Choose To Look Up- Above Expectations and Beyond Horizons

 

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and 

play with it.” 

― Charlie Chaplin

You must believe the aforesaid words especially when a genius comic artist such as Charlie Chaplin says them. To break away from the monotony of our lives, humour becomes our ‘friend in need’ and if you notice closely, we laugh at things we relate to─ boy falling off a ladder, someone getting wet just because he was standing under someone’s balcony, how a man gets slapped for his marriage proposal.. We enjoy these little bouts of humour we may have left unnoticed or these scenes that may have been tucked into some corner of our brain while we were busy “living”.

It takes quite a lot of introspection to really make sense of Mr.Chaplin’s words. But come to think of it, we actually go through a process of experiencing grief and loss to then moving on to ridicule it. Maybe it is the christening of the step to finally move on to another set of grief and glories.

I am perhaps going through a terrible phase of my life with the sudden demise of my mother in Jan this year. And even in this entire paraphernalia, I saw myself ridiculing my grief, my stunned silence. I joked at being like a “stone-hearted daughter who shed no tear” or how we went for a vacation and returned never to be the same “we” again!
To be honest, it is relieving to choose to laugh at your pain than to writhe along. Agonizing through it will always seem much easier, what I saw and continue to see hundreds of visitors, relatives, well-wishers do. How the process of “mourning” is so crucial to settling them back to their normal lives from the very next day. I know I won’t be this easily out of the shock but then I refuse to bow before it, allowing the monster to swallow me from my head first.

Sometimes I end up offending people when I tell them that they were lucky not to be around when mum passed away. I try telling them kindly, how it was irrelevant, whoever was present in those 5-10minutes of suffocation and struggle she went through. But they don’t understand. They seem to have no idea how it is to light your mother’s pyre, to touch her cold, lifeless, decomposing body. To know that this one moment will be your last when you get to touch her. Hugging her felt terrible, for the warmth was gone!

And the most difficult part?

To hold on to your twelve-year old sister but allowing her to see her dead mother. This would be her last memory of her.

I can go on talking about those four days of our “family trip” and how she was perfectly fine until those last 10minutes of her life but then who’d understand?
I choose to instead show people her pictures, how I managed to click her smiling.. I remind people of the pranks she’d play or the jokes she’d crack. Her favourite books, serials, lipsticks and perfumes.

I do sneak into her almirah sometimes. It smells of her. The other day I saw an teaser of this upcoming Bengali show where a guy from the army expressed how he’d miss his Ma’s smell the most and would go sleep in her lap the first thing after returning home. I feel like a dog, sniffing around the house, tracing her through her leftovers.

It is a joke me and my sister share. We pretend she’s gone to Kolkata like she had in September. We keep listening to her Whatsapp audio messages I’d taught her to record.

It is during such times that you feel like closing in. Restricting your life to those you cannot live without. I did that. But I didn’t stop there. I made sure I let go of the pretentious people I once addressed as “friends” and I observed people. Strangers, especially those dealing with the loss of loved ones. It somehow gave me strength and I heavily relied on Gandhiji’s treatise of when your loss seems to grave, try looking at someone who is ‘poorer than you’.

One such example would be this extraordinary woman:

Imagine the kind of determination it takes to come out of a loss and then dare to dream again, to live fully; to trust people and to believe in the goodness of Nature and God.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do 

that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 

― Martin Luther King Jr

I also know of this young fellow of my age who was suffering from Cancer, such that his limbs had started to melt with all the medications he was going through. I remember my mother staying in his hospital room for hours, meditating for him. She’d stay hungry and thirsty for hours and not blink an eye. And when he’d fall really ill, she’d have tears in her eyes and say, “I wish I could make him alright. He is so young and he deserves to live.”

Today, as miraculously as is my agnostic belief in an Almighty, that Guy is Cancer-free. He is resuming his studies and coming back to normalcy!
How does a logical person explain this? The truth is, there are no answers. And when we do not find answers, we have two paths; one, to either let go of everything and just mourn and die. And the other would be to laugh at these perplexing circumstances we are brought into every now and then!

I’m pretty sure everyone is aware of the recent controversy of BBC interviewing of the rapists of Jyoti Singh who is popularly addressed to as “Nirbhaya”. The Indian Government has banned the documentary. I thought initially that it was a good move to stop the maligning of my nation.

However, I watched the documentary and was stunned. I cried.

And, mind you, I did not cry at my mother’s funeral.

But I cried when I heard what the rapist had to say about the incident. And more disgustingly, the defence lawyers called women to be “flowers” that can be either trampled if kept in the street or revered if kept in a temple! We’re gems even precious than diamonds that need to be protected by men. And for crying out loud, all that Jyoti did was watch a movie(evening show!) with a male friend!

