Just for a moment...

I just wish for one more day... Just one more moment...

To say the things that I couldn't because I still need to learn to forget how to love you. I still need to forget how your shoulders would cradle my head, how I could feel the beating of your heart against my chest. I need to remember to forget your smile, the sweet scent of your hair, the funny expressions in your eyes...

I need to forget that first kiss, in the moonlit street, those warm arms wrapped around me. I need to know that I don't need to fight anymore, I don't need to pretend or hide anymore, because you are there. I need to fall asleep once more, knowing that there you are beside me, breathing love. I need to forget how I let go, unwillingly, thrashing every bit of my heart.

I just wish for one more day. One more moment, to undo everything, to say goodbye to you again and to turn back time from then on... Undoing the times we've fought, the times I've made you cry, reliving our blessed and lovingly intimate moments... To know what it was like to wake up in your arms... To go back to the moment I first met you, to fall in love with you all over again...

Just one more moment... A moment called lifetime...

25 things I've learned from Relationships...

1. There is no sense in mourning for something all your life. Just think of it this way, whatever you loved and ended up losing, was lost before you had the chance to see it become something else that you wouldn't love anymore. Move on. Respect it and let it remain a memory, not a shadow!
2. The world is not about just 'you'. There are a lot of other things in it. Other people's feelings included.  But it's also true that if you don't take care of yourself, no one else will! You need a balance. 
3. Most girls only need to be listened to. Your opinion is rarely ever required. If you opine, you're mostly in trouble. Why? Try this. Fill the blank with yes or no.  ____ I am a fool. 
4. There is no love at first sight. No, not up for debate. Love is about understanding and acceptance, neither of which exist at first sight. 
5. A rebound is always a rebound. Sooner or later either of you will realize that you two hooked up to replace your past breakups. What's following the realization is being total strangers. 
6. If a girl tells you that she doesn't believe in love or she hates love, she's just had a big breakup. If a guy says so, the odds are that he's interested in you but needs you to push. Look into their eyes! 
7. If persistence is working, she'll give you the signs early on and trust me, you will know. If not, you have been quarantined & friend zoned. Do not waste your time. Good Afternoon!
8. Nobody cares much about you unless they really have some feelings for you or you care for them or both!
9. Sympathy and pity might help in winning a girl over. But then, you aren't a real man!
10. Never judge a woman by what she wears. No, just don't. She is beautiful, no matter how ugly she looks. But that's no hard & fast rule!
11. Do not take people for granted. They have feelings too! 
12. If she truly appreciates & cherishes something simple for a gift, marry her!
13. Guys, never tell a girl she's being a bitch. When she cools down she'll come to you herself and say, "Honey, I've been such a bitch to you. I'm sorry". Savor the moment. 
14. Sometimes it happens that people share a large chunk of their sorrows with you, but later on, this makes you a part of the past that they are trying to forget. They slowly tend to push you away since you know too much about them and that makes them uncomfortable in some way. Move on, give them the space they deserve. They will always remember you. 
15. If someone you haven't met or don't usually cross paths with, likes confiding in you, it's not always because of affection or trust. Some people feel comfortable sharing things with a stranger, because they know you can in no way affect their lives or maybe gain your acceptance since you don't know the whole story.  
16. Love is like an investment. There's always expectations connected with it. It's normal since everyone has needs and nobody is Jesus. 
17. There is always a need for space, no matter how much you love each other. 
18. If he / she cannot fight for you, they don't deserve you. 
19. If someone marks you as an option, nothing you do can change that. Commitment is when someone accepts you for who you are, not because you are better than contestant 2. 
20. If someone says they miss you even when you're near them, it just means that everything is not the way it used to be. Something's wrong.
21. Everybody deserves a second chance. But only if they truly repent. And there's no sure way of knowing if they do! :) "Something's change while something's never do." ~ Morpheus 
22. Whenever you need someone badly in your life, stop to think whether it is because they had a place that you could give no one else, or because they simply filled a void in your life. In the latter case, work on yourself. In the former, give it time.  
23. Remember that brooding over someone who you broke up with, causes you to subconsciously place them at a higher position in your heart than what they once occupied. You will tend to see only the good in them and blame yourself for what went wrong, lowering your self esteem and slowing down your healing process. In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger in terminator 3, "Don't do that!"
24. Never judge or make conclusions about people. Only make inferences. Inferences can be changed, conclusions cannot. It's human tendency. 
25. The truth in loving someone lies in having to let go... There is no love in holding people back from what they want. What's yours will always come back to you. 

