Thursday, January 19

It was a big, beautiful silver pendant with a luminous white stone

Why is it that when I finally sit down to write stuff here, all the things I wanted to write about,(even the sentences I'd formulated in my mind), evade me.

I've been living a fairly bohemian lifestyle for the past several months, no, wait, several years. Now, before these several months, this bohemia seemed to make perfect sense. Suddenly, at the height of tension and other woes, it seems absurd to be staying up all night, night after endless night to do my work. I mean, there are other people I know who also have work to do and they take it easy. And of course there are poeple around me who don't even sleep the number of hours I do. I know it depends on several things but just this evening I got thinking. Nothing seems to be moving in the direction I wanted things to move in. But then again, I haven't specified this direction either. But you know ....too far east is west.


So, I'm supposed to leave for USA after 20 days. I am not prepared for this hiatus right now. I mean, of course I want to spend time with my family there, but there are so many things on my mind. It just seems like the wrong time to be going away from all that I've wanted to do, when I'm finally going to be free to do all that. Why do paradoxes surround us?
So, if I don't want to go there right now, why am I going? Simple, because that's what everyone else wants me to do to and I don't have the heart to refuse. I've been a nutcase all my life, done things the wrong way, done them too late, left too many things incomplete, done too many things too soon and not done anything, too....as I said, paradoxical... I don't want to be a nutcase all my life. I want to make people happy. Of course I'm going to have a great time, long vacation and all, we'll travel around and do lots and lots of fun stuff, etc. But.

I want to work in the social sector and I've finally decided what I want to do. This realisation makes me very happy. I'm going to move away from the educaton I have got for so many years, and pursue something that I know I must. It seems to be my calling and I hope I won't disappoint not just my family, but also myself, anymore.

Is it true that we create our own limits? Really?
Now, what else did I want to write about? I can't seem to remember....But these are some things I'd like to do tomorrow...and I know I can't, no time now.

~ Go to the National Gallery of Modern Art. The last time I went there (after years) was with a schoolmate I was meeting after a decade. He's in the army now. I love Amrita Shergil's work and seeing her canvasses in person is just too precious an experience for me. Each time I enter her gallery, I sit in the middle and look around, spellbound and then look at each painting carefully, in due time turning my gaze to my favourite.... Bride's Toilette. Why am I writing about all this? Because when I went to NGMA with Capt. Schoolmate, I wished I could run away from there! He had below zero knowledge about art, any of the paintings in the gallery, any of those painters, and when we entered the Shergil gallery, he went on (as he had been going on in all the previous galleries) about how a certain fruit in a certain painting was so funny and O, look how stupid this is, and what was the painter thinking when he made this ugly painting, and that's no way to draw a house, that's not how hands and feet look, etc. It troubled me no end. It was terrible. Finally, I had to stop it and began to talk about whichever painter's painting we were looking at, about his brush strokes and his self-portraits, etc. I think Capt. Schoolmate then realized that those paintings meant something else to me. It's another matter that the captain liked me in school and I figured he liked me even when we met (this happened some months ago), when he gave me something in a jewellery pouch and asked me to open it only when I got home. That's exactly what I did...
Anyway, I digress. I want to go to the NGMA.

~ Sleep
Ah, that beautiful thing...haven't slept well in what seems like forever.

~ Meet some friends. Since this is a wishlist, perhaps I should say more aptly, I want to meet the only boy on my mind, even though he isn't in this town...
I'd like to laze around with some friends, maybe drink some beer, sleep, talk, go out for a film, buy some books or just browse around in a bookstore...just very normal things I haven't done in very long.

~ Go sketching.

~ Have chai at a nice roadside chai-shop and talk to the people sitting around. I love striking up a conversation with fellow chai-drinkers, sometimes when I'm sipping chai at a roadside chai-shop. If I'm not feeling too chatty, I'll just eavesdrop! :)

~ Eat what I want to, however little I want to.

If I write any more, I think it'll just seem like I want my old life back. And that will make me nostalgic and ....soppy!

Must look ahead...must look ahead...must look

4 comments:

Sagar Kolte said...

Look in to the now and you have found freedom. :)

coyote said...

You sound, to me, very human. And maybe like you're reaching toward fuller adulthood. I wish you well with that. But, hey -- don't get too anxious. It's a lifelong journey...

The Wandering Hermit said...

I read this and it makes perfect sense to me as I have also been living a very bohemian lifestyle for the last few years... but that still doesn't make me happy *perse* ....

and I seldom want to please people around me... that ways I am very selfish...

As for moving away from the education you received and doing something in the public sector..I think you should just go ahead and do it..as only if you really believe and enjoy what you are doing do you get satisfaction that you are not fitterring away your life... JUST GO DO IT....

Chai is always welcome..and yes eavesdropping on people at a Chai shop and watching the world pass you by is fun too when I am not in a chatty mood.
cheers
z
cheers

heretic said...

Bohemian sounds good; methinks I have the perfect balance... enough of both lifestyles to justify some happiness.

Now, best of luck for the journey and the new home. Hope everything works out just fine.