One Sentence. One Want.

Thank you everyone for taking a minute out of your preoccupied days and answering in one sentence, what you want. It means a lot to me. 

This was a small project I did for myself. And it was indeed a successful one. 

I had the Gen Y be a part of it for two reasons. 

Firstly, because we are constantly criticised for being extremely materialistic in all aspects of our life. How we're always busy on our Smartphones and pay no heed to the small yet important things in life. How money is the only thing we desire and would do anything to get it.  (However, this is a very controversial statement. All of you who answered my question are, mostly, still in school or (junior) college. Therefore, it is quite obvious that money is not our first concern and we possess the freedom to contemplate other dimensions of life. Taking this into consideration would completely kill the purpose of my project so I'd like to ignore it.)

Secondly, I just wanted to know what people's spontaneous responses would be. 

What I noticed is that most of you did not give materialistic responses. Which, frankly, surprised me because I used to think I'm the only one who doesn't know what she wants when it comes to tangible valuables. In fact, the answers sound rather mature once you read them. 

Is our generation maturing faster? Yes, it is. 

Also, I hardly got any ambitious answers. 

I want to be a journalist but I, myself, would never answer this question with 'I want' to be a journalist. Which is funny because when we start going to school, we are made to write 'FIVE SENTENCES ON MYSELF' at some point. And, if I'm not wrong, "I want to be a Fashion Designer, Engineer, Doctor etc." is always one of the sentences. 

But then, why not now? 

I think it's because overtime we have lost the significance for it. Making a career out of our lives is not something we 'want' any more, rather it's something we know we 'have' to. 

Attend school since the age of 3, get marks, get into a good college, get a job, be rich. We have accepted this to be a system and maybe that's why we don't think of it as something far-off  that we desire.
Nevertheless, this is open to a lot of arguments beyond my thoughts.

A lot of you asked me what I wanted.

I couldn't answer because a new want kept coming to my mind every time I read someone else's answer.

By the end of it, I wanted a lot of things. But I'm going to stick to the first thing that came to my mind. I have incorporated it below because I want to retain absolute anonymity. 

Thank you again for being a part of this. It means a lot to me. If anyone is uncomfortable with their answer then let me know. I'll remove it. Also, don't judge any of the answers. :)
Enjoy reading.

Perfection in all things.

I want to be happy.

I want eternal love.

At least once in my life I want to travel to some place far off all alone.

Happiness without fear.

I really want to be an independent woman in the future.

I really don't know.

I just want to be happy all my life. If I'm happy I wouldn't want anything.

I want to find hope.

No jealousy, only love. 

I want loyalty and trust from everyone I know.

I want the whole world.

I really want to be, what I potentially can be.

I want a political backing and this one girl.

I want to give it all up. 

Knowledge and Peace of Mind.

The engaging cacophony of vibrant enterprise, the sweat and blood of building value, the honour of public service and the the unbridled love of a good woman. 

Freedom. Independence.

I want to learn how to hold on to people.

A Blu-Ray Disc player.

I want fame.

Freedom.

I want to be independent from my worries and feel free from social obligations.

Tattoo.

I really want my Hogwarts acceptance letter because Muggle life is too mediocre; but I would be satiated with one from Oxford too.

Peace of Mind.

A day when I wake up and I feel like not running away, not caring about tomorrow and finally being content.

I want to make my parents proud and find true love. 

Peace of mind, freedom of thoughts, being understood while being me.

Somebody I can open up to.

I really want my leg to be fine so that I can play football again.

I really want love.

A penthouse apartment.

I want abs.

The ability to let go off things that haunt me.

I was reading Harry Potter, so yeah I want a wand.

To travel from the peak of Mt. Everest to the bottom of the Pacific.

I want to know Myself.

I really want to get out of my art block.

I want to know what I want to do in life.

Midnight thoughts

I wanted to pull out pieces of me and burn alive.

I wanted to pierce this silence so that it would grow quieter.

I wanted to laugh at this absurdity till my hopes were famished. 

I wanted to scar someone till they were delicate enough to understand the world.

I wanted to scream for acceptance as an act of rebellion.

