One by one, everything & everyone

Made a life plan, a life calender. Put down things I want to do. Started with putting them against the planned year. Ended up filling the page with several things all over the place, not concerned about the timing. Thats when I felt this. Felt completely in control and capable. It always comes on early mornings that come with lack of sleep, and an insightful !

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Seems like a morning which lets you know that anything is possible. That all you did wrong, that went wrong, all that did not happen doesn’t mean anything. What you decide (DECIDE, yes, thats what I said) does!

Because right now, in this moment, you can choose life. Choose life over confusion, choose life over guilt, choose life over insecurity, choose life over lonliness. Choose life with hope & happiness. Hope that is followed up by a resolution to live and create a reality of all your dreams.

One by one, all that you ever wanted falling into its designated place like the snow flakes and the rain drops from the sky. And it will be beautiful. It will be perfect. It will be exactly what you wanted. And those who are chosen (by you or chance or destiny) under the big plan will share it with you, now and then and forever. So don’t worry and go to sleep. You have so much to dream & achieve for yourself.

” I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside.” – Ekchart Tolle

Stability

I love. I hate. I talk. I contradict. I am vulnerable.

I like feeling the same I felt when three-four years ago. It was more authentic but less wise.

I like the fact that I have a life with more to do than another person my age. Its exhilarating for that side of mine which learns and creates and fills moments with capability.

I like having people. I have some of them, but we are all on a path to redeem ourselves of our insecurities, and fulfill our self-defined (influenced by the world) goals and desires. We take each other for who we are but its not enough. The individual pursuit for self-actualization keeps us away and active. But one day, we’ll spend time, money and energy to just be together and recount old moments while creating new ones.

I like that I have a few things I know I HAVE to do soon in life.

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I like that I can like so many things without feeling certain, without feeling any stability. But then again, what is it anyway?

Restart

Written a few days ago. I am home as a start...

We are all products of our childhood & we are always trying to breakfree from what it is that made us, I concluded this when I was still young & somehow ended up studying Psychology – a field I did not completely understand existed for me to actually study in school. It felt pathetic to realize (and recall an instance with each conclusion) that situations beyond our control & will molded us & affected us deeply, when we were too young to even realize the concept of life as we know it. (Reminds me of the recent report which concluded that one out of every two children in India are sexually molested/abused – and then we wonder why the newer generations are messed up beyond repair. We DO need a new earth with new human consciousness).

We are all normal. Infact, we are all extraordinary & unique with our interests, pursuits & passions. Not to mention our fantasies, desires, behaviour patterns, friends and whatever it is that we currently ‘do’. And then we are all dark & twisted, out drivers sitting deep within our consciousness, established most probably before we even hit puberty or adolescence.

You could walk upto almost anyone on earth & tell them your one deep dark situation/emotion which most of your behaviour, ambition & choices are fixated around. And simply ask – what is yours? And if you are talking to someone even remotely self-aware (or expressive), you’d get an answer or even better a story – and a story, as they say, is truer than the truth.

And in all probability you have already done this. In some instances, it forms the basis for life-long relationships. You find someone who sticks around even after knowing where you are coming from. If you are lucky, even helps you go ahead and do bigger, better things in life, by dealing with your un-solvable, un-explainable & un-reasonable situation & choices. Thats why, people is better than no people.

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I am twenty three years old & find myself far far away from MY idea of what it is like to be twenty three. More importantly, I find myself in an absurdly different point. And I know its not only in my head. Everything I know, everything that has happened to me, every guilt, every mistake, every happy memory, every choice, every person, every desire, every self-judgement – EVERYTHING is catching up, adding up & floating vividly in my consciousness. I can relate it to the often shared near to death experiences – flashbacks of all the important events & people of your life hitting you all at once. Either I am about to die (saying it like this is liberating), or face a major catastrophe (and I have imagined a few already, adding to my paranoia). OR this is simply one of those rare chances life offers you to make a choice and redeem yourself of all the baggage (not the number of years but the awareness of your existence determines this).

In my mind, the list of issues I need to resolve is more clear than its ever been. And I feel that if I don’t do it now, I will surely fall apart. I am already beginning to feel that I have come to indulge in my worst self in the past few months. Signs have been evident. (Finding yourself talking to yourself loudly and talking to the sky – I am assuming to God – and knowing you are NOT crazy yet – is unsettling).

