराजू दे दे, मेरे मालिक मुझे मेरे जज़्बात पे काबू दे दे .....

सब के दुःख सिमट जाए मेरे सीने में, बांट दे सबको हंसी,  ला मुझे आंसू दे दे ....

Today's blog is about the three Freudian slips ; 

The Myth called "Time": I try and travel to Himachal once every three months, Primarily to absorb some energy at the Chintpurni Temple in Una. I sometimes take a flight to Chandigarh or take an overnight train to Himachal. Trains do make me very nostalgic though. Every time I am at a train station, I get very nostalgic, like nothing has changed. I often get flashes that I am still a teenager or a 22-year-old of 1992, frantically running around on platforms, boarding trains, buying Gulshan Nanda Novels & Osho Books at the AH Wheelers stalls, looking for a Chai stall, using my quick scan abilities at the reservation charts board. But the realism sets in a few minutes. A lot of these are things of past. Stations don't have Good chai, hardly anyone reads books. I do get these "flashback" attacks a lot. When I listen to some songs like "Main Naa Bhoolunga" or go to Sodabottleopenervala and they play "Jaanu Meri Jaan", I wonder if time does "pass". We pass, I pass, We move and when we die its called he/she "passed away". Is Time moving or we are moving, just like the feeling in a train when the train next to you starts moving, you get an illusion that your train is moving.  I am often blamed to be "living in the past", Truth be told, I don't see that as past.  I just have deeper and more prominent memories. Anyway, on my way back from Chintpurni this time, I was early at Amb Station, good three hours early.  The train I take has half a coach of 1st AC, three cabins and rest is 2nd AC. It is usually unoccupied until I am asleep and till train reaches Nangal. This time was different. My cabin had three other occupants. 3 people, in their late 20s, early 30s, all FCI employees, who had come to attend a marriage. As the train moved on, we had the usual exchange of conversations and they realized, staff knew me well and I was familiar with the journey. The conversation soon moved to good old days, I was reading a book by Baba Fareed and hence the discussion went to Old vs New. In a few hours, I was able to see myself on both sides of the conversation. When I was that age, how I thought and spoke and how I am today. Nothing had changed. Deep Inside, I am the same person, calendars, clocks and time is a concept man-made. I feel, emote and react the same way. Inflight entertainment has lots of old movies, whenever I am in transcontinental flights, I always see movies like, Lamhe, Kabhi Kabhi, Trishul, Arth, Aandhi, Ghar, Gol Maal and still relish it exactly the way I did, when I saw them first.  May I didn't relate to Virendra Pratap Singh (Viren ) played by Anil Kapoor as much as I do now. Subconsciously we become what we chase. Its possible "Time" as we know is a myth. Do clouds age, do rivers age, do trees age, do rains have a mid-life crisis, do winds go through menopause?  I am, as a human, living this life which was initiated as a cosmic incident, well thought through but yet had a cosmic intervention. However the clock doesn't act as an appliance, the calendar isn't a guide, we live as a slave to these. appliances and guides. I like Karthik Poornima, last year and this year, on both occasions I was in Himachal. Will the Poornima change when I am not around, I often wonder, just like poetry, some things are not bound by time. This one by Nida Fazli ...