How can one stop mocking such people outright! 

While such documentaries bring out the stinging realities of our society and thus have been shunned down, we have people like Laxmi who did not give up even after the horrific acid attack on her. She has started her own NGO and runs various campaigns regarding crime against women through it.

Losing hope will always be an option, like the albatross around our neck. Opt to take problems in life, face on. Halt and spend some time with your grief and hope will bicker in.

You’ll Never Find A Rainbow If You Are Looking Down

― Charlie Chaplin

When we talk of inspiration we gaze towards the horizon but then horizon is just another imaginary line. Look around, for we find stories of courage, determination, hope and experiences of life that mold us into better human beings. The next step of getting inspired is to inspire others. This my friend, is the circle of life.

I wish to thank Housing for a prompt named “Looking Up” which made me realise how often I’ve looked down at my feet, sore and withered in the biting cold. But what if, I choose today to gaze at the sky, smile at the sun and let the world know,

I AM.

If you liked reading my post or you didn't..if you have two words of advice to give or take, do let me know so in the comments below!

Sylvia Plath and I

Hurry up, and keep a 500-rupee note, the snake-charmer said to me, pointing to a box in his hand. I decided not to let my fear overpower me, so I shot back," Why should I? What's in it?" He crooked his eyebrows and twisted his face into an angry scowl. With swift motions with his right hand, he muttered some magical chants jerking the case open, and out came the snake hissing..

How crappy is this story! Priya grunted in disgust. The smoke rose from the cigarette, and she slanted the two fingers holding the butt, and jerked them into the ashtray. The ash fell in a single motion, as if it had been waiting for this disposition. The hand went up to caress her forehead, her eyes searching into the depths of the computer screen in a failed attempt to discover a path-breaking story she was determined to write. "You have to feel it, Priya. Writing might have become a business for some, but it still is an art. You are a wonderful writer, but only when you feel what you write! Right now, you're just running into a deadline and it won't do you any good, Priya. Are you even listening? Priya..." Jatin, her boss exclaimed as Priya walked out of the conference room.

But it wasn't that unfinished discussion she'd had with Jatin that was disturbing her. His words though had started to make sense. Words are like molding clay. You can rub the clay between your palms and make a cylinder out of it or you can mix it with water and dissolve it into a solution that can only be thrown away. Lately, she seemed to have been off-track from what she wanted to do. The number of relatives, friends and well-wishers had lessened and she felt like she was one strange person amidst a whole crowd of people who would smile and go past, but would not bother to know how she really is.

She was a successful writer, who was reputed in her circles, for her intense writing skills. Like any other girl in her late twenties, Priya was in a relationship with a corporate lawyer, who wanted to marry her and settle down. But Priya always felt that there was something lacking. It was only when she would write something dark or heart piercing that she'd gain some mental peace. Her boyfriend, Vinay tried his best to make her fall in love with him, but something was amiss for Priya and she could never really love Vinay though she had the utmost respect for his love, perhaps the only reason she could never call their relationship off.

Many of her friends, who though hardly knew her, identified her aloofness to be depression. A mentally upset person usually stays unhappy and feels incomplete, even when they have the best things in life, some had retorted when they could not handle Priya's "absurdity" any more.

Not that she had not tried. But it was so explicitly visible to her that she had accepted this incompleteness as part of her life. She had a life full of deadlines, questions and void. A void that had taken too much of her, so much that she felt nothing but emptiness. Her eyes drifted to the torn pieces of paper from the scribble pad lying on the floor, pieces she’d wanted to construct lives, characters, intrigues and moments from… now lay waste. Just like the life she’d continue to struggle through. She noticed Vinay’s letter amidst the cluttered pieces too, the letter in which he had declared that she was free of him, now that he had decided to leave. Or perhaps, he had finally set himself free, of her.

The thought brought a smile to her face, the hurt pride reminding her of a quote from a poet, who gave up her life, for death sounded more peaceful…. Sylvia Plath. If there was anyone who had lived in real terms, living through every moment of agony that life brought, for Priya, it was Sylvia Plath. And moreover, she is a misunderstood person in history; often called coward for her act of suicide. Priya recalled her graduation days, when she’d barged out of a subsidiary English class when the professor mocked at her assignment on Sylvia Plath, saying that it was nothing but a waste of time and matter. The smile widened, as she closed her eyes sinking deep into her couch, and hummed with a passion she’d hitherto not felt:

 I feel behind my eyes a numb,

Paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell,

A mimicking nothingness.

I never thought,

I never wrote,

I never suffered.

