I love the word beautiful because it sounds just like its name. It is so filling and expressive that its tinkle makes it extremely quenching…

That’s how I feel after landing back home. I feel beautiful. To me, it variedly means tranquil, content, wise, blissful, beaming, and pretty and I feel all of it. I feel the control that I have and I realize it is not heavy but lighter than I could imagine…

I am in the bus, on my way to Nathdwara. It’s a small town in Rajasthan that I must have visited myriad times. It is different this time because it is the need that calls than pleasure. I have been given the sleeper area that I keenly explore and soon realize that it is big enough to accommodate the whole of me (and maybe a couple of bags). Leaving my mother and aunty to each other’s solace, I shut the small haven provided and shun myself from rest of the people for the day to come.

To give me company is The Zahir that, again, I call beautiful. The book is a journey in itself. The turning of each page makes me feel as if I am unwinding every thread of my own life. I am on a voyage of thoughts that, till now, were entwined in the web of life. I have started enjoying my journey and my small room that just defines the space I need. I look out of the window but I am not really looking at what I am. I am smiling. Nature has its mysteries for sure. I jump back in the shores of the mystical words as if they were picked up from my own life…

I am falling in love with the sluggish pace. Everything is so calm and serene that I feel the breeze brushing my face and whispering soothing words to me. The breathing has become so filling that I can feel the air spreading in my lungs and then in the stomach. It’s getting darker and I try to increase my speed to cover maximum number of pages. Unfortunately, it seems that the lethargic pace has got on to me and I start peeping out before the light drowns in the ocean…

I am always less often advised and more ordered to think less so that I remove excess baggage of worthless sorrows from my life. I agree that I am quite pensive by nature. In fact, I think to such an extent that in that state of mind I can create an entire kingdom of imaginary world that has its less pleasurable and more sorrowful moments. I wonder, am I not deceiving myself by believing in the void called happiness that lies around me? Should I simply eschew analyzing to lead a satisfactory life…? Is that how simple it is…? It is easy to deceive but difficult to believe. I might not have the most satisfactory relationships but I don’t pretend to bask in false glory. I move on…

I try taking a nap but maybe, I want to make the most of this rare opportunity of thinking in my own space. I open the window and struggle to find out the distance that we have covered but the darkness doesn’t seem to be in my favor today. I let the air hit my face but it’s more pleasing than annoying. The air seems to erode each phase of my life with its pace. The movement is so fast that I am just feeling lighter and better with each passing minute.

It is dinner time. We have reached Surat. I get down and feel the air gushing in my stomach which is enough for me to realize how hungry I had been! It’s a dhaba type restaurant mainly scurried by travelers and workers. It isn’t very difficult to get a table for three ladies traveling on their own. We order mouth watering mutter paneer with butter nan. The place with its lower standards has amazing food. In addition, they offer special servings with complimentary tissue papers exclusively for us. Too much for this small place! Of course, special treatments are always welcome…

It’s getting colder which is a beautiful change from the scorching heat of Bombay. Subconsciously, the words of The Zahir have created a stir in me as I try and search for my own. I crave to read more of it but alas! The dark wasn’t visible…

It’s the blink of dawn and I get up with the night’s thoughts still blending within. The words soothe my eyes. This particular excerpt hits me. If I could express it, it spoke about me. In life we start our relationships on a great high but later, with the passage of time we lead parallel lives that walk together but never meet each other. We reach a point where the experience of staying in a relationship isn’t gratifying although there is no reason to complain. It is this that makes us continue because there is nothing to whine about. It is how we deceive ourselves in believing that everything is hunky dory as that’s how it is ‘supposed’ to be. We lead our lives like railway tracks. The distance between the two is 4ft 8 ½ inches which is illogical but followed till date because that’s how Romans decided it in the ancient times. They did so because that was the distance between the legs of two horses that transported the carriages! But we blindly follow it because not doing so would mean breaking the rules…

Its hit me. This is the root cause of all my sufferings. I have been entangled in the world that preaches nonconformist ideas but is knotted in traditional ways for quite some time. Till now, I was stuck in the world of hypocrisy where people simply followed rules but yearned to be different in their hearts, gulped down their thoughts so that life could be simpler, distracted themselves in materialistic pleasure so that it reached their level of satisfaction, disparaged others from doing something different when their soul was plain envious. No, I don’t want this life that I don’t have a right on. I don’t want to lead a life that was decided by Romans.

