Being Visible or Invisible (4 July 2010)

Exiled from my own voice, language and roots,

I am invisible to the world I belong,

Only my pain, grief and despair is visible nowdays,

How I am going to show that who I am actually?

So, I laugh, rejoice and celebrate my unseen face

In the small epiphanies of the everyday life,

To forget that invisibleness none wishes to write upon and

For recalling the buried visibility of my glorious past !

Who wants to be invisible anyway,

People like me who do not want to tolerate

The deliberate and shameless mockery of my sufferings;

Or people who resepect me  only because they fear

I hold the key to tarnish their corrupt visibleness ?

Penetrating the code of existence, this realistic invisibleness,

Negotiating with the identities of the multifaceted life, this imaginary visibleness,

I am stranded between the two giant pillars of my own personality;

Both helping me to actually play hide and seek with my fate,

With spontaneous and seamless conjectures and refutations of my image!

What if I could defeat my invisibleness, unavoidable anyhow,

What is I could hide my visibility, reluctant to change anyhow;

I do not want to be judged by relative insight of someone else,

I wish to be remembered by the absolute outlook of everyone else,

So, let me first decide what I really want, being visible or being invisible.

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In and Out of Night ! (3rd July 2010)

When everything around is hibernated, our mind is awakened to touch the countryside fields of utter silence. There we are with ourselves rising to every warm radiation coming from the sky to brighten the pulse of enthusiasm for the nutrition of the times ahead. How many times we have realized the true color of the dark curtain of our life which says show must go on and also says show must go on with ambience of equanimity. It is a black book of solitude, a night of my life. None can snatch away this from me. This is my greatest treasure trove.

Why the day and not the night has gained all the privileges of mortal life. Everyone is used to adapt their life as per the rigid schedule of natural sunlight. We as an organism are not growing food from the sunlight by photosynthesis. We as a pioneer of technological innovations have made it easier to transform the labyrinth of night in a legitimate luxurious liberty to sustain our everyday (?) livelihood. Apart from the question of energy consumption, we can make night in letter and spirit, a true companion for the quest of the goal which somehow is lost in the crazy rush of the day life.

Nisha i.e. Night, my dear friend, with whom every time I converse gives me a feeling that there is someone, something in my alone life that can understand my thoughts. It gives me a very close and affinitive relation to claim for which every time I can rely on to introspect, scold myself and sometimes to sincerely praise and cherish whatever adoring left in my little life. Sometimes when I was immensely grieved due to intolerable self criticism however unjustifying, I took refuge in the embrace of this night, with some droplets of pure emotions out of my eyes washing my sad face. Other times, when I was discovering the talisman of happiness in the occasionally encountered epiphanies and accidently surfaced serendipities, I am left with this night only to share that irresistible joy.

Every time night seems to me equally heartening sandalwood compensating my parting away with the daily quests, however small. Every other time the night seems to me an engulfing fire of imagination the flame of which heralds me towards citadel of creativity, deep reflection and some strength to provoke my capability to strive for true deserving outcome.

I was never so close to understand the subtle character and underlying currents of the beautiful anti-world of night. As there is parallel for matter and anti-matter, electron-positron, there is this pair of day-night. Deeply engaged with each other; different polarities; and still very much dependent on each another to signify the meaning of each other`s existence. We cannot claim to whom entirely all pervading spectrum of colors in the evening and morning sky belong to. We cannot validate whether where is the real demarcation between day and night; in the emergence of light & dark and in the disappearance of those. Even we cannot prove that night and day differ in thinking about how to be in the gripping, obsessive mind being away from the carefully analyzing the relation of self with the surroundings and about how to in free, wandering state of mad mind believing in randomness of action.

Life in the times of night may be solid indicator towards how much I achieve in day. It is a bond of war and peace. In the peace, we prepare for the war. So, in the silent prosperous moments of evening, night, mid-night, early dawn, dawn, early morning, and morning we are empowered to ponder over the day ahead. Night is a think tank of the day. Night is the power and warehouse of the days ahead. Squandering the nights is invitation to ruin the days. Unfortunately we never realized the true essence of the dark shades of our lives so as we stressed on bright borderlines of achievement. Night is fabulous composition of diverse possibilities beyond objective and certain probabilities of which we are afraid of due to vastly certain uncertainty embedded in it.

