Satan's Fall

Some glorious, some petty, some non-descript, some routine, some exceptional. Few make history by being wronged. Some people’s lives are highlighted by the loss they have incurred in life. The Heroic Victims.

I normally believe in measuring the experiences by their intensity, not by their goodness. The extreme, the better, the more real it is. Some people are gloriously ruined and for good or worse, that’s the only thing, which happens to them all through their lives. Hence I am glad to have the rich experience when you broke my heart. For starters, there was physical pain, real pain in the muscles, which would make me clutch my chest and worry if I would get a heart attack. This is the kind of pain one only hears or reads about. I myself never expected to experience such pain myself, least of all survive it. It was the most intimate, most raw, most real pain, at a whole different level of depth – all thanks to you. Never have I felt so close to you as during that pain. I am thankful that it’s a memory now, but I would not trade it for anything else, even for you. Your love never consumed me like that pain did. If reality and intensity is the metric, that pain was perhaps the best thing that had happened to me in our relationship. Yes, I treasure it and would not change it for the world.

Then for the first time I prayed to God. You know, eyes closed, hands folded, earnest prayer for it to stop. I don’t think I have prayed so earnestly, or at all for anything in life, blessed I have been. Another new profound experience of placing your faith outside yourself and asking for strength or mercy in any order they wish to come. You pray because you can see the damage happening and somewhere you hope that it can stop and you can still be saved. But Satan’s fall doesn’t stop so soon, does it.

You fall more, deeper, more into the darkness, in the blurr, in the confusion. This is where you feel the anchors loosing, the ties from realities breaking. This is when you can’t get up from bed, or this is where you can’t sleep anymore. I have had days when I could not get out of my bed earlier as well, but this was way more intense, almost to the limit that it qualifies for being braggable. Never took a sleeping pill before, another first of ours. Alprax .25 its called and they would not give it more without prescription. The 2 of them, which I could get, hold of. I still remember how I would look forward to having them and ease off my consciousness. The frantic search at retail and online pharmacies to get it. Yes it was another world you showed me, which I didn’t know existed. Yes I was touched in all the new ways, deeper than ever before. Cigarettes replaced sleeping pills and anti depressants, where I would puff them till I get a headache. Where it was 10 am in the morning, and I knew I needed a cigarette to get through my day.

You do all this and still wish it would go away but the reality stays and you keep falling, reaching the next stop: The rock bottom. When you know you are over, when you know everything is lost and you would have to restart. It’s a good place to be, the rock bottom, just that it was so bloody cold. I remember using blankets to sleep at night in what you would call a summer season. Cold such biting I started wearing sweaters around, in the sun yes. You have had me sweating, its only natural you take me to the other end of the Kelvin scale. The Satan’s fall stops at the rock bottom. You reach here tired and hurt and you stay here till, well till frankly you get bored of it. And that’s what it takes to realize the power of choice and of letting go and of inner peace and of patience and all that Jing bang you thought was shit and irrelevant for your age. This is where you realize you have grown years. This is where it clicks. And this is where you realize that it was the best birthday gift for a 26 year old ever possible. And this is when you say thank you and move on.

Just breathe

A boy left emotionally unhealed for years after a severe breakup, expected to shortlist girls over a week vacation and start a family

A girl wanting to start a startup, but is still looking for support to break the stereotypes

A boy expected to have it all, struggling to fill the voids in life as he lives by himself in an alien country

A girl fighting out in an city while she feels her body clock ticking, and has no means to understand what is happening to her

A boy living the expected career dream by fighting it out in a sales territory in a tier 4 city

A girl at the threshold of a new career and a breakup wondering what is she supposed to do

A boy putting all his energies in work and keeping his house wonders where is meaning, where is love

A girl flunking through exams sits alone at home where her parents are really sick

“Am I in the right career? My relationship status is complicated. I am not sure how will this work out. I think I want this. I think that will make me happy. I think that job is good. I think that salary is worth dying for. My aim is to move to that city. She didn’t reply to my message. I didn’t get the project of my choice. I am not happy. “

All the instances listed above are true, and have all the resemblance to people I know alive and kicking. Myself, friends, peers, colleagues looking for meaning, looking for clarity, looking for relief. Some coping with routine, some with occasional venting, some ignoring, some accepting, rarely anyone healing. Speaking of people with similar background as of mine, we hit the real world perhaps too late. 26 is not the age where one is expected to have sorted it all out and brave the realities of real life which are of inevitable nature. One looks for control and meaning externally, but the only place it can perhaps come from is from the inside.

They teach you everything in schools but one thing, which nobody does teach, is how to handle life amidst uncertainty. Being educated from the top colleges in India, one blessedly enters the world of endless opportunities. Corporate struggle, alternate lifestyles, yoga, book writing, business, teaching, traveling, marriage, literally everything is open to you. Now imagine leaving all these choices to a kid who never took out time to realize or develop his internal values. How is he expected to make a choice from such an array, when he only knows what he wants, but doesn’t understand what is that he needs. How can one navigate life when his own internal compass is missing? Result? Mayhem. Chaos. Anxiety. Depression. A taboo our generation deals with, but is rarely brave enough to speak up or share.

Suddenly the real world becomes way too real and many find the necessary life skills missing to live a joyful, stable and meaningful life. Of course my assumption is that consciousness is always there. Because there does exist a lot, where consciousness is missing most of the time and they rarely ever realize if something is wrong or not aligned within them. Otherwise, the cases are extreme. The sorted ones are rare, I haven’t met any yet. And for the others pain increases with their level of consciousness without any means to develop a perspective on what really is happening within. What the hell is happening here?

I guess it’s a journey wherein everyone finds answers at his own pace. But it is our responsibility to ourselves and to family and friends to keep going amongst this uncertainty; and to build and share joy in our lives.

Yes, I understand that every life must end, aw-huh,..
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, aw-huh,..
Oh I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands
the ones I love,..

Some folks just have one,
yeah, others, they got none, huh-uh

Stay with me,..
Let's just breathe.

Sagleo Series: 1

Sag: Goodnite
Leo: if u r actually asleep how to know if its good or bad?
Sag: I am an optimist. If I live, night was good. If not, at least my last words were!
Leo: I m existentialist. If night is good, I would rather stay awake.

Alas one does not always have the luxury of being with a Sag, given its nature, to ponder about the meaning of night, day or life for that matter.

And hence I say, amongst other things, life is like a cigarette.

This is not a sequel to things like people are beer, but still I say, life is a cigarette.

First you need to light a cig to be really able to enjoy it. Saving it for weekend for just flaunting the casing around would not serve any purpose.

And then there are few who would waste all the time wondering about pros or cons of lighting that only cig and then but of course there are the passive smokers. Once on, a cig gives you a fixed time window to smoke it. You can choose to time your puffs, their dose and frequency, but the time window remains constant. Now some people, who would have only one cigarette, would bother to make the most out of it, taking puff after puff till it leads to headache.

Another one would take his time to inhale, exhale, to get the hit and ponder over that idea in his head. Meanwhile there goes another few precious millimeters of that slender beauty.

Herein lies the lesson; it is about how many puffs you take, or how well you enjoy each puff. I think I know what the Sag would think here.

P.S: Smoking is injurious to health. So/Such is life.