C'est La Vie....

I took up the pen. I wanted to write something on this lank white sheet. No questions, no answers, and no topics to chain me. Just free thought and pure imagination, no reason, just illusion, no falsifying materialism.

I searched my thoughts to find an instance but all I could find were vicious circles.

I rummaged through my emotions; I could only find chaos and disorder.
I asked my words to grant me speech but even they seemed mute.
I questioned the leaves outside my window, glistening with the radiance of the summer sun. They could tell me but eluded.
I asked my eyes to give me a story. In reply they wept a tear in my cheek, a tear of fading colors.
I asked the ink, but it was too dark,
I asked the air, but it was too fast.
I asked water to give me thirst,
But it had to satisfy a desert first.
So I went to the woods to get myself a break,
Ashes were all that I could take.
I hunted for the earth to dig up something new,
But in it lay at rest some beloved one I knew.
I asked the thorns to give me some pain,
I asked light to show me a lane.
I sought for fire for me to myself burn,
I spoke to the road in search of an elusive turn.
I went to God to ask for a line,
He refused, He said that he has no time.

Here I stood, that was me, without word, without utterance, with no address, no enunciation and no expression.

But hark! Who is this looking at me? “Leave me alone”, I said. He was not listening. How stubborn! I changed my view. But he did not move. He wanted to say something. I moved near, deep into his dry eyes. I saw fables floating around in vast darkness. I am telling you the truth as I saw it. Perhaps a spell was cast on me. As if I was a visitor to some cosmic dance. And moments, still moments floated around me. It was ephemeral, yet never-ending. I was standing at the vertex of space and there were pulses of time moving all around me. I outstretched my finger to catch one, that intangible form. I received a shock and a flash blinded my eyes.

I began to witness life as if being played out on a sheet of clear water with nothing beyond it – abstract, imperceptible, incorporeal yet scintillating!

At first I saw a girl, big eyes, not more than 8 years old. She was returning from school. She saw an ice-cream vendor and her friends relishing a candy. She looked at the ice-cream and kept looking. She had no money to ask for one. All that she could do was to savour it from a distance. She kept on looking while life passed around her.

I drifted to another moment….

I saw a body covered with a white cloth and lifeless air blowing over it. I saw a woman sitting next to him with tears in her eyes….still as a stone, with lifeless breath…but no words.

I could not understand what was going on. The sequel continued as I grazed for another feeling.

I saw a deserted platform with nobody around except a few workers. A train comes, waits and whistles. But just then I saw an old man sitting on a bench. I could read the wait in his eyes. H e has spent years on the same platform, on the same bench, day after day, at the same time waiting for his son who has not returned from the war. The train whistles again, moves, and departs filling his eyes with the smoke of stillness. He kept on sitting there with no emotions, no words, no soul.

It continued….

I was in a hospital. I could see some tension, people buzzing all around. I saw a man with folded hands in want of something. But just then I saw a nurse accosting him with something wrapped in white cloth. He was a father now! I saw the cheer in his eyes, the spirit of rapture dancing on his lips which were again silent.

Another drama followed.

This was a scene of war. There was smoke all around, roaring guns subduing the sounds of cries. A soldier was entering the enemy camp secretly. He was brave and it was his first war. He crept in slowly, as carefully as possible. But just then he heard a tap, a rustle of leaves. He turned around, only to find his forehead at gunpoint. Death was standing in front of him, sharp and dumb.

The play proceeded into a dry field with a farmer looking at the burning sky with barren eyes, with dread crops, with no strength to articulate a prayer.

Many more cyclones followed through my frail body…moments that were captured in a glass-pane. I saw them…that was all that I could do.

That emptiness resumed form and I found myself in that same stretch of life and death. There was one last window that appeared, more brilliant than the others. That was the last one I had to touch in that vast span of still time. I could see light waiting eagerly to touch me. Everything paused….the whole universe, time, space an all else….still.

The next moment I found myself on my chair strangely looking towards my blank paper. I felt as if it was laughing at me. I knew it now. This was my present. I recalled everything, that expanse of emptiness and form, that cosmic dance, that eternal swirl, that moment of indulgence, that ephemeral time, those stories and that stillness.

There was one thing common to all these stories that reflected equally in all those magical fables, in all those odysseys.

It was the silence of a moment, the fulfillment of emptiness, the completeness of voids, the speech of mutes, the sound of silence.

None of them spoke for a moment – the girl, the woman, the old man, the father, the soldier, the farmer…none uttered a word. Deprived of words, unknown to speech. Everything was still.

And I, a silly writer kept asking for words from everything? How foolish of me! That blank sheet told me all. What emptiness is. What is it to say nothing. The paper told me the essence of being silent, of being white, not spotted, of being unmarked, of being nothing.

I now realize how vital it is to write nothing, just leaving things blank. Bare, empty, unsaid, unadorned, inscrutable, emotionless, impassive, unresponsive, vacuous and lifeless.
So today you are reading something derived from pure silence, dead. Something which has nothing, yet everything.

It is in emptiness that the world takes form, its stillness all over and in God’s voice, you can hear His silence. Try to be empty someday. And you will enjoy the joy, the ecstasy, the mirth, and the fulfillment.

