He who writes...

"Anonymous is a person who lives within me."
- Anonymous

After a particularly barren spell, I almost force myself to bring out this post today.

I had been in dilemma for the last few days. I was trying to figure out why I was writing what I was writing. And how much importance do I need to attach to it? Is this a totally futile exercise? Two conflicting persons were arguing inside me. And I couldn't really figure out who was the real me.

One of them argued that this was just a waste of time and I should rather put my energy into something more practical. He even said that publishing these personal posts online just shows how desperate I am to get noticed. Simply put, this was a kind of 'show-off' according to him.

I was about to agree on this when the other person, who had so far been listening intently, spoke up. He argued that although getting noticed could be one of the reasons it was not the sole reason. And he was completely unwiling to accept these writings as a waste of time. "Not everything you do should be weighed in terms of profit and gain," he said.

So, here I am stuck up between the arguements. And I don't even know, between these two, who actually made me write this post.

Melancholic

"Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad."
- Victor Hugo

Friday evening is certainly not the time to feel sad; I have a fresh weekend at my disposal, the rains have brought down the temperature in Delhi and everything around me just looks fine. Moreover, I have no particular reason to feel sad. Still, melancholy is the only word which can describe my present state of mind. There are times when I feel that way, for no reason at all. This is when I shut myself, this is when I long for something I myself don't know, this is when I take refuge in darkness.

Reading thus far, you might be mistaken that this is my frustration speaking here. No. On the contrary, I am trying to tell you how I feel a subtle pleasure while I am actually feeling sad.

Let me not complicate it further. Take an example. Whenever you feel extremely happy, don't you remember about something/someone which/who would have made you happier? To me, this is this little pain of not having something/someone by your side which actually makes your happiness complete.

I pity those who never felt a tinge of sadness in their moments of happiness. They have never really known happiness.

On forgetting

Of late, I had been forgetting things with alarming frequency. I drop my wristwatch somewhere and then I can’t remember where. I put my wallet in a corner and then I go totally blank. I keep looking for a T-shirt for two days only to find it on the terrace (apparently, I myself had left it there to dry). Each day I have to struggle really hard not to keep forgetting something or the other. And pretty often I fail miserably. And, of course, add to it my dilemma over not being able to remember names when it matters the most. I’m awful at remembering things, I accept.

This morning I reach office and at the gate I find that I am not carrying my access card. I go to the security for a dummy card but, for some strange reason, they can’t locate my information in the database and hence can’t allow me in. I call one of my colleagues to escort me in, go to the badging room, get my information updated, come out to get a dummy access card and then enter the office. ‘A perfect way to start a Monday morning,’ I say to myself as I enter the office premises.

Now, given a chance I would have liked to forget so many things. But, these, I never seem to forget. They keep resurfacing from my memory at unexpected turns and make me cringe at my foolishness.

Well, one more irony of life: things we want to remember will be forgotten, the things we want to forget will be remembered.

Walk in the mountains

"Once you have lived with the mountains, there is no escape."
- Ruskin Bond

I don't know if I have got that quote right. (I'm just relying on my memory here. And my memory, well, is not very reliable. So, an apology in advance, in case my memory has failed me.) But this quote was the first thing in my mind when I started writing this post. And I just couldn't find anythig more apt to begin with.

Away from the scorching heat of Delhi I spent the last weekend in Dhanaulti, a quaint little hill town in the Himalayas, about 25 kilometers uphill from Mussourie. The hills are quiet there, the slopes are lush green with pine trees, and the clouds keep wandering about this place on their whim. Needless to say, it was just the ideal setting for a walk. And walk I did, for all three days of my stay there. I walked leisurely through the drizzle, climbed up the narrow mountain trails and sat up there with the clouds. The wild flowers were in full bloom and the air carried with it the fragrance of the mountains. What more could I possibly want?

I'm back from the mountains now, but as I am writing this I can still see the wayward clouds, the smoke rising from distant hills, lone little huts in the slopes, and the bleating goats grazing around. I guess, one needs some time to get out of the mountains. But what if one doesn't really want to get out of it?

I just wish I could retire to the mountains some day.

PS: The Dhanaulti Rock Show, for which we decided to go to Dhanaulti in the first place, was a big let down though.