Silver linings

Ok…so it hasn’t been a good year! Contrary to whatever my facebook account or my “status” might pronounce, it hasn’t felt like a good year. It has had its highs, things that I discovered about myself, limits that I have pushed which I didn’t think I had it in me to overcome. Despite all of that, the way it looks like to me right now, it hasn’t been a good year.  That’s the weird thing about life right, it’s the bad things, things that get you down which leave an indelible mark on your memory, coming back to make you cringe and flinch when you are at your most vulnerable. In contrast, the best and happiest moments of your life are a struggle to hold on to, so fleeting and ethereal that you can’t really relive that experience try as you may. 

I’ve spent a greater part of this year, trying to take the sting off of many such negative memories and incidents in my life. To my credit, I’ve made enough progress to now know that these memories have power over me only because I choose to give it to them. They’ve lost their unchanging, doomsday quality, or atleast when I think logically I know they don’t have it. But it can get tiresome to keep reminding yourself that. Keeping them at bay can take a lot out of you and its no wonder then that the barrier gets weak and cracked once in a while. Finding myself at a crossroads in life right now, really makes the time ripe for all such time and energy consuming, but pretty often, pointless introspection. Its hard to live 30 years of your life and then have to confront the idea that you might have chosen a path that you never really liked or rather you only thought you liked because you were good at it. Being good at something and being passionate about something are two very different things and its scary as hell to realize that at 30 (almost 30) you are at best an amateur at what you think is your true passion. It might well happen that you might choose to pursue it and fail miserably! For someone who has always been good at studies and the like, dealing constructively with failure is something I have no practice with whatsoever. A fact that I have recently realized given the way my PhD has been going. Sometimes you get so busy keeping your options open and ensuring that there’s always a Plan B, that you lose sight of the fact that you never really did justice to Plan A in the first place. Backup plans become choices and before you know it, you get set on a comfortable and safe path. It’s a very well-disguised rut, a pattern that I am finding difficult to break out of. 

If I think about it a bit, I know that I am really fortunate in my circumstances. I have no real responsibilities, no one who is dependent on me, whose life gets affected by the choices I make. In fact, I am super lucky to have a superbly supportive family and friends who all are ready to even fight against me to ensure that I do what makes me happy. My head knows all these things, is grateful for all of these things. And yet, it does get difficult sometimes. I find myself going about my days a bit robotically, watching movies and serials to get my dose of that happy feeling. It’s not really apparent, no one outside my innermost circle would know of any of this internal struggle, but it’s there nonetheless. I know I’ll get out of it, but right now I have no idea of when or how that’s gonna happen. 

In the middle of all of this “introspection”, I was zapped out of my reverie the other day by a greeting on the road by someone I just knew by face. Despite the bad mood, I found myself automatically responding to that greeting with a smile on my face, a genuine smile. It wasn’t until after, that I fully appreciated what happened. I’ve been reading a lot of articles and hearing from people I know, their accounts of dealing depression, bipolar and other disorders. How difficult it can be for them to even have the will to get out of bed and sometimes at its very worst, what a struggle it can be just to keep from harming yourself bodily. Bad times and depression are something everyone encounters at particular stages in their life, there’s no getting around it. But being able to find it in you to smile, no matter what, is truly a blessing that I never fully appreciated.  It’s not something I can take credit for, its not a carefully cultivated habit or anything like that. It is just my default setting, something that I’ll always be able to do and for that reason, I am truly lucky. No matter what happens in the future, I know that as long as I can hold on to that smile, I’ll always make it through. And who knows, maybe our smile is just what that stranger on that road might need to get them through their day. So for all of you, who have this ability to smile, be grateful for it, cherish it and please share it wholeheartedly…..there is no gift more priceless!