When we are away from the happenings, events, celebrations, cremations, gatherings we are only ‘we’ in this course of night, trying to be in sole symposium of self-engagement. Can we gamble on our other privileges to meet this jewel of the season? Can we embark on the discovery of endless virtues becoming explicit in the voyage of this dark passage? Can we consolidate the determination that we will never forgo the blessings given by night? Can we ever bargain with kind of freedom awarded during this solidarity with the invisible struggle for being alone at midnight? This freedom and these blessings are the epitome of our existence in our lives impoverished in terms of new ideas, novel perspectives and unique way in which we philosophize our pragmatic struggle in affairs of the world we breathe.

Night, of course may be very vague, haphazard and widely unstructured in its manifestation. But compared to the day it is this openness of the night possessing the ability to usher into meaningful out of nothing that is remarkable. This openness holds our attention leaving us in astonishment, shock to give the feel of path breaking phenomenon shaping the upcoming scenario. Why night is so unpredictable, so away from our senses of anticipation in its method of expression? May be it is our ignorance or lack of will power to make a friendship with the night, to imagine a life inside life i.e. life in a day and life in a night revolving around each other in concentric circles of thoughts and action.

Why we still are not able to narrate our life sketch in terms of what we will do in night against as always the foresights, plans and pathways of future only in terms of daylight life? May be we never respected other half of life, just like we never asked what really other half wants. We never organized, accommodated and assimilated the ‘voice of other half’ in the ‘vision of our life’. Other half is not the leftover of life, it is an equal signatory to the memorandum we have crafted about the projects we are going to build in this life. We have to ask what other half wants, otherwise hypocritically, shamelessly and unilaterally defining what other half wants will lead to underestimation, insult and subjugation of the values and institutions represented by other half, in this respect ‘night’.

The quiet journey of night is founding stone of the multitude facets of day life. The process of introspection starts in the dark shades of mind, expands in the stretch of extremely slow moving horizon of night and concludes in the decisions solidifying and witnessing the convergence of dawn and morning raga. How far we will avoid this heritage of night making us more humble and more able, more resourceful in our imagination to think and more enriched in our vigor to marshal the professional personification. Night, keeps giving us the keys to the universe of daily establishments. We have to be supremely loyal to this relation of ours with that of night.

The night is empowered light of the day. It is an enhanced insight about the visible world by engaging imagination about the unknown vistas of life which we can only visit in the realms of cool and less warm night. It is the channel of communication from self to others. It is a symbol of existence of our introvert personality trying to have a dialogue with the grave problems of our own and later those of beyond self. It is an award we have been cherishing since our birth, cooling our heads disturbed due to the unavoidable greed of the day life. Night has emerged out as an indisputable opinion leader across our walks of life. It is an endless companion, even after death.

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Epiphany and Life! (1st July 2010)

I rechecked once again the exact meaning of the word ‘Epiphany’, and then I came to know this. It is, “A sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.” After many months, started taking a silent and engaging walk on a momentous and breezy morning of summer I will never forget. Silent because, it was a revisit to earlier reflection of my most sought after true being with harmony of self; and engaging because it reinvented my ability to have a talk with myself which anyhow I lost in the mean time due to the uncontrolled growth of worry in which I was encapsulated. That worry, about the direction in which I was going, was however unwarranted.

We do not need authority every time to comment on the problems of life. What after all the authority means? They are actually the keen observers of the events, sequenced in the chain of epiphanies. The experts as they are called are sophisticatedly alert and active to sense the subtle trend of characters and pattern of behaviours reflecting out of occasional epiphanies. The hallmark of excellence is nothing but to deal with these apparently small epiphanies of daily life. These small things and incidences may be very redundant affairs for the person who is dealing with the professional virtues of precision and perfection but truly they are the gates towards getting ourselves exposed to the larger drama of reality unfolding in greater world outside our narrow imagination about what really a life constitutes for.

These epiphanies are not isolated events altogether. Interestingly it is our perception makes the epiphany out of an ordinary happening. Epiphany is like a traditional proverb, accumulating vast wisdom inherited since generations and still making a point to be uttered at particular moment, instance or crossroads of life. It is that state of receptive mind going beyond superficial attentive mind to grab the most obvious things to understand in non-obvious ways. Things do not happen just like that. They have rational meaning coming out of theoretical explanation through some practical mechanism to indicate towards larger possibilities.

