Happy baby, fierce warrior

It is entirely possible that the sun will rise next morning. But you just can’t be sure.

In the last few years, there has been an incredible numbing of the senses. The smells and the taste feel doctored and domesticated. Eclectic experiences float away readily, requiring me to intensely remember even just the basic details.

But as I continue checking-in on adulthood, I find my emotions returning in full force and now difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it is because I am taking some explicit time for myself these last few months, my mind finds itself returning to a rawer form of observation and recall. My memories tinge with electricity that stings and dreams that last. And finally, my fingers are inching again to write it down again.

I recently saw a Marathi movie called ‘Killa’ and found it predictable but pleasing to watch. However, it did take me back to when I was 12 year old and my parents had just moved me to another town. Moving to that town was primarily exciting as it meant getting on an airplane and experiencing that absolutely magical feeling of the plane taking off the ground. I left back my 6th grade friends and my hometown of Nashik without much of a thought. Rightly enough, I blossomed in Bangalore. Puberty and adventure hit in its full might. It amazes me how even today, decades after, I remember my time there so vividly. The rains when they came perfumed the red sands along the roads. I cycled to a stone quarry which required some serious huffing and puffing up an incline near a water-tank. An older gentleman managed a smallish library that I raided frequently. I was exploring every day alone on a bicycle and absorbing amazing memories. When the time came to head back to Nashik, I felt terrible and didn’t want to leave. It was then that I first experienced a deep heart wrenching sadness that still pours out when I watch sad movies that revolve around childhood. Eventually, I came out unscathed but the rawness remains.

I am proud of this deeply trenched bag of emotions in me. It is what separates us. Not the stories we weave but the baggage we carry in our tired eyes. Re-reading the hitch hikers guild to the galaxy for the nth time, I noticed what the British humor was trying to cover up. Between the interstellar time travels of its characters, remained a story of a common bloke who witnessed amazing bits of strange galaxies and yet really wanted to only see a girl he met on earth. I found that mildly depressing until I realized that I was in a much stranger predicament. I had the girl that I met on the earth in my arms and yet I was looking outwardly into space, asking her to come with into nothingness.

This is what yoga and meditation does. As you try to calm down the mind, it goes crazy firing weird thoughts. Between nanoseconds of calmness and thoughtlessness lies a usurping of past and future that is reviewed by firing neurons. I wish to sit still and be grateful for what I have and what I have always had but the mind doesn’t want any of it. It thinks of dented Porsche’s, raking yards, mediocre associates at work, rapid aging and a faltering ambition of wanting more of all of it. We both breathe deeply in the artificial heat, feeling rested and together in our walk back home. We walk quietly, tired mostly. But my mind finds the clean slate too hard to resist and splatters it with thoughts very similar to the paragraphs you just read above this one.

It is rough coming back to writing. There is crudeness in my flow now but a reality that was missing is seeping through. There is love for four wheels but there is sadness between the cars. She is my constant and yet there are variables in everything else. This doesn’t feel like aging. It feels like ripening. But most importantly, it feels like melancholy again, between the chores and the blogs.