Just Being Me

 

- by Zany

I miss the quiet,

The fresh air,

The still, clear, water

The sunrise so pure.

I miss the sunset, so serene

As it glides behind the plain.

 

I miss my inner peace

Both inside and out,

On my balcony, my street,

By the river, I feel the drought.

 

No libraries or books,

No siestas or naps,

No hugs, no kisses,

No rests, no respites…

 

I have forgotten to relax

I said, and I have forgotten more

I don’t know what hobbies are

What is a game, who keeps the score

 

Constantly…

Running, flipping, and fuming

No time for love, life or laughter.

What did I eat, did I even drink?

When did I sleep, was it even deep?

 

I don’t remember being…

Seeing, feeling, dreaming or screaming.

 

Feels like I have woken up

As if from a deep slumber

like a lazy cat or just a piece of lumber

 

I cried all night

And I stared all day

I mourned the loss of me today.

Amongst the screen, the laptop and the sheen

Just like that I felt quite clean

 

Now I shall stay

I shall be

I shall close my eyes, feel, and just lay

With chirping birds

rivers and lakes

The rustling leaves

The creeks, and the trees.

 

I shall be grateful for this day

When I can see, I can hear,

I can touch and I can smear.

 

I can feel…

The raindrops heal

All the tears that is yet to peal.

It will cleanse my heart,

And clear my mind,

So I can open my arms

To share my charms

To those lovely hearts

Scattered about – some near, some quite afar.

Besties and Hobbies

Who are your besties mamu? asked my little one who is not so little anymore. She has her besties at school. It used to be her one best friend, and now she has a couple of them. So clear cut, and simple, I thought. 

The question took me by surprise and I was lost in my thought as she blurted out the names of friends that she has heard of, those I speak to or speak about everyday. All I could say was yes, all of them are my besties in different contexts.

It took me back to the session with my counsellor recently when she asked - What are your hobbies? I thought these were questions for your slam book, children at school think about these things - Hobbies. Hobbies are done in free time. Is there any free time? what is this concept of free time? how is anyone ever free, and have time? 

I thought I had heard her wrong, did you actually ask about my hobby? i asked. Yes, she said, what do you like to do when you have time? I wore the look of - Seriously? you are acutually asking me about this look. I work, like 12 hours a day, what else would you like me to do? I did not say that but, put it as gently as i could to mean it. 

She nodded as if she could empathize, yes, i know, our work is such that we cannot even think of anything else. But now that you have some time in your hand, you should go back to your hobby. I asked her an example of what she meant by a hobby, just to buy time, I actually did. She said like reading, painting... 

I read, i said, i love to read. Actually i read so much on paper and on screen that my eyes have started to hurt. 

Well, i kept the latter part to myself. But i made that point very weakly that i read, but i was not sure it was a hobby. It was much more to be than just a hobby. I live and breathe books, but i also read lots of other stuff, emails, online materials, strategy papers, about organizations, children's book reviews to check whether something is okay for my kid. Where does reading as a hobby start and end, what demarcates reading for fun, and reading to stay updated, to learn, reading by choice and reading to earn? 

I used to sketch, I added as the pause grew longer. You should go back to sketching, she said, whatever that gets you to that relaxed mode when you can. Yes, i said, but a doubtful one. I did not see myself having the patience to sit down and sketch. I know that is the best time to go in my Flow, and the only time when i cannot say literally whether it is day or night outside if the curtains are drawn. But i think i have lost it. 

I will have to find it, but for the moment, i have lost it. 

 Besties. Hobbies. Games. 

 Finding the child in you. 

 Loving without reason. 

 Nostalgia of a world goneby, idealistic and happy. 

 But I am still hopeful that like my besties that I have in different contexts, I will find my hobbies, and will sketch and be in my flow not too far in the future.

getting back to my space

 Wow! 

I did not realize this space existed anymore but i browsed, because i had the energy to do so today and i found it. In a sense, it was finding my old self, a renewed self and my old space where i used to be myself. I have not read any of the old blogs today, i just want to cherish finding it first - relish the find little by little like dark chocolate. 

