Labyrinthe

You lay there paralysed on that mattress, lifelessly staring at some trivial spot on the wall or through the window, eyes open with vacant gaze yet shut down to all emotions, your body in the present moment but your soul disengaged, wandering aimlessly in the promenades of past, going through all the worst times, over and over and over, like a broken record.

Your brain, destined to be your masterpiece, now lays as a worthless glob in the vault of your head, functioning only to further add agony, thinking and overthinking about ‘whys’ and ‘whatifs’ and whatnots.

Plagued by immaterial thoughts and unanswerable questions, you are sucked into the vortex of misery, you make a labyrinthe out of your own thoughts, you complicate your own life and then you wonder why you can’t get out.

And your heart, too tired of all this, grows weaker and weaker. As you subject yourself to more pain, its strings take the impact of it all. And slowly and slowly, when it gets too much to handle, they break. They break one by one, until there’s nothing left. And your heart is too fragile to pump blood for your own body.

Is that what you’d do to yourself?

And then there’s nothing, your mind stops the crazy loop of thinking and overthinking and you, you don’t want to feel anymore, you are revulsed by the idea of being passionate or too intense.

And that is how you end up arriving to a vast stretch of numbness.

 

 

Midnight epiphanies.

You know what they say. You win some. You lose some.

You lose some friends from your life and for a significant amount of time you feel dreadfully hollow.

And then you make new friends that fill in their void and now you are no longer empty.

But I think that I’m tired of running away from the ghosts that people carry. I no longer want to be haunted by them or ignore their existence rather I want to be comfortable in their presence.

I want to look at those monsters, those vile creatures,  those demons right in the eye and show them that they do not horrify me.

That they do not affect me. That their existence does not change my perspective towards the people I have always loved,  before I knew of the burden they carried and I will always continue to love them, no matter what.

Because I know that I’m not shallow or judgemental.

That at times, I perceive through my heart and not my brain.

And I will always hate the sin, not the sinner.

limerence

you looked at me like crazy when i told you i want to bathe in chocolate. is that how much you love chocolate?, you had asked me. i smiled, the kind where my lips would always curve incomplete, and gave you a shrug as we lay down on the grass on a uphill slope gazing at the almost non existent stars in the sky. an inexplicable silence fell upon us. i turned my head and looked at you for one long minute but you were too engrossed in your thoughts as you peered infinitely at the jet black vastness spreading up above us. i then gently followed my gaze above too. and as i peered absentmindedly at the sky above, i wondered if you would ever know how passionate i could be about the things i love. but i never told you thinking that it would scare you off. i never told you a lot of things that went in my mind. and you didn’t said much about yours too. but sometimes you did. and you always believed that your thoughts were more messed up and everything in your life was much more complicated than mine. and i let you believe that. because i never let you get a whiff of what actually went inside my head, that there was a pandemonium, a mayhem, a frenzy beneath this calm exterior. but i never told you and so you always thought of me as a girl who’d had a simple life,  with everything planned out ahead. little did you know about my cacophonic thoughts playing brownian motion inside the walls of my head, contradicting every feeling i pretended to feel. but you, you thought of me as a neat girl who hadn’t seen the horrors of life or fell into the cataclysm of this world. but maybe you were true because the definition of them for you and me always differed. at least in my head. but i never told you that. and there were a lot more instances where you completely misread me. and i let you do that. and i still wonder why i ever did so.

but there’s never any answer. or the answer yet again is something i would only like to keep to myself. something, i always tend to do, keep things to myself.

and i wonder, if you ever knew me at all.

Why?

Why has the world become so superficial nowadays?

Is fat really the worse thing that can get?Does height really define the way you treat people?
Being popular is the only way to deserve respect?
Only those who have money can be happy?

Why are we putting such restrictions on our mind?

It is high time to ponder what good are we going to get classifying people based on their superficial qualities most of which are beyond their own control.

Do people really get to judge others that way?

Are we that vain?

Just because a person hasn’t been blessed with super fast metabolism or enough stamina to work the adipose tissue out of the body,  doesn’t mean that you get the right to look at them as someone beneath you.

Or just that their bones haven’t grown long enough according to your standards.

Or the fact that not everyone is blessed to be charismatic.

Or that not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

 

Is it that such people aren’t happy? Most of them are. Then why is society so repulsed with the idea of them.

 

Aren’t humans born to be a certain way? Not everyone has the same priority to become the slimmest or tall or famous or rich.

 

It is okay to have such things as priority. It’s totally okay to have your own thing, own mantra, own mindset about life, about the world. But it is definitely not okay to judge people that they don’t have the same mindset as yours, its not okay to be narrow minded enough to put in snide remarks and pass it off as a joke, it is not okay to deliberately hurt someone just because they are not up to ‘your’ mark.