Losing yourself

Its been a tough week…a tough month….a tough year! So many changes, so many challenges, so many sincere attempts and oh so many failures. Don’t get me wrong….i didn’t write this to crib. I’ve had my fair share or more than that of good times. I found something precious I lost a few years back….fixed something in me that was broken for a long time and I couldn’t be more grateful. But I made a commitment 5 years ago, that I had told myself I need to honor. If not for anything else, then to prove that I don’t give up…..not without a fight anyhow. But there were many times I caught myself wishing so hard that I could just fast forward by 6 months and have it over with, this deadline that has felt like a ticking timebomb in my head. “I’ve been working hard haven’t I??” I’d say….. “hard as I possibly can. Why isn’t that enough?!! Why cant the world think well of me because I tried….why should I have to succeed and look good?!!” Not that any of that was imposed on me….it was baggage I had chosen, subconsciously though it may have been and I have been carrying it around for what seems like forever. Well its almost the end…..a big battle has gone by….I survived to tell the tale….and I stand here on the other side….wishing I could get a time out. But unfortunately there is no such concept in the real world!!! And so i trudge on….with all the grace of a war hero called back from a well-deserved vacation!! As you can probably tell from the mood…….it hasn’t been a very good day. Despite the recent success….I have felt today, so acutely, the pull of strings forcing me in different directions all at once. What I want to do, what I need to do, what the people I care for want me to do and so on. Felt like my head would split with all the noise inside….like these next few months would never end. I had a break all planned out and I didn’t know if i’d be able to enjoy it as I hoped. I didn’t know if i’d be able to shut off the voices in my head. And then I got what I was looking for…..oblivion….losing myself into the darkness of a cinema hall…plunged into the lives and hearts of two of the most beautiful characters I have seen in a long time! Laughed louder than I have in a long time…. cried like my heart would break, cant remember the last time that happened….and came out with the sense of privilege for having known two such wonderful people. Sahana pointed out to me, how i had felt for that story as much as I felt for real life….and I agree wholeheartedly. Its my special quality, weird idiosyncrasy…whichever way you’d like to see it. I can bawl my eyes out in a hall filled with strangers but find in difficult to cry when life is so hard, even with some of my closest friends. And despite all my limitations and weaknesses….I hope I never lose this…this sense of losing oneself in a story…of feeling and experiencing it in a way that makes it real…..so much so that your world and everything in it ceases to exist for that time….and the journey back to reality where u feel like u have lived and learned so much in such a short time! It’s a gift and I will cherish it all my life!

The Pursuit of Happiness Part II

Yesterday night, I reached my room at around 1am…totally exhausted and too tired to even cycle the whole way to the hostel and using music to keep myself up and about. But just as I reached my room, one of my favourite dance numbers came on, and I ended up dancing to not one but 4 songs back to back. BY the end of it all, lots of my joints were aching, I knew I would definitely have a tough time getting any work done the next day….and yet I was completely and totally blissful. For those twenty minutes I was a perfect version of myself, I didn’t have a single negative thought in mind (getting thoughts out of my head is almost an impossible task…..like getting Geet from Jab we met to stop talking!!!).  It was just me and the music and in that moment it was perfect!!

I have tried for a long time now to infuse this kind of enthusiasm for dance in the people around me. Trying desperately to get them to see the kind of joy they were missing out on by not giving themselves to dance. Then yesterday I realized, that I couldn’t possibly hope to succeed because this point of view is not something that is logic bound, it is just something that is inherent in me and so it works for me. And in the meantime, there are probably many equivalent things out there which others may like but I just don’t get!!

So here’s my proposition. I would like to know, what is it that makes you happy. I’m not asking what yo or others might think you are good at, I don’t care if you are pathetic at that activity, all I am concerned about is how happy it makes you feel. It could be anything ranging from reading, writing, running, staring out into space, sleeping or even doing nothing!! If it connects with something deep inside you, makes you feel alive, makes you feel happy, then I would like to know! You might wonder what I might gain from this. Even though I am just asking you to talk about an activity, in essence I am asking you to tell me about something that is very close to your heart. And through this, I’d like to gain some insight….find a new perspective at looking at the things around me, maybe even come to love it like you do. But most importantly it’ll allow me to get to know you a little bit better. This blog has been that for me, a process in learning things that matter to me the most, maybe putting it into words might help do the same for you!

So here’s what you do, either comment on this blog post or email to me (reply to all is also an option if you so wish) telling me up to 3 things that love doing the most and what makes you love it so much. And secondly I would like to know what long term goal (if any) you might have related to them…. might be learning something new about them, taking a course or even teaching it, or just making sure you continue to keep in touch with it as the years pass by. I know I am asking a significant amount of your time (hence the weekend mail!!) and there is no compulsion to reply to it either. But if you do decide to reply. You will have atleast one very interested reader guaranteed!! :)

Yeh Jawaani....

