In praise of Seelfishness: Foundations

I wonder and think and contemplate when I tease other people. I like when they laugh, I like when they avoid any reply because my sarcasm is hitting the spot. But does my sarcasm have any meaning at all?

I see this teasing as psychological cover that I provide to myself. How it works? I do not know what I am exactly. Many of us don’t know this thing. Everybody is in process. Many people make adjustment with such questions. For many, such question never emerges. But, I face the question strongly and I often fail to get any convincing answer, any way that my conscious perfectly accepts. So by teasing others, by being sarcastic, I try to underline my existence. It is like being in a crowd and yet being unsure that you are really present over there. There are two ways by which one finds one’s place in crowd. Either one has to know where he is exactly or one has to specify where other people are. Sarcasm and cynicism provides solution by making other looking inferior. Others may be inferior or they are just overlooking my nuisance, my point is served. For some moments, I feel, I am different.

There is other part to this. I avoid talking with those whom I feel are focused and have found answer for themselves. They might laugh at me or I myself will start feeling more inferior about myself. So I seek soft targets.

As I think more and more, I think ignorance has some virtue in it. Ignorance romanticizes state after knowledge. And, there is no point in knowing what knowledge or what life or what world is. It is like tale of forbidden fruit. One who eats it gets into the trap of metaphysics which leads to either self-destruction or self-delusion. The true joy is in creativity or/and curiosity. Closing these doors and waiting for life to come through thinking is useless.

Often business are criticized for being selfish. But, same selfishness when used in collective form is considered right. There are contradictions in every moral argument. And, it is fundamentally contradictory because it has no role in survival of human being. Philosophers or thinkers or so called social scientist secure their existence on the efforts of others. They create such an environment that those who are actually chasing their curiosity or creativity are called heartless or selfish. And it is of their help to keep this propaganda alive. They then prove, by system of arguments which is generated by them only, to justify their need for society. Actually, they are like a mole or unwanted part in society.

I have seen this ‘they are so dumb’, ‘they are just selfish’ attitude in so many social workers, activists. And, it is their psychological need. It gives them sense of self-search. By calling others inferior, they make assumption about where they are. It works as solution over their frustration or sense of being nowhere.

One day when I was reading my own previous writing. I have called society a myth. I think it is not that wrong. There is point in being selfish because that is the key to survival. What is interesting is when selfishness colludes and when it takes form of ‘I will grab as much I can’. As human, we have understood long back that we have to learn skills of acting. And, we so expertly change roles that we do not feel it. But, once one realizes this shift of selfishness, it exerts a tension on one’s self. This is burden of knowledge.

Why it is futile to try to explain any psychological phenomenon because the only lab one actually has is one’s own mind. And, it is too an unfamiliar terrain. One cannot really understand other’s mind. One can observe, recognize pattern but cannot provide any systematic explanation. And, trying to provide such systematic explanations is harmful. Because as time passes, these tentative explanations are regarded as hard truths. And, as situation transforms, psychological responses suddenly changes and all previous ‘truths’ are now lies. It harms our natural uncertainty responding system which is based on creativity and curiosity.

Future has its value being uncertain. Predictions make our creative and curious abilities lazy. And, they take away charm of responses which come from real roots.

Rain, River and Reality

What we think of each other after 25 years from this moment? Do we still have hope of understanding each other as we have today? Will our dreams be contaminated by bonks and arts that we interact with, as it is today? Alternatively, we will have found ourselves and hence we accept that distance is the best connection between us. I see, myriad possibilities that can shape the relation between twp persons and yet, there is always point made of some unique outcome. Is it there dear, is it there at all?
It is raining and no one is there in periphery of my vision. River is flowing, cluster of lights on the other end and a bridge that makes fiction of other end a part of reality of my end. You know, one friend of mine says, big problem in life is that there is no background music to reality. I never feel that I live any reality. The only taste of reality is failure to describe it. However, then nobody will believe me. Reality is personal property, yet we want to share it, as if it is highly objective. Give me a break!!
I have music in my ears. I don’t like music mixed with words. Nothing harms to pleasure of understanding than attempt to measure it with words. People feel that using words they can solve problems, but those problems themselves are created by words. Do you see it is contradiction? And, yet we want it, as only contradiction less thing.
I know, to live, these questions cannot be focused. Reality must be assumed in some pieces of absurdity and logic must be framed in regions of chaos. And, I am failing to do this. This words are reactions, not creation. There is no creation. It is just discovery of what was there, but was not observed before.
Any game is set of rules and skill to exploit those rules. No truth, no lie. It is just to see this absurdity through and through, and then cheat oneself in best possible manner, as if it is so meaningful.

