The Chamber of My Secrets

Sunday, 9 August 2015

The distance between a deal and end of a deal

Hola readers! I am back with another secret of secrets!!

A deal begins with two or more people consenting to work towards a common goal. And the goal can be anything, from professional to mundane. Any deal or negotiation turns into a goal with a strong, and more importantly common, will and dedication. But a deal involves PEOPLE. And people are different.

No two people can think exactly alike. Any teamwork is a result of a concoction of different ideologies with different efforts, prior estimation of each being next to impossible, but a clever assessment and coordination of both can always carve new routes towards the fruition of the goal. Also, the differences that are conducive to different goals do manage to carve another route, and this one leads to THE END OF THE DEAL.

Consequences of such a deal are never pleasing. Not only does it waste the time and efforts but also strains the ties between people involved in it. The end is never a fault of just one party. If a party is absolutely inefficient, the deal can never begin in the first place. At the end, for all you know, you are tracing back to the point where the different ideologies became different goals and persistently evaluating the lost deal.

If you are an efficient negotiator or merely into socializing, you will tend to be very polite, respectful and mature at the start of the deal and that is what needs to be consistent throughout the deal even if it doesn't lead to success. The distance between a deal and end of a deal is deepened when you refuse to let go at a time when holding on is not the option. Either the loss or the strained relationship keeps coming back to you and you open the gates for a surge of failures to fall upon you. It should be kept in mind that failures or such ends of deals must not be confused with the end of a very important deal called life and well-being. An important solution is to think about the journey rather than the end. Try to break the journey into bits and pieces and grasp any positive lesson you derive from each step. Even if a bond is damaged beyond repair, learn to appreciate its beauty till it lasted and make peace with whatever is left. And as is very commonly said but seldom understood, move on. Revere,accept, learn and live,not in the past but in the present.

Enjoy :)

Saturday, 1 August 2015

Stepping in the abyss of the dark..

I love daylight. It feels like a conquered world. The chirping of birds, people going off to work, the air blowing thick with the sound of the busy city life; everything generates a positive vibe for unrestrained ideas and innovations. An optimistic approach seems all that is needed to drive away any sort of fear or sometimes it’s pretty much just the admiration of the daylight and an eternal wish that it keeps shining upon us. But then the night comes, an inevitable phenomenon. It still feels safe so far as I am surrounded with people or illuminations but once it is dark and the city life snuggles into cosy beds and pillows, my fear begins.

A silence takes over as if waiting for an arrival. It is sometimes interrupted by some fading noises, either the barking of a dog or some gibberish sounds from neighborhood that elate me to some level knowing that people are around but soon it dies out. I don’t remember exactly when such kind of fear started striking me but my concern is that it encumbers me till its morning again. It isn't insomnia because I try to soak every ounce of sleep that surfaces out in my eyes but somehow I am woken up. It led me to sleeping in my parents' room to avoid the same but to my dismay it hasn't been of much help. The few steps in dark from my room to theirs are a sly and hasty affair as if the moment I turn back, I’d be grasped by some uncanny claws.

The darkness isn't the same when I close my eyes but it isn't any better. My worries from the day come alive in inexplicable forms when I close my eyes and it scares me enough to close them again. Sometimes the barking of dogs turns into a chorused painful cry expressive of some long mourned grief that has occurred or is yet to and I hold on to my mother tightly and wish that it stops right away. Sometimes the brush of my hair against my ear gives me slight chills and I spring back from a chanced relaxation. I gaze at the window seeking moonlight but then I realize I haven’t the foggiest of what’s going on at my other side. It’s frustrating sometimes to turn back and forth or to think of turning the lights on to eventually find that every bit is the same but then that’s why days aren't scary because they need you to see and not seek. But night, as I have established now, is an inevitable phenomenon and fear is always of the unknown. It will continue to remain indomitable and perhaps a good sleep, like the angelic daylight, is the only escape. After all to be wiped out by light, darkness has to prevail.

Monday, 11 May 2015

GOLDEN DAYS

Sunday, 22 March 2015

A sleep that shouldn't have been waited for

Warm, cosy, rosey bed, cute, comfy, cotton sleepsuit, hugging your pillow,curled up like a small baby, that may be the story of a satiating sleep, this isn't. This is about being knocked up by "the unpleasant emotional state consisting of psychological and psychophysiological responses to a real external threat or danger" or in other words, FEAR.