हर घड़ी ख़ुद से उलझना है मुक़द्दर मेरा, मैं ही कश्ती हूँ मुझी में है समंदर मेरा

एक से हो गए मौसमों के चेहरे सारे, मेरी आँखों से कहीं खो गया मंज़र मेरा

किससे पूछूँ कि कहाँ गुम हूँ बरसों से, हर जगह ढूँढता फिरता है मुझे घर मेरा

मुद्दतें बीत गईं इक ख़्वाब सुहाना देखे, जागता रहता है हर नींद में बिस्तर मेरा

आईना देखके निकला था मैं घर से बाहर, आज तक हाथ में महफ़ूज़ है पत्थर मेरा

Permeability and Emotional Promiscuity: In the last few years, maybe 8 or so years, I have often been thinking if I share too much, I wonder if  I am too easy to read. People would often tell me its so easy to fool me as its easy to make me follow the breadcrumbs they lay.  After a long time, I concluded on these two terms. I am very permeable, things travel into me easily. I absorb more light, more heat, more pain, more laughter, more wind, more music and more of everything around me. If I see pain, I feel pain a lot. A few months back. I see hurt people and I feel their pain. When I am in my cab to work, I often see school children on Bikes, sometimes shivering, scared and I feel their state of mind. I see frightened animals and I have mentioned a  few times that milk gives me so much guilt now, I wonder how much pain it may have been causing to the cow, whose existential purpose to make my tea taste different or be a  constituent of a  bread spread. I am also often been branded as a social flirt, its ok for me to face such things. To me, Humans nature fundamentally consists of two things, we are animals with social dependence, we can survive in solitude but we will thrive in a socially engaged set up. We thrive when we have healthy social networks, not necessarily a lot of social approval but yes a functional network. Second, we are capable of reasoning and that doesn't mean we are reasonable all the time but we can Reason on most occasions. To me, the primary purpose of human life is to use reason to enhance the social life of yourself and the people around you. In doing so, we meet lots of people, some by choice and some by social compulsions. I have also realized that my level of permeability leads to a high turnover of acquaintances, some turn friends, some turn themselves away. My personality, however, does react to the environment very strongly, I cut people away if they make me vulnerable. Sometimes I am loud and sometimes I am quiet. I sense and read the energy around me and I adjust. There are days and weeks, when I detest any social contact and find pleasure in just music or videos and somedays I do crave to meet new energies to validate or challenge my thought process. It's a new personality type I guess, Permeable, emotionally promiscuous introverted extrovert. Gosh, that's easy! 

हाल ऐ  दिल सबसे छुपाने मज़ा आता है, आप पूछे तो बताने में मज़ा आता है ...

जिसके कुछ तार उलझ जाते हैं दिल की सूरत, बस उसी साज़ पे गाने में मज़ा आता है ..

जान बचाने का तस्सुवुर भी बुरा लगता है, इश्क में जान गवाने में मज़ा आता है ....

याद कर करके वोह गर्मी की भरी दोपहरें, पहली बारिश में नहाने में मज़ा आता है ....

Get a Shawl or Give a Shawl: One of the important Hindu Rituals of death is to offer a shawl or a chunni or a sheet to the mortal remains, a few minutes before cremation. Everyone at the funeral is offered an opportunity to see the face of the departed soul one last time, pay homage, touch feet and empty their emotions. This is the last time one mortal remains are seen in that body foam. The remains immediately are then moved to the pyre and the cremation is then commenced. At the cremation ground, I often wonder, if that shawl is the last gift in a relationship. I also wonder if the people we love would even get to that ritual. Every time you answer a WhatsApp or meet or attend a call, its possible it is the shawl moment. Maybe this is the last time you are seeing them. I often wonder if people realize that all connects and disconnects cease to exist in the cremation ground. In this last year, I tried to mend a few burnt bridges with the hope that if I fall off one day all of a sudden and die and if I don't get to say something I haven't so far, It would be so wrong on my part. But some shawls have been given ....and some yet to be .....a few days back I read a Bulleshah verse ...

It means first you pluck flowers, turn them into perfumed oil, then make a river of that perfume and swim like a fish in that river. Even then your stench of "I" ego won't go away ...first remove the stench of "I" - The ego

फुलां दा तू अत्तर बना , अत्तरां दा फेर कड दरया , उस दरया दे विच तू रज्ज के नाहा , मछलियां वांगु फेरियां पा , फेर वी तेरी "बो" नहीं मुकनी , पेहलां अपनी "मैं मुका .....

and ....

इस क़दर उसका ऐतबार किया , टूट कर मैंने उसको प्यार किया ....
उसके आने की आस टूट गयी , मैंने खुद अपना इंतज़ार किया ...
वास्ता मेरा पत्थरों से रहा , रास्ता जो भी इख्त्यार किया ...
कुर्ब की कोई इन्तहा ना रही , अपने ज़ख्मों का जब शुमार किया ...

Today's song is another Freudian slip ...