8 Minutes

It's simple really, you put on a song, (this one was about 8 minutes long) and you write while it plays. No editing. No re read. Just write it and be done with it. Here it is:

It came to me as a very mellow realization. It took it’s own time. I wasn’t rushed into it, not at all. It made me very happy, no doubt, that I had realized it, but at the same time, the realization itself was a little…

            Well I was let down to be honest. I knew it was true but it was just so… Saddening. I realized we all come here. We’ve all reached this wonderful place that we call earth. This little corner that we’ve carved for ourselves in the universe. Of course, we didn’t have much to do with getting it, but I think we’ve done a pretty crazy job shaping it. I wish we had been a little more careful, but then, we are but children. Toddlers. Babies. Compared to the universe we live in, we’re hardly a few minutes old at this point. We’ll get there some day. I’m sure.

            I’m sure because…  I believe. I… Believe in people. Human ambition. And Capacity. And Potential. I believe we can truly achieve anything we want. We can improve ourselves, despite ourselves. We’ve put a man on the moon, a number of robots on mars. We’ve cured diseases and we’ve built structures that challenge the tallest mountains and deepest oceans. We are the most advanced race this planet has. We are the epitome of evolution. Conscious, sentient beings.  Walking, communicating, loving, hating, inventing. We are amazing. But somehow, my realization introduced me to an idea that reminded me that there’s something missing.

            A sense of disconnect. I feel like I’m no longer in touch with something greater. Something I was very very close to at some point in time. I feel incomplete. Like a part of me is missing. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t been home in as long as I can recall. My entire lifetime has been just aimless wandering. I feel tired. I feel… Alone at times. At times I feel afraid. I wish I could talk to someone about it but for some reason, so few of us understand. But I’m still positive y’know? I’m positive that I’ll get there. That collectively we’ll get there. One day. Because we are better than we think we are. We are worse than we believe ourselves to be. We are capable of anything. And we have the ability to chose. We’ll get there, eventually. We’ll get there. I know.

In case you're wondering, the song I was playing was Fjor Piano by Sigur Ros

The Last Apology.

Fellow Travelers, Friends, Family, (Alive and Otherwise)

As you might already know, I have, in all probability, wronged you in some way in the past. I have, until recently, carried vast stores of guilt with me regarding said acts. Thank you for sticking around through and through. I am sorry for having done so. I really am.

But this is the last apology I'll make. The last time few times I'll say sorry for the things I've done in the past. Because being the most apologetic sack of fat just isn't my scene.

Know that I never have, or will, intend to cause you harm. I love you, just as I love all them beautiful things under the sun, and all them pretty things beyond.

All the decisions I take, are with the most positive of intentions. All of them are intended to do good. All of them are made so that happiness happens. The world tends to be cruel though, and sometimes people get hurt. I do not will for this at all. Trust me.

So for the last time, I'm sorry.

You take care now. Lemme know if you need me. I'm always there. Sometimes close, sometimes far, but always there.

Love,
Mehta.

All Your Arguments are Invalid.

A signal is sent pulsing through your nervous system. Muscles move. Your mouth opens wide. Your Lungs Expand. Air is being sucked into them. Tiny molecules of oxygen inside this mixture of odd and even gasses are now in your lungs. The alveoli that line the inside of your lungs absorb the oxygen and give it to them blood cells. They tell the heart to lay down a beat. The heart complies. Blood is now rushing through your heart, into veins, then to your capillaries and back to your heart via the lungs through your arteries so that it may all repeat. Once again.

You just yawned in Math Class.

All your arguments are invalid.

The world is awesome.

Smile.

The End. More or less...

So it's over! My 4 year long tenure as a college festival participant and organiser is finally over. Yup. I'm taking early retirement. Opting out of it all for good. And it's an odd feeling man. It's one odd, bittersweet feeling. If you don't want to read through all this crap, you may just push to the last paragraph! That should help! :P

Honestly, I'm at a loss of words. Though I'm certain of my wanting to opt out of it all a little early, I'm also completely sure that I am going to miss it all. So much. So very very much. But then, as a friend of mine put it, new experiences await me.

I think it's safe to say that I had a rather successful stint at fests. Initially, as a part of PA teams that kicked ass musically and later as an LA participant. The certificates piled up and festival season was sure to come along with discounted haircuts and tattoos for most of my friends and families. But it was all such a con wasn't it? Never did I go for a single prize distribution. Never really bothered about holding on to the trophies. They lie in the corner of my room gathering dust. Thank God most of them were for the college, I wouldn't have bothered holding on to them if they had been kept at home. Honestly, it was partly because I never really figured out how I won so many events. Hell, I still don't know. All I ever did was show up and chill. Relax. Talk to people. Yeah... It was always all about the people. And trust me when I tell you, I've met some of the most wonderful people I have ever met because of these fests, and most of them are far better at fests than I'll ever be. And I think that's something I'll miss immensely. Partially, the reason why I dug fests so much was because they provided me with a challenge. Something to stress the limits of my creative ability. Festivals gave me a chance to create and tell stories. And for that I am forever grateful.

