Who am I to judge?

My existence is a dichotomy. No, I'm not a  bourgeois mind and pauper reality.
I'm a girl on a mission to debunk the myths people have about appearances.

Just because I seem frivolous because I laugh at a rather silly statement, doesn't make me a candidate of "lack of intellect." I might actually be faking a laugh because I don't want the person making the statement to feel bad. But you wouldn't know that. Because you didn't take the time to hear or understand better.

Don't associate traits with other traits.
Pretty doesn't equate with airhead just like not attractive doesn't, with intelligence.

This is how prejudices could actually be defined. Your pre-decided notions, are actually limiting your scope of knowledge, your scope of learning. The "strangest" looking people, have the best stories. And the more time you spend in forming a character sketch of any person in your head, the more you're losing out on. Go save yourself!

My mother never really did my hair.

My mother never really did my hair.
Two pigtails, nice and tight. That was my usual.
One thick plait when I felt especially adventurous.
I had hair that reached my waist.
At 10, my hair was half of my 4 feet stature.
So the pigtails.

My mother never really did my hair.
She never really played around.
She never really did a French braid or a waterfall plait.
Just like my education system wouldn't let me drop a science subject to study psychology.
She stuck to the two pigtails and so I stuck to science.

My mother never really did my hair.
And once I got it cut, I think it was the 9th grade, it became a staple ponytail.
My baby hair interfered and the ponytail looked ridiculous.
But years later at 19, when I was away from home for 6 weeks, it made me realise that change in every form, is tough and ridiculous to accept.

My mother never really did my hair.
But she did teach me how to roll it up into the nice working-class-lady-bun.
She did teach me that no matter what ice cream flavour my society served to me, it was completely okay if I chose another and enjoyed it.
Despite whatever backlash my choices made me liable for receiving.
That, even if I were expected to stay at home and tend to the house, my working-class-lady-bun was one step towards wanting my own career and life.

My mother never really did my hair, but in the pigtails, the plait and the bun, she helped me do life.

Lessons I learned this week.

(Written on 3rd May)

My mother lost one of her college friends this Monday, in an avalanche on the Everest base camp, due to the earthquake in Nepal.

Though I had never met the lady, her death shook me, in ways I had never imagined.

I spent an entire day in an almost dazed state trying to absorb her death. Trying my best to move towards acceptance.

I shall not go into details about things her achievements but she was definitely someone who was living her life. Someone who was squeezing life out of each moment of her life. Maybe that is the reason why her death made such an astonishing impact on me. 

Kashmiris have a phrase ‘shamshan varag gasun’ which literally translated means the lessons you learn about the volatility and vulnerability of life, its nothingness are just more of a momentary realization which fade away as soon as one leaves the crematorium.

My plan, is to not let the lesson, its effect, leave me once I leave this crematorium, where not just her, but the numerous lives lost in the earthquake have been laid to rest.

The volatility of life, is a paradoxical concept, it reminds me that my existence is finite, but the potential for greatness in me, and each human being, is infinite.

Unfortunately, we keep forgetting this, and tend to lose ourselves in the monotony, drudgery of everyday life. I do not mean quit your job and go backpacking around the world, but if that is where your calling lies, do not let anything stop you. Take risks, be thankful for the opportunities, but do not spend one waking minute of your existence, wishing you were someone else or wishing you were somewhere else, If you find yourself doing either of the two, stop not till you find what makes you tick. Squeeze each drop of sensation, the feeling of being alive from your live.

Make the most of your limited time because dying with some vague, tingling sensation of fulfillment will/ must be much better than ending a life that you never lived in the first place.

As Charles Bukowski said, “find what you love and let it kill you.”

Nothingness of life, might seem abstractly, contrary to what I just asked of you (i.e absolute involvement in life) but it is almost in tandem with the same. It is more of the chalk that you use to draw the boundary around how involved you are in life. Perishability, holds true for every animate object.

These are things I never want to forget but as an envelope to this rather long letter of life lessons, what I learnt can be summed up rather concisely by this alteration to Carpe Diem. Seize the day, before it seizes you.

Nonexistence.

(Forgive the language, I'm writing this at a moment when I can't handle my emotions, sentiments or my tear ducts.)

