Touched by light

Here’s to light. To hear it slowly shuffling across the room you are in, entering through the window like a stray bird with burning wings and giving everything it touches the gift of life. To feel it on your eyelashes, seeing the soul of the world with your eyes closed. To sit under a banyan tree and see it play hide and seek with shadow, its eternal friend. To being with light, as you look back at the years gone by and realize how it has always been about her. Or him, as you wait patiently by his side to open his eyes at the dawn of time. Yes, light can be a person too. 

And yes, it can be you, too. 

To be someone’s light. To see their eyes light up at your sight. Knowing that even after the shadow has consumed you, some part of your light will stay alive in them.

To be touched by light, to be alive, to be immortalized.

-Alok 16/04/24

To be at home

It is a feeling that doesn’t come easily.

I’ve changed many addresses throughout my life. Some, not how I would have liked to. Only a few have felt like home. And even in those few, this is a rare one.

I’m sitting, once again, at the dining table. Don’t know why I do most of my writing here instead of the dedicated (and expensive) study corner we got custom made! I have our main bookshelves in all their congested glory on one side, and the cabinet of curiosities i.e. dear wife’s crockery/knick knacks display on the other. Slightly further apart on the left and right are our son’s room and our bedroom respectively. And behind me is the living room. The one I’m looking at though is the guest cum study cum temple room where a pile of ‘sun dried’ clothes and books we got from the recent book fair and some winter blankets are lying on the bed in an exhibition of inter-species harmony that human beings should learn from. 

It is not a pretty sight.

When I was growing up and as recently as a few years ago when we were thinking of moving into a bigger place than our previous address, I had this notion of creating a house with Scandinavian sparseness and Indian warmth. Had even thought of a term for it, ScandIndian. It was to be this large enough house with clean white walls, wooden flooring, subtle colors, Indian accents and not a thing out of its place.

This is not that house. 

Not a single room here is good looking to speak of. There are crayon hieroglyphs on the wallpaper in the bedroom; the living room sofas are colonized by things that shouldn’t be on the sofas; the dining table is a visual depiction of the word chaos; the bookshelves store books and medicines; the child’s room is a museum of toys, the aangan is a gallery of dying plants, and the guest cum study cum temple room is well, the antithesis of my dreamy ScandIndian aesthetic.

And yet, this is the one that feels most like home.

This is the one where our newborn crossed the threshold from hospital to home; this is the one with all the fights and sulks and not-talking-to-you but still-caring-for-you happens; this is the one where just a few hours ago the three of us were dancing on a medley of Punjabi, Hindi pop, and Tamil songs; the one with all the yet to read books, yet to play games, and yet to dream, dreams; the one we all come back to wherever we have been.

This is home.

This is a feeling that has not come easily to me.

I’m home.

-Alok, 02/03/24

2022

It comes unannounced.

You are sitting a slight distance away from your wife and your son.

She’s talking about her day, some experience in the crowd, while your toddler is trying his best to squeeze out the juice from a 200ml pack and ruin his clothes and the floor...and suddenly, it washes over you.

It comes in the form of an artist you just discovered, in the last two minutes of a TV series you just finished watching, a song that touched something inside that zombie heart of yours.

It comes unannounced when you talk to an old friend who casually reminds you how far you have come…how far.

You wonder how all the billion moments you have lived have contributed to this very moment, that despite everything, yes, every damn thing that life threw at you, you are sitting here, on the sofa, listening to your wife talking about her day while your son is trying to squeeze the juice out of a 200ml pack and ruin his clothes.

You wonder, you smile a faint smile, and you say a silent thanks.

Gratitude.

Walking on water

It is said that Jesus walked on water. Devout Christians believe in it. Like an actual, historical incident that took place. It is also said that Rama’s monkey army created a bridge of floating rocks that helped him cross over to the island of Lanka and defeat the evil Ravana. Devout Hindus believe in it.

Believers, whether Christians or Hindus, would strongly disagree with me, and nowhere I’m trying to contest their beliefs, but for me, I believe that our ancestors were wise and creative enough to realise that complex metaphysical or meditative concepts are best understood as simple stories. That, to reach a layperson, you don’t need academic erudition, but simple, everyday parables. It just happened that as the centuries passed by, the stories took the form of histories.

But why am I thinking of Jesus and Rama and the whole notion of walking on the water today? It comes from this book I’m reading, ‘The Art of Happiness’ by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler.

While talking about happiness (the real, deep-seated stuff and not momentary pleasures) His Holiness mentions that we can train our minds for it. He says, “Within Buddhist practice there are various methods of trying to sustain a calm mind when some disturbing event happens. Through repeated practice of these methods we can get to the point where some disturbance may occur but the negative effects on our mind remain on the surface, like the waves that may ripple on the surface of an ocean but don’t have much effect deep down.”

And humbly he continues, “And, although my own experience may be very little, I have found this to be true in my own small practice. So, if I receive some tragic news, at that moment I may experience some disturbance within my mind, but it goes very quickly. Or, I may become irritated and develop some anger, but again, it dissipates very quickly. There is no effect on the deeper mind. No hatred. This was achieved through gradual practice; it didn’t happen overnight.”

Krishna says more or less the same thing in Shri Bhagavad Geeta. He calls it ‘Samta.’ That the true path to liberation lies in being ‘Sam’ (pronounced as sum), that whatever life gives you, happiness or sadness, riches or troubles, don’t let it affect your inner, deeper self. (Adding as a Mandalorian fan, “This is the way.”)

Coming back to the parables of walking on water or the bridge of rocks floating above the sea, aren’t Jesus and Rama telling me the same thing?

That, I can create miracles if I train to stop my mind from getting affected by everything that comes my way. That, to go out and conquer the world outside, first I must learn to float above the commotion inside. That, there is a deeper, truer, happier, more peaceful me, and that it is possible to achieve this state of being.

Easier said than done? You bet!

But at least I can try…try walking on water.

Only when you hear in your eyes you will know

For a person in love with words since a very young age, for someone who makes a living by writing, it seems surreal to accept that words need not convey the exact or complete meaning of what one wants to say. But then, who better to know the fallibility of words than a writer himself. Even if he is a writer in the global advertising industry :)

Apart from a few sporadic poems hidden in my phone’s notes, I have not written much for the past few years. That poet-blogger, non-advertising side of my writing life got buried under deadlines, fatigue, stress, responsibilities, and God knows what all. That said, today I’m not in a mood to dwell in the past. This blog is an attempt to correct that wrong.

May I succeed in this endeavour.

And may you hear what I want to say.

The title of this post is from a book I’ve just started reading. ‘The Language of Zen’ by Richard Burnett Carter.