My 3 Philosophies for 2012

1. Give no bullshit, take no bullshit

2. Always have a better tomorrow (In this way in 365 days i would have bettered 365 times)

3. Keep calm, nerd on

Quotivation

Every once in a while just sit still and appreciate the vastness of Nature and the inconsequentiality of the Human race.

Love that Wasn't

Baby; I know it was blurry

All quick and we never realised that it was gone

I know when you look back

You find just black empty spaces strewn

I know as well; it’s too late to write a song about it

And it’s also too late to set it straight

I guess it just wasn’t meant to be

I know I was stupid, no doubt I was dumb

But the absence of that possibility was leaving me numb

I heard you cry, I saw you try

You did what you could

You hung on to it

Didn’t let it slip

But it’s just me, don’t blame it on you

For us not making it through

Memories are all that I have been served

And that is all I ever deserved

But this poem isn’t an apology

Coz’ somewhere deep down inside, I know

Even if wrong was the way,

I am grateful for what I did that day.

It’s sad when you make me realise

That we are back to where we begun

But I guess it’s a step you took which I could not

And then, it took me a while to realise that the bliss was a curse

But I guess it’s grown into a wound we cannot nurse.

You know I always have,

And I always will

Wish the best for you

And secretly pray that you make it through.

Inspirations for the sad times

How far can one really stretch; how extensible can one actually be?  What if someone tells them at a decisive juncture that if they go down that road they will run into depression; for sure? What if they are given medication for a mood disorder and told that it is a cough medicine? Would you hang on to sanity when pushed to the brink of depression? Would you or would you just let yourself into the lap of lunacy and rest your head on to the wonderful pillow of lifelong weirdness?

It’s easy for people who have a history of mood disorders to say that depression is not a big deal. Ask those who have never been in depression. Then go and ask those who are proud of the fact that they have never been in a depression and sure of the fact that they would never go into one. These are out and out positive people with strong, stable heads and they would take it on their ego if you tell them they are sad; let alone feed them pills.

Life gets hard sometimes. People will tell you to go and see a psychiatrist, they will sniff at your mouth to find out if you have been stress drinking, they will peep into your house through your window to see whether you have hanged yourself yet or not and nobody would sell you rat medicine anymore. But life is going to be fine if you find any of the above happenings laughable. It should be a delight to know how very strong you are than what people think of you.

It’s okay. Bad things happen, people get sad every day and life does not always go as we intend it to, but then I guess that is just what life is; that is how they designed it above. God does not always give a damn about your plans for your life. If sometimes it does not go as you intended it to; well, get flexible!!! Get imaginative!!! Think out of the box, Tear apart the box, don’t get disappointed.

“Think out of the box? What box?? I have no idea where the stupid box is.” – House, M.D

People are going to tell you what to do in life. That is just why God made people for and mind you they may be even giving you the right advice but there may be a difference between the right thing and the thing you have to do to set your life right and if it is there, appreciate it. It may not be conventional, it may not be the right thing in the eyes of the world but it will be the right thing for you and that is what matters. Go do it; the world won’t have to live with the advice it gave you when you were down. You will have to, for all your life. So listen to your heart, do what feels right inside.

Heart is a busy organ and has shit loads of work to do with all the pumping and contraction and it does that oxygen thing as well, so don’t burden it with the extra load. Don’t take everything to your heart. The troubles, the emotions, the sadness, the grief; let them be an “in from one ear out from the other” kind of a thing. Life is too long for a small grief to bother you. What looks a big trouble today will look a small bump in the road tomorrow.

So chill, relax, take it easy. Go, hug someone tight and cry it all out.

“Don’t take life too seriously, you won’t get out of it alive” –Paulo Coelho

Love,

Ishaan Kumbkarni,

A road, a hill and a little tea

6.15 pm, National Highway no. 3

54 kilometres from Dharamsala

I sit in the car speeding through the hilly road with treacherous terrains on either side. The speed does not really bother me; neither do the deep pits besides the road. Some pits are so deep that you cannot see the bottom of them; they are filled with dark vivid darkness; it sometimes makes me wonder if I would find hell on the other side of that darkness but my curiosity is not strong enough to make me jump into it to find out. Night was falling over the cold deserted hills slowly. There was still some light of the day left but it was as if it had already surrendered itself to the dark with a barely audible, determined and constant mutter which sounded like, “I shall see you tomorrow.”

We stop at a roadside tea vendor to refresh ourselves; there is this thing about the tea you have in these small roadside shops in hills; it has a way of reaching out to your soul. As soon as I take the first sip of the steamy brown liquid, a chilly gust of winter air sweeps upon me like a cold blanket. It was as if the winds were complimenting the tea. The colder it got, the more wonderful the tea felt. Some wild bushes line the road in front of me and as I sit there sipping my tea the bushes sway in the wind, making ruffled noises which added to the whole atmosphere of the hills somehow. There is no real inhabitation barring an empty house a little to the right of the tea vendor.

Sitting there in dim daylight with cold wind all over you and not even a hint of humanly sound does something to you, you go into a trance and for some wildly incomprehensible reason you get nostalgic about old times. As I sat there, still and calm two small kids walk through right in front of me, a boy and a much smaller girl. The boy holds a small steel container in his hand and he walks swinging the container wildly in his hands making a clanky voice with it. Milk spills down from the sides of the container slowly but the boy, unmindful of that fact or of the fact that there was someone sitting there sipping his tea while appreciating the calm and peace of the surroundings; went on in his own world. A small girl walks behind him. She walks with a spur in her step; the kind kids generally have when they have just discovered this wonder ability of human legs known as walking, she is probably singing a song in a dialect I barely decipher. Her mother probably sang her this song when she used to cry as a baby and she just won’t shut up whatever her mother may try.