 

Maybe some people put their time, effort and energy towards becoming kind, compassionate, generous, broad minded and open hearted that they do not have the time to bend their backs over other things, which for them are just superficial characteristics.

 

People, live for themselves and they do not live for YOUR aesthetic pleasure.

 

Maybe you have to ask yourself, are you really contended and happy with your life?

Maybe that’s the only thing that should matter!

 

 

Bye

I laugh as we talk and the tinkling voice makes you smile, that doesn’t go unnoticed by. I know how much you love it when I laugh that way, wholeheartedly, so much so that my voice tinkles. I tell you that my time is up and I have to go. And you just say ‘okay go’. I want you to stop me, to say don’t go or ask me to wait because that’s what I want, I want you to miss me and I know that you do but yet you just say okay go. I wordlessly clamour for your attention, I sigh as I realize that it has now become my addiction. Your eyes gaze deep into mine and you give me that playful smile and you say go. Yet you just sit there and listen as I try to push my limit and stay with you a little longer. You don’t ask me why I haven’t gone yet even though I’ve announced a numerous times that I  need to go. I blush as I realise that you know how much I want to stay. Although I know somewhere in my heart that even you want me to stay too, you just don’t say it out loud and I crave for you to. And each time I have to leave, I’d ask you to say bye, to give regards, to tell me that you’d miss me the time I’ll be gone but you never do that. Instead I say it all, from your side as well as mine. I tell you to take care, I tell you how much I’d miss you each moment we don’t spend together and I tell you bye. And just before I leave, I ask you to utter a bye, just once but you don’t. You just say okay go. It would irritate me to not end but you’d just laugh it off, that playful look in your eyes and all my irritation would vaporise. You always knew how to use that look in your eyes to your advantage, you knew how easily I melted with that look. And time flies by, the world has revolved for a good while around the sun, the seasons changed, and yet its the same. Each time we have to depart, I’m the one who says bye and you’re always the one to say okay go. But one day, its not the same, there is adrenaline in my veins, heart beating overtime, blood gushing wayward through my vessels in a rush and all of these would have been the good kind had they not been accompanied by the ache in my heart, throbbing pain in my head, with flare of my nose and the worst, tears in my eyes. I’m so angry, so so angry, the kind of anger where it gets even difficult for you to breath. So angry that I lose my senses and this time we depart, I don’t say a bye, I tell you okay go but there’s tears in my bloodshot eyes and your eyes do not have their usual gleam as they whisper to me a quick ‘bye’. Little do I know that you dash out, more anger in your body than mine, anger at yourself that you made me angry, and you lose your senses in a way far worse than mine. So much so that this time you really meant your farewell when you whispered me that bye. So much so that you really did go away when I asked you to. Now, you don’t breathe anymore and I, I wish I wouldn’t too but I guess this time, my time is not up yet. So, I breathe although it takes me a lot of effort to. And I don’t think my voice will ever tinkle that way and my laughs, oh my laughs will always remain hollow.

 

Error 404

One of the most profound thing I’ve ever observed about humans is the erroneous presumption they have about themselves. False assumption about themselves to be always right, to be always the victim.

Most of them at least. Although there are a few wise souls which are to be exempted from this, since they have gained the wisdom to retrospect themselves beyond the innate error each human possesses.

Simply put, each person I’ve come across wants to believe that they are in the right for every argument they have. Wise enough to assume, since they wouldn’t have been having the argument in the first place if they hadn’t believed that they were right. Though, there are a few people who argue just for the sake of arguing or knowingly argue even though they know they are wrong because they are conceited enough to think that they can twist the argument in their own direction. Such people, very clever people I might add, have to be spoken about much in detail for such less light on their malicious ways does no justice.

Coming back to our point, one of the innate error I’ve observed in human beings, not every but significant amount of humans, is that they always want to assume that they are correct. They do not stop to ponder upon themselves, what if I was wrong. No, such behaviour doesn’t ‘seem’ to them reasonable specially when they need to think rationally but they are distracted by their hot headedness in circumstances where they need to tread with extreme caution.

Why is it that they cannot bear to imagine that they could be wrong at this place. Maybe they are the one who are toxic to the other person. That they are the ones to blame. Maybe if they realize that they have committed a mistake, maybe a very small one but albeit they did commit one and own up to it things would’ve gone much better. Sadly that’s usually not the case.

