Journey, not the Destination.

We all get excited when we plan a holiday. We choose our destination, we plan the trip, we book the tickets and we pack our bags. All with an excitement that’s infectious and heady! We picture the fun we’re going to have, the places we will see, the pictures that we will click and share back home with family and friends. It’s one more place on the world map that has seen our footprints, one more speck on the vast canvass of the globe that our minds have experienced.

One of the pleasures of travel is the anticipation. Counting the days when we can ‘take off’ – leaving our routines and regulations and roles behind. Our minds take off, unfettered by schedules and systems, to different planes, where we touch upon our true self and feel revived. We think about the new people we’ll meet, the cuisine that our taste buds will relish for the first time, and the lazy, unhurried way we will spend our days. Time on a holiday, stretches, lingers, waltzes and waits.

Our bags are taken out of the loft and dusted. Opened with a flourish for their emptiness is exhilarating. Their hollow contours are waiting to be filled with memories and souvenirs, magical times and friends, for they will be touching the sands of a different space, coming back carrying the smells of a different land.

All that our bodies and minds will need for the next few days are contained within a couple of sturdy suitcases, all the belongings that will take care of us while we are away.

The morning arrives, early and yet, not too fast! As the sun’s rays smudge the horizon with orange hues, and tinge the clouds that are heavy with rain, our alarm clock pierces the silence and opens the floodgates of excitement.

Children jump out of beds at this unearthly hour with an enthusiasm normally reserved for a pizza or a game of football. The sleep scampers out of their eyes with the haste of a rabbit on hearing a shotgun. Everyone gets ready without promptings, naggings and procrastinations.

The day looks different. It feels different. Yes, it is different!

Depending on the destination, we get into our chosen vehicles.

If it is a car, we roll down our windows and let the holiday breeze wash over us. Carefully chosen music is pushed into the stereo and from this time on, all these songs will remind us of this holiday. A year later when the first strains of this song opens on the airwaves, our mind will return to our holiday, its feel and its flow. That time and this song have forever become intertwined.

The city recedes outside our car pane. The roads open wide and inviting. We hit the expressway as the sun slips past the horizon and into the sky and the day begins for all the people we’ve left behind.

But for us, it is a free day, a day that stands poised on a new place, a day that will usher in a ‘changed’ us, for when we return, we will have altered in slight imperceptible ways, so that the self that we leave behind won’t be the self that will come home. We will have stretched our horizons, cultivated our minds and traversed a different road, that will create a shift in some small way in our hearts and minds.

We don’t know how this road takes us, but we know that it will lead us to our destination. It meanders and melts with the landscape. Villages, trees, flowers, shrines, mountains, lakes and birds swoop by. We stop when the beauty overwhelms us, to take a photograph, knowing that no picture can truly do justice to the way the scene has unfolded before our eyes, the way the winds blow and encase the moment, the way the light dances on the edge of that time frame. A picture will capture the scene, not the moment. The moment you take in your mind as you sit back in the car and you revisit it whenever you want to feel the same way again.

Isn’t it true then, that traveling is more about the journey than the destination. More about the experiences you have, than the places you visit. More about the feelings that arise within you, than the touristy things you do. More about broadening your inner landscape by the spaces and sounds that surround you.

Stillness

The mountain breeze
Sways the leaves
Rustling gently
And one feels this soft movement
Only because of the stillness
Around it.
It is this stillness that breathes
Through the mountains.

A distant bird
Sings to itself
And one hears this song
Only because of the silence
In the deep valley
It is this silence
That defines the sound.

The sliver of ray
Dances through the shadows
Scattering tiny pebbles of light
And one sees this shimmer
Only because of the surrounding space.
This space shifts and grows
Around the beam.

This world moves, breathes, breaks, does, lives, loves
And ends
Because of this vast
Silence, space and stillness.
Through it rises light and colour
Form and fluidity
The depth of darkness and the brilliant blue of the sea.
From it emerges
The contours of imagination
The cycles of life
And the moon and stars
the wide blue of the skies
and that one blinding moment of eternity.

Muse

There’s nothing really
That you’ve give me
Only that which I’ve taken.
I’ve added the song to my smile
With your words.
Your voice, I’ve resonated with
A thousand stars
That shine through the deep darkness of my soul.
Your presence, I’ve expanded
To fill my universe.
You are as much as my imagination
Carves and creates
To fit a void
That life alone cannot fill.
Stretching to blur the boundary
Between what is and what could be.
I sometimes stand at this thin line
Staring in part horror and pride.
For I have made you what you are
Larger than life and omnipresent
But what if I start believing in you,
My muse, my creation,
The one that I have given
Depth and dimension
Strength and silence
What if you now push me
Across this precipe
And become more powerful
Than me?

Haiku - ish.

This moment where I am with you
Stretches endlessly
Like a ripple in the water
Growing wider
And deeper
Going outwards
And inwards
At the same time
Affecting future moments
And my inner self
So that time and space
And beneath and beyond
Get intertwined
In concentric circles.
And heaven and earth
Meet somehow
In a fluid cosmic swirl.

Like a book kept
Near an open window
The pages turning and fluttering
In the evening breeze
The days flit from my life

Plagarism.