But hey, all good things must come to an end. To be honest though, I wasn't entirely sure as to what would signal the time for me to stop. When it happened though, I knew it in my gut and my mind and it all made sense. See, I have this piece of paper with a bucket list that lists the things I wanted to do when I had just entered junior college. And on that list is a little line of scribbles that reads I should, in massive part, win 6 trophies, of which at least 2 should be Individual. As for the other 4, I should have a large part to play in them.I should also organise a fest and help make a considerable improvement in the same. And this year, at college, I got lucky. I was blessed with a spirited (and rather talented) batch of juniors and awesome seniors and batch mates to match. Together, as one hell of a tiny ass team, we managed to win both Umang and Enigma (two rather large fests in the north Bombay area) and even got ourselves the LA trophies in both. It wouldn't have been possible without them juniors though. Them juniors and my Buddy Akshay Tamhankar, the best CL I've ever seen after Nihal Daswani. Remember those names. You'll hear them somewhere big some day. I even got to be the Vice Chairperson of the festival my college organises. We took it from a small fest to one that's so much closer to being a big one. I did little though, most of it was the amazing dream team I got to work with. For those people, both younger and older, I am so grateful.

Of course, it goes beyond just the folks in my contingent and my organising committee. There were the amazing minds I met. Specially in LA. Pranav Advani, Aarsh Mehta, Parul Rawat, Aadya Shah, Sampurna Maitra, Rashmi Mehta, Akash Vishwakarma, Vishaal Rashquinha, Paurush Irani and so so many more.

Of course, I probably haven't made the best impression on everyone at fests. And I really wish I had. But I guess it's something that might or might not change over time. And I have so much more to do. So many people to meet. I just hope I don't mess it up there I say!

But hey, I've been ranting. And I think I should wrap it up now.

I am forever grateful for fests. I am forever grateful for the people I've met along the way. I shall always look up to my LA seniors. I will never be as good as you. Ever. As for my Juniors, I judge you by the standard set by my predecessors. Live up to it. You have such wonderful potential. I think you're all better than I am, whether it's at PA or LA or whatever. Kick ass man! And enjoy these days. Do more fests! You'll realise you take away a lot more than just trophies and certificates.

Special mention to Malcom K. Remember, I kick your ass just like my LA seniors kicked mine. So make sure you Replace me at PGCL man. Replace me.

An analogy to explain meditation...

So I was talking to a friend, Aadya Shah a while ago and thought of this analogy to digging into ones mind...

After further thought it made sense to apply the analogy to meditating. Thought it needs more work, I think this second draft is good enough to put up:

Think of the world as having two parts. A hall (like a banquet hall) and the rest of the world.

The Hall is the only building on the block. On all four sides of the hall are roads.

Say you're sitting on a bench outside the hall. On the opposite side of it.

The hall here, is your mind. And everything outside is the world you perceive with your external physical senses.

So you're outside the hall, sitting on that bench and one day you decide to enter it. Say, one day, you decide to meditate.

Now, the first thing you must do, is cross the road and enter. You must first shut down all exterior sensory inputs. Close your eyes, close your ears, etc. You must not allow the goings on of the world outside the hall to draw you out of it.

So you enter this hall and the first thing you notice is a sea of people. So many of them! Each distinct! Some happy, some sad, some incredibly attractive and yet others that are downright repulsive. And they all want to talk to you. They want your time. They want your attention! These are your thoughts. The thoughts that keep running through your mind all day. Remove them. Ask all the people to leave. You'll realise how much more pleasant albeit slightly lonely it can be without them. You're here to check out the hall. Not it's contents.

Ok! Now all the people are out. It's just you and the hall. But is that really so? What about all the furniture? It isn't a part of the basic structure of the hall, is it? It must all go! The chairs and the tables, the counters and the cupboards and even the carpets. It must all go out. These are your fleeting goals and ideas and beliefs. They change with time and so are easier to remove. They only get into the way while you're trying to understand the true nature of this hall. But you must study them first. Understand their nature and why they've been kept there. What purpose does that sofa serve? You'll realize that most of them were quite a waste in the first place. Now be warned! You might find a cockroach or a snake or even a line of ants when you move this furniture. They are fleeting fears. Be not afraid, you are greater than them. This hall is greater than them. You must remove them too, before you can move forward. Lest they come bite you when you're working on studying the true nature of this hall! If you're too afraid, leave that sofa in place. Wait a while. Rest. And then try again.