She felt better, all of a sudden as she finished reciting the verse from Plath that had been her favorite one. Light and breezy, her head felt dizzy and for a second she feared she had low blood pressure. Sipping some water, she walked up to the balcony of her rented sea-facing studio apartment on first-floor.  This void had a sense of contentment, she realized- something that even she wasn’t aware of. She looked towards the horizon, the sun was setting and the waves were jilting the rocks and swaying along the breeze. The evening had been relatively calm, with no one else to fight with or laugh with except her.

She opened the clutcher that had been binding her hair in a tight knot, releasing the rumbling riot of tension, the frustration that she’d been roping in all this time. Happiness or sadness is nothing but a state of mind. You choose what you feel, and no one can make you feel anything without you wanting to feel it. But what about those who claim to be yours, and then cheat you when you need them the most, she contested. The breeze kept blowing her hair from her shoulders to her face and back- like the waves rocking in the shore that lay ahead of her and she began talking to her own self, something she had consciously kept ignoring for a long time.

The gray sky looked ferocious now, dark clouds taking over the crimson sky, inch by inch, devouring every ray of color as it spread. Priya felt a sudden surge within her, and without a thought she hurried out of her flat onto the stairs and she almost skipped two, causing an imbalance in her weight and she fell down. Instead of cringing with pain, she burst out laughing like a playful child, who’d just realized how naughty she is. Her eyes twinkling of the mist in the air, she sprang up and rushed with open arms to envelope the world around her.

Her dupatta fell midway and she didn’t care to lift it and she ran wistfully towards the sea. Her arms spread like a bird, she felt like she was gliding towards the horizon, her legs as light as feather, guiding her to a sequestered home that she had found somewhere; somewhere distant. But the joy of finding that place was so intense, so momentous that she was close to tears. Tears fell just like the rain poured and the two waters blended into one, so perfectly that she didn’t realize that she was crying. She looked up at the sky, the gray clouds silently calming her senses with its own brute and she breathed deeply over and over again, as if she had just learned to breathe. Yes, yes she had. Never before in her life had she felt such an inferno, something that looked so destructive yet felt so soothing- so unbelievably peaceful.

The cool water pricked like tiny arrows onto her skin as she stepped onto the waves as they kept rocking roughly onto her. You are Liberated! "You are liberated!" She shouted, gulping down the tears as she cried. "I finally understand what she’d been telling me all this while.!" Sylvia Plath through her words had oozed out the truths of life, so effervescently that most of us would lose it so ignorantly. But Priya did not; in fact, she had finally understood how much of a winner she’d been in her life. She stood up, arming herself as she shook due to the strange eeriness that had surrounded her. The tingling effect that the revelations have, that one starts fearing one’s own vulnerabilities.

Now I am a lake. 
A woman bends over me, 
searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. 
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. 
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. 
I am important to her. She comes and goes. 
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. 
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman 
rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

These lines from Plath’s poem Mirror concocted in her mind, like the church bells.
This was the first poem she’d read of hers while she was in school. As much as she’d tried, she could not understand it. She’d believed that she’d left it right there, but now when she re-iterated the verse in her mind, after so many years, she could see the mirror so clearly. So what, she ended her life? Only if even a handful of us could live through what Plath did..

With a reasoned timidness, she crept out of the waters and went back to the lifeless house. She changed into dry clothes and burned some incense sticks. Tonight she’d write about her life. And she’d end it with her success. Not because life would guarantee a perfect ending, but because the ending did not matter anymore. Sylvia Plath died not because she lacked the virtue of being strong, but because death seemed to be the only exit from the life she was leading for her to actually live, breathe and be at peace.

To live is not to merely exist. To live is to realize who you are, and this mortal body becomes a secondary entity then. Sylvia Plath was a misunderstood woman who chose death to life, not because she could not take it anymore, but because she was too ahead of her times. Because she knew too much which the world could, never in her  lifetime understand. She tried fighting the ignorance but treaded to choose herself than the world, which lacked the depth and the patience to discover what she already had in that short life of hers. But Priya would live, because she now had a motive to live: she would not end up being a misunderstood woman. This is what Sylvia wanted to hint at, in all that she wrote! Live till you find a meaning and purpose, without which existence is of no use.

Priya wrote on and on, through the night and when she was done she thought of Vinay and smiled, “The alliterations of life are twisted and thus are never really the same as much as they appear to be alike. These paths seem to be , and it is only with the passage of time that the variance is unveiled. I have also penned our love story, with the names and the places changed, and perhaps, with a better ending.” She stubbed the last cigarette with a determination and dumped it in the ashtray. She titled the manuscript “Paradise” and in the acknowledgement she wrote,

To Sylvia Plath,

Who, through her immortal words, inspired me to live again.

