Too Many Goodbyes Too Soon.....

When life decides to throw surprises your way, it can get quite enthusiastic sometimes. Having barely had the time to sort out illusions and disillusionment over the past year, what thrust itself on my fragile sense of existence now was bland reality. Suddenly and annoyingly.
'We do not belong anywhere'. My head hummed. Though this suggested a sense of freedom, it was only a fleeting one. Being in glorious solitude knowing that you can step out anytime you want to familiar faces is one thing, but waking up to unfamiliarity everyday is quiet a frightful proposition.

                                             

The house that holds 11 years of my life - will no longer be mine. Ours. It was decided in a jiffy and it will be sold in a jiffy. There is no illusion here. And I don't know if I have enough time to say goodbye the way I want. I remember how just a few weeks ago, I had screamed at the walls of my room saying it wasn't letting me go, that its walls had held me in its dream-like state all this while and had let me be continually slapped for my insanity. And now, it is defending itself, shooing me away, and I have no choice but to move on. The terrace that inspires so many ideas, the floors that feel the brunt of my dancing feet, the walls that patiently hold my canvases - will hold some other strangers' pictures and feet and minds that stare at the sky. It is as if I am being shoved out, like I am being given unbridled freedom with which I don't know what to do, at least for now. It already feels like I dont belong here. The search for a new house has started fervently and it is just few more weeks in counting that we will shift.
But the scariest part is that before these few weeks end, I will not be waking up to neighboring skies or streets or even faces - but on the cradle of another continent. I wouldn't even get to feel the imprints of our new house before I leave.
It is a dream come true - being selected for MA at Chelsea college in London. One of my favorite cities, one of my dream colleges. But not a single familiar soul, not a known voice. For a year I will have to learn to not take others' company for granted and put my solitude aside and build a life. A new identity, perhaps. Away from every person I know and love, every person who has made life 'life' for me. And even after I return to my country from the 1 or possibly 1.5 years of another habitat that I would have adjusted to, I would fall headlong into a new habitat again. New neighborhood. New people too, because I don't know how much I would relate to everyone after so long at a different culture and lifestyle. Or who knows, maybe my studies or career would take me further on to further unknown shores, and I wonder how many 'lives' I would have to keep building.
This is the life I had always imagined and wanted - to just keep travelling and dancing and painting and laughing. There is nothing to complain. But when the string is cut off abruptly, the tiny kite does quiver in the mighty unpredictable wind. Cords are cut here in the familiar world, and I am washed too far on the other side of the unfamiliar shores. Maybe holding on is not meant for me. Maybe I am not charming enough for one place to keep me tight in its embrace forever. Or, maybe, it is time to start living life a little above the tangible physical sense. Maybe there is no such thing as illusion or disillusion or even reality - just different levels of existence, different planes of perception.
I should learn to shift my planes a little more quickly.
To gather the strength to say all the goodbyes - I don't think I can muster. Love and gratitude and memories fill me to the brim. My heart cries with a strange mix of joy and pain and helplessness - a wordless emotion. I want to surrender to life's wind and I am halfway through, but the mind has its own patterns and I try to fit in the pieces as I throw my oars into the ocean.
'Goodbyes' are just words, and I know there are things and relations that will stand above such mundane formalities. And yet I feel like a little orphan left on the street, with no hands to hold. Am I crying ? A bit. Am I happy? I don't know, for I am still figuring out hoto define what 'happy' is. All I can do is take a deep breath and let life lead the way for me. For now.
Embrace me, life, because I am really eager to embrace you tighter!!!
(Just put up a little with my impulsive outbursts once in a while ;) )

Some Art for 'Enywhere' ( nopes not a typo; trying to be art wordly ;) )

Hey everyone,

This is a post for my paintings... If you are looking to do something about the thirsty walls of your home or office, do have a look at my works and drop an email at radhikaprbh@gmail.com if you find something for you.

http://artbyradhika.wordpress.com/


:) :) :)

( This is random; but do feed my five fishes in the rectangular aquarium on the right; u just have to click on it. They love any extra morsel they can get). 

