Closure

Mohit: You're back?

Reena: Yeah.

Mohit: Where were you?

Reena: Had to get work done?

Mohit: Oh really!!

Reena: Yes!! Really!! Will you stop interrogating me like I am a criminal.

Mohit: Fine I won't. I need you to help me get into bed.

Reena: Why? Where's Naina?

Mohit: She left early today. She had something. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention.

Reena: Hmm. This is the fourth time it's happening. I will speak to her tomorrow.

Mohit: Alright! but first help me get into bed.

Reena: Yeah, Yeah I am coming.

Mohit: Lift me up slowly and don't pull my arm.

Reena: Yeah I know. Don't worry I won't. Umm. I need to tell you something.

Mohit: Don't! I know.

Reena: You do?

Mohit: Yes.

Reena: But how?

Mohit: What do you think? I sit on a chair the whole day and I don't know what's happening in your life. Anyway I don't care.

Reena: You don't ?

Mohit: No, because I trust you.

Reena: I am sorry.

Mohit: Don't apologize. You are young, beautiful and impulsive. I don't blame you. I know you were looking for freedom, but that's not freedom. Imagine how I feel. Sitting on the chair the whole day. I have found my freedom here and I am living with it.

Reena: But are you happy?

Mohit: Do you think I have a choice? But the choice is yours now. What do you want? Infinity in your home or superficial finiteness which you found outside. I don't know what you want or what your decision will be, but all I know is that I love you.

The Delusional Liaison

Akshay: Why are you here?

Reena: I don't know. I just wanted to be with you.

Akshay: Aren't you married? You shouldn't be here. Go back home.

Reena: But why are you talking to me like this?

Akshay: I am, because Mohit needs you. He's waiting for you. Don't abandon him like this. If you had told me about your marriage earlier then we wouldn't be here talking about this.

Reena: I didn't tell you because I didn't want to loose your trust. I didn't want to loose you. Being with you felt different. I never feel like this when I am with Mohit. I feel like Mohit doesn't love me anymore.

Akshay: But do you love him?

Reena: I don't know. I don't know.

Akshay: Well then you should find out. You feel this way about me because Mohit cannot give you the same comfort and happiness that I gave you. He feels disappointed and he is scared to loose you. But when I found out about your past I felt terrible about myself. I had never imagined this and I feel it's time to move on. We should part ways.

Reena: What happens between me and Mohit is none of your business, alright and you don't need to jump to conclusions here.

Akshay: Ok, calm down and listen to me. Go back home and speak to him and tell him the truth. Don't be scared and tell him the truth.

Reena: What? So you are leaving me. This is over.

Akshay: Yes. This is over. It was never meant to happen. We were both delusional about ourselves in this relationship. I have realized it and I want you to realize it too.

The Illicit Clown

Society pushed me around like a trash bag but I still make people smile. Nobody made me smile when I was a child but I still make children laugh. I don't know my dad and my mother abandoned me, I roamed around the streets like a bastard child. I now work in a circus where I help people forget their worries even though those were the same people that abused and kicked me around when I was a nobody.

But I have no regrets now because I am a clown, I have my own identity in this world.

Sometimes alcohol consumes me and the lines between me and my persona become blur. I become a vicious and vengeful clown that wants to hurt and harm people in my imagination. I suppress it and push it aside to the back of my head, but the thought of it ever being realized scares me.

Sweet tears of joy run down people's faces but mine are filled with sadness and sorrow when I take off my veil. The facade that makes people laugh has a dejected man behind it and I cannot tell the world my story because then people will shun me.

Alas I continue to make people laugh, find my happiness in their happiness till the day I die and find another character to play.

The Forgotten Kind

I often wondered how does it feel to be an outcast in a backward and poor society. Being abused on a daily basis and still fighting for existence. I recently watched a documentary on the plight of transgenders in Pakistan and my heart went out to those who participated in the documentary and millions of others who are struggling to survive each day of their lives.

Living in fear of being beaten and raped, not knowing when they would be killed, I also got to see the other side of their personality, and that is their humanity. Just like any of us, they voiced their desires, ambitions and love stories which made them belong to the society and this world as much as we are a part of. Looking at the current scenario it is sad that we have not been able to treat women as equally as men let on allow transgenders to fit into the society. It looks like everybody is scrambling for space in this world trying to establish their existence but we are not ready to embrace each other and make it part of us, we are only fighting it. We are yet to evolve ourselves as human beings.

When I look at the big picture, the enormous world and the diversity of people that exist, the languages we speak, the food we eat, it all seems like a part of a plan to let humans shoulder and embrace each other the way they are. Because when you learn to accept people without judgment then you learn to speak their language, eat their food and hence understand the importance of their existence. So let's hope for a better world filled with peace and harmony.


P.S. In case you are interested in watching the documentary the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvehhXaFh8U

Confessions of an actor

What makes you tick? What propels you to act? 

