Tested in Fire, Born of Steel

Inspired by the latest Adidas cricket ad. I loved the words, and tried to make a few of my own.

The walls just keep getting bigger,

The crowd is yelling, mocking, daring,

Spotlights bear down like an angry sun,

My body screams of pain and sacrifice,

While the heart and mind are numb to all,

Pressure only increases, the rewards decrease,

Voices of support die away like an echo,

Taunts and failures become my shadow,

And just when reason is about to die -

I'm going to stand up one more time,

To shine forth and eclipse the sun,

To bear down and silence the roar,

In this moment, at this place, I am invincible

The Sapphire Wind

Today is another sweep down the eternal corridors of a never-ending spiral. The fanciful flights of birds break the dawn, and yet the birds are an after-blur set against the cold light of an alien moon. Here we belong, and here we remain. Even though the air that seeps through the puerile soil reminds us that suffocation is a mercy, we smile through the dark curtains of our own facades. The waves of our dreams and desires break upon a shore of our steadfast morals and sure-footed assumptions. Like dolphins we prance, little realizing our flights of freedom were confined to a plastic bowl for the amusement of the masses. Dance, they scream - and we do. Little aware that they dictated our actions.

Like puppets on an infinite string the minions fight, over Gods and Demons, over Love and Hate, over what we've already forgotten. All in all, the stardust seems to have broken down over and over till all thats left is mud. The endless crowd of insomniacs soar into the world of broken awareness. Vivid in the monochromatic shades of opportunity, the colors fade into a shapeless, formless amalgamation of constancy. The innocent laughter of children echo through the malignant walls of the abyss. The populace crawls within the belly of progress, churning and turning with the movement of insidious constellations. Some remain on the precipice, the sapphire winds blowing through raven locks. The final step to all the others that need to be walked remains hidden and locked away in a fortress of fear.

Woods that spoke

We walked on in woods that spoke,

Of lost dreams and shattered hopes,

In the rain of the last light of a dying sky,

Forever judged by silent eyes,

And yet when we slept, we marched on,

The purpose colored in vermilion,

And still we gave our eyes to see,

A glimpse of our Utopian insanity,

Where every success is steeped in loss,

The singular bite of a million faults,

The future cried a mother's sigh,

As still-born, we all arrived,

But yet we listen in the heat of anticipation,

For the breath of our own salvation,

And in yearning all faces turn to behold,

The silent bell, resplendent in gold,

But hark, this bell does not ring,

And tonight, no Myna sings,

For here and now we begin to walk,

And yet another day is lost in thought,

Eternally judged and found wanting,

Our backs are turned to the world taunting,

And we find our way into an absolute truth,

When you live for someone, your life bears fruit...

And time stood still

Every now and then, we stop as the world speeds on by. Through the incomprehensible blur of the constant landscape and the streaks left behind by the ghosts of memories, we slow down and breathe. In that moment, clarity becomes a beacon we cannot ignore, and through the gray haze of confusion, the future begins to form.

I wish we knew how to switch off our "Auto-Pilot" feature. We tend to become comfortable, averse to risk, rigid in mind and broken in spirit and we forget that sometimes risk becomes a key to a lock that we had forgotten about. How can we justify our complacence in a world where wonders never cease? But then we keep marching on, like mindless drones to the sound of a piper whose pipes were broken a long time ago. The music that leads us on is abhorrent to our ears, but the comfort we gain from numbers advises us to forgo the cacophony and believe in the merits of conformance. Through rain and hail and smiles and pain, we march on while always losing something intrinsic and beautiful along the way.

I was looking through the Facebook profile of one of my school-time buddies. He's married to the love of his life, and now with a child to herald a future of promise. Surrounded by friends and family. The best part about his profile was that he took a picture of every moment of his life. I was going through his albums, and it left me thinking about how blessed his life is. The pictures bound me to the screen, each picture another chapter in his story, rather their story. And it made me smile a little. Simultaneously, it also made regret how I've never wanted to be in photos.