The furniture's out? Great! So you're left with a bare room. Devoid of furnishings and light fixtures. Just four walls and a ceiling. Next step! Tear it all down!

Tear down those POP walls and enter the next layer of this hall. You are now beginning to understand the Hall's true nature. The plumbing, the electricals etc. These are your base beliefs. The kinds that tell you you exist. That you are human and so on. They must go. You might (hell, you probably will) find termites or asbestos in behind that false wall. These are your innermost demons. And they are, more often than not, as strong as your base beliefs. Tread carefully. Getting hurt is fine. But you do not want to destroy yourself. But anyway, there's a brick wall behind these and you must see it and examine it as well. After all, that is the true nature of the hall, isn't it?
The hall now looks starkly different since when you began. It can be a scary place. But do not worry. The fact that you have been given the ability to come this far and even venture deeper means that you are greater than them!

So dig on! And before you know it, all that shall be left will be them columns and beams. Concrete or brick, it matters not. You are now at the edge of the shell that is the hall. What now? You have understood every component that made up the hall. You have only one thing left. Go through the shell, just to check if there's anything beyond. And when you do, I promise you, you'll be back outside. Just where you started. Except now, things seem different. Your experiences inside the hall have shaped your perception of the world outside. You smile to yourself whenever you think of it and when someone asks you what happened you say nothing... Nothing at all...

Meditation does not equal detachment. The sense of detachment is a natural and necessary step towards reaching and understanding one's inner self. Meditation does not mean giving everything up as well. Dig enough and you'll realise, you're back outside. The world you perceive through your senses and the one that lies inside your mind are more connected than you can ever imagine. At least that's what happened when I entered my hall. When will you enter yours?

A Different School of Thought

It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. It's not that I haven't been writing, It's just that most of what I've written has been written elsewhere.

I've written log entry after log entry full of thoughts and ideas and philosophy.
I've written answer sheets full of badly scribbled handwriting.
I've written songs that, in all probability, will never get recorded or heard by anyone else...
I've written little notes full of love and texts full of motivational thoughts.

Yeah... I've been writing. Just not here. So I guess it's time to type out a little something for this platform. This other platform that no one really reads either...

It's been a rough couple of months. I've questioned why I'm doing what I'm doing and whether it will eer yield results. I guess it's easier to have faith when you believe in something. When, on questioning, an activity that you devote so much of your time to yields answers that are not just unsatisfactory, but leave you with a really bad feeling in your gut, it's hard to have faith.

But that's the thing with faith, I'm told. It's believing when there is absolutely no reason to believe.

I disagree. And I do so strongly.

The fact is, I believe in another school of thought. One that believes in questioning. I believe in asking questions. I believe in asking question after question after question till there are no more questions left. Anything that is presented to me, is questioned to death. If it holds up to questioning, I agree with it and believe in it. If it does not, I reject it for another time. For questioning is also time-specific. There are things I've believed in for years. It doesn't mean I've stopped questioning them. It means that they've held up to my questioning every single time.

Sometimes thigns don't hold up to questioning. So they're rethought. Re-explored and reexamined, they often lead me to greater truths. And I guess that's the thing. I love the truth. More importantly, I love Knowing the Truth.

Knowing gives me a strong strong sense of relief. Whether what I know is pleasant or downright horrifying. The fact that I know it gives me a strong sense of... Fulfillment.

So that's what I do. I question. I follow my own personal school of thought. And every now and then, I question whether questioning itself is of any use. And as always, the idea holds up to questioning.

I guess writing these hopelessly abstract and random ideas are better than having nothing here at all....

Why is it better? I think I'll get to that soon.

It's Important

I think it's Important...
To wake up really early once in a while just to see the sun rise. And to appreciate how it manages to do so every day. Guaranteed. You can go back to sleep right after.


To help a blind man cross the road every now and then. Not to restore his faith in humanity. But to restore your own.

To lose yourself in whimsy every now and then. So that you don't lose all them lovely colours to the monotony of day to day life.

To accept your mistakes. For that is the first step to never repeating them.

To accept yourself as well. Because you're born alone and you die alone. You better get used to the person you're with most of the time.

To put away your cell phones when you're at dinner or chilling on the beach. The world can wait. Your best friend getting bitten in the ass by a crab won't.

To slow down your car and let an old lady cross the road. 'Cause don't you just hate it when those douchebags run around speeding?

To put yourself out there and to let yourself get hurt. You might have a scar, but if you look at it right, you'll have a great story to tell.

To not forget and to not recall. Because the present plays a much bigger role in deciding the future than the past does.

And lastly I guess it's important to smile. 'Nough said.