I am getting back to whatever i had forgotton or lost over the last decade and a half of getting adjusted to a very different life - getting married, having a kid, losing my father, balancing work and home and travel, and then the covid work-from-home situation really pulled the plug on me. I am now on a long break from work, seeing a counsellor and having conversations, untangling the knots - as some call it, taking life slow, yet trying to achieve what's possible every day. 

I decided to take a much longer break when i became aware one day that i had forgotten to relax and be on a holiday. My body and my mind had not been on a break ever. Even on holidays it would be to organize one of the many social events for the kids, parents, cousin or self. So even on long leaves, i would be organizing and managing something, else, planning and organizing a holiday. Holidaying with kids is project management. Please deny if you can. 

In the past two months, i have gone back to what i like best - being around nature, touching trees, noticing the color or leaves, being around lakes and rivers. I have gone back to listening to music, buying and reading books. I am yet to pick up sketching and writing. This might be one of my first tries of filling a page with my thoughts except the journal that i keep almost regularly for theraupatic purposes. 

I am surrounded by many books as i write, and the visuals give me a pleasure that nothing else does. To be surrounded by the great minds, the words waiting to speak to me, the writers on my cupboard amongs colorful book covers is a different connection. I thoroughtly enjoyed a book about this topic by Margaret Atwood recently. But I am never in a flow like when reading a novel and immersing myself in a different world. I am super thrilled when i connect to the author through their work, especially when it is autobiographical in nature and is a true story. The power of words never seize to excite me. 

I hope to make this a regular thing now. I am shy to share this widely like a "blog"... "blog". I would like to publish it so i can find it easily in the future. I might share the link with a few close friends. I would not mind if they don't read it, would be glad if they did and gave some feedback - positive or for improvement. 

May be i can fish our my next project or plan or ideas for the future through these writings and we can plot and plan together. 

It is great to be back in this space, and it does feel like really coming back and finding treasure as i could scroll down to 2006. 

Thanks for reading thus far and let us connect through the magical words! Ciao!

Their definition of life

From a  journal entry last month:

The rain has been beautiful since morning. When the droplets touch the dry, starved leaves and branches and roots of trees, it feels heaven. The quenching of thirst of a desert walking man.  And what other dharma does the clouds require than the blessings of these creatures, alive - just to see the rain.

The blissfully ignorant have constructed concrete cement buildings with cubicles in them: hundreds of cubicles which have been lighted so well that even when the dark clouds gets the city gloomy, their cubicles will feign sunshine. Hundreds of applicants get through “tough” tests and interview. Why? To toil in these cubicles from 9 am in the morning to late into night, six days a week and they think they love it. They shout over their ever ringing phones, they lose their temper, get irritated and use swear words. When they get a deal done, they are proud and think they are smart. Of course they are smart. They make a lot of money. They buy even bigger houses with air-conditioned rooms and even bigger air-conditioned cars with bed like seats. They tread in their soft carpets, then in their soft cars and tip toe to their carpeted cubicles. Every evening or so, they go up the escalators to buy their essentials, come back in their comfy car seats to their soft carpets at home. And for them, they are the luckiest, the richest, and the most happy people in the world.

When the routine is done every day of the year, every year of the decade, it becomes the life style for hundreds of cubicles in hundreds of companies and it builds cities and nations for whom soft carpets, comfy seats are the definition of life. 

Unlearning experiences

The maid might not be here for long. She is of little use while feeding the baby, anyways. She is a great help with washing her clothes, cleaning the kitchen etc. But what I really need is someone to stand by the baby to feed and cajole her when I am off to French classes - three days a week for three hours. That is a difficult prospect with her, especially since the little one has not taken up to her too good. She is not acclimatized to ktm and it’s ways of life. She is from a village and she remains so in her behavior etc. I respect that. It is not that I don’t like people from villages. But when we are used to a certain way of life, we require that of the person who is to work with us. That is all. If we went to the village and dictated our way of things, that would be detested there too. That’s about the same equation I am trying to draw. I don’t see anything biased or untoward there. It is not about inequality or disparity. It is just about how one is brought up, like caste or your favorite pastime. One does not need to live with an opposite caste (if something of that sort exists) or some unlikable pastime. It’s your choice, not about respect.

