For Crying Out Loud ^.^

YIPPE!!

Over 20 posts, 20 countries and 2 months later, I realize what an amazing seed of a thought had transformed itself into an ever-growing plant, credits +Ameya Jain 

Writing this blog has been a great joy!

A huge thanks to all the readers, your support has been phenomenal.

Here's to infinities!

Much love

The Freelancer

Small Sagas #4

Futuristic Vengeance

Ten million years from now

when the earth falls

to enormous earth ruling

and excessively evolved daffodils,

It is our limbs they will pluck

as they might callously chant

"He loves me, he loves me not..."

Travel

I do not travel much.

I occasionally step into a taxi, only to get to another place; a place that I must reach on time.

I close my eyes and open them again. They fixate themselves on what lies behind this mechanically animate glass shield.

We pass people, we pass robots, only clockworks in actuality. Rushing off to the same eventualities, day in and day out. Suffering the same hardships, celebrating the same joys.

I do not say anything.

For I do not travel much.

On some days the sun is a friend, it helps me. On others, it does not. It is on the other days that my pet cloud keeps me in shade. But it too sometimes, rains down on my parade.

This is why I like the sun better. He treats everyone the same. It can be surprisingly warm, it can be relentlessly harsh. While some prefer to drape a cloth over their head, some choose the shadow of a bus shelter. 

I am fascinated by some choices. 

But I do not travel much.

We tend to stop at these recurrent traffic signals very often. They seem to drag on forever. I hear the endless rumbling, and honking, and grumbling. It is almost funny how everyone puts in a consistent effort to test each others’ patience. Like a jungle at midnight, only raided off its silence. A loud night safari of sorts.

However, I am not supposed to know.

I do not travel much.

I suppose these roads like to entwine about these flyovers and the flyovers about these roads. I am still unsure. But they wind and unwind. Dancing, with the concrete landscape as their dance-floor, following a hectic routine. 

It is almost nauseating.   

But I do not travel much.

Blooming laburnums become a distraction. They are too beautiful to be bystanders. Sometimes, I spot a pink or an odd yellow flower growing from between the cracks in the pavement. It makes me happy in a vaguely gloomy way. I mean, yes, there exist several possibilities where the little bloom may be mindlessly trampled upon by an ignorant pedestrian. But it dared to flower in such a dangerous location in the first place.

An obstinate and unforgiving world.

Also, I do not travel much.

These roads also change colour every now and then. Smooth at some places, pebbly and frayed at some, some covered with potholes and puddles, some dusty and musty. I see them all. It can become a roller-coaster ride.

Thrilling and exhilarating.

But then, I do not travel much.

I see streets both chaotic and clean. Some are lined by mongers, seeking to make a livelihood on those sidewalks. Several have manicured lawns and well kept hedges to add to their beauty. Some are crucial to the functioning of many households; some to that of an entire nation. 

But they are roads nonetheless. 

After all, I do not travel much.

There are vacant benches and busy park rides. Swings that sway endlessly. Tall towers cast looming shadows on the playground. Some are not tall enough. Some are not towers at all. I get off to take a picture but decide against it. I need a little perspective. So I stretch out my hand towards the names of those who showed great valour a long time ago, only to be forgotten today. 

I shut an eye. I catch nothing but grasp something.

I am hungry yet slightly pacified.

I am in a trance yet slightly awakened.

My visual abilities seem to have magnified, sans the glass that had been a limiting factor. My dad calls out to me to get back in, already used to my bizarre urges. I walk back behind that transparent screen, inspired and amused.

I have a few questions. They seem to be silly. 

But who do I ask? 

Or should I ask them really? 

For you see, I do not travel much...

PS- A huge thanks to Pranav Khanna for some great captures! Peace out.

Wandering Words #1

Exploring Lullabies

“Rock-a-bye-baby, on the tree top,When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all”

There is something magical about a lullaby. The experience of listening to one is quite unlike anything else. It is almost impossible listening to one without responding to it with an emotion that one never fully understands. Even without knowing the words we know exactly what a lullaby intends, even if we are unable to put the words to that deep source of knowledge. 

On the face of it, lullabies soothe, comfort and lull the awake into sleep; indeed that is their essential function. They help babies feel protected and cocooned as they slip into the tender arms of sleep. Mothers envelop their little ones with a musical translation of the overwhelming and unconditional love they feel.

Why do they tremble with some deep indefinable sense of liquid melancholy? Why do they ache with a nameless yearning for things lost and things that cannot be found?