Here I am, aware yet undecided, wanting to reform yet lost. If I am indeed capable to doing this ALL on my own, then I am ready!

free at two three

So much. Literally. And as strange and cliche it may be, hardly any words will do justice to my state of mind.

This week, I found love & happiness for someone, peace, people I can call mine, accomplishment, witnessed dreams becoming reality, witnessed people changing for the better, felt proud of having been who I had come to be in AIESEC and people that got the chance to join and change because I made the sacrifices that I did. Also made plans – happy plans, and I also turned twenty three on my eighteenth (nat’l/int’l) AIESEC Conference – that was quite sudden. Twenty three – really? I was just eighteen, but being twenty one seems like a distant dream, and twenty two – was okay. I am not supposed to think like this, numbers and figures, age and months – they are not defining values of life, but this time, I had to think.

Also this week, I let the same fears, pain and guilt lead me which have influenced me time and again especially in the last two years, I lost people that I once called mine, maybe because of them, maybe because of me, maybe just because of time, maybe I just think I did. I also saw me make a promise to myself and break it (yet again), and I blamed time, and emotion and everything I could just to justify what I felt.

I don’t even know what this means. I am still waiting for you to tell me.

Facts that matter, right now:

Harveen has a niece, and she is a Virgo!

Thanks to my Dad, my parents have run out of time to decide where to move, and this might be the last week I call that house in Panjab University Chandigarh HOME! I am going to help with the shifting (wherever they are moving?). Its going to be nostalgic, its going to make me feel 16, its going to be difficult. There will be Ram Leela and hot peanuts and desi popcorn and One standard Gypsy with Cops and kids dragging parents (or otherwise).

I want to go to UK this December with Harveen for her Convocation at LSE. Fingers crossed.

I think I finally have my job figured out, or atleast what I want to do before I am done with my term. I like how its hoped to be shaping up.

Apurav has finalized his accommodation in Mumbai, him having a proper kitchen tops my priority list.

I didn’t pick up Prerna’s call on my birthday and haven’t talked to her since, I think she is going to be pissed or just indifferent

Aseem called. I think I should have called him long time back, just like I need to call Anupam and Ashima.

Avinash & Tewari are ALSO senti.

Mumbai Meri Jaan

I am sure I already mentioned how Mumbai is absolutely the kind of city I never would have aspired to live in, yet its the city I have moved to first. The stark difference between where I come from (I call it a small non-cosmo but green, planned, modern & amazing city, with an informed and conducive environment, well atleast enough to not make me feel left behind in anyway whatsoever)

But Mumbai – why do I feel compelled to write about the city, from my meager experience of living here only for three months, out of which I was traveling for more than a month, when I know more than enough has been written, said, and talked about this city and what it means to breathe, survive and live here.

Its because its it is the city of dreams for many, and whether it turns out to be that for you or not, it mesmerizes you with the power to turn someone’s dreams into reality even though someone like me still keeps wondering how one things even work in this city, what keeps these people going, and how, HOW on Earth is this a place people LOVE to live in.

And then it happens to you, one day when you are coming back home in an auto listening to songs that sound best only in an auto along Marine drive, when the cool breeze fills LIFE into you, and you see LIFE all around you. You see people from all stratas of society strolling along the sea, you see kids trying to sell you roses right outside Jazz By the Bay just to keep the irony going, you see the parties in high society balconies, houses that cost a few million times more than the roses being sold right beneath them.

Because you live in only a suburb, you get the pleasure of seeing Mumbai – THE CITY disappear into the background, just to see MORE of it, only its not as dreamy and rosy. Its greener though, but you see the quality of life around you wavering in huge proportions, but you never not see life, you never not see human presence, you never not see cars and autos and cabs on the Eastern Express Highway – in an endless chase to beat each other, with destinations spread over the Suburbs or beyond.

When you see a hill on the left, glittering with bulbs from the slums which cover it to the top, and you see a plane preparing to land out the right corner of your eye (occasionally its more than one, and you see series of lights in the sky approaching your direction – and it ignites one of those childhood fantasies of seeing something other than a plane in the sky because from the Highway you only see a light getting bigger and brighter), when you see these two things, you know you near home (a house you never wanted to like enough to call it home).