Firstly there is the problem of false assumption that they are automatically in the right. No restrospection upon their own actions, for if they did they would’ve realised that maybe their assumption wasn’t right all along. Second, there is a problem of massive ego wherein a person comes to realise his own error, that he was the one who was wrong but doesn’t owns upto it. Because the vanity of pride overtakes their senses and they do not want to appear foolish claiming that all along they were arguing for nothing when all of it could be easily solved with a simple apology. It is now foolish of them to not apologize but they don’t realise this, because as I said not every human is wise enough to look beyond their error, to accept that there is some innate error. And the world would be a better place if all of us, ascertained our actual footing each time we got ahead of ourselves, be humble enough to realize that sometimes we are in the wrong when we argue and we are the ones to make mistake and in the end be courageous enough to own upto it, to apologize for their mistakes.

 

After all, to err is human and to forgive is divine.
—

I was overwhelming with a plethora  of intense emotions as I wrote this and this is just my opinion about us, humans. And I’m open to accept that my opinion could be wrong. 

Harmony

I’m engulfed in the comfort on my bed on a lazy Monday morning, I say lazy because I have nothing productive to do. Its a holiday. I’m a Monday person, believe it or not. I love going back to the grind after a refreshing Sunday. But when Monday is a holiday, I feel sad. Since my summer vacation is going on, it is no different. I don’t even have to remember the days, everyday is monotonous, I’ve got no tasks for my beck. I devour the solitude before everyone wakes up, solace of seclusion of my room before I’m whisked away from my home for vacation and I’ll have to be surrounded by people twenty four seven. There is no place like home. I try to enjoy my last morning of this summer lazing, my mind buzzing with random thoughts which are halted by a text I receive from my friend, asking if I was free.

I missed her. It had been months since I had spoken to her. Not just because the both of us were too busy with our lives, but because the whooping time difference of almost twelve hours made it very difficult for us to catch up. We weren’t the kind of friends who’d casually text each other. It is that either we have a long hearty conversation or nothing at all. Only extremes.

Have you ever had that feeling, damn how did I end up finding a friend like this? That’s the exact feeling I get every time I speak to her. If you just look at both of us, you’d never imagine that the two of us could be friends. But once you personally get to know the two of us, you would totally understand that it would be insane if we weren’t friends. The kind of friendship just flows so smoothly, I fall in harmony with her every step. Maybe that is how you feel when you speak to your soul sister. That is what we call each other. I wish I could write a blog post about her. The unique amazing person she is. She is one of a kind. She is always engaged in a world of her own, hardly caring about anything else. The kind of person who would do things on her own comfort rather than following the crowd. I look upto her for this very amazing nature of hers. And when I say, she never fails to surprise you, it is the best one line I could sum her up in. The kind of person who you HAVE to get to know. I have friends who had casual conversations with her and they say ‘we don’t get her’. Because she is the kind of person, you just can’t figure out superficially. To appreciate her, you need to delve in her depths. Those who had actually sat down and spoke to her can only understand what I’m speaking about. The best kind of people are those who I can have open minded conversation, those who are firm about their values and opinions but would give a chance and actually listen to other’s opinions, try to understand just for the sake of understanding what the other person wants to tell you. And yes yes yes, she is that kind of person. Her mind is the best thing about her. And I feel so awful that I just can’t do justice to her with all these words, I just fail to capture her perplexity, her astounding self.

And each time I speak to her, I feel like a certain part of me has changed for the better. Like I’m able to figure out one more fit to my disarray of puzzle pieces of life. I feel all the musical notes that would define my existence are in harmony, only if just for a while.

---

Have a nice Summer you all. I absolutely hate summer, I hate the hot hot weather. Although, the mangoes are a plus but I would rather be in winter. Or even better rainy season. It is like I’m deluged by sadness this season. Summertime sadness. 

 

 

 