I wanted the music to make me fall asleep for more than just a night.

I wanted to tell people I pushed them because I didn't know how to hold on.

I wanted to walk into oceans to fill myself up.

I wanted to desire things.

I wanted to not be so complacent.

I wanted a sentence that could shred my insides repeatedly.

I wanted the swirling galaxies inside me to prove themselves.

I wanted the magnitude of fear to exceed its limit. Then explode.

I wanted the selfish to remain selfish.

I wanted undercover happiness and relentless euphoria.

I wanted clarity of distance.

I wanted a hopeless conversation.

I wanted assurance that we were all going to die.

I wanted green grass at 7 a.m on a sneaky Sunday morning.

I wanted a sun kissed act of poetry.

I wanted my black desires to sleep soundlessly.

I wanted my inadequacy to stop haunting even though I called out to it every night. 

Obscure

Those pen marks

That keep you up

Through nights are just a cure

For when you thought 

They knocked and opened

And barged in through your door. 

You feel lofty and lost

And so obscure,

That it fills you up with beauty

You end up carving on your own.

You never ask

You never tell

You're a byline 

Underneath, unread.

Maybe that's why

When they were scared

They called for help

Didn't hear you yelp

No, no, no.

Elope

Didn’t you ever

Hear the Saints of Night

The way they lingered and whispered

And took away all our fright.

That one brusque evening

You looked into eyes

Stars spelled wisdom

And burned away sins

All the skies.

Akin to my demons

My fears spelled the plight

Of virtue and forgiveness

How did you make it all right?

Drunk in a café

Under the beach house

At night.

You smiled like it could

Last and that is why I sighed

With hope that this moment

Could freeze but you turn

To tell me: it’s over,

The hard part has begun.

We danced on shattered glass

As our feet bled to bone

But happy, oh, I was

I didn’t have to be alone.

The moonlight shone brightly

And razed all my homes

Of free falls and train wrecks

The silence choked me more.

It stung, the common sight

Of being apart and far off

The shore.

I swore I could plunge in

Deep and let go.

It purged me of essentials

To let my memories

Out the door.

But conviction that held me

Urged me to get off

The floor.

The friend that I needed

Was killed in a war

Of preposterous vulnerability

That I couldn’t evade

Even now.

I searched and I failed

Till one night I saw

I didn’t need my friend

Or an image for someone

To draw.

I slipped into a rabbit hole

That I knew held the key

To a place if I entered

I would not flee.

There you stood with shoulders

So broad and so sure

If I was in a crisis

You’d do more than just cure.

Now we’re back to the Café

The beach house

At night.

It’s stormy and ravenous

Of destruction tonight.

You’re talking and slowly

Your breath means more

Than the humor that escapes

Your perpetuating aura-

Let’s elope.

The Lost Woods

Sometimes when I stop
And stare, at the quick and easy.
I question rather repeatedly,
The direction of the wind so breezy.
An entrapment of original ideas,
Which makes no one want to flee.
But then I think that maybe,
The woods are lost, not me.

The Front Row Seat

He raised his hand and jerked it upwards, trying to pull back the inconvenient yet somehow majestic sleeve of his dark grey blazer. The intercom rang and he sighed as he heard the ever-so-bland voice of his assistant reciting to him some appointment she thought he had forgotten.

But he hadn’t.

He simply chose not to remember it.

Nevertheless, he uttered “Send him in ten.”

“Certainly, sir.” came the response.

 

He needed these ten minutes. Not to prepare himself or clear the mess from his already compartmentalized desk. It was a gesture. A rather passive one meant to make the person sitting on the opposite chair subside with irrational inferiority.  

But in reality, he felt bored. He was like a teenager in the body of a 35 year old. What he really wanted to do was walk out that door and greet the gentleman waiting outside. After all, time was precious to all and wasting it, in his opinion, was a sort of cosmic crime in the moral books of the universe.

 

The Murano Glass lamp on the table camouflaged just perfectly with the ethereal air of the room. The Swarovski pen lying next to his laptop displayed wealth and stature gorgeously. Handmade Egyptian artifacts on the wall behind him never failed to have an arresting effect on anyone who entered that door for the first time.