Last of all, I read the following quote somewhere the other day, not sure who it's written by, but it's perfect... 

"Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn't about what others can give you because you’re empty. It is about what you can give others because you’re already full." ~Anonymous

Pursuit of Happ'y'ness

There is life between these shimmers they say, the glowing embers of happiness and the brimming sense of gloom. I've been there, spent a long time savoring the little victories, sobbing the horrific losses, quenching my thirst in the unfathomable sea of love. Wait? What am I saying?

If that didn't make sense, let me get down to do some more light hearted jabbering! Once, my friend and I sat watching 'Kung Fu Panda' on the night before an exam. It gave me some amazing points to reflect at life. Like life being a present (gift) and there are no accidents, everything is how it is meant to be and blah blah! :P I could tell you, I have never been that happy in days then on. Not coz the exam went disastrous but well, now even years later, working in a good company doesn't give me that happiness I had in college years. I have a lot more things than I had back then. Yes, things produce an environment conducive of happiness, there's no denying that. And I wouldn't be half as happy now if I didn't have all the new stuff. I hope this is making sense! :D I simply can't live without my phone, ipod or gamer pc.There's a lot more in life now, like five stars, luxurious airports, malls to buy stuff from (previously window shopping), new clothes for every occasion and beautiful gadgets (need them or not).

Though I fancy and absolutely love the things I just mentioned, and God forbid that I would have to leave them someday (save for death, which we all do), there is always a contrast from what used to be and what's now. Like food at the restaurant near college. It was never all that great, for I have tasted better. But the difference was only the impression it made back then. Then waiting for the train at the station with a song blaring from the nearby tea stall. People flooding the station like bees in a swamp. It carried us home every weekend and nothing brings back that feeling anymore. Staying in the hostel with friends, simply made anything a reason to celebrate. Waking up in the room next morning for class and finding everyone else still sleeping around you was so consoling. Fighting for the window to look at the hot junior walking into the building, pardon me, I still ogle discretely if I get a chance, but somehow, I feel the fun was about the fighting and not really the girl. And somehow, I have lost my liking for a lot of things. I can no longer enjoy finger dipped tea. Even though at one point, it had become so much of a routine that I used to console myself that "the chai waala would have washed his hands. He only makes chai doesn't he?" I do not wish to think what else he does with his hands :P

Also, along the years were some beautiful things. The first time taking your crush on your bike, the first kiss by the empty courtyard in the rain, suddenly start attending classes because you get to see her and finally the heartthrob when she inevitably walked off with someone else someday (except for the nerds, everyone else I know had a story like this). What's changed now? I still have my friends. I still roam about ogling, I still catch up with them at KFC instead of Shukoor's shop near college, I still run about and dance like crazy when it rains... Just that, It was all 'enough' at that point. Our expectations were less, our life was just more... Now it's simply gone the other way round. And here, I am, asking myself, "what's new?"

Like most people I know, I'm pushing a 14 hour routine. I watch them rush, complain, crib, cry, try and make more money, buy more gadgets, decorate homes with the comfy furniture. But simply, life has gone timeless, breathless and simply, less. I'm not going to tell you to go watch the sunrise while you can snore away to glory on a weekend. But, I still remember how good it was to ride with my friend on the bike to his stunt practice ground early in the morning at 5. The foggy picture we took that day is still a memento in my fb account.

Flashback aside, with all the complexity of today's life, there is simply more at every corner that gives you happiness, if you look hard enough.  And mostly, all of them come for 'free'. Yep, the word free usually brings a smile on our face, but that's not what I'm talking about. I drive to work every day even though it's in a walk-able distance (yep, lazy). and every single day, the place I park my car has a truck guy pulled up beside it unloading groceries to the nearest shop. I just can't take my car out! There have been times that we have argued and I'm sure we both mutter under our breaths about each other. Just this one weekend, I was just going to get some groceries, but he thought I wanted to take the car. I was in a good mood and smiled at him and waved indicating that I wasn't going to. It kinda made me happier for a while that day and simply every morning afterwards we smile & wave at each other and he moves his truck away so I can take my car. I don't know him, but there's some happiness watching someone smile because of you.

