Tag: absinraw

  • “कौन हो तुम” – Poem

    “कौन हो तुम” – Poem

    कौन हो तुम?
    जो बांधते हो मुझे मेरी ही पौराणिक छवि से
    और दागते हो आज ये सवाल
    कि क्या मैं मैं हूँ कि नहीं?

    कौन हो तुम?
    जो मेरे सवालों के मेरे ही जवाबों को
    अपने सवालों की कसौटी पर कसते हो
    ये कहते हुए कि तुम तो ऐसे थे नहीं?

    कौन हो तुम?
    जिसके अपने अज्ञात सत्य की तलाश
    मेरे अर्धसत्य में निहित है
    परन्तु इसका मुझे कोई ज्ञान नहीं?

    कौन हो तुम?
    जिसका अंधविश्वास कायरता की बुनियाद पर
    मेरी दिशा को दिशाहीन ठहराता है
    और मेरे विश्वास को मारी हुई मति?

    कौन हो तुम?
    जिसकी डगमगाती नींव को
    मेरे प्रश्नों से कम्पन महसूस होती है
    और मैं ज्ञात होता हूँ शत्रुरूपी?

    कौन हो तुम?
    क्यूंकि जो भी हो तुम
    मेरे दोस्त, कदापि नहीं।

  • MY RELATIONSHIP WITH CHANGE

    MY RELATIONSHIP WITH CHANGE

    Recently, my relationship with a certain word has been in a difficult position. I thought it had mended after struggling for so long over the years, but was found otherwise. The word is “change”.

    My journey to reach where I stand currently has been quite long. I started from being the boy who wanted a few constants in his life forever, and then I was the wreck, who seethed at the state of those constants after almighty time shaped them beyond familiarity then. Finally, I was able to understand that the “not so familiar” constants then, were not the only part of the equation that determine the changes. It took me quite some time to accept, that I changed too, which also changed the equation, making those constants more distorted than they were. Only then I was able to make my peace with the changing relationships with the people around me. With the fact, that how a friend for whom I switched a school once, is now a friend whose profile I find at times in my IG while scrolling. Or the girl for whom I travelled 400 km in a day once, is now someone I accidentally skipped wishing on her b’day. I am not saying that all these changes happened because of them or me. Change happens due to multiple reasons, but we are one of those reasons too. So when things start to feel not the same, the first thing that needs to be checked is us.

    Before diving more into it, I need to clarify a basic thing which many times people assume about change. Change is neither good nor bad. Change is change, like a fact. The outcomes of it are what hit people differently. And because the outcomes have their relevance aligned with the people they impact; they can be molded by those people themselves. If tomorrow rain occurs in the middle of the advent of summer, which would be a change, its outcome to someone like me who travels daily would be pleasant weather to ride my bike in, but for a farmer who was waiting to harvest his/her crop over somewhere else, would possibly cry tears of blood. So the question that asks to be answered here is, how blaming the change can be the solution to the problem if the outcome depends on who took the impact? You cannot control the change. What you can control is always the outcome.

    Coming back to my difficult relationship with change, it has been in this state due to the perceived meaning and notion around it. My life currently has a lot of factors that have contributed to the changes occurring in it. These changes are as varied as an increase in my curiosity about the social scenarios around me, to being in a relationship with an amazing person, to changes at work, and many more. These changes are connected through many different threads with different outcomes for me and people affected by me. As the outcomes differ for everyone, the impact they have on everyone is different too. But the difference between outcomes and changes are not very clear in the eyes of people, which has put all the burden the outcomes were supposed to carry, on the changes themselves.

    Tell me honestly, if you never have been a part of a similar conversation, when a person in your group has recently started seeing someone, as a result of which they spend less time with you, and the talk that happens in the group is, “Since they have been in the relationship, he/she is changed. He/she doesn’t even hang around much.” The simple outcome, which was the lack of availability of the person, which due to any reason was an issue, is directed instead to the change. Even I have been a part of such conversations. Change is crucial to be understood to deal with the outcome, but that’s where the role of the change ends. It’s the outcome that needs to be addressed. At times there are some outcomes that can only be modified if the change itself is modified, or is changed itself, even then, the process has to be the same.