Did you ever sit alone on the sea shore? You could always hear it shout, you could hear waves breaking on its vast body. But did you ever hear the silence beneath?
Did you see the silence of a bird taking flight?
Did you see the butterfly flitting from flower to flower?
Did you hear the silence of mountains?
Did you hear the silence of a forest dimly lit with glowworms?
Did you hear a glass before it breaks?
Did you hear the notes when the night sets in and the morning wakes?
Did you hear the sigh when the raindrop breaks?
Or when you drop sand from your fist?
Did you hear the silence when you look into the wet eyes of your mother who just scolded you?
Or the waiting lips, when your beloved just proposed to you?
Did you hear the silence of the last breath?
Did you ever hear them?
Did you?

I know, I know it’s been super duper long since my last post. But I have been really really really busy. And for once I mean it for real. :D

This internship has driven me crazy!! I knowwww!! I too thought I was already at the maximum level that anyone could go on the crazy scale!! :D

So anyway, if you thought that with time my goof-ups at work would have become lesser or at least of lesser intensity, Yup, you are WRONG. For the uninitiated, try this >> OFF THE RECORD, STRICTLY.

Alright, so let me tell you a bit about my work. It’s this really edge-of-the-seat kinda work you know, where one has to stare at the workstation, do number-crunching, read the stupid Income Tax Act - all while sitting on the seat!! Oh you wondering about the edge part? We are supposed to take a hard copy of all that we do, so yes, we constantly have to be on the edge of our seats to take those damn print-outs which eventually land up in the bin as my current erstwhile employers are too much of perfectionists. They’ll tell us to waste some more paper as “Oh!! But this thing should be in times new roman 12.5 and not 12 size!!” Ughhhh!!! “Let’s waste as much paper as we can!!” seems to be their motto!! I mean it’s so heart-wrenching you know. Especially for someone who writes less in the exams just so that she can save some paper. :D

So as you can guess the only exercise regimen I now have is that of walking to the printer. Now, me being the restless person that I’m, could not take it after 10 days. I just had to go out and release my pent-up energy. But where?

The queen of stupidity has an epiphany and marches off to the nearest washroom. Once there, she begins to jump up and down like a maniac. Had Jeetendra been there to witness the scene, I’m sure he’d have had inferiority complex. And just as I was about to put a stop to the torture I was causing to the floor, a lady comes out of one of the loos and stares at me with an expression that clearly said “Note to self: Stay away from this girl. She is a potential threat to mankind.” I of course dashed to the closest loo available.

After lying low for a few days after this incident, Neha (another intern) and I were once chatting nonchalantly in the office. Here’s what happened:
Neha: So how’s work?
Me: Usual ya. They really meant it when they said it’s going to be very demanding.
Neha: I know. Hey, have you seen that cute Transfer Pricing guy today?
Isha: Haan…wahin tto baitha hai. (points in his direction discretely) Kya yaar, there are NO cute guys in this office. No incentive to come every day. I hate this place.
The topic was then changed as is usual when two girls are chatting and soon we moved from guys to shopping to movies to what not.
Suddenly one of our senior managers passes us by. We happily say “Hi!” to him and he moves on. We resume chatting in the middle of the corridor leaning on one of the desks for support. Once again suddenly, he turns back and stops in front of us. And says “Itna mat socho, jis se baat karni hai bindaas karo.” And walks away.

And we realized that the desk we had been using as a support was no one else’s but his!! And we had conveniently failed to notice and had chatted there for at least 10 minutes. But still the two of us were lost on the comment he had made. It did not really make a lot of sense with what we were talking about at that time (movies).

So anyway, realizing that it was about time we both head to our respective seats, off we went in different directions. And it was while working on something that it hit me. I immediately dialled Neha’s extension and told her that I’d figured out what he was referring to. He was of course referring to our conversation about the “cute” guy!! He thought that we wanted to talk to him and were just a li'l too shy!!! The two of us, embarrassed as we were, could not help laughing our wits out.

Told you, I AM the queen of goof-ups.

So you think goof-ups are funny right?? WRONG!! :P (Get used to it – most of what you think is just that – wrong) :P

Allow me to apprise you of a very very sad goof-up. In my office (like in most offices), all social networking sites are banned and no, proxy sites are of no help either. So in my free time (alright alright!! – most of my time spent at office) I used to blissfully log in to apna dear blogspot and read your beautiful blogs and reply to your comments on mine. But alas! After 3-4 days of my prolonged stays on the blogspot, I realized it had been banned too!!! Apparently the IT department keeps an eye on what all one is doing while pretending to be super busy with work on the computer. Hmmpphhhh!! Now you know why I hate technology.

And now comes the last one. Pakka pakka!! Aur nahi pakaungi!!
Some news channel had come to our office for a shoot prior to the announcement of the Budget and all. And these guys decided to get the firm’s partner’s views in the bay rather than in his own room. I was as expected working my ass off (read checking my yahoo mail), when suddenly the girl who sits next to me comes from the printer and says “Isha, can we sit and keep working?” Without looking up from my computer screen, I said ”Of course ya!!” (I had started to get a bit irritated with all the fuss being made over the interview) and then thinking that I had been a bit rude looked up to smile at her and BAM!!

I see a huge camera placed right behind me directed halfway at my computer screen!! I swear, the speed with which the window was minimized would put the fastest keyboard player to shame. (that’s Adnan Sami btw right?)

My college is re-opening from the 13th and my internship does not seem to end. These guys want me to work till the 15th for them. I’m trying all that I can so that they kick me out. Wish me luck.

P.S. And I’m really really sorry for not being able to read a lot of posts lately. Please forgive me. With college due to re-open shortly, I shall be visiting your blogs soon hopefully. J