Back a few days, I was out on a helping spree. I gave a poor guy a hand with the tire iron trying to loosen his flat tire. (No, I didn't blast open his skull with the tire iron :) - I'm clarifying coz I just had a feeling you might think that). I managed to help him  and the guy shook hands with me and said "strong man". Well, it wasn't about the compliment. :) But you know, I have felt happy this way, innumerable times, doing little something's like stopping the car to let an old uncle cross the road, giving another vehicle a side amidst the traffic so that he can get into the lane, helping someone jump start his car early morning, saying "It's gonna be alright" to a random stranger who is seated by the park crying to herself (yes I tried this and she only smiled - do not use this as an opportunity to flirt!), waving to a little kid who sat bored in the backseat of a car, and even giving half of my shawarma to a hungry looking cat... :) Hehe

A lot of the people (& the cat) I mentioned are those who did not know me and who I probably will never get to know either. But it felt good to have them smile over something I did. It felt good to have them remember something about me for a split second and probably in later days when someone else treated them like I did.

Well I'm not saying this will give you or me ultimate happiness. But maybe, what you did today for someone might just come back as a big favor to you someday. Just think of it this way, We do a lot to put our today's and tomorrow's in luxury. We pay a lot to bribe hearts to love us.We do a million things that don't matter to impress and get accepted. But maybe, it's the little things that matter in the brevity of life. Maybe it's just worthier to leave something to remember you by, even if it is as effervescent as a bubble. 

After all, in the end, life is nothing but just a memory. Happy happiness to you! :) 

Untarnished - From the lady's heart...

And she remembers...

"I don't want to be a drama queen, you really know I'm not into that stuff. But things you did always motivated me, always made me smile when I was hurt. Remember the first time you just sat beside me and I was crying in class? You just put your arms around my shoulder. You didn't ask me what I was sad about, you knew that would make me cry more. You just sat there while I sobbed. It was a cold winter day and I was shivering. You told me it was going to be OK. Told me that you believed in me. And you left me your jacket and told me to sit alone for a while. I still have that jacket. I guess you forgot and I never wanted to give it back.

You took those seminars in class, I wasn't listening. I was looking at you. Most of the days, you were absent from class and I didn't always get to see you. You were always lazy, so I submitted some of your assignments, I signed your attendance. You never knew. You were just busy making everyone smile and happy. The day your best friend back stabbed you, I was there, watching those tears in your eyes while you wouldn't let them fall. When you fell off your bike one day and hurt yourself, I sat beside you in the hospital till you woke up, I hid myself away among the other friends and my voice was drowned behind their hearty hugs. When you wouldn't close that window next to your bench when it started to rain, because you loved the feeling of the cold summer rain against your face, I sat at the other corner of the lecture hall, feeling the rain in your heart. When you would walk along those corridors, I would know from the scent of the perfume you would wear, though I never really liked that perfume.

When everyone hung on to the arms of their lovers when going home on weekends, I watched you kick a little Pepsi can in the rain, all the way from class till your bike. Among all those colorful umbrella's and blend of uniforms, you couldn't spot me when you looked back. I waved at you when I was leaving in the bus, you ran behind the bus like I always hoped you would do for me, but then I blushed when it was to simply hand over a book to a friend. I would listen to the rhythm of the back bench guys beating on the benches in between class hours. I knew you were always the one who didn't have a tune to beat to and it would be irritatingly distinct. I remember the songs they sung and the one's you loved humming. I hung out with you, sat beside you on that college tour we had. When you slept your head found it's niche on my shoulder. I did cry when everyone made fun of us and I still have the photo they took of us. I remember how someone jokingly dared you to propose to me on stage on our college foundation day. I still remember the thorn on the stem of the rose you held in your mouth had cut your tongue. It was a painful proposal for you. I tried not to laugh, I tried not to cry, I tried not to blush. But you were boring anyway.

I watched you sing for our farewell but never told you how wonderful it was. I still remember the last day when everyone were signing on each other's shirts. I had this new dress and wouldn't let anyone sign on it. But I let you sign when you asked with a cute frown on your brow and you drew a big heart and wrote Captain Jack Sparrow's favorite dialog to Elizabeth Swan: "It would never have worked between us, darling" I knew you were a movie buff, but somehow the words' seemed right. I have loved you, over the years. I have enjoyed how you wouldn't ever eye me or touch me wrong. I loved the respect you gave me. I loved the hug you gave me before we all parted. It still lingers around me... I scribbled on your shirt that I hated you and wished you would know what I meant. I wanted to kick you when you signed lady Laura's dress with "Will you marry me?" but I knew you'd never liked her all that much except that she looked too good. Maybe I won't find that 'you' in years to come. I may not have been that 'her' that you have always wanted. I just wanted you to know that you were my everything and you will always be...