The last rain of this season....

The sound of last rain, the smell of last rain, the melancholy tune of last rain is in the air. There was no hint of this at morning, the sky was bright, the sun was fine, the humidity was terrible to make everyone run away from roads, roads clear as they are on holiday and then from nowhere song of last rain started playing on this stage, sunshine disappeared, the air became more fluent, the wind started playing whirlpools, old leaves left their trees and begun traveling into world which will be soon their death den. I sense it is going to rain, the last rain of this season, the season which started by rain in the night, season which was marked by a dance performance of rain at one wild night and then a whole turmoil of meaning and chaos, way and turnarounds, setbacks and leads, and now, it is last rain of this season. It is never going to rain like this, not at least in near future, future that my eyes can behold now....
I am in the rain now. The last rain putting it all in the performance, thundering, lightening, sipping sounds made by water drops and over all there is an aloof sorrow that is being poured. Mist covers the hills before my eyes. Drops form curtains and those curtains dance at frenzy. Rain is playing at its will, as if this is last show done by a maestro. I am feeling it, all through my skin, naked under sky, and in front of eyes, in my ears, on my tongue it is this rain. The last rain of this season, as if this is the end.
Words are at my feet. Everything is echoed in my ears by these drops. The rain never sees the seed it bows. The creation will happen inside the rugged earth and however effort rain will make to touch that miracle of creation, it will be thirsty. It cannot penetrate earth, unless it gives up everything and becomes a drop that enters through the earth and becomes part of new life. So this rain is giving all he has, he is making last effort to tell the earth that without me, you cannot create but i am so unlucky that i have to be alone. I listen to his monologue. No, no, it is not a cry. It is not a prayer, it not a confession. It is a poem which is never written on any paper. It is the only truth that to be known. It is sphere of loneliness that is me. But to reach that sphere, I have to travel through so many people, and yet I have leave all those who accompanied me in this journey inside. Rain is not domicile of this land. His birthplace is on those distant oceans, but now he is dying in a land, blocked my mountains which rain nerve able to cross. But rain is not worried by this loss. It has only one feeling that to told and that is everywhere in this rain. This is last rain of this season; as if this is not going to rain ever again.....
I am alone, standing on edge that is not so strong to hold me for long. And this rain is telling me its poem. I remember you. I remember everyone who taught me these words. But, I remember you, more than anyone. You for me are unique identification of all that was not within me. you, who are mesmerized by my words, you, who are deceived by what I appear to you, you, who walked on path that I never thought you will walk, you, whom I always imagined but failed to recognize when you became real. But, now, with this last rain, I feel death of my words and hence death of you too. I have a pain in heart, similar to what I feel in initial moments of journey to some new unknown. I see you getting mixed in these passing drops of rain, or are these my tears?
The space time in which live in, makes us what we are in it. But, apart from it, I exist; see myself getting governed by these two ultimate forces, especially time. I see pleasure of celebrating the desire and I feel vacuum that remains once desire evaporates. I wonder at this ever continuing game. I dive deep with refreshing river of time, my breath is choked by purity around me, I get beck to shore and truth passes away as drops on my wet body. I am the actor who knows the play by heart, yet, every time he plays it with increasing skill.
Now, it is me. I see my fear, my desire, my survival instinct, my thirst to know in this mist in front of my eyes. It is rebirth into the region which is known only to me. These are my last footprints and this is what I can tell at the most.
The rain, last of this season, is fading now. Soon it will be part of memories or call of dreams. Soon the game will resume. Soon it will be beginning and soon it will be an end.
But, right now, I am, just I am…

You are not the one which I ever desire,
You are the one which I never imagined.

You are not the one who quenched the thirst
You are the one who put me in the search.

You are not the one who let me live,
You are the one who to teach me to die.

You are the dream, the celebration of moments,
You are not the one who sustain for long.

You are the one whose memoirs are pearls of my tears
you are never the breeze, never a song.

Rain: the first memory

It used to be the morning. The mornings sound different. Sky is dark, and even a weekday seems to be static summer holiday. I turn and twist in the bed. Some minutes pass, in sleep, in dream. And, then I listen to the sound, ssss, ssssssss, tipppp, dhassss, all sorts of frictions, hits and touches are included in the sound. Its rain.

I go to the door. I feel invisible drops touching me. a opaque curtain of rain is covering the view. A hard, dry concrete spread all over the city looks little mystic, little painful in this rain. And, I realize even this city, which I hate most of the time for being to heartless and unromantic, seems beautiful in the rain.