Yesterday, I watched Yeh Jawaani hai Deewani….for the N^th time! :P I’ve spoken to a lot of people regarding what they felt about the movie and have received reviews ranging from horrible, same old story to one-time watch. The only person I know who feels the way I do about the movie is Sahana (God bless her for that!!). We’d both decided that we’d stop trying to debate with people about the movie. Nothing we could say would change their opinion of it….if they didn’t feel it from within then there was nothing we could do to make them see things otherwise! Though that still holds true…after watching the movie again yesterday I couldn’t resist just making one last  attempt at telling people why the movie is special to me.

From the time that we are born, the world is eager to figure us out and categorize/label us. Good girl, bad boy, naughty, obedient, topper, back-bencher, rebel, tomboy, idiot, good-for-nothing….the list is pretty endless and I’m sure all of us have had one or the other label applied to us. Most of the time, people don’t think twice about such labels. But sometimes, as kids, these labels become our identity. People tend to expect certain things from us and we in turn get used to meeting those expectations. The label becoming, not only a self-fulfilling prophecy but also, a self-limiting one. Those boundaries that people lay down for us can sometimes be too difficult to cross and we remain enclosed in this shell of others’ perception of us.  Naina’s story is not too different from my own….someone seen to be this studious girl who was happiest with her books, but who was actually in part hiding behind them. A girl aching to go out there, be brave and  do adventurous fun stuff…but no one, not even her parents, expect her to be interested in any of that and so no one ever asks. That mixture of loneliness and regret….the feeling of life slowing slipping by without you ever having truly lived a moment of it….I can imagine how she must’ve felt, why she’d wanna run away from her life, if only for a few days.

And then comes along Bunny. Most people think its pretty clichéd, Naina’s transformation to this cool chick as soon as she meets a cute guy, but things go much deeper than that. Its very difficult to explain what it means to find someone who sees you for all you can be, when you can’t see it yourself. Who likes and accepts you just as you are, giving you that confidence and freedom to truly open up! And Naina did the same thing for him… saw beyond his antics and humor, to the passion and drive that was at his core. Its no wonder then that they forged a bond that lasted through the years. For once, I felt the treatment of the story was far from clichéd. The maturity that characters like Naina and Aditi show are something you rarely get to see. No wonder then, that with such loving and caring people around him, that Bunny makes the big leap….quitting his dream job, not for a girl, but for himself. Because he finally had the courage to face the fact that circumstances had changed him, changed his dreams, his priorities.

This movie has brought me a whole lot of joy, whether its the songs, ranbir’s awesome dancing, the humorous dialogue or some of those lovely moments between the 4 key characters. To me, it feels real and close to  my heart. Ayan Mukherji has done a fantastic job of bringing back memories of friendship and love. A different story….probably not, but certainly well made. A story not just about deewani jawaani, but of growing up. It’ll be my “Happy Movie” for a while to come! :)

Pursuit of Happiness

If anyone were to ask me, what is the one thing that always makes you happy….the unequivocal answer would be dance and music….of course you might consider that as two different answers, but for me one cannot exist without the other!! No matter what condition I am in….how down in the dumps…dance is one thing that has always lifted my spirits. Whether its watching a dance show on television (rather laptop these days) or actually dancing to a song, dance in all its forms is a constant source of joy. In fact it is the one thing that I don’t think I can ever give up in my life. Even if the only way I manage to keep in touch is shaking a leg while cleaning up my room, it would still mean a lot. In fact, me not responding to music is a sure shot way of confirming that I am no longer alive, irrespective of whether I am still breathing or not. It is the one thing I know I could never give up on….non-negotiable condition, so my husband (whoever that  poor soul is) had better make his peace with it.  

Thankfully, along with loving dance, I also seem to dance pretty decently by normal standards (was going to write "or so I’ve been told" ….but I think I know this much for sure whether or not people agree!!). I’ve learnt classical for quite a while and one of my cousins seriously felt that I should take it up professionally. It’s a notion that I toyed with for a while, still do in fact in a very “what if” kind of way. But in the end, I realized it wasn’t worth the risk! Now don’t get me wrong, by risk I am not referring to the lack of security in the arts stream and all such practical notions. Even though all those considerations are very valid, in today’s day and age, there is a lot of opportunity out there. If you are good, there is a place out there for you! But that is the condition, if you are Good!!! Considering everything, I knew I was a good dancer, but I also knew that I had a lot of work to do to get anywhere close to being a professional. It would mean a lot of hard work and a lot of competition too! To tell you the truth, that is what decided it for me. Ever since I can remember dance has been my escape….the place I go to when the pressures of the world start to get to me. Studies, exams…all these things were always a source of tension no matter how good I was at them. But when I danced, I was free from all of that. I went to class for the pure joy of learning, reveling in appreciation when it came my way, but happy nonetheless. If I took the plunge, decided to take my dance to the next level, I would now be subjecting myself to the pressures of succceding even in dance…..it would be an exam all over again. I’d risk losing the enjoyment that I derived from dance under the pressure of excelling at it.....and thats a risk I just don’t want to take! 