Overall, his office appeared magnificently gregarious. Although to him it felt like an entrapment.

His feelings were jostled into a tunnel of his mind with the buzzer painfully piercing through his ear.

“Sir?”

“Send him.”

 

For the next two hours he was immersed in the one-to-one symposium with his colleague. Cups of coffee were refilled, the AC temperature adjusted and papers signed. Constant activity left no room for any Awkward. There was neither a casual breath nor a worried silence. There were talks in jargon and numbers not meant for the layman to understand.

Finally, the enfranchising words were let out, “It was a pleasure doing business with you Mr. Manhotra.” Accompanied by a quick nod, they were both good to go.

 

He felt consumed. One would presume from his ecstatic smile that he was now a comfortable part of that life style. But nobody knew that it was a result of those forceful braces back in eighth grade which gave way to an inkling far from the truth.

 

There was still time before he would be expected to reach home. Even though he felt like rushing out, he had to fight himself. It was, supposedly, ‘a thing’ to come home late from work when you were the Vice President of a large firm.

And then they said money would make life easy.

 

 

But the money never pinched him. He had seen enough of the callosity that prevailed in the lives of those that lived on the tattered streets of Mumbai. He had come to realize that Money was a dictator. A cruel one at that. And though silent and seemingly powerless, it would inevitably withdraw certain privileges from your life. He was more than aware of the criticism that would stab him in the back like friend; he was ready to serve as the martyr in the war field of this corporate world if it meant giving his family a quality life.

 

One of his many untold struggles involved this 44^th floor office. The grand glass window that gave him a view from the top. The fear of falling was so secure that he had forgotten what it felt like to look up.

It was like being the topper of your class in school; full of innocent joy and pride. Until one fine morning you woke up and found the redundant happiness smothered by vacillating colours of insecurity. He knew there was no going back. At least for him.

But he hoped. He wished this was not what true success felt like. He dreamt dreams that manifested escapades involving his disappearance into someplace else. His awakening would bring to him a reminiscent shame. This moment was once upon a time his dream, too.

 

 

He loosened his tie a little. His thoughts sometimes possessed the ability to physically smolder him.

Breaking away, he glanced at his Rolex.

It was time to go home. A schoolboy-like excitement welled up inside him even before he could begin to hide the injuries from his reopened wounds.

 

They don’t tell you that success, just like funerals, is all about others and nothing about you. They don’t, he thought.

 

 

Old Leg

My veranda smelled like old dust and the rusted chairs added to the ambience of lethargy. I had wrinkled through, and out of my glory days. This weak tea and sugar-free biscuits comprised my morning and evenings. The sun set; birds flew back home. 

My predicament lay static.

Every minute detail appeared emphatic.

Like young-age stilettos, nostalgia clicked, at every corner of my memories. A blasted entourage of vanishing mirth and laughter. They said, body aches were the beginning of a new journey. Or sadly so, an end. This old leg was proving to be a bit of a trouble lately. Like a horrible dream, I’d shake the pain off for just a bit.

How fruitful is the physical pain,

That can take over the memory lane.

An empty cup; cue for the execution of the next activity.

Not wanting to hurry, I sat there an extra few minutes just so I could sigh in my solitude and feel like I had achieved it all in life.

But no one could achieve it ‘all’. No achievement ever topped the list. My own seemed so shallow and worthless in front of this Behemoth made up of loneliness and fears alone.

City lights, and a fake smile;

Sacrificing, to be enough and agile.

A premonition made its way through like a serpent towards its first bite. I had sat there for much more than time permitted. I gently placed my right hand on my knee, took a little support of the arm rest and there I was, on my feet. Ready to gawk around at whatever my eyes would find. Mundane takes time to get used to. It certainly does.

The doorbell rang. A few shrunken jolts of a childlike excitement built up in my body as I moved out of my veranda and into the seclusion of my room. Upon reaching the door I figured it must be the neighbour. Asking for sugar, chilli or something of the sorts they use in newly married houses.

All I had to give,

Was experience in a wrap.

But everyone’s more concerned,

With looking for the Map.