I look as away as I can. I see lonely green trees, drenched in this shower. Their dark leafy appearance has new wet look. Birds caught in the rain, birds waiting at dry corners and birds daring to fly in showers. I see road, now seem as polished mahogany furniture.

Vehicles pass, conscious about applying gentle breaks and children roaming as if they are the only well-wisher of rain. People wait to have a break in rain so that they can continue their activities, yet they are those who in the morning read about rain and discuss too. It is always a double game.

I play ‘Sahela re’. song says, ‘hey friend, come, let’s sing. This is been song which we are singing for life, and will sing for lives to come.’ This is song in Bhop raag. Who cares!

A cigarette! As nicotine travels through the veins, words float in head. Hands feel restless, to make them alive on paper. I reject. I just feel my words getting wet in the morning rain, cleaned for whatever jumble of meanings they have and disappearing in the earth that calmly accept her love, rain.

I leave, rain too stops. Clouds walk away, as if they were never supposed to be here. And, everything goes on…

Evening Poems

(these are not my words. this are shadows from 'GRACE'.)

Here, dear, here,
In this evening light which makes these woods disconsolate,
I sing hymns of divine condolence.
Flowers of final sunrays are engulfed
In the vagrant waves of sea…
Where they go?
Where?

Epileptic seizure

But doctor tell me what was it? He kept asking this repeatedly. At last doctor said, “You had epileptic seizure.” He could not believe in what he heard. He had just fainted by acute pains he had when nurse removed vein flow. “But I had such experiences before. I lied down for half an hour, ate something and everything was fine. I didn’t even chew my tongue, cried, or yelled. Why are you naming it seizure and extending my hospitalization?” his questions were filled completely by surprise and frustration he is feeling right at this moment.
“ It would have been severe is you would have bitten your tongue. Seizures can be of various types. You had one and as you are telling you had few before.” Doctor calmly replied, with added determination to avoid this patient.
He thought of his childhood and youth, which were constrained by his weak body. Since last few days, he was feeling that he has passed those limits and he is really living. He cannot imagine next every day, moment of his life shaded by uncertainty of being weak, being dependent. He sighed and tears almost rolled down his eyes. It seems that he is like a helpless small tree in the road, waiting to die by a storm.
“but why you are so dull? You have to take medicines and rest. You will be fine” Doctor tried to bring him in good spirits.
“Huh, what is use of such life, doctor? I am always shaded by one or another fear. I hate such life.”
Doctor knew him for last 10 years. They know it is difficult to console him by any argument. He thought of tried something else.
“You must be thinking that how can you have epilepsy at this age and not since childhood. However, it can happen. I had my first seizure a month back, in this cabin. But I am fine now. You can be same. Come on! It is not the end.”
His face lit. He left room with hope to have bright tomorrow.
Doctor sat on the chair and sighed. Suddenly he thought about lie he had just used. He felt a tension in his legs. He stretched his legs or did they get stretched itself. He felt something revolving around or inside his head. He is viewing so many images and listening to so many voices in his head. He is just forgetting where he is, what is the time and what is happening with him. Sweat covered his face and a light kept appearing in front of his closed eyes…what is it?

night among stars

when you sleep with your back to cold, pleasant earth and your eyes fixed somewhere among the stars, you know that either you are feeling happy without any bound or you are out of yourself.
still you sleep like that. because you want to be so unknown to you, that even you won't be able to identify yourself. such un-identity is difficult. and that's why one sleeps under the stary sky with cool wind around and memories, imaginations storming in the head and some unknown pressure mounting on you, trying to crash you down.
but then why you sleep watching stars? one can sleep putting his head under the pillow. one can get drunk or one can let loose oneself with someone dear. no! one doesn't do these things when one doesn't even know what is it. there is nothing to tell, nothing to hide, nothing to repent and even nothing to ask for. what is it!
may be it is space and time around yourself which is not yours. and, hence one has to look into stars. they are there. some are at one place for ages. some are moving slowly. some are not even known. some are frequent visitors. and, they too don't have time space of themselves.
what you do when you feel like part of big giant machine, following it's laws without any attention to small lives which don't want to be ruled? what you feel when you see your actions are unwanted, meaningless or responseless in the environment? what if you feel that you are just product of actions and decisions taken in your absence?
you do nothing! because you can not. you go. you try all your means to console yourself, you try to erect yourself, you try to fight, you try to feel totally devastated, and nothing works. some sparks of life remaining can't let you die, they can't let you give up. so you do nothing but you sleep with your back to cold, pleasant earth and your eyes fixed somewhere among the stars.