There was a question raised in our last class by the instructor. He asked if anyone kept a journal and I said yes, I did. Everyday?! He asked a little aghast. I said, as much as I can. That is because there is this section that we are dealing with in class that teaches us to write journals – in the past tense basically and we have an assignment related to it too.

Being with fuchi and learning French: two unlearning experiences for me. Both very fulfilling.

Facebook statuses, twitter updates, linkedIn updates what else? These move your life everyday because that’s how you get connected to your brother seven seas across, keep in touch with your friend, get the world news and what happened in your town. It is also a medium of getting knowledgeable and I find it intellectually stimulating when I can see what some revered author of mine thought that day and posts it as an update on twitter. Naseem Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Atwood, Manjushree Thapa, Paul Krugman – all are on twitter and I am following them. These give me a chance to have some level of connection with them which when reading their books definitely affect me.

Dad and their generation are never going to get it and thus, they think they do not like it. But if they had it their way, they would never deny it. Like, if I asked him if he could have S. Radhakrishnan or Swami Vivekananda twit to him every day or Pandit Nehru give facebook status updates, would he deny them? He simply would reject to hear such an absurd idea, gone is gone! Or rather bygone is bygone. But he would deny to understand a parallel for us. When NNT gives an opinion about what happened this morning, when Atwood says she is looking forward to Canada day, it stirs some emotions in their readers definitely. It’s too much for dad and the like when reverence and deep respect is the only emotion they had for their authors.

List of books to read

I have a list of books to read in my mind. They are matter of factly stacked up here and there. Few are autobiographies - Einstein by Isaacson, i remember that one - due from last year. Then i have a series on Nepal that i missed earlier - books by Harka Gurung and Manjushree Thapa, and the history of the country.

I have lists that include novels recommended and gifted by brother and friends.

I have my own collection that i buy out of interest or out of someone's must read list.

And i think the library has a good collection, which i bring and return without sometimes even turning the page. The guilt is there of course.

Online journals, articles, interviews - is what takes up the time that we had not factored into our "reading time". Once you put the mind to it even twitter, facebook and surfing seems as much intellectual as pondering upon a few pages of philosophy.

Read at night, before going to bed has been the trend. 

A balanced personality

In grade six, we had a punjabi teacher by the name of Ajit Singh. In my report card, he had not given a tick either in extrovert or introvert, but had written in his cursive writing 'Balanced'. My dad had been highly impressed, I had not understood its significance then. This post is not about my balanced personality, I highly doubt it is so now.

My concern or rather my mood at the moment is to think about balance in the intellectual and the practical side of the personality. I have increasingly found that those who are of an intellectual bent of mind, who can do maths in their head, think non-linear, be stark creative are usually not practical. These people shy away from bargaining for a few thousand rupees while they did be stuck with the pride of not paying for parking. Penny wise, pound foolish. The practical aspects of life and living, earning and feeding, sustaining and surviving simply don't enter their periphery of thought, and while forced into this family life practicality, they try to think of models around each chore.

The 'other' kind of people are the practical hard bargainers, multi-taskers. This bunch knows where to get a good bargain for a cheap and fast laptop, buy a lasting pair of shoes and that no.7 paint brush you have been looking for all over town. They know where to spend their bucks, how to hold a conversation and talk, basically.

My question however is, is introvert and extrovert related to these personality types? No. I have seen introvert people who are extremely practical. Does the left side and the right side brain got anything to do with it, leaving aside the debate that the left and the right side is just a myth? Maybe Type A and Type B personality types that is studied in B-schools? I don't know.

But god! a little bit mix of both practicality and hard core idealistic intellectualism would really help the world albeit an inclination to one type of personality can't be helped.