Think of a lullaby and you will be struck by a tinge of sweet sadness that accompanies it. Often the words too, like in the case of the all-time favourite - Rock-a-bye-baby, are less than soothing. Across cultures, the lullaby carries traces of sorrow, an imprint of some final and inconsolable incompleteness.

The purpose of a lullaby is anything but sad. The baby needs comforting and absolute protection from all sources of fear. The lullaby imitates the rocking motion of a cradle with simple repetitive phrases and basic melody. But unlike the nursery rhyme, where the melody produces little emotional effect, the lullaby infuses everyone listening with a powerful sense of longing.

In some ways perhaps the musical structure of lullabies in their desire to soothe, comes close to that of dirges. The slowness and tenderness of the tune makes it tinged with an unmistakable air of melancholia. In this sense, sadness is not intrinsic but merely a musical by product.

There is a sense of separation and the baby’s going away to distant lands that evokes a certain gloomy feeling, that is all the more powerful because it is not real.The lullaby is nothing but a song of the baby being cast adrift ever so slowly on the solitary journey called 'Life'. As adults when we hear this song, we are reminded what we have lost and what we can never hope to regain.

All of our lives we are driven to pursue the idea of individuality, of shining in our special separateness. The paradise of completeness has been lost to a quest for individualism. The lullaby draws us back, without our becoming quite aware of it, to the ideal we might truly desire, one where we are never singular, never incomplete.

The lullaby is a bridge to infinity of longing, and ode to the illusion of belonging. 

It tells what is the most beautiful and what makes us feel the purest emotions is also the most transient. 

The lullaby is a tender chronicle of life told in reverse.

Small Sagas #3

Missed

Some stories are only whispered so shadily among these flowers

Where there are no cities or communication towers

Her coffee is getting cold as she waits for him to miss her

While his cigarettes are running out as he tries to forget her.

Her +coffee is getting cold...with another that lies neglected.
Image Courtesy - +GoogleImages

Consequences

Words are best when turned into actions.

Six feet under those who seek shelter

In distant future only stones will pelter

Come out of hiding, go out and seize the day

Fifteen or fifty, only working will pave way

Unlock the doors and blow the windows open

Stop the clock and leave no truth unspoken

Although when living true, you may feel lost

A thousand times, the prize is worth the cost

Let down all the walls and drop all the pretenses

Dismantle the trapdoors and barbed wire fences

Invite the good, the bad, the beauty in

Through once thick skin, now beautifully thin

Confusion and uncertainty may drop on you like bombs

Inactivity makes dust piles over these catacombs

Take measure, take step, do it all to bring a change

Unselfish actions have an infinite range

True strength is found in those who cry the most

In those who neither need nor fear to boast

In the childishness of those in love with living

Who know that getting

is a consequence

of giving.

+Unselfish actions have an +infinite range.

Image courtesy - +Google Images

The Dawn Of A New Period

But old man Hydrogen still isn't happy.

The isotopes were overjoyed. They had finally been able to get together. The long form of the periodic table was to be credited for this celebration. Sitting along in the same frame they cursed the wretch known to them as Mendeleev.

Fairly recently had he appeared. The evil genius who was hell bent upon presenting to the world the crafty fruit of his scientific exploits. Initially, everyone was awestruck by the systematized beauty created by the scientist. Gradually but eventually, everyone came to recognize the filthy trap that the citizens of the Kingdom of Laboratory had been lured into.

It was not long before they saw the receiving end of the bargain. Periodic scrutiny and marginalization became an everyday thing. The aristocrats were very happy.

Only, they were unaware of the silent revolution being stirred by some scheming apprentices planning to overthrow the dark lord that Mendeleev had become.

Then a wave of reform washed over everything, something that would transform the anarchy of the chemical laboratory permanently.

And out of the muck and chaos of misplaced elements, dissatisfied anomalous pairs, frenzied lanthanoids and crazed actinoids; was born a new a convention. A system based on the constructs developed by one of the supreme contributors of the atomic universe.

Thanks to the modern periodic law, peace was hence restored in the Kingdom of Laboratory, where wonders are not unexpected.

The Periodic Anarchy

Image courtesy - Google Images

Wishful Thinking

Seldom.

Oh my dearest star, tonight

Let me lie in your shimmering light.

Show me your face and shy away,

Bright or diffused, you are here to stay.

Giving you something special of mine,

A promise you'll preserve while you shine.

Aeons later, when we unite again,

It'll only be cited as insane.

This packet of love between you and me,

Will fade amidst a yellow sea.

Fetch a ferry when it's time,

Until then, I'll write this dismal rhyme.