Company

he was astonished to see what he has to walk in next few days. though he had enough harsh life before, he felt this might be last and first task which he wouldn't be able to complete. he waited, not under any shade because there was nothing. he tried to see as long as he can. some mirages flashed in front of his eyes, but till wherever he sees, it was endless desert. he has map, he has food, he knows where he can get water. still one dark, deep and dull feeling of hopelessness filled him. he closed his eyes, heard his deep breath until he heard something different than wind blowing and his breaths.
he saw another traveler. he or she? it was she. she was waring blue clothes, right from her head to toes. only life which was revealed was her eyes, fathomless. she asked, "should we start walking?" he responded with a brief grim and somehow started walking.
they were walking for last many days. they walk together, eat together, sit at each others side. talk about what life they had and their perceptions for life. at some nights, when moon was at it's best magic and chilling wind made them impossible to forget rhythms of their bodies, they searched themselves through each other. she was traveling to meet someone in the city which was at the other end of desert. he had forgotten hollow feelings he had at the start of the journey. he has put dreams in place of understanding. he has started painting images with words and illusions. desert often has such effect.
one day, both of them saw buildings of city where they were heading. this was going to be last walk of the journey. he has written a letter for her. they kept walking. last walks are bound to be nostalgic. her voice trembled. sometimes her fingers caught hold of her hand, as if she is never going to leave it. he recalled all those evenings and nights, laughs and silences, responses and quarrels. they reached from where they have to move on their own path.
and, now he looked at her. he was shocked. her eyes were exactly as they were when he first saw her. she cleared some sand on her clothes. he felt like one of those sand particles. she has removed desert, sand and him, within that moment. he was amazed and yet, he felt, this has to be like this.
they wished best life ahead to each other. they started walking on thier paths, now alone. he looked back. she wasn't anywhere in the sight. he looked back to desert. the point where he started was long back as if it was not there.

Walk in the morning , sleep in the eyes

The whole reason to keep myself wake up through out the night is friend going to home for week long holidays. It started with foul try to have few hours sleep in the account. Desire to talk as much as I can before friend leaves and similar condition at other end scattered all plans to sleep on time and wake up early. So it was long talk, some irrational silences and then brief walks. Soon both realized that words and phrases, proverbs and quotes are not going to fill up vacuum of life. But, somehow, conversation ended on some optimistic note and ended with ‘to be continued’..
Then within hour I, my friend and one other friend took auto to reach domestic airport. It is 4.15 A.M. rickshaw driver was ready and quick as he has realized potential night charge augmented large fair. So in 20 minutes, we reached airport. I was first time at airport. And thoughts occurring in my mind were of socialist shade. I felt all those illuminated structures, well planned buildings as some unnecessary obstacles in peace that city needs urgently. Around airport, even at this time, was rush of vehicles, travelers, cab and rickshaw drivers. I bid good bye to my friends and started walking back to my place. I was wondering on how easily my friends have paid rickshaw fair( RS.120). so watching all the vibrancy around me, I took my road back. The last sign I remember was vehicles full of on average fat people, eager to reach their destinations and blue collar airport workers( one of them asked me for tea shop, old one, who should have retired by now).
I had money in pocket. I could have caught rickshaw. My legs were not so fresh. Not even I had minute of sleep in the night. I was feeling hunger. Still, I waited near airport( apparently for bus, but it was wrong time to wait for bus, scarce commodity at 5A.M.). then I found one sign board indication nearest railway station. I started walking to this new contemporary destination. On both sides of the road, I noticed large number of ATM centers. And as a byproduct of heavy transactions made in these centers, remaining part of street was filled with shops and clinics. I had enlightenment that all these envy feelings I was having for people who can spend money fluently was outcome of me being poor. Eureka! Eureka!!
Street was not lonely. Paper boys, morning walkers and rickshaw drivers were part of street life at that time. I passed through them. I climbed up Station Bridge and while getting in the train, I had realization of being ticket less. Next surprise was I was not panic at all. I sat coldly, started enjoying morning breeze (enough chill, even in March), put earphones and started playing FM radio. It was local FM channel and it had some spiritual songs. (I listened as I was listening anything in my mothertounge after many days) like spiritual things are, it was about how one should live life and how this life is worthless compare to how divine it can be. So I forgot my worthless worry of being ticket less in some spirituality.
Got down at home station. No bus waiting for me. so started my march. (by this time, these words had started their life). I walked watching people, sleeping buildings and yawning homes. I walked half the road. I was tired now. Acidity and hunger both striking inside. Yet, I had energy to think and to write. Some nice songs were played by FM channel. Meaning in those songs were simple, but it matched with my mood, my walk and my view.
My friend had checked in, sat in the plane and will fly soon. A sms with some probable future behavior alerted me on my phone. I am not in anything now. Morning has made me light and yet, I am not floating. Thoughts are keeping me tangent to mother earth, or normal.
I could have caught rickshaw and reached my place without anything of these. Then I would’t have played simulation of future career best performance in my head. Nor I had proved my pro-poor life theory once again.
But I watched people. People traveling in cool cabs and ac cars, boys on bicycle to distribute newspapers an milk bags, rickshaw and taxi drivers, office folk. I watched people paying hundreds and thousands easily and I watched people walking kilometers as they had nothing in pocket. What does all this mean? A mere pleasure game of thoughts, some spark of action leading to ultimate frustration or just an observation? I hand over my questions to you and go for some sleep. I have to walk again….