    My relationship with the word started straining when the people around me, especially the ones closest to me, started negating the fact that the outcomes that they are being affected by, are not due to the changes, or me, but them. This stressed relationship between them and the outcomes is being transferred to my relationship with the changes, knowingly or unknowingly. It is also having different kinds of impact on me, both short term and long term, making me question if what I am doing is enough, where I do not even know what I am supposed to do. I find myself consistently defending the changes I am proud of, and that is not a healthy thing at all. When I start thinking about it from a third person’s perspective, it terrifies me to imagine what others would go through in the same scenario. I deem myself to be a pretty confident person, but I find myself questioning my own decisions and what other possible paths I could have taken, leading to even questioning if the changes in question are right for me in the first place. It is like carrying a burden that is not even yours, for no reason, and it is not helping anyone.

    Which brings us to another question, to what extent are you responsible for mending the relationships of the people around you with the outcomes of the changes? This question does not have a simple answer, still to put it in a statement addressing the utmost priority, I would say, to the extent beyond which it does not have any deteriorating effect on you. You can only help someone if you are in the right headspace. With that sentiment taking top priority, there is no expiry date to the duration or maximum capacity barrier to the load you can offer support to. It requires patience and self-belief to navigate through it.

    This piece was a part of therapy for my relationship with the changes in my life that I needed to put into a proper perspective, and I think it has solved its purpose. For anyone who reads it, I would like to urge you to keep asking yourself about the distinction and work towards outcomes of the changes, so that you and people around you could absorb changes, as they intend to be. After all, change is the only constant in this world.

  • MOTTO FOR THIRTY

    MOTTO FOR THIRTY

    We can breakdown the lifecycle of a person, based on how we expect certain age numbers to mark as a shift in the state of our being. Like, hitting the 18-year mark and expecting the world to take you more seriously, legally. Or that 60-year mark, when your life starts to steer away from the road you have taken all your life and veer into these newer, greener pastures. I think the 30-year mark is the most transformative of the three.

    The 18 year marks the explosive outpour of the youthful energy when you are ready to take the bull by its horns. Whereas the 60-year mark is the goodbye to an old friend, a life long-lived to achieve something you sought, moving on to the new chapter, one filled with fulfilment, contentment and what follows next. But 30-year mark is all about a crucial junction of both; that justifies the person you were at 18 and defines the person you will at 60.

    Being 30 is chalking it out, the tentative plan of your life based on what you have accumulated till now, be it money, career, family, friends, or if nothing else then experience. Your eternal spring of youth now knows its depth. Your excitement knows better than poking some of the beehives that you would have confidently pelted stones at, at 18. You are not there yet and know that the journey is not going to be as breezy or beautiful as you thought it would. You are ready to accept it for what it is, with all of its flaws, and plan to make the best out of it. Being 30 is about acceptance.

    No, I am not 30 yet. I still have a year to go. But trying to understand what lays ahead always takes me back to what all went by. Only by retracing it all I will be able to figure out the way forward. So, with the timer started, I have exactly a year left to figure it all out, or maybe to accept all that has been figured out till now.

    Hence, this year is about fine-tuning my acceptance of situations around me. To address them, acknowledge them, and let it all breathe. Among the long list of things that needs to be wrapped up and tied with a neat bow to achieve it, one thing that’s going to be tricky is the abrupt endings.

    I realised today while talking to my friend that the people who enter your life, the ones with whom you make memories, fall under three categories:

    • The people who continue to be in your life.
    • The people who phased off your life organically.
    • The people who are not in your life anymore.

    The best thing about people who stick with you for long enough is that they stick with you through thick and thin. The years you put under your belt do convert into some amazing relationships, no matter the distance or frequency. Yes, the underlying assumption is the fact that they should be good humans, but I have been lucky in that department. I have friends from all spheres of my life, who have stuck by with me. If we calculate the dissociative tendencies I exuberate at times, I cannot take any credit in this department other than the fact that I tried keeping honesty at the plinth of each of these relationships. No matter how hard the going has gotten, no matter what they wanted to hear, if I have been asked for my honest opinion, I have told them the truth without holding any punches. Maybe it is the trust that has generated from this fact, that it’s not as if I won’t lie to them, but I sure will not if I am asked not to. You not only live your memories with them but also keep creating new ones on the go.

    Then there are people who belong to an alternate timeline now. You have been very close to them in the past, but due to situations, transitions, life in general, you end up phasing away from each other’s universe. Your fondest memories of them, are the recollections that always bring a smile to your face. It always feels as if the entire thing happened a few days, months, maybe years ago, but the truth is that your memories are of your school age, and they are having kids now. You have lived very different lives from those times, are most probably different human beings altogether now, but it fails to deter that smile, that fondness or that warmth that accompany those memories. You know if you cross your paths with them again, all it will take is just a smile to rekindle that warmth from the embers long-forgotten underneath the slumber of the life that happened.

