Sukshma

Have you seen it yet?

It defies constitution. You may have had many long and arduous journeys, but nothing like this one. The one that your taking right now, it defies analogies and it evades description. A poor writer can only but hope that his honest attempt to capture the underlying patterns in the interweaved fabric of life.

Born on a certain day, so everyone else claims. One has memories of that particular day sometimes, memories of other days follows. They are few and far apart. Almost always the sneaking suspicion enters your mind that these memories are just faked, built by your mind to explain the stories those elder and close to you tell. But happily you will hold them close to your heart. Looking at other children, you can tell one thing, they were blissful and happy.

Awareness begins to grow, innocence remains. Hard memories begin to form and inspirations take hold. This is the age where experiences tend to overawe and yet pleasures are still simple, a very desirable combination. Often looking down into a flowing river you watch your reflection wondering about things and not noticing the tremendous youth that creates the image. Time may fly, but your heart does'nt care… in fact when you look back it almost always seems as if time did fly!! The growing awareness of oneself also results in the formation of envy and greed.

It's around this time that the simplest things matter the most, that bird you saw hurt in your backyard, or losing a friend early and to bizarre circumstances. Things might start making sense, but you could'nt care less… there is a growing realization of bonds that can be built with others, maybe a slight weakening of existing bonds, especially with parents, who try to discipline and make you walk on the straight and narrow.

School enters life, bringing with it an infestation of complexities. If the truth lies in education, its also education that encourages the neverending search for truth. It's here that many learn about choices, the choice to work hard and earnestly, the choice of building a character with the blocks provided or the choice of starting from scratch and visibly rebelling! All this must happen naturally and with the flow of things. You learn routines and other's schedules, you learn other's interests and acheivements trying to understand what it is that your here on earth for.

Your much more deviant now… the questioning begins, why do it this way, is it because I see everyone else do it this way… sublimally we assimilate certain things, others we don't. Trudging through the whole mess of things, you must lead two lives, one where time is yours to kill and spend and the other where you must devote yourself to the formation whose end you cannot see. While genius must blend or pretend as the situation might demand, most find a pretty tough fight and must see themselves through.

The memories that are left behind are some of the sweetest or some of the bitterest, but it almost seems as if it were a train ride, a controlled environment to look out from, it's beautiful outside, you can see… but you must stay inside. The speed at which you travel is tremendous, in the end leaving behind just those frames that had something important to offer, maybe a very deep red gorge with craggy peaks and a scary drop or an awe-inspiring and proud mountain with a snow capped peak dominating from the distance.

Things start to grow confusing as awareness is almost complete. Morals must receive a deep shock, the terrain begins to change. The peaks and valleys are exciting, now that your able to descend and climb them. But you don't know what to make of the excitement. Your in control now, you tell yourself, but the frames of others in your mind prick when you think you might have done something wrong. Get rid of it and life is beautiful and ready to let go of all of it's secrets. All reach for them, sometimes you get hurt, sometimes it's worth it.

It's around now that bonds grow the strongest, others grow on you, reliability, trustworthiness and compatibility, you can pin them down and describe them… often a friend is enough, for others many is fine!! You think your seeing straight but smirkingly realize your intoxicated with life. A Job maybe A Car, material pleasures create space for themselves in you mind. Your heart has very little to say!! Letting go is as easy as visiting the next watering hole with the stranger you met last Friday.

Acheivements for you are now quantitative and not qualitative, the zen you might have brought to balance your two lives tends to dissapear. Your working harder/longer or just the opposite. For those in the city, destruction approaches faster.

Your seeing Personality types now, the mentor, who tries to show you where he has been and where your headed. The laggard, who failed to keep up on the oft trodden path, some still happy some aren't so much, some having defined their own lives with the diligence and guile of their own efforts others having messed up again due to their own actions. The conman, the fellow who assumes your still to naive and tries to cloud your vision, the wannabe mentor. Often your right sometimes you might be wrong. The followers, those who struggle with earlier phases and are desperately looking for a way out. Your peers, some in a struggle with you, others whose personal struggles you acknowledge. Finally, your friends and family for whom you allocate a strong static block. Your inspirations remain and you yearn to bridge the gap.

Life's speed upto here has to be appreciated, You've hit 25 and I don't know the what or how yet of why things are the way they are… maybe your looking for ways to slow it down, maybe your still burning out. Maybe you realize there are so many questions that it makes you comfortably numb not to have that fever anymore to uncover the truth. Instead you settle for regularity and prepare for the rest or build mental challenges that define your place in the race. The child is gone, maybe to return, who can tell, I certainly can't.

(sorry to recirculate,but I got to get my hosting sorted out)

The Rhythm of life, the pulse that courses through everyone’s veins. Yes, that’s me! Jack knows I exist. Jack knows that I am the expression of his soul. When people talk off the beat they simply mean me.

Without me, expression is so incomplete. Jack tends to forget of my existence now and then. I remember on one occasion, Jack wrote his thoughts out about how he felt, but it lacked the life-giving pulse… Jack regretted its lifelessness and tried harder, only to fail and to try again. When he was able to find the rhythm, Jack knew he had it, he did not have to think about it. At that point, I breathed beauty into his expression and a smile onto his face.

Jack remembers the rhythm of his mother’s lullaby, too embarassed to uncloak the memory. The lullaby matched the rhythm of Jack’s heart, always managing to put him to sleep.