It was the warm night of an unreasonably continuing winter. An echo of the chirp of a distant bird pierced through the silence of the night. I had slept through the day and my head felt heavy. I opened the door to look for anybody I could find awake in the hostel but their voices-loud, cheery, playful, expressive of the regular chirpy mood turned away my steps back to my room. Lights were off and my roommate fast asleep. I got into my bed, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. After 15 minutes, world felt the same: no sign of sleep. I checked my phone for messages. There was none. I texted my bff sensing that I really needed to talk to someone. Wifi connection was lost. This night wasn't going to be smooth. I plugged in my headphones and listened to some good music for a while but contrary to the expected, it diminished even the slightest possibility of sleep. Downhearted, I locked my phone and slid it under my pillow.

After a while I switched to my laptop with the intention of watching some random sitcom. After about half an hour, my eyes may have shut down but the voices from the sitcom woke me up. I hibernated it, and with a momentary joy that sleep had finally knocked up, I closed my eyes.
After a minute or so a voice interrupted whatever sleep I had grabbed hold of. I had shut the flap and placed the laptop next to my pillow. Everything was the same only the flap was open now and the sitcom was playing on it! I sensed I was in trouble and in half sleep I closed my eyes thinking that the nightmare will wear away with the sleep. But after a while another sound woke me up. This time a song played on the phone I had slid under the pillow. I thought of taking it out and pausing it thinking that I may have forgotten to close the music player app when I dozed off. But my hand couldn't move. It was frozen! And someway my inner conscience had the feeling that this paralytic attack that I had experienced before in my dreams was happening again. Only this time I knew I wasn't dreaming. I had a notion that my body wouldn't move but I still struggled into moving it. My head was still, facing the left side towards the laptop that was now closed. I tried moving my head with the help of my hands but to no avail. I couldn't move my legs too. It was like some unnatural force that had gripped my body to the bed and the fear of what might happen next made me try to scream. Yes, try to scream because I couldn't hear my own voice. It was like my mouth was glued and no word could possibly be uttered. I tried calling my roommate or making any possible sound that the uncanny paralysis would allow me to but nothing worked. The fear was consuming me. The night that had just been about the wait for sleep had turned into a horrific demon I wanted to run away from. All my existence and space in the world was about to be erased away because of this unknown force that was drowning me inside this diabolic sleep.

I sensed the vibration of my phone. I realized that wifi was finally connected and my friend would have replied me back. I had a strong urge to jump out from the demarcation line between the real and unreal to the real world where I could now wait indefinitely for sleep rather than being consumed by this evil force. After a few seconds of the unrestrained torture, I finally felt something evaporate away from me. A sudden feeling of being dumped back into the real world because of being terrified like a puppy. I bounced back and left my bed as fast as I could. It was dark and scary. My roommate was asleep and looking at her for a while I realized that I was back and that everything was back to normal.

I walked in the corridor, distraught and aghast, thinking of whatever happened with me in the last few minutes. I looked at the sky through the window, seeking an unsaid blessing and tried moving my hands and legs frequently trying to get it engraved in my belief that I was back. My bff laughed it off saying it was sleep paralysis and very common but for me it was my brain's own way of reminding me to stay thankful for being alive and healthy and appreciating every moment of life before an endless sleep consumes me.

Sunday, 18 January 2015

MIRROR SIZED LIFE

The world is but an elaborate reflection of one’s own ideas and perceptions that keeps us going. It’s a mirror we all live in, glancing at ourselves head to toe, reveling in our triumphs, lamenting over our shortcomings and stupefying at the other bewildering reflections of the capabilities we never knew existed in us. Each day is another page written by the quill of destiny, with each noun conducive to another incipient chapter budding in our lives and verbs made of wistful projections of the desires buried in the deep attics of our hearts that we inexorably seek to accomplish every day. Every moment is the inception of an idea, a desire, maybe a whim or a feeble dream about a reflection we always wanted to see in that mirror. Interestingly the mirror neither shows ‘that’ reflection nor the way to become it, but plants the infinitesimal seeds that keep on germinating with each new page that is scribbled in our lives.

Mirror is intriguing. You know it’s you in there, right? Try to look in the mirror for 10 minutes straight in dim light and you may start doubting yourself. If you doubt yourself, you won’t stop looking and if you keep looking, you won’t stop doubting. You may break it into pieces but you’d still look back into them for once.

It’s an innate desire, an obsession with the identity if not a fear of others’ perceptions about it to keep ourselves from drowning in oblivion and a constant reminder of the package we came in.

Human race has for long been intimidated by the questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? What lies beyond? Are we alone? And there are various plausible answers to them with no absolute proof but a belief. The doubt drowns you a fathom more but a belief no matter right or wrong raises you above. That is another belief.