captivated

i despise the thing between your lips but you say it helps you take the edge off, though it burns your lungs and clouds your mind yet i’m distracted by your throaty laugh and those liquid gold words that escape your smooth mouth. and when darkness cloaks the sky, phone warms up my ear like a fire that burns so bright, you pour out your demons and they swirl and swirl in my mind. later at night i toss and turn in my sleep. i swear those demons got me. and then i wonder how you carry their weight and i wonder how you slay the ghosts of your past. in that moment, i admire you and i admire you a lot because i’m fascinated how you’ve come so far. yet every time there is glow in your eyes as you look forward to the world. the world i’ve grown so tired of. and my feeling doesn’t pass you by. sometimes you even point out, how you’ve never seen anyone more negative than me. and i tell you slowly that some people are just made this way. you try to argue but you don’t because you know how stubborn i am anyway. but every time you point out, i try to be a little more positive towards life, but that just isn’t my cup of tea and i give up way too soon. yet you don’t say anything. you just let me be. and even hear all the negative things i have to say. so instead of asking me to be optimistic you put in positive ideas in my ears which i’m sure are just bounced off by my mind and yet you try. sometimes you even just laugh them off. did i tell how much i like your laugh? much more than i like your smile. only that one smile of yours that comes naturally. but you hardly ever smile that way. maybe because it takes a lot of effort to actually be happy when a lot of things are just weighing you down. i guess because you don’t answer my question why you don’t smile that way. rather you change the topic to my smile. and you compliment in ways i’ve never even known before. do you do it on purpose or am i really starting to like something about myself? i wish you knew the enormity of the change you’ve done to me. but i don’t tell you and i wonder if you’ll ever know. also sometimes, i wish a lot more than that. i wish i could tell you things, show you my demons and unveil my wounds. but i just don’t have the strength anymore. so i just listen to yours. because yours alone are magnanimous enough for you and i wouldn’t want to burden you more. but that’s what i tell myself. convince myself. because i don’t know if i’ll ever be able to do that. i keep all the darkness to myself. maybe that’s what i’m supposed to do anyway.

---

lower case letters in this post. terribly sorry if lower case irritates you. but i just love it and i think lower case makes it way more vulnerable.

E Y E S – Musings of a MedStudent.

I trudged the corridors of the Operation Theatre in my flip flops donning the standard uniform, a blue gown complemented with my hair tucked inside the scrub cab and my face hidden behind the mask, as I searched for a cataract surgery. It was my very first day at the OT in Eye Hospital and everywhere I looked were just strange faces of people who provided little to no solace. I was just a fourth semester undergrad student whom those doctors wouldn’t pay heed. They had more important students to attend to. The students of higher semester, students of postgrad, students of speciality. Plus, there was this impression they had that fourth semester students were too young and reckless to understand their seriousness. That we were free birds flying anywhere and everywhere.  It wasn’t their mistake. Rather it was our own undoing. Hardly any fourth semester student was serious about Peripheral postings. Or rather not many were serious about any posting in fact, be it General Medicine or Surgery or ENT or even Opthal.

My friends and I, were kind of lost. Although there were so many people in the OT unit, we were too afraid to talk to any one because we were just ‘fourth sem students’ or maybe we weren’t really the bold ones. I finally mustered some courage and asked the cleaner whether there was any cataract surgery and he replied that no, there wasn’t any. Although we did come to know later that plenty of cataract surgeries were performed that day. But why did the cleaner say so? It was because he was plainly being rude, just for the sake of it. There were all kinds of people at hospital but I would always find people who would usually be rude to the young people, only because the young had no other option but to endure their rudeness. Well, on the sunny side, it does make us, the young people very tolerable. After much stumbling, I came across a soft spoken doctor and she guided us towards the cataract surgery.

 

Finally! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Oh, eyes. Eyes are such monumental parts of our body. Not only do these tiny globes behold the world and play an enormous sensory function biologically but also they occupy a significant place in literature. Very often they have been a muse for the poets. Such majestic words are written about the eyes and they have been extensively described by the writers in various ways depicting a plethora of emotions. As they say, eyes are the window to our souls. There is something unexplainably imposing about looking directly in the eye of a person. And if I start to put down all the thoughts about eyes that are bursting in my mind right now, I could write on and on, but I guess you get the idea. How important eyes are.

 

And here he was, the surgeon, sitting calmly on a stool in front of the patient probing into his eyes with the various instruments. The cool air from the air condition gushed through the room making it more chilly for me and elevating my anxiousness up a notch. A couple of us students, gathered around him and watched him perform the surgery delicately and swiftly. He was a very skillful surgeon. I felt as if I was watching art. He gave us a basic idea about the steps of surgery but what made him more awesome was the way he made it sound so interesting and caught our attentions by cracking jokes. I remember how he compared removing the nucleus of the lens to pouring a dosa.  And there were many other funny comparisons which were fun to listen to and made those moments of surgery unforgettable. He cracked jokes not only with us, but also the patient. Oh yes, the patient is given local anesthesia so, he can talk. He calmed the nerves of the patient, kept us amused and all the while briskly correcting the defect in the eye. There is some weird magic in Operation theatres. Specially when its a low risk surgery and the mood is jovial. Also, there is something so charming about a surgeon’s attitude. And the best part was, when he got to tell the patient that it all went well and at that moment there’s this happiness on patient’s face. A small magical beautiful thing to witness. Maybe even more magical to experience. Those seven to ten minutes were the best part of my day. The doctor was way too awesome. He not only taught us the subject but also gave us tips. Our level tips, for undergrad students. He told us how he loved to perform dissection on frogs when he was a mere seventh Standard student. He would do it on her sister’s behalf who would be in eleventh. And very solemnly he explained us, how you should enjoy the surgery, find rush in doing it and absolutely fall in love with it, then only you could become a good surgeon. Maybe it does come naturally. It’s like art. At least that’s what I think. But there is some pure bliss in those operation theatres that I can never explain exactly or I can never compare it to anything. Just enchanting.