Being Human - The other Side

There is something repugnant about trying to be selfless. I mean, all of us are selfish at our core, but somewhere along the line of life we get tangled and caught up on invisible wires of morality and values and everything that has come down from generations as stale gifts and which are sometimes better left unopened. We go through the path, saving ourselves from imaginary thorns and waging an endless battle between God knows how many and whose voices within our head. I can't help feeling selfish. I can't help feeling nonsensically jealous and petty and everything wee once in a while. I live among a web of circumstances, and  I can't help reacting to them. And I certainly can't stand the thought of posing as a martyr of sacrifice when it doesn't feel right and when it doesn't agree with my soul. All these come with the package of being me, of being human. The more I try and deny their existence, the more they bang on my closed doors waiting to be acknowledged. It would perhaps be better to just let them in, hear their wails and cries, and then let them grow on to maturity. It doesn't mean you will see me running down the streets and snatching ice creams from every little kid, or sweeping up all the pencil jeans at a sale for myself. Oh, and nor will I shut away 'sacrifice', because there have been circumstances where I have gladly done it, no matter how little or big. It only means I will not deny myself anything that happens to peep into my life. I will not close away ( or at least try not to) and hide behind the  non-existent door of 'reality'. This word just seems to be blurring away like an inconsequential blot.
I am inconsequential too, an invisible dot in this vast universe. And so are my armful of everything I have. Maybe I could rather gather my hay while the sun shines, instead of seeking the shade of seeds chewed by many.

Hunting Upon Existence

What a sweet witch she is. So subtly alluring, so beautifully sensuous. She is invisible, colorless, and she rides upon the chariot of words. She is sense, she is essence, she is existence. She holds me in her charm. Trapped I was in her blithe beauty for a long while without knowing it, and then feeling her presence within me incessantly like a throbbing pulse. Of everything I have encountered, she is the one who makes me feel the pride in being her servant. And she gives me back aplenty. She gives me words. And she gives me beauty through them. She gives me ugliness. She gives me pain, happiness, haughtiness, rawness, rusty-ness. For the first time I find 'me' melting away, dissolving in the charming chaos she has created for me. And I gladly melt away, searching, restlessly for her everywhere. I hunt for her in every nook and corner. On grey streets and houses tucked away under red roofs. Under the bed, on the dining table. In the winter's breeze, in the dull light of planes hidden in the clouds. In every thud, in every flutter.
But more than anything, she has made me honest. Truly honest. Being honest to others is one thing - you reward yourself with an exaggerated sense of being of a superior make. But being honest to yourself is altogether different. There are no rewards of pride - just plain, simple truths that you encounter. She has wrenched my soul completely awake and thrashed my mind to shake away its egoist slumber. My heart is perhaps the happiest, for it has finally found something for which it can do anything, absolutely anything. It could travel the universe and cross the mightiest oceans of imagination. It could rot away in solitude and find the secrets buried within, or mingle with the breathing minds outside like salt in water.
I have, finally, found my life's salt.
Entangle me, encumber me, oh pure essence that rides upon words.
Enrapture me, oh creative presence that rides upon words.
I shall hunt upon my very breath of existence for you.

Does love even have a name?

August rains are pretty plain. It is only when it rains during the burning heat of a summer day, when we stand with no umbrella above our head or no jackets covering us do we feel every drop of the sky's elixir.
Only when love drizzles during a dry summer zone in life do we actually feel its inherent power, its intensity and its trueness shorn of all ambiguities and pretenses. Only then does it reveal its full glory. And we drench in it, almost in disbelief, coming as near to touching reality as we had ever imagined possible with all our awakened senses and soul.
Courage, Freedom, and such ridiculously pure joy assail us as we stand soaked to the skin, that the whole world seems surreal and 'oh so perfect'!. Everything else seems like a jarring note when compared to the melody that sings within us. We get set to conquer the world. To conquer love.
And that is where we skid and fall, and love suddenly refuses to drizzle upon us. For so great had been our joy, that life begins to refuse scorching us anymore. The burning summer melts away, and life dresses in all its beauty for august.
But somewhere we let the innocence of joy be killed, for we are now inside our hearths, safe and warm and dry. And presumably happy, and presumably still holding love. But love is outside, banging at the door, crying , writhing in pain to be let in, but so contented are we with the fireplace that we forget the blue fire that had almost swallowed us. Our heads are held high in pride, but courage and freedom have run away, and not even their shadow is there within us. For what is courage and freedom without the purpose of love? What is joy without the depth of love? What is life if love should only be like august rains, predictable and fathomable? Does anyone believe in a summer love too? Perhaps we will know after winter and spring have come and gone, and when summer again comes glaring at us. But until then, we will need a few more drops to keep the magic alive, to keep the hope from fading away like a fairytale dream.
 Look! Love is thinking of going away! Maybe we should call out to it. But what do we call it? Do you know what is love's name? No? Why is it still such a stranger to us? Or has it forgotten itself amidst the numerous identities that we force and thrust upon it? Does love even have a name?