I should have had been angered, disturbed, irritated and frustrated at the sudden entry of these sources of noise into my tranquil world. But I am not. For some reason they just delight me even more. An emotion sweeps over me as I watch them go. Sadly I cannot describe the emotion; I don’t think I will ever be able to but it was something divine shining upon me through the innocent beauty of the children and the angelic brilliance of the hills. Those two kids of the hills were a part of the scene, they belonged there. They were a part of nature.

With the innocence, truth, carefree-ness and simplicity of the children the human race is as close to nature as it will ever be.

Ishaan Kumbkarni

Its Okay; I Guess.

Its not everyday that you wake up and realise that the time has finally come to take a decision in your life. My life up untill now was all about going with the flow. As a young boy growing up in two enormously different regions of North India namely the still and cool hills of Kangra in Himachal Pradesh for the first 10 years of my life and then the polluted and congested plains of Ludhiana in Punjab for the rest 10 of my 20 till now, I was constantly surrounded by my caring parents and my loving friends. All this time; though I loved the support from all those who cared about me; I never really got a chance to be alone and a situation never arose where in I had to decide on something. Things were decided for me and I went with the flow and I did not mind actually. My mind grew up to be a little different from the kids who were growing up with me. I would have attributed that to the switch of habitats when I was 10 but for some strange reason I seemed to have failed to imbibe the composure and simplicity of the people living in the hills or for that matter, the charm and style of the people of the plains. But as I had always done, I tell myself, “Its Okay; I guess” and move onto the next ladder.


School was a piece of cake; it always is unless you really want to screw up but then here in India when you clear 10th standard and you have barely celebrated your 16th you are suddenly laden with the enormous responsibility of choosing from a few given options as to what you want to do for the rest of your life. Suddenly you have to take a decision and the small problem when that situation arose for me was – I hadn’t been taught how to. And then you eventually take the easy way out; you play safe or atleast I did; I chose what I saw around the most; I chose what, over the years had become sort of a family business. It is logical after all; isn’t it?  If your Dad was a doctor, all your dad’s brothers and sisters are doctors, if nobody has chosen anything except Medical for the past couple of generations in your family its only natural that it would work for you. So end of this story. I take Medical; I tell myself;  “Its Okay; I Guess”.

Everything was thought out in detail, the logical explanations, the practical viability; everything; absolutely everything. But I would realize some years down the road that there was a flaw in the plan, there was a loop hole in the script, something had been left out, something had not been paid any heed to and that something was – the unpredictablility of human genes. Yes; my parents were into Medical, Yes; my grandparents were into medical but what was also true was that the DNA does not necessarily give a shit about that.

Yes people would argue that considering the easy going thing I sometimes am; its probably a case where I am trying to run away from the hard work and dedication that comes in with choosing medical. Honestly; I dont know. Maybe,  just maybe those people can be right. Actually I so badly hope that those people are right and that I have not wasted almost 5 years of my life barking up the wrong tree but then how will those people explain the fact that I stuck it out for 5 years here; not 1, not 2, not 3 but 5 full years and as a matter of fact I still am somewhat fighting but one thing is so spectacularly clear in my head now and that is the fact that I do not belong here and honestly; I dont think that anything or anyone will be able to change that now.

But it is okay I guess. Life goes on as it always has.

Ishaan Kumbakrni

Nobody Dies Today

Staring at the other side, standing at that last cliff

Ready to take the final plunge;

I guess it won’t really matter if today was sad

That ‘once upon a time’, will then be inconsequential

There was once a day when I locked up the room

Locked up my soul and locked up my life

My life was surrounded by that metaphorical darkness,

But then, as fate would have it; the room wasn’t windowless.

The sun shone in that morning like it always did

What a wonderful habit it has, the sun

Defeating the darkness is something he does everyday

What if everyone gets another shot?

Just like the sun’s each and every ray;

Maybe that’s why metaphors are just for poets,

Maybe that’s why nobody dies today.

I just hope I realise it before the other side;

Before I say the words, “it’s been hell of a ride”.

Someday skipping ropes is gonna kill me

Someday I won’t be able to climb stairs

I just hope I jump the cliff before that someday

Just in case I don’t; I am gonna make sure

I skip enough ropes, I climb enough stairs

I won’t lock myself up coz’ I can’t read a stupid book

I am gonna go out and tell them to bring another book

Everybody gets a chance less than the days he lives

Coz’ there won’t be any tomorrow once they pack you up in that wooden box

So it’s all cool if you fell down today

Coz’ there is an old trick to that sorrow

It’s called watching your step tomorrow.

Nobody dies today

But then what if today were my last?

The thought brings my imagination to life

Would I finally ring her doorbell and not just pass

Would I?

Would I tell her that she is the only love I have ever felt

Would I?

But then some doorbells are just meant to pass;

And nobody dies today;

Some love stories are just not meant to be;

And nobody dies today.

But then what if everyone gets another shot?

Just like the sun’s each and every ray;

Maybe that’s why metaphors are just for poets,

Maybe that’s why nobody dies today.

What if some stories take their time?

Just like words do to rhyme;

What if some doors don’t open before they are meant to?

Just like the sun’s each and every ray;

Maybe that’s why metaphors are just for poets,

Maybe that’s why nobody dies today.