To my surprise, my neighbour’s one year old daughter stood at the door. Her wide eyes looked up at my crooked nose like I’d done the work of a Genie for her. They sparkled in a distinct manner, much more rident than mine would have ever looked. That toothless smile spilled sugar in my mouth and that’s when I caught myself smiling. How could I not? There

she was, an oblivious little child gazing at me with a gigantic, inexplicable awe. Like I had completed the world’s most impossible task by opening the door.

Achievements. The real ones.

It would be hard to explain this feeling. It was a scintillating vibe of satisfaction and my chest swelled up with a tender joy. All because of that one look in her eyes.

“Aunty, could I have today’s newspaper? He has just came home and I cannot recall where I kept it.”

Sigh. Their sugar and chilli.

Death and Found

As I am brushed aside due to ‘more important’ work, I realise the fatality of my existence. My survival has killed many and yet my survival is what keeps them alive.

I’d rather not play the game of ‘Who Am I?’ You can use several distinct words to describe me but my subjectivity is so versatile that not even the Oxford Dictionary, so profoundly hailed, can explain me to you. Call me Passion, Creativity, Hunger, Art, Talent or even a Waste of Time. I am pretty much all of them and not once have I considered myself to be punitive. Why should I, for I have fed more hearts than those charitable dispositions and quenched more thirsts than you can imagine.

And even so, Gratitude never found me and here I am waiting for a call that often comes late, but never too late.

Sitting here, ignored and perpetually passive, I have come to observe a lot about myself in other people, but mostly, about other people only. Like for instance, consider Mrs. Verma here, who basically tossed me into an uninhabited corner of her mind where the darkness will probably chew me down to bits that she will never again be able to discover. But I don’t blame her. That poor lady is trapped. She’s trapped in a water body where she resembles the fish as well as the bait. But how can that be possible? Well, Man has been known to do the impossible for far too long, hasn’t he?

If my memory still serves me right, I remember Mrs. Verma used to be an extraordinary artist in her days. Too cliché? I guess so, but clichés are called so for a reason.

Having completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree successfully, she lived the victorious life of an independent working woman in the 80s, until she got married. And maybe Fate would have it so, because her mother-in-law wanted things to be ‘like they were supposed to be’. Mrs. Verma was doomed to be a Housewife.

Here’s when I come in. Mrs. Verma’s abundant love for beads and diyas and paints could never really get her anywhere in life, according to her mother. Under the influence of such whims, Mrs. Verma was condemned to a life of hell where she would forever function behind the dreams of her children and husband. A mother’s words have such scintillating effect; I cannot even begin to explain. Mrs. Verma slowly and steadily let go off her desires to stay up all night and create masterpieces out of scraps she’d discover lying around. Unlike the ordinary assumption, she was not forced to do so. But she was made to believe that it was necessary to do so. And that, my friends, is what I have always found to be even more dangerous. The difference between the two is the same fine line that separates a misanthrope and a hermit. In both cases, the alternatives are misunderstood to mean exactly the same.

Getting back to my tale, as Mrs. Verma’s life progressed, her Youth met with the fury of Avarice, the Greed accompanied by Need for money. And gradually, I became a manifestation of her childhood.

I’ll admit I felt a little left out. But I’ll also admit that this wasn’t the first time.

I would say I felt bad for her and honesty would prevail. But I would rather empathise because of the Pity I feel. It saddened me not, to see that I would never again collide with Mrs. Verma, but rather she would never collide with me.

This was all said and done; her fate was sealed till the time of her grandiloquent marriage and her expected first child. And the second.

Both now fully grown, Mrs. Verma found herself in a vacuum filled with the laughter of her kids and the smiles of her raconteur husband. But what was she doing apart from feeding others’ dreams and pacifying herself? Absolutely nothing.

I had died within her. An absence she took quite a while to realise.

It was the calm before the storm. So natural. So strong.

The storm was vigorous and her quest stung hard. She was faced with several of her Inconsistencies that left indelible memories hanging from the loose ends of her thoughts.