For the first time, I am satisfied for the actions that have helped me in not fooling myself. I haven’t really led an unconventional life but haven’t yet made myself a victim of tradition. Questions murmur in my head. It is easy to talk and write about inspirations but rebelling is not a child’s play. Maybe it’s just a phase. Whether I can do it or not only time will tell…

I am about to reach my destination and I have never felt lighter. I feel naked as if I have shed every agony from my soul. I want to come back and meet every person even associated with minutest incidents of my life. I want to start afresh and the practical person that I am, it’s never too late…

Don't take life too seriously, you will never get out of it alive - Elbert Hubbard

Its 8:54 PM right now but seems like midnight to me…! Yeah, I have again started getting these pangs of insomnia and so here I am, writing about it. Gradually, I am becoming comfortable with this bushed state of mind as the lone feeling of staying awake when the whole world sleeps is soothing; the advantage of being lost and indifferent at the strike of dawn couldn’t be more comforting. Maybe, I want to be a day-dreamer so that I become numb; frozen of feelings that affect me, scenarios that prick me, thoughts that twinge the tetchy me…

I must be thoroughly self obsessed to even mention my so called birthday that’s nearing. But here I am, writing about it. They ask me what I want and I yearn for tranquility. No showering of gifts, no grandeur affairs can help me seek what I am looking out for. As a toddler, I always made sure people remembered D-day months and months before its arrival just to end up crying the most on the day due to lack of ‘enough’ attention. Birthdays came and went and here I am; scared, shuddering, dreading to reach the boundary that detaches me from a care free teenage life and pushes me into a new world, a world of forged gallantry, a world that signifies a seemingly ‘heaven like’ but an ‘abysmal ditch’, a world that can make and break my little shell apart. I want to freeze the time, rewind it back, pick my own people and kick the others off! I want to be me and just me…

Tired of the downbeat vigor that surrounds me and here I am writing about it. Exhausted of helping to breathe, trying to survive. All I want is feelings subtracted from manipulation, love without condition, life without materialism, smile without reason…

I want to give but don’t open, I want to help you fly but my wings don’t flutter, I want to be myself but the me just stutters…

And here I am penning every bit of it…

I wish I had some control on my thoughts. For the first time I wish my space was private. I could have made a private one but I didn’t have the heart to do so. There are so many unshared thoughts, so many unshared feelings that are ambiguous and revolving in my head like a buzzing mosquito that seems innocuous but cannot be ignored.

I am losing the thrill, the excitement in everything I do. God only knows when will I figure out what is indeed really bothering me? Why is it so easy to fall in dumps when you are so happy? Or am I? I think I do have the answers to my own questions but as I said there are millions of ambiguous thoughts roaming in my head that I don’t even know what is it that I am trying to find out…

The thoughts are just filling in the vacuum and I seem to have no control on them. Unfortunately, my inlet doesn’t have an outlet. I am staying in my own world at the same time very much with the outside world. Do I even know what is happening outside? Am I even there with anybody? It’s like suddenly my subconscious mind has become more alive than my conscious mind and I seem to have built a cocoon for myself…

Suddenly I feel like ending everything… writing, blogging, blabbering, ohh and yes thinking! I want to stop doing things that I am supposed to and breathe at my own will. Paradoxically, there is no one who is stopping me to do the same but I still feel stuck somewhere. I feel like sticking my butt to a place and sit there for days and days without opening my eyes.

But no, I am going to do exactly the opposite. I am going to run away till I get my answers. I don’t care what is right and what is wrong. I don’t want a break as a break would mean an added temptation of another one that I cannot afford. I want to stretch myself to see my limits! A break is not going to give me my answers, it is simply going to give me solace and I don’t even seem to know what I want!

I don’t even know if I can stop what I want to. Writing has given me solace during the time I needed it the most. It is the only mute outlet I seem to have. I wish I was a little surer about my feelings…

I was not going to put this up over here but then at the end of the day it is my space and I can write whatever I want to. It is utter crap and doesn’t make a bit of a sense and that is the whole reason why I am feeling like one!