Jack knows I exist in the many forms, from the simple ticking wall clock that cuckoos to the the small quartz chip that keeps the fanciest of wrist watches on time. The analytical side of Jack must work hard and find innovative ways to capture the essence of soul. It merely attempts to replace me, never coming close! However, what Jack fails to realize is that I exist in him too.

Unfortunately for him, I don’t think I am going to take the trouble to find Jack, for Jack must find me.

He stared out at the wet street. It was pouring outside! He walked into his studio apartment and switched on his PC. In the few seconds that it took to boot up he was letting his mind wander through to several rainy days he spent years ago in a different place.

Almost instinctively, at times like these he went into a folder full of pictures of this particular girl he liked, she fit in the frame of his thoughts right now like a glove. He thought of one such wet night. He had had a lot to drink, vodka was so good with great company, went down almost like water. He had not known what had hit him. She had felt the same way.

They got out of the bar and into the street. Walking arm in arm, in a drunken stupor, they climbed into his old blue aston martin. Our protagonists mind was racing through the events at this time, the words they exchanged almost echoed in his mind. He held onto them like treasures, lest he forget, he feared.

“I feel great when I am around you!”, he distinctly remember saying… he looked down straight at her. She looked back a, coy smile telling him that the feeling was mutual. Instinct took over. He leaned over her and for a moment she felt his warm breath. She inched forward encouragingly, he kissed her at first on the cheek, almost testingly. She responded by locking lips with his! He was lost in his very first kiss. It felt great alright.

He wondered, how many years ago was that? A stupid thing to muse over, to interrupt that wonderful theater he was enacting in his mind. He thought, maybe I really did love her. He looked over at the bed, his date was asleep. Almost a hooker, a university student who needed his money, and even more a wild night out downtown. Easy he thought, then erased the thought, embarassingly. He badly wanted to respect her! However, the truth, soon it would be someone else.

He looked back at the computer screen, he was sure he wanted it all to get out of this artificial bottom he had created.

An interesting paragraph was read to me yesterday from one of Robert Frosts poems.

Robert Frost spoke about taking the difficult path. He says it makes all the difference. However, what he does not mention is that when your vision will only tell you that both paths are just as bad, then what does one do? Or should I say, both paths may look just as easy!

Looking back to lore is so easy, making a decision on the other hand is so hard. If you think ahead… and not waste time with frivolous hindsight will you be any better?

Ahh.. forget it, let me live in the present. Rochester is having a heat wave, thats a first for me! But the campus is looking very beautiful today.

Shekhar was relatively quiet that day. He had done something he could never have imagined. An act whose consequences he had never fathomed. He walked slowly down to his friends house down the street. His head hung low, he avoided the stares of his neighbours. As he walked, his feet scraped the dust in dejection.

He wish he knew what exactly had swept through his mind as he swung that bottle through the air before it smashed to pieces.

He looked down at his feet. His shoes, bare at the soals, exposing his many soars and blisters to the dust kicked up. He could not have felt sorry for himself for he knew no better. Forever, it was always necessary to have lived with the problems, so abundant and so pervasive. Occasionally, he would glance at the new sneakers the kid in front of the class wore. But he never felt a desire to want, all he felt was pangs of guilt of what had conspired that day at home. It was his priority and his all important consequence to carry that luggage around.

His father had promised to be home that day at 8. It was after all his youngest brothers birthday. His father was a modest worker at the nearby steel plant, but if he wished he could have used the few Rupees he earned that day to feed his 3 children a decent meal.

He could see that Shalini had not eaten that day, neither had the younger Rohit. His mother could only manage a few Rotis which went into his fathers tiffin. A sacrifice they were all willing to make. They had hoped for a little too much, he thought.

He walked and looked down the road. Beyond a large banyan tree whose roots held as much wisdom as one might seek, lay his friends home. Ghanshyams father too worked at the factory, but he cared. Atleast they could eat. The house was not too run-down, neither was it too fancy. It had its own character, a roof with red tiles, few modest windows and a large door, decorated with paintings of elephants carrying Princes of an erstwhile era.

Instead of coming home, he had found his father in the nearby country liquour shop. He had popped in for one drink too many. He came looking for him when he realized that it was quite late for steel workers to return home. He might have dreaded that moment, but all the same he hoped that his father might instead have taken a detour to the bakery on his way home. He loved the cream rolls from the bakery.

He looked at the large door in front of him and knocked hard. An almost urgent desire to meet his friend crept outwards as he knocked. The guilt was hard to bear, all he wanted to do was confess and face the consequences. His young mind automatically led him to Ghanshyams house. He wondered why, at this sensitive time, did he not run instead.

He faced upto his father, with the heart of a lion. With tears in his eyes he mentioned how they had missed him, what they had hoped. A blank look of puzzlement stared back. Almost as if, something might have possessed him. He so much wanted things to be normal that he offered to walk his father back and forget everything. So what if they skipped a meal, dad would be home to contribute to the warmth.

One more drink he had said, slapping Shekhar across the face when he refused. Shekhar walked upto the bar, picked up the bottle and walked back calmly. He swung the bottle hard breaking it against his fathers temple. The blow knocked the older man back of his perch and onto the floor. What followed was more rage, the remnants of the shattered container went straight into his bosom.

Ghanshyam listened carefully as Shekhar wept, telling everything. He whispered “You could not have helped it bro, it’s alright, just let it go, I understand your reasons. “.

His guilt melted away with his tears, he was looking out at the cold streets. Ready to face the consequences, for he had already deposed before who had mattered most. His friend, mattered most, for he knew what was true!

He looked up, saw two stars. Close by, they accentuated each others brilliance. He just wished…