The Moon

The soft light of the moon calms my mind tonight,

Relaxing my desires and insecurities

Even in this daunting world.

Even with all the lifeless mountains around me,

Even with all the colourless lights shining from down below.

Even with every inch of this desolate world trying to pull me down,

The moon still shines as silver as it was back when the mountains were alive!

And even the dead around me glow with the same amount of glee

That a happy heart would.

And even my blackened and bruised self glows in this silver light,

And I feel reassured that no matter what happens

I’ll still be able to glow at times.

No matter how dark the night seems,

The moon will still shine light on me

Along with every other tired soul out there.

And bring out a faint smile on all our faces,

Making sure we never forget the joy that comes along.

The Hill

O soft, sweet silence!
I hear your faint becalming tune today.
As the wind which the mountains blow
Glides quietly along my hair,
I hear you more clearly than ever,
Without any soul around disturbing your song.
Your beautiful, enchanting hum
Humbles me like nothing ever has
And fills me with awe,
Along with a tender yet irresistible desire
To stay,
On the hill I sit on right now, forever.
And my heart, oh my!
My heart gives a steady, gentle beat,
Which, in harmony with your voice
Makes me wonder,
If it belongs to me or to you,
If it was yours to be, all along,
To be the rhythm to your song.

One Last Hug

One last hug, he insisted
They had but a day to meet before he’d be off.
The city was big, and she was far.
‘Hope she can come’, he thought.
She did, long after the sun slept,
Weary and lifeless she was, but she came.
They spoke about the beauty of their homeland.
As their arms wrapped around each other,
A burst of glee filled their hearts.
Soon to be infected by a drop of sorrow.
And finally, he let go.
Somber,
But content with their little rendezvous for now.
Eager to resume his paused life in another realm,
Waiting for the time when he’d see her again.

Tears

Tears
With every drop
Falls a wave of emotion, so strong
That it can melt a diamond
Yet some let these tiny weapons
Out in the world for things so little
Caring not of the destruction they cause
To the hearts which try to bear them
And these hearts, they break down
Get shattered to pieces finer than the finest grain of sand
When they realize that those mighty tears
Were mere droplets of saline water after all
And the nuts and bolts and stitches which build up them hearts again
Leave scars
Which live on forever.

An Adventure

I’ve always been confused as to what I want to do in life. I mean I wanted to be a rockstar, a scientist, travel a lot, and what not. But I never seem to be able to choose. Maybe I know now. Just maybe. I want my life to have meaning. You know, some special cause for which I’ll cross the world, fight dragons, go without eating for days, and then, when I finally achieve it, I’d feel good. I want my life to be full of adventure. Unicorns, orcs, swords, old legends which come true. All of it. Okay, that’s slightly unreal, but my point is, the life we all are expected to live. Work at some boring place, earn lots of money, spend it on alcohol and food, have kids, grow up and die. It’s so boring. There’s no meaning in it. I mean why on earth am I earning? So that I can live longer? For what? So that I can continue doing the same thing to live even longer. What’s the point of such a long life if I have no ups and downs. What’s the point of life if I don’t value it enough. And how am I going to value life if I’m assured to live forever? I want to gain knowledge, travel around the world, make music to which everyone will dance (headbanging is technically a form of dance. Wikipedia!), help save polar bears, risk my life. I want some honor in my life. I want to do everything just because I want to do it, not because I have to earn or because everyone does it. I want to look at the mountains and fill my heart with awe. I want to go off into the vast oceans and find myself where nothing exists. I want to get up on stage and play music which will run through the blood of millions of people. I want to do something more than earn, eat, have kids and die. I want my life to be an adventure.