Don't know whether the word should be plagarism, or inspiration, but surely Annie's song by John Denver came first and Javed Akhtar's 'Ek ladki ko dekha' came afterwards?
How come no one's noticed the thread of similarity and the echo of thoughts and the reverberation of concept in Javedsaab's song. Doesn't it bear an uncanny resemblance to Denver's classic?

You fill up my senses
Like a night in the forest
Like the mountains in springtime
Like a walk in the rainLike a storm in the desert
Like a sleepy blue oceanYou fill up my senses
Come fill me again

Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga
Jaise Khilta Gulaab
Jaise Shaayar Ka Khwaab
Jaise Ujli Kiran
Jaise Van Mein Hiran
Jaise Chaandni Raat
Jaise Naghme Ki Baat
Jaise Mandir Mein Ho Ek Jalta DiyaHo
Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga

Like-like? No?

Voice.

How can you find your voice? And speak with it clearly and confidently?

It's not that apparatus that rests in your throat and produces the range between screech and melifluous, but that essence within yourself that asserts its identity, steadily and surely.

For writers, it is the particular style they write in, that identifies, even without their byline, that the words that they write contain their unique voice. Ditto for artists, the strokes, the images, the palette they use, paint their individuality on the canvass. For musicians, its the way they combine the seven notes that sets their signature, and even for doctors and lawyers, the way their personality and their unique 'touch' that creeps into the cases they handle.

So much for the personality that creeps into work we do. Its always shaky at first, fumbling to find the right chord, the perfect pitch, but once discovered, we delight in it, finding ourselves over and over again.

But a voice is much more than the way one expresses oneself through work.

It is the core of our self. The essence of our nature. The ability to be truly comfortable in our own skin.

But how many of us really find this voice? This startlingly clear, infallible, unshakeable, firm voice that arises from deep within us. That is immune to any pressure, internal (our own insecurities)as well as external(societal).

Most of our days are spent in living a life that is shaped by expecatations and fears. Spent in conforming to inner demons and outer role models. In trying to make ourselves understood. In confusions and distractions. In trying to find a way to fit in with the world with what we have within us.

Some children have this gift at a young age. They can be with their friends, or alone, but they will be the same people - not changed in space or silence or the crowd. They sing their own song, even when they are alone - or with others.

But for many, even old age doesnt bring our own tune to our ears. We struggle, shift and change many times over, to get that comfort level, that feeling of being in sync with ourselves.

For a definite, crystal clear voice to emerge from this turbulence of the mind, is, to first find the silence within. That lets us hear the sound that is uniquely ours. That lets us speak in a way that is unambigous and aligned with what we do and how we are.
The voice that speaks - even when it is silent.

Positivity

If, as the cliche goes, every cloud has a silver lining, then the cloud that had shrouded Mumbai on 26/11 was the darkest, most ominous one that this beautiful vibrant city had ever seen.

But as the days pass, a faint light is tinting this cloud, slowly but surely.

There have been positive fallouts of this catastrophe:

1. India has won a strong, firm, assertive ally in the US which was hitherto sitting on the fence as far as Pak-India relations go. With their support and strong arm tactics (the need of the moment), India can tighten the pressure on Pak and have them follow up their words with decisive, committed and long term action.

2. NDTV 24x7 has shown us what responsible, professional, discerning, informed, well researched and balanced reporting is all about. Hats off to Barkha Dutt (spirited, energetic, fiesty, focussed and relevant) and Sreenivasan Jain (how can intelligence and good looks be combined so well!). In the midst of the other (especially the hysterical Hindi ones) sensational, irresponsible and amateur news channels, NDTV was sober, sensible and sensitive. This should be the future of News in our country.

3. Every citizen has at long last taken his and her democratic rights seriously. Even if it is something apparently small(but hugely significant) like casting a vote, the truth has finally hit home (and hit hard) that we are ultimately responsible for the government we get. Action committees are being formed at housing societies, we are finally raising our voices and demanding to be heard. Candles being lit may be a symbolic sign of our protest, but it is not a token gesture, since it keeps alive the anger, indignation and resolve at the brutal massacre of whatever our city stood for. Its a springboard to continued action - and memory. We need more black bands, candles and midnight vigils.

4. Hats off to Moshe's nanny, the frail, dimuntive woman who braved all the bullets and rushed this little child to safety. What guts and courage - and all for a boy who was not her own child and not even of her own family or nationality. Just goes to show that women and children can and will show the path to peace and progress....:-)

5. Mumbai and its people are no longer willing to turn the other cheek. We are no longer proud to be considered a 'reslient city' and a 'city that bounces back'. Phrases like these have made us, the highest tax paying Indian population, easy scapegoats for vote banks. We no longer want to believe in the 'spirit of Bombay' - which is what will spur us into now doing what needs to be done. (Though I am not a fan of her writing, Shobha De made a fervent ,relevant, exceptional point on NDTV in this regard) Enough is really enough!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTZ8-K0jiE

6. We have started looking beyond our own selves, our small cocoons of safety and our narrow interests and existence for the greater common good. To effect a change, we must truly BE the change we wish to see. We do it for our kids, for our future generation, and we know WE must do it, and do it NOW.

Every situation has a positive side. Even something as dark and sinsiter as this. But see it we must, to learn, to live, to love and to move on.