Prashant's Solace

I am an eternal romantic in the broadest sense of the term. Some people, places, events, situations, mannerisms and even some self-reflection exercises create an everlasting spool of thoughts out of which I weave dreams. Motivational salience makes me revisit one such beautiful dream. A forest of dreams I fashioned, where one day, rather one frosty twilight she walks in... ...this girl. She walks all uneasy. Uneasy and unsure. I hardly notice her presence. But in her absence, her anticipation makes me feel many things. Nervousness, plunges and contractions and waves of expectation in stomach. But nothing now when she's here. Her presence doesn't make me smile. I hope it never does because it denies her omnipotence in my mind.  She has a warmth about her that does not exude any aura. It's just there. Reassuring as ever. There is nothing in the world, fictional or real, that could be more important than having her by my side. If I were ever to tell her how I feel, I ...

Sometimes he wants to burst out crying extremely loud and cry for all times to come. He doesn't want to stop at all... But nothing happens. The world is moving unlike what he might have assumed. Weakness he cannot show. In feigning, tears dry up. As here is a life to be lived. People to be dealt with. Work to be done. Maybe diseases to be prevented. You cannot be so privileged to cry. Crying is a long journey. It begins with a little hesitation. When you gather speed, you want to continue. A rhythm gets set. Afterwards, it is fairly easy. Then comes the dragging point. You try to continue even if there are enough reasons to make you stop. And then you stop. Either you realize the futility of the endeavour or the incentive to cry no longer persists. Even then, he tries to resume. He can't. He searches for motivation. Motivation to begin crying again. He picks up things, looks at things. He stretches his thought till it reaches the unreachable, thinks the unthinkable. He forc...

An October 24, 2019 post by Zadie Smith in New York Review of Books, inspired this essay. So I would like to duly acknowledge it by sharing its link. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/24/zadie-smith-in-defense-of-fiction/ The human mind is a dumping ground for all kinds of thought-material. This is a pretty outrageous statement to make, considering the above article. But so is the use of the adjective 'outrageous'. This sort of conjecture keeps engaging me and my actions and hence unpopularity with certain individuals around me. It seems that confusion, especially in issues of the daily, from - where to eat, what to eat, whether to go on a vacation, if yes where to go, should I read a particular book or not - to major life decisions - everything is dictated by a pressure of definition, certainty, a defined state. Doubt has always characterised my decisions. Whether the resulting judgements (if I can call them that) have proved fruitful is another lo...

…Three characters who were the best of friends set out on a journey. Shortly after the below picture was taken one of them vomited because of the twisting and turning road from Mumbai to Goa. The happy expressions do not betray the discomfort of at least one of them. Pictures never reveal a lot so I never read too much in one. Times do. The milky waterfall, riveting greenery, the time of the day, the sweeping beauty of rain in Western Ghats presented a wonderful backdrop for one of the many journey’s they undertook together.  The memory of the moment serves as a reminder of a bygone era. It had interlocked three wishes; to be happy, find purpose and to make the most of their lives. That era catapulted more or less intertwined lives into three different streams of life. One of them ever-determined to make the most of his life continued his search for meaning of life and happiness. He lives to push his mental and physical self into uncharted waters. People, pla...

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A…” “Wake up! You idiot.” “How dare you interrupt free India’s first Prime Minister’s speech?” My sister is in a hurry to leave the house. Parents out of station. Before she leaves the house, I must be awakened to do the morning chores. The house maid must be buzzed in. Plants in our garden must be watered. And of course, I have to go to the office. A Prime Minister of a new born country being woken up cruelly when he is in the middle of waking up the whole country! The world has lost its sense of priorities and important issues. “I will be home late. No dinner for me. Don’t you dare waste a second getting off that fart smelling bed.” She is quite nice, my sister, otherwise. Thud. The car moves hastily out on t...

Scepticism as oppose to denial is about the believers and non-believers - my little world of people, places, events and perspectives. A question in a school text prompted me to come up with this musing. It asked whether throwing/showering rice ( akshata, in a Maharastrian marriage ) justified when many go to sleep daily without a single meal ! If the child throws this question to a believer parent, teacher or a guardian, they come up with religious explanations for the practice. In the process, they are supposedly quelling the child's doubts. If this child plays with rice at home, throws or tosses it around he/she receives a big smack on the back, a dressing down and lectures on respect, privilege and positioning with respect to poor kids. What adults are doing here is not assuaging the kid's doubts but their own deep-rooted dilemmas. More like suppressing them. Adulthood comes with self-justification and more doubts for any curious child. Maybe I ...

(NOTE - Term in the title is not about a certain Netflix series, though borrowed from it!) The fact that I write this is a setback of a kind. This one is the emotion of the wrong kind that stimulates me to write. So, have I lost the battle to maintain my sanity? I might as well have vented whatever I felt in the most hurtful words I could sum up. But I held on, proclaiming victory to my conscience. Although the fact that I write about these – a thousand bad adjective worthies - shows that they do take a place in my system. But I fight them as one would fight cancer. And I fight to win. Disastrous, monstrous. People I hate most in the world are around me. They grow upon me like a parasite, unyielding. I cringe at their very presence. But I endure. I seek no pleasure in giving it back to them. Because they are not worthy of it. I only fight my equals in thought. I understand the immense control to hold back might implode me. But causing an explosion is beneath me. In...

Part II - MOTION Imagine this motion. You are coming out of a shower and you hear your child's cry. She has just fallen down a swing across the narrow road separating your house and a play area. 'I'll run out as I was!' The luxury of sitting and comfortably analyzing this situation will make you say this, isn't it?'                                                                                                                                                                                                ...

Part 1 - QUESTION "Bye bye Grandma." "And Asid left the house for work as usual. "When he came home that day everyone except his brother was emotional. His mother, father and the most his grandmother. His world was about to change. At 31 he was against getting married, meaning against the rest of the world which already had by his age. He had simply refused. Was angered, threatened to be disowned he even left the house, only to be brought back twenty days later. His grandmother in hospital sealed the deal for his escapade! But something about this day was different. No sooner did he enter the house than the Dias family Blitzkrieg led by the oldest began. This time it was not an emotional one but a step further. "Let us face it. You like girls, don't you? You are planning to get married one day, aren't you? Knowing you, accept that you are most likely to take only one partner for the rest of your life, will you not? You have already fai...

Many people will read sexually explicit and won't read further. Some might, secretly or openly. A growing kind are the ones  outraged just looking at someone looking at these words! One of my friend considers talking about sex, not the verb but even the noun, as outrageous. This one time he was explaining the procedure of filling out a bank form. "First write your name, then address, then the pin code and don't forget to mention whether you are a male or a female." He simply won't say 'sex'. That was too sexually explicit for him.  Proof that people like him exist aplenty - try voicing the word in any crowded bank branch across this country. The mere mention of the word draws fleeting but definitely uneasy glances from listeners. As if you just spit on someone. Talking of spit, recently DNA samples from saliva of at least 10 guys were collected from a crime scene. The scene, with full sensitivity I state, not surprisingly, was the body of a teenag...