The New End

So college comes to an end. Feels weird. Sad? Yes, but not that much anymore. I don’t know why. I was quite sad a few days back, didn’t want to leave all of this behind. After all, college has become everything for me. A second home, (honestly more home-like than the first) with my closest of friends living in it, all the “bakchodi” done over the years, all those amazing professors and their lectures (yes, I’ll miss lectures too). What else do you need. And the fact that I have to go a semester in advance made me even sadder. Never knew the difference betweenm 3.5 and 4 years would have such an impact. But all of that sadness, it’s suddenly gone. And I’m excited; for a new life. I mean I’d have to leave all of this behind someday, wouldn’t I? And I don’t want to live the college life forever. It is awesome indeed, but it’s not something you can hang on to. It’s like one of those amazing moments which come but eventually go too. If all moments in life were amazing, then, well none of them would be amazing after all. Everything is relative. So I’m kind of happy; happy that I could enjoy such an awesome college life with some of the greatest people I have met. And I’ll let it go with a smile; with tonnes of memories to cherish. All those nights spent at the galla, CEP terrace, SAC terrace (not a terrace exactly, more like a ledge), playing DOTA2 (and abusing the shit out of everyone while punching rabbits), playing the guitar even though the rest of my body (except for my fingers) are dead due to lack of sleep, or playing football at 4 in the night when literally my whole body feels like it’s about to disintegrate and fall apart. And not to forget the endless hours spent at the cafeteria, just sitting, bakaring, and forcefully having+galyaofying the cafe food (which is actually decent enough; except for the first counter. Wow, god only knows how he manages to make such bad food sometimes. It’s an art). Even the amount of time spent in the hostel watching cat videos. Or fighting kung fu with my roommate. Time well spent indeed. I remember the first day in college. I was this shy little guy with a guitar and a laptop (which was taken away from me forcefully. Almost made me cry). Now, after 3.5 years, I realize how much I have changed. I’m a new person. Lot of my beliefs have changed, and I’ve started looking at life from a new perspective. But most importantly, I’ve become braver than before and I’m not scared of life anymore. College probably made for the roughest few years of my life till now, but also the best. Full of downs, but more importantly full of ups as well, memories of which I shall relish forever. I’ll miss every moment of it; and will definitely come back to college whenever I get the chance. First target, Synapse 2015. I’ll tell my company that I have a mental sickness whose main symptom is an OCD to headbang throughout Ragna Rock or something and flee! But till then, I guess the time has come to let go and move on to a new life, where I’ll find many more exciting adventures (hopefully). Internship, here I come!

Life, Goals and Happiness

So I was strolling down the campus road earlier today, and random thoughts started coming to mind. What I’m doing with my life, what I’ve done till now, what I want to do in the future, etc. Not much of active future planning or anything; more like the chilled out back-of-the-mind tension about life. I realized how much I’ve struggled. Not voluntarily, subconsciously. Why? Because I’m so passionate about Music (I want to be a rock-star \,,/ ). Whenever I think about all that I’ve gone through: the endless nights of practicing, endless nights of getting others to practice; just so that we remove that small mistake we were making while covering a song for a competition. Sometimes just a performance, not even a competition. No money involved. And yet I kept on working towards perfection, without giving a single shit about my health, sleep, studies, or anything else. It makes me want to try sometimes, looking at my situation. Whether these are tears of happiness, or me just getting tired, I know not. Mostly a mixture of both. I feel proud of myself for not giving up on myself. Ever. And at the same time, I start feeling scared. Scared because the amount of struggle I have gone through is nothing compared to what’s yet to come, and I may give up later on. I’ve only dipped my finger into the sea of struggling; I have yet to swim across it. Even imagining the difficulties I will come across when I start my real hard life after college scares the shit out of me.

One thing I know for sure is that I can do it. I have it in me. To be a musician. To grab the guitar, get up on stage, and play in front of thousands of people, and get paid for that. Because I love music so much. So much. The sweet sound of the guitar passes through me like electricity, lighting up every bit of me. And it’s not just that. The fame, the feeling of being wanted on stage. All those people loving you and cheering for you like there’s no tomorrow. That feeling, it’s amazing. It’s like an addiction. I cannot imagine a life where I don’t play the guitar and perform as well. But the one case when I will fail, is when I will stop believing in myself; when I will start giving into my fears. And that is when everything will start to seem impossible. It has happened a few times with me; I’ve broken down completely from within. It felt as if the easiest way out would be to just kill myself. But I don’t know how, maybe the support of my family, my passion, and the amazing feel good videos on the Internet; I’ve managed to get out of that phase. I’m glad I did. So as long as I don’t get stuck in the ‘I want to die’ phase for ever, and keep on getting re-motivated, things should be good. And hopefully I will become the person I want to be one day will continue to live life happily as I am doing now.

So yea, that was the first realization, that I have gone through a lot, and have a lot more to go through. The second realization (which is kind of related, and also the reason behind the cancellation in the last paragraph) is a bit more general. It’s about life, goals, and happiness. I’ve realized that when we’re passionate about something, music for instance, our ultimate goals are so big that they’re unachievable. I mean, I don’t want to become a famous musician and stop there. I want to keep on playing music for the rest of my life, keep on learning, keep on making more music as each day passes by. It’s a never ending journey. I want to keep on evolving, never standing still. So that means I will never be satisfied, and thus never find happiness. Which, fortunately or unfortunately, is the truth. We cannot really find complete satisfaction, not forever at least. If we’re satisfied it means we’d have nothing to do. And life would suddenly become pointless. All that we would have achieved in order to get the satisfaction, all of that hard work, just to end up getting bored all day? I don’t want that. On one hand I’m scared that I have to struggle. But struggling is what I love. Struggling is what I live for. I love spending all night practicing the guitar. I love skipping meals to play the guitar. I love getting my mind completely messed up over some stupid problem of physics (How did physics come into the picture? I’ll explain later**). Struggling for what I love is what drives me, keeps my mind and body from getting rusted. So why do I feel scared when I am told that I just have to do more of what I’m doing right now? Honestly, I do not know. But it is stupid nonetheless. There’s no logical reason for me to be scared. I will keep on struggling, keep on working towards my unattainable goal. Because my ultimate objective is to remain the same, ever evolving never stopping person forever.