"But it would never have worked between us darling...." "

Letting Go...

"We create our own demons..." 
"Who said that? What does that even mean? Doesn't matter..."  ~ Iron Man

Often, we love to blame someone for our own mistakes. "I didn't do this" because of someone. The only choice we have, to put it a little differently, is to blame our past self's for it. "I didn't do this because of who I was." But often, even that doesn't change anything. You say that it was your past, but it's still a place from where you haven't walked off yet. And believe me, you just can't accept that you haven't.

Soon, the sense of Deja Vu makes you mumble, "Why am I here again?" when you walk past your coagulated and convoluted yesterday. It works the same way, be it pain or hollowed complacence that you have buried in those pages. 

You did this to yourself. When life gave you a million reasons to walk on, but you just held on for years for a miracle to happen.  You refused to believe when time showed you that it could change anything. That nothing ever lasted forever. That no matter how long you spend trying to climb out of the mess that you were in, you could still fall back in an instant. Something that you believed to have conquered. And someone just called in, to tell you that what you believed true for a lifetime was just a big lie. 

A million turns to the path that you are on, a number they call your 'age' frantically ticking toward the other side of life, and memories tucked away in your pockets that you have no new space for new;  letting go has never been easy. There was rain, always glistening and gnawing away at the deeply seated scars. Scars do fade and wounds do heal, if you let it. 

Simply, the only shackles that hold you back are the ones in your mind.

Simply, "We create our own demons..."

Faint Memories

At an hour plaintive and bare;
I lay before an open window;
Blessed a breeze blew along;
And yet, the night fell into silence.

The melancholy soul of an old friend came unto me;
And spoke upon voice so shrill;
With wordless words I could not perceive;
And sadness that I could not relieve.

Years and years of memories;
Moments of laughter and tears;
Like fading ripples and smithereens,
Broken hearts, love and fears.

And still, a fainter shadow;
She looked upon my friendless soul;
Like a sailor of the lost without a heading,
Cold, broken and dreading...

A drizzle lead to the accent of dawn;
Shivering her to the brightening of the lawn;
All was left, to the shadow I could see;
I whispered the words, "Remember Me."

Rise & Fall

The clouds parted. I was back where I started.

The journey was enchanting as ever. A backpack added extra effort for my knees. The roads seemed stretched out to eternity, while life threatened me of brevity. Steam seemed to rise from the cracks in the roads, the earth a thirsty stretch of scarred asphalt.

I had places to go, people to meet, things to do. People seemed to pass by me, with likely smiles of courtesy. Sometimes a word or two we exchanged in this map-less paradise. Some stayed for a while, with vivid promises. Bagged I, some of these sweet moments, in life's camera. The reminisces made me smile, like shimmers in a pond, the image shifting as I changed with it.

The heat of the day followed the cold of the night. Glimmers of memories lightened the path, like the occasional lightning, bright and evanescent. The stars gleamed from up above, effervescent as ever. They moved, they glittered, they vanished.  Moving on was an inevitable effect, brevity an anticipated cause....

I made friends, shook hands with my fellow comrades in this race. We partied, rejoiced, danced, loved and yet fate engraved a destiny for each of us, the many pairs of feet invariably separated to one. The gushing wind was like a parting torment, the clouds roared along in a monotonous cacophony, home was a memory nowhere to be seen. 'It'll pass' they all said as they parted.

Bereaved, holding back those moments where we loved, memories of the nectar at the lips of the loved one's we kissed, love left in the heart from those we embraced, fighting on in the vicious circle of life, the days unfolded. The rain washed away the torment, calming & consoling like time's most merciful tricks. The burning in the soul dampened and diminished like under a spell, in a false sense of comfort, in deceit of life's paradise.

Weeks, months and years later, they were all there, at a travelers' tree, waving in unison.  It held the warmth of finding something you were searching for at one point; yet something that you have learned to live without.

The clouds parted. I was back where we started. 

Our enchanting roles reprised in this imminent rise and fall...