40 years from now, I would have almost nothing to remind me of how much I've lived. I hope my mind will hold these memories in a chest which I will dust off then. Though I might have seen quite a bit of the world, I do not keep souvenirs. I maintain that I will return whenever I want to. But there are things which I want to cherish and there are times which I can never return to, and these are the hardest currency of all. For having gained it, I would never trade it - but I never accept it in the first place. Recently, I took a chance on something. The chance I took was something so out of character for me, I have a hard time believing it myself. But that chance led to something incredible. My days have grown brighter and my life feels rich. I am lost without words for I really want to describe in words the sheer freedom of leaping off a cliff and learning that we all have wings. We ride on starlight, and sleep on the moon. Our words melt and flow for now we no longer need to speak, because we already know. In being we are all we will be, absolute and pristine we shine. And the genesis of this post, the picture of a man and his son, the conversation of expectation and the response of unmitigated joy and pride was conducted in a picture, without a single word visible and without a single motion comprehensible...and time stood still.

Driftwood

Born into a reality that he had no hope of defining or affecting, he accepted the cruel trappings of fate. At a critical moment, he woke from a lucid dream of never-ending mazes when he chose to tread the path less chosen. On his awakening, there was clarity - and never was clarity bestowed on another so bereft of reason.

The hollowed out shell of the world he participated in screamed out in utter silence. Oh, he still had his options, but his options were too limited to be different. All in all, the beginning and the end was what he chose to perceive it as. Saddened beyond the infinite stretch of human hope, he woke that fateful morning to relish everything he had. He held what he always had in a way that lingered into eternity, his body striving to record everything like the parched desert soil absorbs the rain. Into the darkest corners of his emptiness, he let the light shine. He tenderly reached out to the promise of a future he would not behold.

With a single tear rolling down his left cheek, a symbol of the hallowed seas of fate, he stepped into the busy double-lane traffic - closing his eyes just as his feet touched the asphalt, imagining what heaven would hold for the broken...

Lost Lands

During the great quest for purpose, we came across the greatest obstacle of all. We found a mirror, and in the mirror we saw a broken reflection...the mirror was whole; the distortion lay in our being.

The obstacle turned us away from our destiny, like homing pigeons drowning at sea during the storm of revelation. The endless spiral of self-assessment screams out at you, like a perverse jury of sadomasochistic fiends. When do we start to realize that the long walk into the desert of desolation has left us broken and alone.

The time hallowed corridors of inevitability are adorned with the nameless, faceless portraits of those who've tried and failed and faded away to nothing. The choices we percieve are circular mazes which bring us back to the road we were meant to tread. Our feet do not seek the other road. The lamb does not live in the shadow of the wolf; the lamb lives in fear of it.

The pursuit of happiness

I am an over-achiever. Not a statement of arrogance, as I'm usually expected to do, but more of a statement of fact.I'm 27, and I'm a computer graduate with honors from one of India's toughest and highest ranked institutions for engineering. I am one of the fastest growing employee's in my company, with a package to boot. I am the creator of a framework in my domain, which people with many more years of experience are still struggling to grapple with and my company is trying to patent. I am learning the hindustani classical flute; I do charcoal shadings; I play almost every sport there is; I've read so many books that I lost count long ago; I've done part-time jobs to support my extravagant lifestyle; I've seen more countries and met more CxOs than most people will do in their lifetimes; I've been an international guest speaker at conferences; I've done charity work; I've been to jail for my folks; I'm a group sports captain and an organizer for many of my company's events; I'm a dramatist and an actor; I'm a published poet.

And in the eyes of the people closest to me, I'm a failure.

Everyday is one more chance for me to disappoint the people around me. I struggle with the paradox of not living my own life. Why should any part of my life not be dedicated to my happiness? For currently, my family considers me an alcoholic; extended family has mostly excommunicated me; I am neither a good friend nor am I a good enemy; I am the last thing some people want in their lives; I am a disappointment to my mom and dad; I am not happy inside myself; I am still lost in trying to understand who I am and what I want to do in life.

There is so much of hatred in my life, and so much of resentment, that I fail to understand why I put up with anything. There is a side of me which can end all my issues in a heartbeat; and then there is a side which tends to understand that every part of my life is crucial. But I try not to get home, for home is where I hurt the most. I want to get along with everyone I know. But I can't. I try, but I fail. I love failing, for failing is what made me who I am. Fearless. Reckless. Strong. Honorable. I know I haven't tried unless I fail once. It's important to fail. Failure doesn't build character - it reveals it. Or so I believe. I've lived my life better than most. I don't give in to temptations, I don't cheat people, I've loved with all my heart, I've never given in to drugs, I've respected my culture and my elders - and I've got nothing to show for it but some grief and a whole lotta disappointment.