—

Happy April you awesome people!

 

 

Bikes – A short story.

Stacy looked out of the glass walls as she sat in the coffee shop with her friend Jenny,  who was stumbling her way to complete the assignment which was due the next day. Stacy looked out of the glass but she was not actually looking, it was as if her eyes were seeing the images but the mind was not processing them. For, her mind was consumed by the very thought of something special. A pretty someone, to be precise. She couldn’t help but smile as he crossed her mind over and over.

“. . . . . . . so is x = 20 or x = -10”, asked Jenny as she incorrigibly scribbled the assignment that Stacy had refused to let her copy but sat with her here in the coffee shop itself for any help.

“Hmm. . “, Stacy looked at Jenny confused with her eyes wide like saucer.

She was sure that she had just heard and understood Jenny saying something but instantly forgot what that was.As Jenny repeated the question, she came back to her senses and helped her through.

She looked at her coffee, which she was supposed to have drank ten minutes ago. The coffee stood there cold and all Stacy was left to think was how Zach had always asked her to drink coffee with him.

It amazed Stacy at how the thoughts of him always plagued her mind. It was like a chronic thing, it returned no sooner had it left and it would shake her up.

Human mind is an utter mess, she thought. By now, her mind had swirled through everything else and stopped on the way he looked as he rode his bike. Bikes. That were his favourite thing. She reminisced how he stooped forward as he raced.

R

 

A

 

C

 

E

 

D

Thats what her heart did when she saw him on a bike. It raced and beat and palpitated.

He loved bikes.
And she loved that he loved bikes, even though she had never given bikes a second thought before she met him.
Now, she loved that he loved bikes.

Because.

Because, she loved to see the zeal in his eyes as he spoke about them. She loved how silent he could be until someone would bring up the topic of bikes. She loved how he could talk on and on about them.

More than anything else, she loved to see him smile.

“You should’ve drank your coffee, Stacy”, Jenny interrupted her chasm of thoughts monopolised by a certain someone.

” Yeah, I should have”, mumbled Stacy as she got up to get another coffee. There was still some time left for Jenny to complete her assignment.

As Stacy waited in the line, she wondered if it was a co-incidence that he always asked her to drink coffee with him. Would he have known that coffee was the absolute favourite thing in the world to her?

Only if he knew, she smiled.

Smiled. And as she smiled, she marvelled how any thought about him would instantly curve her lips upward.

“Excuse me, Madam”, the cashier frowned at her, “you’ve been standing here for a while. Would you like to order anything? ”

Stacy was embarrassed and baffled. She quietly placed the order and walked back with her coffee.

HIM.
Whenever she thought of him, she lost the track of time. In reality, she was surrounded by lot of people but she felt as if she was the only person in the room and he was the only person in her mind.

She sat back on her seat.

“Stop thinking about him now, will you? ” Jenny smirked at her.

” About who?” asked Stacy, trying to suppress her smile as flashes of him automatically played in her mind.

And.
A tinge of electricity jolted through her brain, right to her heart. And, her heart thumped faster. Blood gushed through her ventricles. Streamed through her arteries, up through the carotid and scattered in her cheeks making them rosy. And, thats how she blushed, at the mere thought of him.

And, Stacy was not someone who blushed easily.

“You know who I am talking about”, Jenny was serious now and Stacy knew why. Jenny was looking out for Stacy and she appreciated that.

Zach had left town and gone out to college. And Stacy. Stacy had one more year of schooling and God knew which college she’d be selected in.

Her heart sank. Stacy hadn’t realised the reality but now, he was gone. And Stacy didn’t even give him a chance. Heck, she didn’t even drink coffee with him.

———

I know I sound so cheesy here 😛

Well, I wrote this story like an year ago and it was just lying around so I thought why not post it. I wouldn’t write the same way now. Also, I know this needs major editing but I wanted to keep it that way to remember how my writing used to be. I should’ve written up something but I didn’t and rather posted this. Because I’m too lazy to write some new stuff. Also, there’s a lot going on in life anyway. I need to learn how to manage to do everything despite all the ups and downs in life.
But how was it? Was it any good?