Gratitude & Memory

Gratitude is one of the most powerful qualities in the world. Imagine, you’re standing at the edge of a sky high cliff, and the world underneath feels like a river of thorns. Life stands still for a long second. Darkness looms over the midnight sky. A lone star awakens you and shifts the very tectonic plates of your life.

The waves of joy and kindness take over, leaving you at a seashore, with the cliff in sight, like a morning alarm that reminds you of your dreams, both good and worse.

Gratitude gives perspective like none other; when the alluring summit may give you vertigo, the seashore jolts the ray of hope within. The moon surrenders to the light, proclaiming it’s borrowed beauty.

Even in the darkest of hours, the rains ask for lightning, to shower the blessed.

—

This is something I had written a week back, on the tenth day of grieving. I lost a close person in my family couple weeks back and I think the grief is beginning to settle in. So I revisited this today, and 3 weeks in, I feel grief is a powerful emotion that opens the cracks within you, in ways you didn’t imagine existed in your cells. During these testing times, it brought me closer to my family as we went through phases each passing day. During tragic times like these, we humans choose memory rewind sessions to process, every time the grief hit each person, differently.
Rewind sessions of memories as we packed things, habits of the departed soul that reminded us that all we leave is a pinch of existence. A dent in the universe. Living it all in the hope of ‘being remarkable enough’. Memories in little corners, where undisposed boxes lied in cartons, in cupboards, photos hidden under saris, in kitchens, a fresh packet of sugar stored in Britannia tins, and an antique lamp’s flame flickering from the previous day. It feels like a weird tasting potion has suddenly been poured into your brain cells searching an archive of memories, stashed in library looking caves of people existing in your head.

This digression is purely an outpour of reminiscence and gratitude that I have for the dearest who has passed on to another world. I wonder where and how that might be, what it feels like? Is it more peaceful or liberating or are you burdened with superficial tasks there as well? How different is it from the mortal world? Fantasy takes over my imagination, influenced by artwork of the immortal world fills in for the geography, spiritual riches and kingdoms designed for them. Maybe that’s why folklore glorifies those who just dipped a foot in the Death River and came back to Mother Earth in the nick of time. To remember a life gone by is a cathartic and reflective process, that instigates you to rethink and reinvent your views and ways on/of life. All the things left unsaid, compliments unspoken, memories unshared and the memorabilia of events lying around you, with stories left unrevealed.

To satisfy the quench for words and regrets, I began to write letters to each and every person I lost, and the sentences included all the emotions I couldn’t share, the events I didn’t recognise them for, the invaluable lessons I learnt that I didn’t acknowledge enough, the emphasis I didn’t pay to the past they were narrating, the musings that lingered in midnight silences. Ultimately, it became an exercise for the amount of gratitude I have for them for the profound impact they’ve minutely or elaborately had in my lives. Isn’t that always the one that isn’t spoken often when we are living, breathing mortals roaming about the Earth? Doesn’t this thought constantly prick us when ‘one’ leaves? Those last moments last longer than their entire lives and we wish for a miracle to have undone several things and tell a better, satisfying story to our minds. The mind never stops churning these unprocessed thoughts and sugarcoats our experiences into wishful narratives.

In the book Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell talks about the magic number 150, i.e. in our ‘singular’ lives, we are capable of having social relationships with a maximum of 150 people. This is also known as Dunbar’s number, AKA Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who defines 150 as a ‘point beyond which members of any social group lose their ability to function effectively in social relationships.’ Hence, “Be careful of the people you choose to let into your lives.”

When I read this theory, I wondered about the various people who come and go in our lives but how only a few stick on. Unfortunately, many-a-times, I have regretted those who’ve left and being ungrateful to the ones who’ve stayed. I’m sure a lot of us do this and it becomes a circle of life. Why do we not appreciate the ones who stay enough? Why aren’t we grateful for the ones who stood through the sands of time?

To sum it up, I’m trying to adopt this exercise- Gratitude letters. Letters to both the living and dead.  Reminiscences of people I know, noted with their important life events and appreciations for their effervescent presence in my life. A.Thank.You.Note. It’s better to toast at birthday parties than read eulogies at funerals, isn’t it?

|| Pathways ||

Shot on iPhone.

“Can we take this road?” I ask of him.

Him is a shorter way to describe this mysterious specimen. I thought I was the Orangutan who’s run away from the zoo, left out in the wild wild world. But looks like his parents took a chance with him too. As we navigated through the lost path, we got talking. Talking about this and that, the weather, our roots and what got us here, to this particular point in life. “What can I say, I’m just going where the road takes me”, he said, half smiling. The way his lips smile but his eyes don’t, rather having a pinch of menace in them reminds of Appa. A strange connection to make, I thought to myself.

Zigzagging our way over thorns and small pebbles, awkward silences didn’t brood over our heads for long. A string of words flowed occasionally, it was one of those moments where talking felt like a solace to the heart and mind. Maybe not for his, but he played along anyway. The wilderness of the towering trees and dry grass wilted in the woods soaked us in. We make momentary connections with certain people, a spark where we think, or maybe assume we live on the same plane. He was one of them, but oh my, how wrong was I in my warped head, for eventually, time like always, proved me wrong.

We are now diverging nearly at the end of the woods, my “momentary” friend. If destiny permits, I hope our paths cross to strengthen and ignite a deeper meaning to this chance encounter. Until then…

| Missing out or Waiting for? |

I’m searching for you. In the corners of every thought train, faces of the unknown and in attempts to create a thread of art. “Where can I find you?” I ask of love. Are you hidden in the smiles we share? The little giggles that pop out at lame jokes or the twinkle when we find common interests? Does your heart really race like a horse? Are you near my doorstep or in a far away city or town, waiting for destiny to deliver? If love is truly the elixir of life, then Fate has some questions to answer! Starting with- “What are you waiting for?”, “Do you have a tick, tick, boom kinda testing period?”

Now that it’s out in the universe, let’s resume the waiting and switch to patience mode, my friend. Until then, let’s live on the fear of missing out, as February approaches. Haha!
(Dedicated purely for single people only)

P. S. The photo and caption have nothing to do with each other, just like single people and couples on Valentine’s Day.

Wall Of Arts, Ravindra Bharathi, Hyderabad