Thats Mumbai, or the tiny little part of it I live every now and then. There are other parts ofcourse, of meeting old friends in Bandra, of watching a moving in Mulund, of simply trying to pretend you live in Powai and spending a whole Sunday there sitting in a Cafe.

To conclude, I am not sure if I love it or hate it, but I have come to enjoy the existence of this city. And the way I live is a factor which that makes it swing all the time, the city, and the job – both have me bewildered.

Not just another conference

Despite the incredibly liberating moment I had before coming to Malaysia back home, in India, in Mumbai, I seem to have left some perspectives blocked. However, it provided enough room for me to come here and experience International Congress as something special, because thats what it is.

107 countries is a lot more than a lot people will ever get to travel to, 520 young people representing these countries carry unique and important opinions that are shared rarely on one platform. The energy, the knowledge, the drive – it comes together to take AIESEC forward, every year.

Even though I have been in AIESEC for four years, being at this IC has brought forward some new and fresh patterns, ideas and commitments. Each session has been substantially meaningful and constructive. I must admit that its after a long time that I feel like I am actually learning at a conference. Perhaps, the roles I have been playing and the frame of mind I have attended my last few conferences in, was not the best in terms of seeking some answers. The predispositions about AIESEC and what I want to do here and how were predominant.

But here, I have been a delegate. And its been very fulfilling – enough to fuel my passion to do my current job in AIESEC well and effectively. And thats cool and new for the way I have lived AIESEC, and those who know me well would know why – why this year is proving to be so different than my first four years in AIESEC. Its after a long time that I am maintaining a note of every session and every thought that I have penned down and want to remember.

I am beginning to seek simplicity and clarity like never before – about everything, including my future. And I am also happy to see some questions and thoughts raised about AIESEC and its relevance and its future at this conference. Only because it validates my doubts, and answers them at the same time.

In conclusion however, I am still unclear about how I actually feel about being here, perhaps I should stop thinking of the future that much. The places, the people and the purpose for the next ten months are pre-decided. And I have that to live – and perhaps only in the now.

On a personal note I have had funny realizations at some odd moments about how I am really far from a lot of people that have started to matter a lot including my parents. And maybe thats how it will be for a while.

The future is promising, in AIESEC or outside, in India or outside – I am the only common factor.

Today

First & foremost, my country made me who I am. And I make it what it is everyday for it inspires me to. Happy Birthday India.

Wishful thinking

Being literally forced to write this one. Not by anyone, but the slow buffering speed of megavideo and the loyalty and love for blogging, almost ashamed at not having written anything for almost two weeks.

Maybe I can get away with just pictures, maybe, I just don’t need to use words today, because if I was really to do that, this would be a devastating blog post. For I wouldn’t be able to with-hold names, and feelings and perspectives, and decisions! Or maybe, it will be blank, just like the past few weeks now. Not good, not bad, not happy, not sad, not anything – and that was supposed to be liberating, but its only plain (I like how it can rhythm with pain)

In the end, I only chose one, which for some reason fascinates me, it appears different things depending on what I want to see.

It came from joy of having found good coffee, and the urge to spoil, ruin, and  spoil. Oh, now I choose to indulge.

There and back again

I found Courage again, in something. Not only courage, but reassurance of living the way I thought was the right way to do it. Also, a new belief in death, being a gift and a doom, at the same time. But certainly not being the end.

Which gives reason to live like never before. And give something (or someone) – everything.

“I see in your eyes, the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves, and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! For all that you hold dear, on this good earth, I bit you stand, men of the west!“

- Aragorn

And there is someone else who has gone through the same thing.

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life. How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back. There are some things time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.”
The words I should have said, but did not.

“You cannot always be torment too. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on.”

Finally

These are the words that hold us back, or did. But now that they are finally out there, the pursuit is different.

You love someone, you open yourself up to suffering, thats the sad truth. Maybe they’ll break your heart, maybe you’ll break their heart and never be able to look at yourself in the same way. Those are risks.

The thought of losing so much control over personal happiness is unbearable.

Thats the burden.
Like wings, they have weight, we feel that weight on our backs, but they are a burden that lifts us, the burden that allows us to fly..