I am baffled while I battle this crisis.
It is more of a breakdown of a life situation into a crisis. 
I am running away from this conclusion that I have come to.

Life is nothing but blocks of moments which are nothingness once the moment has passed.
Think of it, once a moment has passed, it is nonexistent. It only lives on if you think of it. The anticipation that surrounds an event in the future becomes nothing once the event has passed, that event, becomes nothing. It is all, nothing.

Memories are such an abstract entity and at this moment, it is making me cry that memories are all we have and how do I keep my memories, how do I feel they were real? How do I hold them with my feeble hands, how do I stop them from slipping and falling out. Please stop memories, please don't go, please stay, please become more real than just a cloud of thought in my head.

I'm in pain right now. Miserable amounts of pain thinking about how desperately I want my mind to stop pick up each memory and sink into it all over again. And I can't, the helplessness that has covered me all over because I can not go back, is mind numbing right now.

Our lives are nothing but a collection of memories.
Should I be happy that they've passed and there might be better memories in the future or should I be sad that they're in the past and they're never coming back again?

Baggage

(This post is in response to a message which my dad received the other day, below is the message)
Question for spiritual guru --- to add growth to a plant it is a common practice to prune it from time to time ; what is a eqv in case of humans, obviously you are not going to prune physically, so what do you do to grow?

(This is purely an attempt at decoding the question, not committing the sacrilege of considering myself a spiritual guru)

Each day, along with the continual addition to the number of days we have spent on earth, what also increases is the baggage we carry. The emotional baggage and the mental baggage, to be more specific.
I have not interacted with a gargantuan number of people in my infinitesimal lifespan of nineteen years but nevertheless, I have come across people who though, despite seeming emancipated, do end up taking certain things to heart.
For the less intellectually whetted individuals, such as us, even the most insignificant details can become hurtful.
We might pretend to ignore something or behave like it did not make any difference to us at all, but deep down inside, a harsh word does leave a scar.
In addition to the not so major, slighting incidents, there are also people who undergo serious emotional damage owing to certain circumstances.
The point in all of this being that all those scars (or scabs in some cases) pile on to our mind. Without realising it we are adding endless layers of absolutely unessential emotions and carrying the same around with us.
A small altercation in the office, or at home and subconsciously you start holding a grudge, deep down inside.

So start cutting down on all this baggage. Cutting down on all the pain and the hurt. On the innumerable grudges you are holding and stifling yourself with.
From time to time, remember to take a look inside and forgive what happened in the past, forgive the people (even if you don't speak to them anymore) not for their sake, but yours. Every  six months or any particular time period of sorts, indulge in a little introspection and find all the noxious, venomous emotions, that you might have held on to, by mistake.

I can't entirely recall where I read this, but your emotions must be enough to fit into your child's school bag. The question is would you then fill it with all the joy or the bitterness?

Maya

I find it a cruel joke that humans spend their lives believing and acting like they'll never perish, whereas life is actually nothing but a collection of short lived phases.
Our minds are so befuddled by material incantations that we seldom realise our time here is limited.
I do not mean to be the preacher who asked a little boy to stop eating sugar and couldn't give up sugar himself but I wish humanity employed their time to find a way around these foggy curtains of attachment.
For myself, I wish the sustenance to go beyond this material world.
Imagine a cliff, if you jump from the cliff into the gorge, you presume you will die, what if, one dip in the gorge and you find yourself in another world? Redeemed as a detached individual?
And the promise of redemption isn't made before the jump. It is a risk you've to take.
The high cliff symbolises the high that comes with money and power. Only after attainment of the two can you find the courage to begin the shredding of the thread, the bond, between you and the lust for money and power.

The truth is, this concept is too idealistic to be true. Getting out of the maya jaal is probably tougher than moving mountains. These material attachments, like a spider's web start off from the periphery of our lives, slowly working their way in. As we grow, so does the stronghold of the web. The irony being, we can't feel the web strengthen its grip till the moment we realise we want to free ourselves from this web. A captor that leads you to enjoying and loving each minute of captivity. So much so that you go on to consider that captive existence, your life.

Free ourselves, let us.