I’d like to end with a small theory that I devised while thinking about all of this. Life is like the earth. It has an island and water. The land is our comfort zone, it’s where we start off. It’s where we are taught to deal with water; which is the reason for all of the struggle in our lives. But why get in contact with water if it’s so bad? Because water is also the only way to go ahead in life. Our aim is usually to leave this island, cross the harsh seas, and reach our destination; the place where we’ve always wanted to be, become the person we’ve always wanted to become. But that’s where we go wrong. There is no such place. There is only one island surrounded with water. As soon as we leave the water, we’re back to where we started. So instead of aiming to reach our destination, we should aim to go as far as possible. And finally die. But keep going forward till we die. And after every successful struggle, we can jump out of the ocean and enjoy a small waterless joy-filled flight till we fall back in. The more time we spend in water, the less harsh it will get; and the higher we’d be able to jump (because practice almost makes perfect). This way, we’d be enjoying our lives, and at the same time, we’d always be moving forward. That’s about it. Look at fear as a form of excitement, that you’re getting to swim. And jump. It’s so much more fun than sitting on shore and looking at all the others chilling at sea.

**Physics: I’ve developed a lot of interest in physics of late. So along with a rockstar, I also want to be a physicist. Do tons of research, study all my life. I don’t know how I’ll be both together, but I guess going in any one direction would make me happy. I will not leave the other, obviously. But I’m good as long as I’m a physicist who plays the guitar, or a rock-star who solves complex equations and keeps wondering as to why the world is so chaotic (or not).

Look Back!

I’m in a good happy happy mood. Why? Partly because of nostalgia, part because I’m getting a “life’s good” feeing. Life goes on, and we don’t even realize how it’s been passing away. Today, when I look back at 2009-2011, 3 years ago, I feel good. I feel as if a lot of things have happened in these 3 years. I’ve changed a lot, yet remained almost the same. I’ve made new friends, explored new things, and done so much. I actually feel that my life has not been a waste after all. And at the same time, I even miss those days. My friends, whom I haven’t met for so long; the places I haven’t visited since forever. In fact all of this nostalgia started off with a message from a very old friend whom I haven’t spoken with since 2011. She just said Hi, nothing much. But it felt good to hear from her. After so long. And then I started thinking about those days. I’ve even pinged a few of my other friends, hoping for a reply from them soon! :D

So yea, back to the philosophical part. Life goes on, we don’t even notice time passing by. But in my opinion, we should spend a few minutes every now and then looking at our lives, what we were, what we’ve become. We realize a lot in these few minutes. How much we’ve changed as per or against our expectations. And I’m not saying that we should be regretful of what we’ve done in the past, but we should at least know what’s going on with us. Sometimes, the realizations are bad, sometimes good. And apart from looking at our lives, thinking about the past also helps us in remembering the people who used to play an important part in our lives at some point. We should make sure to keep reminding them that they were (and are) special. It feels great to hear from an old friend, no matter for how long you’ve not spoken to them.

So yea, you should open up Facebook, twitter, Google plus; basically whatever social networking site you’ve been on for a while, and start browsing through your old pictures, posts, messages, etc. That’s what pictures are meant for, right? To be looked at later on. That later on’s now! If you’re not on a social networking site, just find some other memories somewhere :P. And ping your friends. Say hi. Say you wanna meet. Don’t be afraid; of whether it’s appropriate to suddenly want to meet after so long or anything of that sort. Everything is okay. And in the worst case, they’ll deny. Big deal. Not that you’ve been talking to them everyday anyways. But meeting them will feel amazing. You’ll relive all those good moments, and build more special ones. In fact I wish I had the same positive “nothing to lose” attitude I have right now, few years earlier. Would have been in touch with lot of my friends if I did. But better late than never!

This time when I go back to Mumbai, I’ll meet as many of my old friends as possible. And do something stupid; for instance have either an Ice cream or a drink together. Whichever they choose! :D

(Now lets hope I actually do that :D)