It is a matter of supreme satisfaction that (if) we are discussing epiphanies every now and then. It is an evidence of hypocrisy coming due to wrong perception of authority, a feel of power and an arrogance of expertise when we see people ridiculing these moments which according to them are obscurely mundane.  When we watch every day with great curiosity, we observe many things which are not privy to the mind obsessed with competing with others. When we discuss minute issues, emphasis added on micro, it gives strength to have grip of visualising scenarios which are much more dynamic, complex and vast in their expanse of existence.

When we claim that we gain experience over the time, what do we mean. It is actually a self-generated wisdom out of these trivial matters. The trivial, not because of a sense of futileness reflecting from it, but due to feeling it gives about rudimentary arrangement of the building blocks it gives about how we think, how we behave and how we act. It is not about talking in a superficial way and in vain about the things which shape routine times in our consciousness. It is however, our urge with deep eagerness to absorb the germ of the thoughts we believe in from the events unfolding in front of our eyes, every moment, every coming step of the road ahead.

A relation which empowers our every drop of blood is the conference room of such epiphanies. We constantly discuss about all these epiphanies to make the sense of the position and direction we are headed towards. We may not be academically sound in the deliberation about the true meaning of the daily events occurring but that does not matter. The fact that we never stop of debating about all these issues makes it more worthwhile. It gives a space to intercept the possible risks, uncertainties and destabilising factors in our today, tomorrow from having a brief look of the yesterday. What more, by having a frequent chat about all these things, we develop a capacity to overcome the problems which at the outset seem overwhelmingly challenging requiring audacious courage to contest those out rightly.

Therefore we need a mirror, very very transparent and reflective; so as to see the things they are, not as they should be. Then after watching those things in the mirror, we begin the conversation with mirror itself about how things should be. So, mirror is actually creator, disseminator of the values we are searching in the life. Discovery of that mirror enables us to search those values in every walk of life. In the mean time, mirror becomes everything. It becomes soul gravity of our being. We revolve around that mirror. We constantly need to have insights about life from that mirror. In a sense, that mirror evolves and ushers in a role which is actually a larger epiphany radiating the essence of our mortal life. We are in search of that radar and telescope which enlarges and maps the outer universe and distant future for us. We are in a passionate mood to construct that microscope which will tell us everything about us so honestly, so ruthlessly to shape our times in turn. The discovery of that epiphany in our mental and physical realms makes us profoundly happy and unquestionably wealthy.

When we ask ourselves about what is novel in our lives we should ponder over the exceptions rather than uniform criteria of achievements. Success, recognition and honours are really the pedestals strongly craved for. We earn respect after we gain something. We earn laurels of history when we lose something in a unique way like none has lost that in common ways. We do not discuss what legacy is hidden behind the silver appreciation and golden mementos. The persons who are keenly observing us are witnesses of the true meaning of legacy we are carrying with us. That legacy may not be qualified according to the principles of history but for our life, that legacy is no less than figment of history. A localised history, a history of solitude. Epiphany is the true historical account of our solitude.

None knows true inner being of ours better than the mind of epiphany. That mind may be enshrined in an epiphany of any pure human body, in a legendary book, in a great story of drama or film, in a symbol of inspiration, a deity deserving devoted worshipping or any material thing we consider worthy of adoring for it`s structural beauty. Then to instantaneously engage ourselves, to know the true meaning of epiphany is actually the sole and soulful project of our whole life. That project drives our every physical senses and divine aspirations. That project alone carries logic to live. Only that project gives excuses, justifications and mad reasoning to everything we do. That project in its entirety captures our every breath making ourselves desperate to die to embrace the spirit of that project. We become nothing but a small epiphany for that project which is actually the greatest epiphany of our life.

So, epiphany is whole universe of imagination and living for us. If there are no epiphanies we will not understand, rather we will never try to interpret the extraordinary out of ordinary. Epiphany makes us selfless to respect the virtues of the nature around us only to enrich us in return. That enrichment is like royal lighthouse which bestows upon us the enlightened pragmatic philosophy which everyone chases to have at their disposal by paying any value. Philosophy, not coming out of its shear rational logic, but to give a vision. To understand it better, let me quote what William Somerset Maugham said, “The value of art is not beauty, but right action.”  Isn`t it! Let us go for right action and then see maybe we could realise beauty of the art. An art of making sense of epiphany and an art of linking that sense to the larger story of life unfolding by the expression of all the proud and regretful epiphanies.

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