    At last, the ones who have gone, the abrupt endings. You are not talking to them anymore. You may or may not know why. They are people who couldn’t stick and couldn’t phase away. You fell apart at some point, due to reasons known or unknown, but they are defined by the fact that you do not know where you stand with them. If there has been a person that has been close to you ever and is not anymore, and they did not belong to the above-mentioned categories, just put them here. Mostly you will find those people here whom you wish could have moved to the “phased off organically” category. You are in a dilemma because you do not know where they stand in your list, or where do you stand in theirs. When a memory with them hits, you smile, which converts into a frown a few minutes later, wondering what happened. Even if you know what happened, you wonder, if that was supposed to be it? There are some people who are easier than others to shift from this category into the other two. And then there are people who are to be figured out.

    I think my form of acceptance will be complete if I would be able to have zero inventory in the third category. No, it is not going to be easy. Yes, it is going to venture into some territories that might even open pandora’s box. But the best part about communication is that it is two-sided. One-sided communications are just attempts, that are harmless if not replied to. Rather than taking these attempts as an attack on your ego, you should be thankful for the fact that at least you tried, and that was what it meant to you, worth a shot. So you can move on, with a ball in their court. Anyhow, you will have an answer to your question the next time your mind plays a memory of them. If you are lucky enough, you will rediscover some amazing people that were lost as life happened, due to wrongly translated emotions, burdened expectations and situations. Worth a shot?

    As I prepare to enter into my 30s with a year to spare, I want to be ready to be accepting enough for what my future holds, with the confidence that can come only by accepting what my past was. Acceptance about the people you have or have had in your life is just one of the many domains in which acceptance is required. It comes in different variants like your career, your family, life goals, even the meaning of life in general. But these are not the answers I am seeking. Maybe you are, and you should.

    I just want to be ready, so that if I decide to take the bull by its horns sometimes post 30-year mark, I also remember to let it breathe a little and flung me upside down for a while too. After all, it’s my friend for this lifetime, life itself.

  • TO THE BUTTERFLIES IN THE STOMACH

    TO THE BUTTERFLIES IN THE STOMACH

    Dear Butterflies,

    Long time no see!

    I thought you all moved to someplace else, because it had been quite some time since I last heard from you. I was confused then, struggling to understand whether the absence was good or bad.

    I still am, about your return.

    No matter how much I enjoy the fleeting feeling of nervousness that zaps through my body like a jolt from fingers to toes, it’s hard not to notice the companions that seek you. I don’t blame you for them, but you all did hang around with”uncertainty” and “rejection” all day long in the past. You definitely have attracted some bad company in the past, and I can still see their faces lurking out just outside the gates.

    It always puts me in a difficult position, because I really enjoy being with you all. I always find a different side of myself in your presence, a much happier side. But I also hate to see you rush away as soon as those guys show up. Past mistakes are hard to wash away at times.

    I wish I was strong enough to stand up against them earlier, but they were strong, and ruthless. Now, I think I can deal with them, but putting you into the mix changes things. I don’t think I am capable enough to save you yet. If I decide to stand up for you, we both will suffer.

    So even though it was a thrill to meet you after so long, I think you should go back. It’s not safe for you yet. Maybe you should not pay me a visit for a while. Let’s maintain the distance for mutual safety and non-exposure to your street-side romeos.

    I hope the time comes when I’ll be strong enough to welcome you back and to protect you. Till then, just be alive.

    I’ll find you, I guess.

    Yours,

    Absinraw

  • “TWO SECONDS” – Poem

    “TWO SECONDS” – Poem

    It’s funny how you find yourself
    in the same space,
    again and again,
    until the umpteenth time,
    when it is not funny anymore.

    When the rhetorical questions
    don’t have answers.
    When you seek
    those two seconds
    where you can pity yourself,
    because you have to be strong otherwise.

    When you know
    you are not running in circles,
    but each turn seems to be familiar.
    The thought of a life
    that is going to play itself
    just the way you know it would,
    scares you.

    Just two seconds
    before you close the doors
    on your screams,
    you let your voice loose,
    even if nobody hears it.
    Afterall, it is better
    than people choosing
    to ignore it knowingly.

    All this, in the hope
    that your legs will not let you down
    as soon as you put your weight on them,
    to run away somewhere else.

    Maybe somewhere unfamiliar.
    Maybe somewhere unpredictable.
    Maybe a new home.