Parents.

Parents are the smarter species. There's no two ways about it.

Here's something to think about.

Are you ever truly happy? You may experience defined moments of happiness, but it isn't lasting. Even during the phases of life when you're relatively happy - which means you're less sad than usual - you are sitting on edge, constantly questioning, waiting, with horrific anticipation, for the next thing to go drastically wrong. Even if something isn't about to go wrong, your overactive imagination will tell you that there is something drastically wrong. Moments of happiness don't come often. In fact, sadness comes disguised as a moment of happiness.

Want an example?
Say you meet an old, dear friend after a very long time. That moment when you meet, is your happiest moment. As you sit and talk, you reminisce in the good times you had had. Then, you start to grow sad that things aren't the same, you wish that you could rewind time. Nostalgia they call it. It lasts for the rest of your conversation. Then, its time to leave - you're sad to be leaving. Once you're alone with your thoughts, you think of how great it had been with this friend, how times have changed, how things aren't as great as they used to be.

You draw instances from your past, some you're not proud of, some you don't regret. And then you remember the dream you had at that point in life. And you realise you haven't reached your goal, you are growing old, and your dreams seem so far away, so far out of reach. And you listen to a song that increases the nostalgia. And you think, how you might've let down the people in your life who're important to you. How you've not done enough sometimes. How you hadn't done enough, how you did too much. How you gave yourself away, without really caring about what you were doing. Then, next time, not being able to give that easily because you gave too much before, and you're once bitten, twice shy. You realise that you want to be a good person, something you would've been proud of, had you still been a child. And you realise that at some level, perhaps, you have let yourself down. And that becomes the hardest thing to live with. You are still afraid, of what the future holds in store, whether the people you care so much about will stay in your life or drift away, and you will perhaps continue to hope that things will get better, easier. Continue, to learn that your hope is in vain. Continue, like you can't run from it, to set yourself to certain things, and disappoint yourself. Continue, to dwell in the bane of life. Continue, to hope for no change, but make amends, because change is inevitable. Wait, for life to lash at you again, and hold out your skin, toughened and hardened by past blows, to take yet another.

Fall, pick yourself to fall yet again. Such is the constance of life, much like waves of the sea - up, down, up, down, up, down, only stopping in a final crash of death.

You never know who's life you're screwing up.

Ever.

Pour vous

Bathed in the glow of the half light of the morning filtering in, I watched you watch me. You smiled at me, flash of white, lighting up your face, lighting up mine in a smile back. And between our delicate black and white kisses exchanged, I wanted to tell you something, yet I didn't want to tell you, it only would have defined that moment. And I want to tell you when it defines more than a moment.

All that you tell me mingles with the swirling thoughts in my own head, a complex combustion of the colours of our conversations.

I wish it were easier, yet I know it won't be. Maybe our similarities in a lot of ways makes it easier, or more difficult. Those things that are different - they glare at us with bright eyes.

Sinking into bed

Its one of the greatest feelings, to come home after a tiring day at work, and look forward to nothing but lying down on your bed to feel the tiredness ebbing away, getting soaked into the mattress under you. All the effort you have to put in as sleep beckons and your body relaxes, is close your eyes... and let sleep take over.

The Jarwar Boy

Both he and I, strangers to each other. I wondered what he was thinking. What he thought of us. We looked upon him as a tribal, someone who lived in the forests, not exposed to the result of the industrial revolution. Dark he was, with hair shaved, but for tiny dots of tight, curly hair on his head, black as dirt. All he wore was a thread around his middle, with an orange cloth attached to it to cover himself. Hands full of grime, he reached in through the window, wondering what to take from us. We were the abnormal in his normal world. He was the abnormal in my normal world. Both, curious about the other. Turns out, he knew Hindi. I'm not sure if that surprised me. I don't know if I was glad to be how I am, or I wished I could live like him too, with only nature for company, with no clue of what it was like outside the forest, but for passing vehicles like mine that he stopped and tried to get little treasures from the outside world from.

Sunset from a ship

I watched.
The great big ball of fire, being devoured by the dark mountains in the distance I watched. So gracefully the sun dipped into the horizon. Leaving the mountains erupting brilliant red at the top, like a volcano. The sea no longer reflecting the distorted image of the sun, the sky now host to the sun's leftover colours. Mountains grow darker in the distance, the sea turns from red, to clear blue to white to a navy blue and then to a dark, disturbing black.
The sun has set.

A holiday in pure beauty

Have you ever seen.
Such a blueness of sky. Such a clearness of water.
Heard.
Such a sharpness of bird calls; found such precision in a blue crab's leg from a green shell.
Felt.
Coolness of water, reflecting the sunlight in each wind induced wave. Seen intricacy in the veins of leaves, discipline in the swimming of fish.
Touched the fineness of the soft white sand, cushions under your soles.

Think of how small you are, how inconsequential. Not half as beautiful, the man made world, not half as peaceful and happy.

I want to melt... into the log I lay on, soaking in the warmth and the sounds around me. I want to sink into the sand, into granules just as fine, and dissolve into the water, all consuming. I want to leave no footprints, no sign that I existed in this beautiful world, too beautiful to be spoiled, by me or my kind.

Jaded

Jaded, we are all jaded. We look at each others' faces and we question.
Cynical, we are all cynical. We look at a good thing and find in it an ulterior motive.
Love is an alien word, we don't hear it, we don't use it, we are afraid of it. We are afraid to care, we are afraid to let others know who we are. We are afraid to show, we wear masks for faces.
The past is too far for us to believe anymore and the future, too bleak. The present is a hell we cannot burn in, and heaven is but imaginary.
What has become, say we. To the world what has become. But we hear and we speak and not listen.
We look at the faces we are supposed to love and question, measuring and analysing features, like the stock market.
We are the world?

Hope?

Sometimes, but rarely, I wonder if I made the right choices. I know that I would not have appreciated who I am now a little while ago. I know that in my head, I am still the traditional but broad-minded girl my parents raised me to be. But I have sprouted wings that belong to me today, and even though they are the same shade, they are wider, better. I know that on some levels, what I'm doing is perhaps not right. On some levels though, it is.

I have some hope. I only hope that this hope is not in vain, like every other time in my life.

Wine

I love the taste of wine on my lips. Sour, just like life.