Let me tell you that I have been proud many a times in life, and maybe that’s why I wasn’t exceptionally joyed when her cold fingers found me somewhere in the shadows of Timidity.  But I could breathe and she could breathe and that’s always been enough for me. I would never satisfy her because if I did then I wasn’t really enough. But that was my one strength, that no one could ever possess enough of me.

She found me.

The challenge was to not let me die a second death.

And that’s something I’ve always envied in humans. At least they die only once. Because every time I die, a huge chunk of me goes unfound. So what’s all this fuss about wanting to be immortal?

Mrs. Verma is still sitting here, and she snubs me every now and then for some other ‘more important’ work. Sometimes she returns, most of the times she doesn’t. Sometimes I imagine the Grim Reaper beckoning me once again and I will admit, it makes my environment a little lugubrious.

I know that I may never be ‘more important’ or even ‘important’, for that matter. But I am something else. I am Essential.

And that might just be another description of me that Humans are yet to discover. 

Words that Fly

1. Good Deeds

Trespassing a memory,
Behind the rident shadows of joys
We forget how good deeds haunt
In the silent symphony of our voice.

______________


2. Pretense

Watching the sun pity the moon,
I've lived all life like a summer,
Of Aprils, Mays and Junes.

______________

3. Plastic Daggers

The casual vacancy of his words hit me hard as always. Plastic Daggers, but daggers nonetheless.

______________

4. Keys

Through her midlife crisis,
She laughs at jokes,
But Please.
Think her not a hypocrite,
For she has only lost,
Her Keys.

_______________

Spoiler Alert!

THE BOOK THIEF-MARKUS ZUSAK

After all the stuff I had read about words saving the girl’s life, I really considered the insinuation to be on a more philosophical note. But I was proved wrong to a great extent. To my surprise, words LITERALLY saved her life!

‘The Book Thief’ written by Markus Zusak is not just a book about words feeding the soul, or the horrific consequences of Nazi-Germany or the morbidity of it all. It’s a lot more than that.

Published for the first time in 2005 in Australia as an Adult novel, the book begins on a rather phlegmatic note, contrary to the kind of beginning one would expect considering the story is set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. The narration is calm and serene throughout the book. The narrator is none other than the omnipresent Death.

Death narrates the entire plot, giving us a rather humour-filled yet dark perspective of things. It contradicts the common belief of Death and War being friends. Death claims to be commiserating, empathetic and unabashedly sick of his job.

I would say that the author has done a brilliant job with the narration. It is a unique concept, and the words chosen could not have been more perfect. This book definitely impressed me because I don’t normally praise books so wholeheartedly. The scene of a war-enveloped country melts the heart of the reader with immense sympathy and pathos.

The book revolves around the main character Liesel Meminger, who has just had to leave her Communist mother being taken away and watch her brother die in a train on the way to her foster parents’ home i.e Hans and Rosa Hubermann. She refers to them as Papa and Mama throughout. She develops an interest in reading and words after the first time she steals a book, and Papa waters this interest of her by helping her read each night. The book stealing continues as she finds herself guided by nothing but words from every possible direction.

In the first few days of her new life she gets acquainted with Rudy Stiener and they go on to become best friends. The end of which is heartbreaking.

Eventually, we are introduced to a Jew-in-hiding, Max Vandunberg who seeks shelter in the Hubermann’s basement. Liesel and Max’s relationship develops a strong bond, a testimony of how love sees no barrier of race, religion etc.

The end of the book is shattering. In a melancholic Hubermann house devoid of Max, Liesel sits in the basement crafting her own words. Meanwhile Molching is bombed by the enemy and everyone surrenders to Death’s ambulant arms.

All but Max. Because had been caught by the Nazis.

I found it very hard not to notice the irony behind the book’s theme of how all the Germans die whilst the Jew lives. A cruel humour maybe. In ways it also brings out the unprecedented nature of life and how death cannot be prognosticated irrespective of social, cultural and political conditions.

The book, however, does get slow at times. Death’s narration can get a little stretchy but he catches up.

Obviously, these are more of my immediate thoughts about the book rather than a review. Lots of spoilers too. But it’s a book every avid reader should try. I’m not sure about the others though.

Also, a splendid review of the same by John Green:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/books/review/14greenj.html?_r=0