Wagging Away

It's a painful push when a friend, in a personal moment of pain, decries you as heartless because "you're cold...you've never known love"...man, did that hurt...now I'm not sure whether he was just being pissy, or perhaps therein lies a kernel of something that comes too close to the truth, perhaps? And strangely enough, to me at least, the sentiment has been echoed with increased frequency among those who know me well... and perhaps love me best.. detached, they say.... certainly more than before... why then are you so cold these days?... followed by a, "it’s not that bad, this detached person who observes from afar"...and as I’ve discussed with a dear friend... one observes from strangely disembodied states... watching yourself as you go through the act of doing, reacting, living... a while ago I seemed to see this coming... my blogs from a year ago are strangely portentous... detachment, I wrote, is great until it is not... have I now reached t...

I spent some time tonight going through blogs and thinking about stuff...I've spent a few years locking myself away and have grieved only one thing the most..the loss of my words...a comment on another blog left me grateful and humbled...when the mind finds a way to read, to write, to paint to dance to sing, it's a gift that ought not to be taken lightly. I spent a joyous half hour with my daughter tonight ostensibly helping her write a speech...what it helped was to free me from self-imposed cages of the mind. It's a hard habit to break when one pretends one does not need to write. especially when it is the one thing one cherishes the most...so I shall see how long my gratefulness and humility last...how long I can put pen to paper and try to write...not to publish nor be read but for windows to the soul and for the soul...a voice that begs to be heard apart from the recesses of one's brain....so write I shall till I can...for it makes me whole again...

It's a strange thing it is...kissing... I feel I am, at 40, very inured to the lure of a kiss...and from what I hear and the little I know, not many people are particularly good at it. On the surface of it, it's pretty gross...saliva, bad breath, germs, non-skeletal organs twisting in battle...it should be enough to kill romance surely? we kiss in anger, we kiss to turn off thought, we kiss to turn off and turn on...we kiss out of affection we kiss to cover up hate...we kiss to maintain distance, we kiss to obliterate it...it's a pretty darn amazing gesture actually... But somewhere in the deep recesses of the human soul is the need for that one perfect moment...we can live without it but we cannot live without the hope of it... So what is it about a kiss that draws us so...in that perfect movie moment, when somehow looking into another's soul can only be sealed with a kiss...a pouring in of one soul into another through breath...in that one-breath stealing breath ...

Funny thing they are, tears...for when you're happy and when you're sad... always there and only missed when they don't flow. For over two years now, I've not cried...at least not much and never for myself...I've felt no grief no anger no feeling... when they came I would look away and try not to cry...a weakness, a foolishness... except, the dam... it's broken... or certainly sprung a leak...uncomfortable...little dribbles at happiness, in full flow at grief, a wobbly smile at an emotional movie, sorrow at memories...I cry for love, for the lack of it..I cry for songs and for battlesongs...I cry for symbols of hope, for lost souls...I cry for myself...as I am for who I was and for what will come...I cry for what I want, what I have...I cry because I am loved and I cry because I want to love and yet cannot...I cry as I write, I cry as I think...I am brave and yet I am not...cowardly and yet not...soldier I am and victim the same...words that want to come but w...

Travelling at 40 So as my trip slowly dwindles into a lovely haze of distant comforting memory wanted to jot down a few more things before general senility took over... It's funny how the trip evolved actually. I got on the flight from here to Dubai and onward to Copenhagen fairly uneventfully (thank God!)...I ended up sitting next to the only other Indian who was flying to Copenhagen! A young thirty something chap from Gurgaon on his way to a training month in Copenhagen courtesy his company. Never flown before, never left India before and straight to Copenhagen in Oct armed with nothing more than the most redoubtable of armour...lots of ready-to-eat Haldiram's meals...As he earnestly explained to me, "wahan khane ko kya milega pata nahin" so he was prepared to beat out the 7-year famine if need be. A very helpful chap and sort of clinging on to the last vestige of home and a familiar face, we shared  a cab and he dropped me off at my hotel and went off to hi...

So i am finally writing about my long planned journey alone...to Europe because I am a coward and don't want to face random trials and tribulations on a holiday! But the key point of that last sentence was ALONE! After 15 years of marriage, 40 years of a vanilla existence I finally decided to have a me-moment. And that resulted in 10 days away from home...not anywhere particularly brave or particularly exotic...Western Europe is nothing if not the antithesis of those two things... but for me, it was more than that...it represented a frontier hitherto unthought, untouched and certainly not breached... So bear with me while I rewind a bit... June 2013-June 2014 was a bit of a red-letter year for me...consider this: Got a job in something I knew nothing about Kept a job and learnt what I previously knew nothing about Turned 40 Worked with personal turmoil Worked through parenting guilt Came out fine after parental guilt Didn't resolve personal turmoil More importantl...