Reminiscence of a rare morning

Sometimes you diverge from predefined path. You have in mind consequences of such divergence. But what turns out of that change of decision is something you had wished to experience, but remained unaccomplished.
So it is about morning, it is about realization of a poem which is part of hidden corners of heart and it is rare concurrence with sense of beauty. I had planned to get down at dadar. I had sufficient amount of baggage with me to keep me worrying throughout the time I was in local train. The crowd at the door of local training, waiting with practiced eagerness to get down at dadar, confirmed my fear. I could have easily got down with crowd, but then shapes and sizes of food items I had would have became drastically different from what they used to be. So I did some tome management calculations in mind, estimated the risk of being caught by ticket checker at station and decided to get down at next station. And with some surprise, after 10 minutes of this decision, I found myself out of Bhyakhala station, safe with my belongings and unchecked for ticketless travel. So I had some time in hand and an Irani restaurant in front of my eyes. I sat on those age old wooden chairs, ordered brun maska and tea. That tea fulfilled my sugar requirement for the whole day. I sat in the taxi and said, ‘Mumbai Central Station’.
As soon as I looked out of taxi window, I sensed the morning. Though it is not freezing winter in Mumbai, it is strange mix of chill of passing night and warmth of arriving day. so I sensed spell of nature, compounded by presence of some old British structures and slowly awakening city. I watched restaurants gearing up for daily work, taxis enjoying short-lived spaciousness of roads and people breathing a scarce low-noise walk through the heart of Mumbai. This ambience revived poem which I learnt in the school and from that day, it has settled in mind, in tunes and in walks I had through this city. I chanted those lines and felt that right now, I am part of the picture which has long been solidified in those lines.
(Then it was scribbling in the pages, trying to translate words in marathi to English and at the end, realizing inability of my words and distinct beauty that each language caries.)

So, now morning has lost into the pool of people in the local. Yet, through limited canvas of window, I feel, golden, warm rays of sun, just arrived on daily duty. I sense structures, modern and age old, yawning as they are awaking. My eyes holds image of old sturdy church, which once used to be tallest in the surroundings, trying to spell its holy spirit on flux of life around it. My nostrils keep smell of early morning, mixed with soft sea breeze and mid-work talks of tea and milk vendors. In ears, I preserve songs of birds, dissolved in horns and cries and fading into emerging chaos. I live all this; I feel it is passing through me. At the same time, I grasp sense of joy, silence and sorrow for this time, which is merging into faceless, huge and dry tide of crowd.
I am storing in my words, I am storing it in my senses and I am passing on my feelings through this city, that this morning should get imprinted on the palms of new born baby and some of its uncaptured dimensions will get life through those hands, in which future still sleeps.

when dream disappears

i woke up in the morning and
soon realize that my dream is missing...
i search around, and i found traces of its sudden but certain disappearance.
i cry, then i think, i console myself,
that no loss is ultimate.
the whole day, my eyes tried,
but in vain, friends, my dream disappeared.

i heard my steps singing a song,
i read poems walking beside me.
i talked even with breeze
and i shared my secrets even with street-lamps.
dream assured me, that whatever i will do
it will be beautiful.
dream itself told me that it will fade one day,
but it whispered in my ears when i cried at though of its departure,
" when separation is certain,
you can live every moment.
if dream lives forever who will chase it".
i was assured with words
and now, dream has lost and my ears still hears it.

i am not so hurt by the loss,
dreams i have lost before.
i am hurt because
its been long before i had dream.
and, now i fear i will not permit
any dream in future.
dreams compel to live,
and living compel to search for the meaning.
meaning is mirage, but dream is the thirst.
so, as i have lost thirst, why i need water even in mirage.

when dreams die,
they plough new dreams.
but when dream disappears,
it keeps memories.

bye, my dream,
if you see my awaiting eyes,
touch them once more,
i haven't left you yet.............