heartbreak

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certain kind of sadness

Its that kind of happiness which makes you sad. Not the weepy and sulky sadness, but the sweet one. The beautiful, serene one. The one which you could get addicted to. The one you sometimes even hope for.

Remember the feeling you get when you are sure it is not going to happen. Remember the disappointment that you suffer from when you break someone’s expectations. Try to imagine the huzun that Pamuk feels when he sees his beloved Istanbul crumbling into ruins. Now mix it with the feeling you get when you make peace with the fact that you can’t do anything about any of the above and you will get this certain kind of sadness.

Its too parochial to ask for happiness, as it would devoid you of the great feelings that the emotional pandora box has to offer. To whatever gods dictate the laws, I only ask for life. Life full of mysteries, full of uncertainities, full of victories, full of heartbreaks. Hope is a dangerous thing, the most cruel one out there; but its fun to play with fire and get burnt now and then!

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Fickle Hearts

People have a habit of falling in love. They fall in love with a person, an idea, with money, position, power and sometimes with themselves. They obsess it in their dreams and thoughts. They paint in their minds the image of how the person or idea is, or should be. This love forms their lifeline, their source of energy in distress. And we admire such people, people with purpose in life, people with beliefs, people who love someone.

But what happens if one day I realize that the one I used to love passionately has changed beyond recognition or I always had wrong notion about that person; or that the idea I so obsessed about doesn’t even make sense in the current context anymore. That would shake the ground beneath me, and deprive me of my source of energy. That would leave me heart broken.

And its not an alien concept. This keeps happening everyday to some person or the other. Every day ideas are debunked, perceptions are proven wrong. We rely on fickle things to keep our hearts from breaking, and more often than not we are punished for it.

Still we survive. In fact we live. Isnt that a beauty? A tale of courage often untold? Or is it that only those survive who do not love, do not believe in anything? I hope not, because that would break my fickle heart.

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The village with beautiful eyes

The village in a place far far away had a peculiar culture. Whether it was because people were too ashamed to show their real faces, or whether it was a noble step to discourage all prejudices; each one of the villagers wore a mask. The mask was created by a mask-maker whose shop was near the village common well.

There were masks for happiness, with a smile on the lips. There were masks for sadness, with a frown on the face. And then there were masks for laughter, with white shining teeth. So the streets were witness to just three kinds of emotions, which was pretty unfair.

And so it happened that once the mask-maker fell in love when his eyes struck gold seeing a beautiful girl who had briefly unmasked to buy a new one. Not surprisingly the whole village got painted with this spirit of love. Where ever you go you would see people with a glow in their eyes. Their smile got more genuine, their frown got more heart touching, and their laughter would remind that there was still hope for humanity. The whole village got  beautiful.

But the fate had to intervene and soon the girl got married. The mask-maker was heart broken. It was imperative for him to swallow his grief and continue making the masks, for the whole village chores depended on him. And soon the village got painted with a totally different kind of expression, the emotion of pain. The pain which needed compassion rather than pity, as it was accompanied with dignity and self-respect. The people would smile and laugh but their eyes would betray. The sadness got more genuine.

But there was some beauty in this breakdown. The tear filled eyes would sparkle in the sunlight. The streets seemed grave, serene.  Silence is a virtue too underrated as it is invariably associated with being dumb. But it was the silence and the beautiful clear eyes which exalted the village to divinity.

Your voice may lie, your lips may agree; but its those two beautiful eyes of yours you need to watch out, for they have a habit of telling the truth!

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Good-Bye

Recall the experience when you have a big presentation in the morning, and you are suffering from a “can’t-sleep-before-3”-nia. Now if you are like me, in the morning when the alarm rings, you would press the snooze button. Usually these 10 minutes of snooze feel like heaven, its like I am mogli in the cozy lap of balu in a jungle with everything made of honey and my nostrils are filled with the sweet damp smell of honey. But now it becomes a different story altogether. These 10 minutes become the most painful 10 minutes of my life. A dream recurs to me again an again like a hundred times in these 10 minutes in which I have got up and entered the class prepared to give the presentation. And the most painful moment is when the alarm again rings at the end of 10 minutes. Now I have to wake up in any case. And the lack of sufficient sleep the last night lends a lot of tiredness to my body and so when I try to wakeup I feel like my soul is trying to rip off my body to get out of it.

I have been living here in iitg for 4 years and now the alarm has rung. Now its the phase of those 10 minutes of recurring dreams following by the 10th minute of painful goodbyes. But its only after that painful process of waking up is accomplished, one gets to give that presentation of his/hers to prove his/her mettle. Dreams, however beautiful they might be, are still dreams. To solve the real world problems, we need to wake up.

I have made a lot many mistakes while being here in iitg. And this place was generous enough to forget my mistakes and encourage me to look forward into the life. I have learnt a lot much from those mistakes, and I know that the outside world won’t be that generous.

Good-Bye everyone! Hope to meet you all at the other end someday or the other!

P.S. : I couldn’t do justice to the post, but I think to write a  post which would do justice to these moments, I would have to transcend my own abilities.

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Fighting A Lost Battle

There are uncountable battles which I have lost. And there are as many which I have won. But not until the results were out that I could enjoy the sweetness of victory or the bitterness of defeat. But this one is different, a lot different.

For an optimist, the words goals and deadlines are divine in nature. They keep him on his toes, they are like checkpoints to be cleared in the journey of life, and without them his life would be just a stretch of a long road with no bumps and no turns making his journey unbearably monotonous. Whatever the result may be, never in his journey does he think that he would miss the goal, shoot off the deadline.

There are some battles in life, or maybe a very few of them, where you know for sure that defeat in inevitable, conditions favor the adversary and victory is just a fool’s hope. You are too tired, not because your muscles lack strength, not because you are exasperated of those infinitely many challenges thrusted upon you, but because you don’t have any motivation to keep you going. But still you wont quit, because you believe in miracles, a faint voice in some dark corner of your heart assures you of victory, and this voice however weak it might be, becomes the basis of your faith although everything around you is announcing your defeat in its own shrieky voice. You know that when the reality descends, it will slap you so hard that you will think a hundred times before committing to any further challenges. But that’s the beauty of an optimist, you still go on.

So I am ready to surge ahead with just a handful of soldiers, against the unsurmountable enemy. Instead of fear I feel serene, tranquil. There is nothing I can do except for fighting so hard, that my efforts are remembered forever. I have got just one chance to show what I have got, either I resign to my fears and let my feelings, my spirits plunge deep into the abyss, let them be lost into the oblivion or I muster enough courage and fight in such a graceful manner that my feelings and spirits cast an everlasting impression. For me there is no option to quit. And who knows, maybe the angels bless me and the miracle does happen.

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The Lost Mango

My eyes were set on it. The mango at the top of the tree. It seemed so ripe, so sweet. People told me I couldn’t climb that height and I should choose the lower ones. People warned me that it might even be rotten. I even heard someone saying that if I somehow manage to climb so high, as soon as I try to hold it, it would just fall down and I would loose it.

Nonetheless, I had to give a try. I managed to climb the height. I reached the top of the tree. And as I tried to touch my prize, I lost it, for it went crashing into the ground. I was shattered. People said it was just a mango and I could always get another one. But I knew it was not just that, just a fruit, it was something more. It was something my heart was set on. It was my desire. And it pained because with it went away a piece of my heart.