This post is part of the contest Ten words to a Story(or Poem).. on WriteUpCafe.com

If you liked this post, please do vote for me at http://www.writeupcafe.com/link/715/sylvia-plath-and-i 
Thank you WC! I enjoyed writing the story!

Beginnings

Raindrops drum the tin-roof

clumsy flowers nestled in the crooks

Breathe a sigh of relief

The cat skimpers a little

drops shine off her skin

Roads now sinned into

utter silences,

watch as it rains

Within.

The orange bangle, now hidden

tears the gray apart

and out, it bounced

like a toddler's toy, bouncing off the cloud.

The kicks of life, strangle us down,

And yet, we gasp to breathe some more.

Rains come, the rays go

And comes the dark and the light

Pain disappears, only when we begin to smile.

Help-Less

Entrapped within a worldly affair,

Time to surrender a deep breath

And a hope or two along with it

Some thousand unheard prayers.

Under the debris, I hear the thunder

Of the destructed chimneys of solitude,

That once let the grudges, vapour away.

The shields now broken, the dust has settled

Why to whimper now,

You are dead, already.

I watch you, see it all,

Like a moving reel of tainted pictures,

From above, the heavenly hollows,

And as you await another life,

I await another death.

I was Born to be Broken

I was born to be broken
It seemed too veracious to be questioned
But I had my doubts, so I dared to return,
again, to the Battleground.

I patted Life's back, as he was about to leave
and asked if he had ever lived a life, of its own.
And he looked stunned, and then he smirked,
A smile of thousand secrets and a lie, weaved into a cackle.


The venerated paths, of Try and Try again
now constrained by Titian vines of the irrevocable
We must give up after a while, he said
as he banged his fists, at the now-empty table.


Once laden with fruits of scintilla
now darkened with spasms of relinquished memories
they haunt the walls of this paradise,
Souls of the martyrs that loved and lost, it reminds.


How many battles must I fight, before I give up
How many lessons shall we learn to make no vice?
How many miles to walk before I am gone
Before I realize,
I am Broken, to be Born.

Life into Death

Venerated exits

reason their existence

often innate

in their absences.

Tremors of regret

erupt memories.

Blue skies 

draping gray horizons.

Taken away

cries of beloved

too much

and too apart.

This is Life

they say,

I say, a Journey

into Death.

Free-dom

It is too dark in here, she gasped

my hands are tied, it seems

nestled amongst the tuscan webs

She began chanting-

I need to be Free,

I need to be free.

Titillating eyes, now filled with tears

her skin now a filthy brown,

The end now seemed so near

As she began chanting-

I need to be free

I need to be free.

She flung her arms,

that one last try, before she gave up

and there, it cracked, the shell of vengeance

Out she fled, her arms, now wings

She flew across, as she chanted

I am free.

I am.

Free.

Can you.. Die?

Dear You,

Before you read this..

I wish to tell you something. There are to sets of people who'll read this.

First those, who have a scarred past and who cannot move ahead for one or the other reason.

Second those, who have a scarred past but it doesn't restrict them to the moments they can live..today and tomorrow.

I once read a quote, Why be just about anybody..Be a Unique.

To that I'd say..

there are approximately 7 billion people existing..and if each wants to become a unique..then there are 7 billion unique people around..which ultimately makes them..All The Same!

dON'T BE uNIQUE. Be YOU.

That is it. Live each day as it comes.Plan, but not too much. But make sure that when they plan your funeral.. it must be a good one, the one that reflects a true sense of Loss!Till then, Live.Celebrate Life.. its miseries..and its fantasies..

Hope this reaches to all those who are looking..for That One Good Reason!

Amen!

You wish to live a life of Misery

blemish it with thoughts of a revered past

Scrape today's plan for a Yesterday's scowl

Now you lament, yet another wasted moment.

What use is this life

when you already wish you die

why do you live, still

why pretend at all, inside?

Time is running out,

a decision must be made in haste

So you choose to crawl into a bounded shell

Move around its edges, is that your best?

Go ahead, finish it up..

for you do not care for no one else

but for your own hurt ego and selfish pride

ever wondered about other's pain and sorrow?

You promise of unending tales of companionship

and break them away at your pace and nerve

The heart was broken, trust misplaced

I know it is difficult, but at least give it a try!

It is your mood, that determines your behaviour

Oh what a pity! is all you wish to hear

Grow up, the world expects more,

if you cannot give it , then let it go.

Let It Go..

Can you

?

And if you  cannot,

Then learn to live

like the rain drops that scatter

from the leaf to the ground,

Sprinkle some happiness around.

Just before you die..

let your absence speak for you

and you shall be heard,

like the story of the Boy who Lived.