I don't know. I have never been able to answer that question. I just love it. I love doing what I am doing. It's similar to falling in love I guess. Why do people fall in love? Nobody has been able to answer that question, so maybe this is why I don't know what pushes me to act. It's art, pure art, to be able to enact somebody else's life whether it's fictional or non fictional. I want to hide behind it.

Behind what?

The mask.

I feel safe there. I feel that nobody can touch me or hurt me. The person behind this mask is a scared human being. I have lived a life filled with remorse, fear, insecurities and I want to run away from them. The characters I play give me a relief that I am alive. I can be a lover and a bandit and I can do it with much bravery and passion than I would live my real life. This is what keeps me alive or else I would have been dead.

Oh!

The lights, the costumes, the sets, the people, the stories all amalgamate to form a moment that feels real, that is true.It's like all negatives combine together to make a positive.

You know good actors have to be good observers. What do you think?  Enacting a
beggar, or your neighbor, or your colleague,their every move, their every gait comes from observation.

[Sigh]

Sometimes I wish I could be invisible.

Why is that?

So that I can stand in the corner and just look at people. Look at how they behave. How they act and react. Maybe this is what life is all about. You act and the world reacts and if you are great at acting, the world reacts greatly.

Through the looking window

Through the looking window, into the open world. A vista that connects our eyes into a world of hopes and opportunities. Our desires are infinite but the world is finite. Our eyes can only see what it is able to see but the mind is infinite and develops a myriad of pictures. We imagine and hope we see the same in the world we witnessed through the vista. We push and push to achieve the infinite in this finite world, hoping that one day the volcano will erupt and everything will work the way we want it to. The lava of our desires will spread and turn to what we want to see and not what it is. But is that what we want?

The lava will one day cool down and become solid and then nothing can be changed and the heat of our desires will not matter anymore. We realize that how much ever we push and push nothing will change. And we exhaust ourselves. Our bodies and minds are exhausted. We remain in solitude for days and days till our minds and bodies come to rest and the sudden realization strikes us. We realize that the vista never showed us the real world. It only showed us the picture of the finite world not the infinite one. We missed out on all the real opportunities and pushed and pushed for the opportunities that never existed. And when we look at the larger picture we realize how big the universe is. The vista doesn't matter anymore all that matters is us our understanding of the world through our eyes, that finite doesn't last forever, it is only the infinite which is who we are and truly want to become eternally.

Order in Chaos

As an observer I feel we are these pockets of energy moving around the Universe and as physics puts it, energy can neither be created nor destroyed it can only be transferred from one form to another. Keeping that notion in mind I don't believe in the concept of God that created the Universe. It is just Man who has created this concept because he needed a start and an end to a story. Very mechanical, I must say. Just like when we draw a circle on paper we start at a reference point and end at a point, but that was needed because we needed to draw a circle. When we look at the circle from afar we see that the start and end point have dissolved and all that remains is the circle that goes round and round with no end and no start. So then how do we conclude who created the Universe and who will destroy it? With no start and no end, this circle is just like energy being transferred from one being to another to do work, to keep the cycle moving round and round to infinity. So is the concept of the Universe being God's creation just a way to adjust our lives in this finite world we have created for ourselves and if that is not the case then what is the actual Truth?

When I observe Nature I find order in chaos. There are no perfect shapes and sizes, there are no set of rules and orders written down and most importantly there is no authority. But even then Nature follows the day to day chores very precisely. There is nobody to tell the sun when to rise and set, there is nobody to tell the ant where he needs to build his house. For the lion killing the deer, the caterpillar turning into a butterfly or for the bees picking up nectar from the flowers is all Truth. The workings move round and round in circles just like we drew on the paper but this time there is no reference point. No start and end and no mechanical nature but still there is form, structure and more importantly order. This is their basic Nature and it forms the Ultimate Truth.

Humans too are part of Nature and are also very much part of this order in chaos. From time and again Man has given into and bred emotions such as fear, insecurities, anger, hatred and jealousy that it has shifted away from its true Nature. With its conscious mind Man wants to achieve power and with power comes fear and with fear comes violence. Man has created the concept of authority to rule over him, breeding more fear and more violence. It has come to spoon feed himself on knowing what the Truth is and is trying to find order in order. Order in order is like taking a ruler and pencil and trying to draw a perfect rectangle, or a square, or a triangle but, you will never achieve that perfection because, there is no such thing as a perfect shape. It is like a magnet when like poles repel.  The mind is so attached to this superficial, materialistic, artificial maze that we need a guiding force to show us the way. But can somebody tell us what to do or not to? Is there anybody as God to show us the way? If we were left all alone in that maze then do we have the power to find our way out? If Nature can do it then so can we if we consider ourselves as part of Nature.

With time we have distanced ourselves so much from the basics that now we think from top to bottom and not from bottom to top. But there is hope that one day Man will let go of superficiality and look inside out and not outside in.