So no answer or belief can be absolutely denied. There might be others out there, residents of some distant planet or a world that exists parallel to ours that is omnipresent but invisible, yearning for a slight doubt to come into existence just like a mirror which always shows the reflection but man is too absorbed in his world to keep looking into it to find something beyond his belief, to know if it’s his world out there or his reflection’s or to touch it and make a slight stir much like the concentric ridges made by throwing a pebble in water which does it’s work irrespective of the volume of water. But if truly man were just one touch away from that world, it would have been a rage on either side of the mirror to know each other and most of all to tell each other apart. It can break; it can tarnish but the mirror stands unfazed asking you in the face, “For how long will you face your face to face the reality?”

Saturday, 8 November 2014

Kidding,falling,kidding!!

Since times immemorial love has been contemplated as a very mysterious entity that was ever born and has eversince been living its ubiquitous immortal existence. Its the only lesson that we learn at school without being taught,the only air that we can die for breathing in and the only pain that isn't inflicted by any weapon.Love lifts us all.It's the only meaning of life.Love dooms us all.It's the sweetest killer.And the most annihilating disaster strikes on those who think of it as the biggest joke.KIDDING!

Turns out that whatever we preach to the world isn't as intimate with us as what we want to be preached is.We're drenched in love,we emit love and all we keep thinking is that love is yet to knock while we are already basking in it.Such is the magic of love that resuscitates the most reticent ones and silences the most belligerent ones with a swing of the wand.FALLING!

We're nurtured with love and it's very symbol pumps its elixir in our souls.It's the only innate quality we're born with and the last one to be stripped away when we breathe our last.World remains the same,a different mirror for a different identity just sans the love's essence that kept us alive.The biggest paradox takes it's shape,we end at the beginning and love continues to be the mystery that mocks us in the face and lures us into believing and living.KIDDING!!

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

No regrets,just love!

The first step into adolescence is all about falling in love.Yes.All the other better parts of it that cbse books stress about only step in the latter half.By then most of us already start floating in the bliss that the feeling superficially called as "infatuation" gives us.The first eye contact,the first brush with his hands,the first meeting,the first song that reminded of him,the first compliment and a series of other 'firsts' get embedded deep into our bosoms.Then after a few years when all of them get almost eroded by waves of college, new friends, works and responsibilities,the ghosts start hovering around all over again.We text them only to find them happy and blessed in their own lives and wonder if there is a need at all to tell them that we still need them.We tell about them to our friends but at a point of time while they continue with their mockery we realize what we did and what we should have done.The "shoulds" obviously have been designed only to keep the regrets alive and sometimes these regrets bring back lot of people together.
She called me up at 3am and as they say such hours are only meant for nerds,lovers,alcoholics and engineers(no doubt!),I understood it must be something either serious or stupid.Insanity was pounding in her talks but only after a while could I draw out sense from them.When someone tells us that they miss somebody,its very easy to say "call him\her then" but we never really understand the reason unless we face it ourselves.Some places hold a special importance than others because we have been there before.And perhaps all we need is the same company to cherish the moments spent there.
She was crying.It had disturbed the serenity that otherwise surrounded her.I could barely console her that time and after two days it happened again with her."The practical problems are rather easy to deal with",I thought to myself.She was a bright student particularly in Maths and 4 years back he had stepped in her life and changed her world completely.Exams back then were all about mugging up and he made her realize that the brilliant results and grades she used to chase would only give her the momentary pride that'd mean nothing in the future.He honed her talents and showed her that chasing a dream could give her way more happiness than materialistic awards.He helped her when she stood at crossroads to decide if she wanted to follow her desires or her parents' dreams.With time he had become an indispensable part of her life.It was the school's farewell party at a mall in the city where this part of her life parted ways with her.I couldn't find out whether it was some small differences over something or some big matter they didn't want to disclose to anybody but it left her devastated.She healed with time pursuing her interest in Maths but upon a recent visit to the same mall the glass around her broke and rendered her on the same crossroads.The best solution anyway to such problems is making a contact rather than running away from the ghosts of past which is what suggested her and coincidentally they decided to meet at the same mall where they had parted ways.

The next day she called me up to tell me all about it."So are you guys together?",I asked."No.Because only after meeting him I realized that I should have understood his concern about me.He wanted to be with me ,not as a distraction but a motivation and perhaps I couldn't understand it that time.",she said."Perhaps you shouldn't have let him go",I said."Aren't the shoulds designed to keep the regrets alive and bring back people together?"she said in her classic serenity.

"IF YOU MISS THEM,TELL THEM TODAY"