People say the best way to be happy in life is to make your hobby your profession, and I completely agree with it. That would be the ideal situation!!! But sometimes, I feel it might be too much to expect of your hobby/passion to make you happy as well as meet all your other needs!! Not all of us are talented enough  or driven enough to make that dream come true. And sometimes, there are just some criteria which are not in your control, things that cannot be acquired by any amount of hard work…whether it’s the voice quality of an aspiring singer, or the body structure of an aspiring dancer…somethings are not in our hands. But that shouldn’t stop us from pursuing those things, just maybe not professionally. So do something you like, that you are good at or can excel at….earn a living, be comfortable…and make damn sure that you leave enough time for the things and the people you love the most. May not be the best way to happiness, but its close enough for me! :)

Justice....really???

Was just reading a post by a solitary confinement prisoner, William Blake(Voices from solitary: a sentence worse than death). He was convicted of murdering 2 police officials in an attempt to escape and was sentenced to 77years of imprisonment, of which he's spent 25 years in solitary confinement and has quite a few decades more to go! He goes on to describe in chilling detail the life in solitary confinement, deprived of all friendly human contact, completely cut off from everything in the world...left only with the mind-numbing emptiness of your cell and worse yet inside you. How the author has managed to hold on to sanity and hope for so long is incomprehensible to me!!! Reading his essay was so difficult, I can't even imagine living a day of his life....even if i knew that it was just for a day. Knowing that this was a life sentence, never-ending, would have driven me crazy and bereft of the will to live. What manages to drive the writer to get through each day is just beyond me!!

He points out, quite justifiably, that what he has been through is far worse that any number of death sentences in any form!! That no matter how horrible his crime, this form of cruelty was unacceptable. It got me thinking about this whole system of punishment in itself. I can understand that nothing can take away from the severity of the crime he has committed. The loss of their loved one is something those police officials' families are gonna have to live with for the rest of their lives....living out a life sentence of their own in a sense. Snuffing out a life and saying "sorry...it won't happen again" just doesn't cut it. If i were in their place, I'd probably be screaming for revenge and retribution....that the killer should suffer as much as he made his victims suffer. I get all that....atleast theoretically. But that isn't truly what the justice system is about is it?

While its true that the system ensures that we are accountable for our actions, and that we pay for our crimes, its also in essence trying to instill a sense of responsibility in the criminal in the hope of reforming him/her. While noble in intent, I am not so optimist as to think that every criminal can be reformed. Whatever might have been the motive, whatever might have happened in the criminal's past to drive him to such cruelty....there comes a point where you cannot forgive...where you say that no matter what...this is unacceptable!!! I guess that is when you hand out a death penalty to someone....not only with the hope that of reform for that criminal or for the peace of the victim's family but to ensure that you deter anyone else from committing such a heinous crime. In that sense, I can accept the existence of a death penalty!! But when I read about things like solitary confinement....that too for such prolonged periods, it just seems so pointless!! Something so inhuman couldn't possibly have any justification could it?? It sounds more like something entirely born out of hatred and anger!!! I wonder if it gives any comfort to the victim's family knowing that the killer is suffering such hell every moment....or whether the criminals out there even know that such a punishment exists or how bad it actually is. Most of these prisoners probably just go mad in there and die a horrific death. or else come out as irreparably broken men. Does anyone gain anything of measure from the existence of such a punishment?? Or is it just the sadistic pleasure that a few get out of subjecting someone to unimaginable torture....because we can?? Nothing very noble about that! In fact, practically speaking, precious tax-payers' money is probably being wasted on feeding and housing these men for life....who are no good to anyone alive, rather no one wants or hopes of any good to ever come out of them!!!

Maybe there is some important point that I'm missing here....maybe there is a side of this story I just haven't heard yet, a reasoning that would make some sense. It would be easy to write such an account and play on people's sentimentality to win popular sympathy and support. I would be glad to stand corrected but until I know better, I continue to say that this just isn't right!!