Speedbreakers...

Life has a strange way of surprising you..teaching you..and telling you..that all that you had all figured out and laid out on a platter..well, that wasn't all.life turns your life topsy turvy just when you thought you had found your rhythm, found your peace.Just when i was writing about patterns in life and fighting and arguing that i see patterns in almost everything, life surprised me again.

i lost my wallet day before yesterday during my travel..the daily mumbai local routine from lower parel to navi mumbai.traversing daily from western to central to harbour line.changing trains at the most crowded and dangerous platforms.it carried all my important documents: my passport, my identity cards from office,my debit and atm cards, my membership cards,some cash and my sodexo vouchers.

It has happened to me a lot of times..a pattern probably..but again , maybe just my ridiculous search for a sequence, a pattern. i digress. As i was saying, most times when something has gone wrong i get a premonition. I am a great believer of karma. I believe that if i do something that i feel is not right, it comes back to me, in a certainly certain way. 

I feel this happened because of a few things. The first was my arguments and my stubbornness in my trying to find patterns and taking an almost insolent stand with my husband to justify that. Even when i was doing that, i was in realisation of my stupidity but i went on with it anyway. The second was my role in firing someone in my new workplace. Even though i still did not know him much and my heart i believed that the decision seemed hurried, i did it because it was an organisational requirement or so it was justified by myself. The third, i was reading a book called "River Sutra" by Gita Mehta. There's a chapter that explained a billionaire renouncing his life to become a jain monk which had me thinking how i would feel if everything that made me comfortable was taken away from me. If i too was at a crossroad where i had to fight my lone battle. Where i too was faced with challenges that were too big for me. How would i react? How would i behave? How would i feel?

When i got down from the autorickshaw infront of my building, i realised i did not even have a single rupee on me, not even to pay for the rickshaw,. i borrowed money from the watchman, went home , got the money from my piggy bank and went back to my office, all the way. And as i did, praying that i had left my wallet in my drawer i was pushed, squeezed, stepped on, caught between a crossfire, an eternal wait for a train just 3 minutes from my office due to faulty announcements when i  just couldn't run anymore, everything that could go wrong, going wrong...walking till my office, in my heart knowing i wouldn't find my wallet anymore, coming back yet again , all in the rush hour from 5.30 till 10 pm not even sitting down for a minute, all alone..

The police station visits, the calls to banks, going to sleep at 3, waking up early to do the cooking for a long planned party, running to banks to get  duplicate cards, attending a session with friends and coming back home to finish cooking before the guests arrived. In the meanwhile fighting with myself and trying not to have violent outbursts and not succeeding at all.

There was life-smiling its mischievous smile..answering my questions, questioning my insolence..there was life showing me a mirror..telling me that i still am not that strong as i imagined.that even a superwoman can feel broken and feel like giving up everything. That most strong of people have their weak moments when you want to just let go and lean on a pair of shoulders.

i also learnt, i'm still the same girl i always was. I still accept my failures and take responsibilities for things i did wrong. I am still questioning myself. I am still changing myself.

I do not know what i will do tomorrow, but today a small incident has shown me that life is a mystery and i can just let it unfold.The wallet is gone. It may just come back. I may just wake up and find that someone's put it on my doorstep. Like many times when i have learnt my lesson , all things may turn out right..or maybe not..I today see it as a speed breaker..a nuisance in the fast lane lane but necessary to save you from an accident...

Patterns..Life..Life..Patterns..

Life ..patterns..

tick-tick..tick-tick.

in the dates, the days, the years..

in numbers, in colours,in structures,in structuring.

a pattern in sarees, in clothes,in trousers,in shirts,in the tiny stitches,in the prints,the cuts..

a pattern on the speed breakers, on the sidebars by the bridge, pattern in the zebra crossing, the police cordon, the street lights,the neon lighted advertisements,the flags of political rallies,the banners of an upcoming event .

the way the lights come up as the sun goes down, the pattern in the sun itself going down, coming up back again, day after day..night after night.

the pattern in birds sitting on an electric line, the pattern in flying birds,the pattern in their feathers,the pattern in birds themselves.

the pattern in stars, the shapes in the cloud, the ripple in the waves.

the pattern in leaves, in flowers, in trees, in branches.

the pattern in art, in madhubani, in warli, in picasso, in hussain.

a pattern in the way we walk, the way we sit, the way we arrange our furniture,we fold our clothes,we keep things, a pattern in how we cook, how we wear clothes.

a pattern in how we sleep,how we wake up,a pattern in how we like to travel,how we don't, how we pack, how we unpack.

the pattern in smiles, the patterns in tears, the tear drops.

the pattern in dohas, in sonnets, in couplets, in haiku.

the pattern in prose, the pattern in poetry.

the pattern in ppt presentation,a graph,a projection on it, the sensex.

the pattern in milestones, in distances, in minutes,in weights.

the pattern in lines in a face, the pattern in the eye lashes,in the arch of the eye brows, the pattern in the lips.

the pattern in the grotesque, in the stitches of a wound, the pattern of a scar.

the pattern in sounds, the patterns that make it music, the pattern in raindrops.

The pattern of birth, of growing up, getting old, dying.

In the things we have done, in the things life has done to us.

in the decisions we have taken, in the decisions we haven't.

in the things that we have carried with us, the things we have left behind.

the patterns in things we say, the things we cannot, things we do not.

patterns in people who we remember,people we forget.

a pattern in the things we see,pattern in things that we don't.

a pattern in relationships, a pattern in their making, a pattern in their breaking.

a pattern in the life you lead, a pattern in life you chose.

a pattern in doing, a pattern in not doing, a pattern in undoing, a pattern in being, a pattern in unbeing.

tick-tick..tick-tick.

life..patterns...

Who's life is it anyway?

Someday somewhere someone commits suicide. And one life ends. And leaves a lot of people whose life comes to a standstill. Living but not living anymore.

I have always wondered what it takes to end one's own life? What is it that sends the person to that brink of life, the point of no-return.One of my cousins had committed suicide a few years back and i had met her only a few days before. She was so cheerful, so happy and someone who loved life and wanted to live it to the hilt. To this day whenever i remember her it seems so unreal that she would kill herself. 

What is it that sends people to that insanity ? What happens in that moment that you forget all ties, all love, all hope? What happens that makes one take the most precious gift of life. What do they avenge and whom? Who gives them the right to banish their families into a life of regret, guilt, pain, hopelessness and unending pain?

I feel so sad, so deeply hurt.And then i imagine what the people who're near to them would be going through.  One of my friends lost his sibling the same way. His sibling is gone and for us, so is he. We can't find the cheerful smiling guy we knew anymore. And i doubt, if we ever totally will. The pain, the remorse, the hurt, the finality of death is etched on his face.

You want to lend your shoulder to cry on, to say a few words to sooth , wipe away the hurt and pain from those eyes..but the shoulders are hunched and the words don't come and you can't reach out to your friend . The family is hurt, angry, in pain, still not in mourning.  A part has been forcefully wrenched away and the gash is too deep and too fresh that no words, no touch, no one can soothe.

Everyone i know..Please do not ever think about ending your life. It's too precious. And there's nothing in the world that can't be solved. And remember, you life is just not yours. There are other people who love you more than you love yourself.