Ok. so now what ?

My mom called it an incurable laziness. My dad thought I had become arrogant and over confident. My brother said I was becoming anti-social ( Not that I am very social otherwise).My relatives thought I should get married and 'settle down'.
And I thought that.... well. I dint think anything.
Life is unpredictable and strange. What is even more unpredictable and strange is our own minds, and how it perceives and reacts to what happens (or does'nt happen) in life.
I ransacked google to find out what was happening. And I found this fancy phrase - 'Quarter life crisis'.
 Oh lord.
I had never expected I would run out of dreams. Nothing excited me, no goals beckoned. Everything I did was plain and involuntary. Where was my passion and enthusiasm ? I had wondered. Had I let the world water it all down so easily? Ideas abounded in my head, but I dint do anything about them. I dint feel like doing anything. About anything.
Depression ? Salvation? Nirvana!!?
Should life have a purpose? What is life without purpose? What is my purpose? Can I spend my whole life wondering?
That was when I started holding on to everything I had ever known as strongly as I possibly could, afraid of falling into a void.
 But when my heart failed to keep up with my restless mind, I went into self - pity. That most selfish of all emotions. I thought I was doing everyone a favour by removing my bland self from their lives. I kept myself away from dance as well.
Since the time I could remember, I had always hated and kept away from a 'routine' life as much as I could. And now, I had landed myself in a scarier situation - my mind, my emotions had become routine.
The day I realised this, I went into the deepest imaginable pit within my spirit. And there I saw that, unknown even to me, my tears were watering, slowly but surely, the new sprouts of love, of joy, of inspirations. It felt like I had turned myself inside out, dusted away the cobwebs, and then re-emerged. I was still the same, just fresher and newer. I realised, and accepted that passions and dreams cant remain stable and stale. They grow, they evolve, they mature. Just like us. Holding on does'nt help at all. It will only stifle you and your perceptions. And in this process, you change too. Or rather, you get to know yourself a little more better, a little more closer, a little deeper.
The empty space , where everything you had imagined till then evaporates, is actually a beautiful space to be in! It teaches you a lot of things by opening the numerous closed doors within you to more expanse, more beauty, and more love than you ever thought you deserved or were capable. It makes you such a wreck in your solitude that you search for the barest and smallest shreds you can hope to find to help you get back to living again. And that is when you realise your strengths, your actual passions, your true and pure motivations for life. Maybe it is to be without motivations, to live each minute as intensely and truely as possible.
Re emergence of your self is a lovely process to watch and experience.
And no, as I stand on this precarious yet exciting threshold, I dont have an armful of new 'dreams' now, or new 'goals' that I am fervently waiting to see manifest. Anyway, no one's behind me with a whip to speed me through life and gather as much as I can. I would rather discover a little more love, and a little more acceptance. Within and without. Slowly, truly.
Ya thats it, for now :)
 

DAWN DREAMS

As dawn struggles to break away
from the relentless shackles of night,
mysterious images breathe within,
like scattered pearls blushing in amorous sunlight,
and the heart holds in its palms a mystical sight.
Forgotten faces, unheard voices,
unseen visions, non-existent memories
all wait upon as the soul is unfurled
opening the doors to a white untouched world

(OIL ON CANVAS)