Day in and day out, there is a never-ending cycle of "prove yourself, or hide yourself". My parents never encouraged me to do anything. They didn't support anything I've tried to do, from school day extra-curriculars to working-day initiatives. I fight through negativity every single day of my life. Supporters are rare and far between. I've rarely heard anyone say anything which makes me feel good about anything. But I'm an extremely positive person. When shit pushes me to the wall, I turn around and say fuck 'em all. I couldn't give a flying fuck about the way people dictate my life to me. In this direction, all us failures do is read motivational stuff. My favorites are outlined below:

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. – Winston Churchill

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. – Robert F. Kennedy

Success builds character, failure reveals it - Dave Checkett

And my personal favorite of all time:

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan

The End of all promises...

The End of all promises begins with the gentle sigh of doubt. A life unfulfilled starts to sound like hail on a tin roof - the ringing notes become a constant reminder of things that will never be. The echoes become the ghosts of christmas past. They begin to haunt you as you try and flee in a velvet corrider of self-loathing. The end of the corridor looms close, and then you realize that the exit loops back to the entry. The only difference is, now you're falling into an infinite pit. Glimpses of your life shoot past - those choices which would have changed your road, those people who would've meant something, those moments which you failed to treasure.

Yet, in the vortex of shattered lives you smile, and you smile, and you smile - not the hollow smile of the insane, but the knowing smile of the preternaturally wise. It was all for naught, after all. We're so caught up trying to peek behind the satin curtain of finality, we often forget that death will embrace us all for one night. She is everyones mistress, and no one's whore.

Why then like ants do we scamper trying to find meaning in a world bereft of reason. Nothing happens for a reason. In fact, nothing is all that happens here. Like lost children in an abandoned carnival, we ooh and aah at the sights we see, but we refuse to understand that the carnival died a long time ago. Its sad that the clowns are gone, and the man on the flying trapeze is no longer the star he used to be. But stars die, and back to dust they go. Stardust. I am the cumulation of this endless cycle of despair and death - and the star's dreams lie dead in the Stardust that forms my corporeal form. Long after I'm gone, my dead dreams would be hidden in someone else's body, like a man buried alive. Silent and desperate to break out. But there lies six feet of dirt between the reality and the aspiration . Where then do the screams die? In reality, there never was a scream. Only the whimpering cry of acceptance. The End of all promises begins with the gentle sigh of doubt.

Relationships are a farce...

I've had a lot of time to myself recently due to various reasons. During this otherwise uneventful period of clubbing, partying, meeting new people etc. something wonderful reared its head. I saw this movie recently by the name of "Into the wild". There has never been a movie that I believed in as much as this one.

Through life we see a lot of relationships - friends, family, enemies, contacts and so on. There is one underlying fact about most of these relationships.

We...always...compromise

Every sentient being enters into a relationship because there is a gain. The good relationships are the type where the gain is mutual and the bad being the one where the rewards are reaped by one and the burdens are sown into the life of the other. The thing that has always irked me is that the world doesn't work according to my time-table. When I want to stay home, people call up for a do. When I want to go out, people have got other things. When I don't want to work, customers send over a billion documents. When I want to work, there is nothing to do. There are soooo many more instances, but I think you get the picture. I know the thought is selfish, but somehow I don't really care about what anyone thinks. I have come to a realization that life seems to be like a really bad movie at times. There are the great days in between, but in general life is about doing things you really don't want to.

Why should I do anything except that which I want to? This is a question that irritates me to no end, because I know the answer. No man is an island. We need interaction. Or do we? I believe that this thought process is the result of generations of conditioning. Everyone tells us, directly or indirectly, that we need to be accepted, we need to be loved, we need to be cool or any one of a billion things that we "need" to be. I can understand that among animals, this might hold true for there is a genetic programming that tells them about safety in numbers and a chance at breeding. But I thought humans believed we were more than animals. If that holds true, then we are divine by ourselves. We do not "need" each other.

There are a billion ties that hold you down. There are tons of "must-do" things that vex and burden you. There are so many opportunities for people to hurt you or make you feel bad about something. Then of course, there is the inevitable loneliness of when someone abandon's your corner.

Why do we "need" to have relationships? I cannot think of a single reason so abject and so without any downside to support it. Time makes you think, and when you think you grow. Many a time you grow out of the current container you possess. Will everyone understand your growth? Will anyone support it?