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“Sometimes it is difficult to explain to anybody how you are feeling inside…”

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It is all jumbled up.

You are feeling sad, but not sad enough to cry. You are feeling angst, but not anguished enough to shout. You are feeling helpless, but not helpless enough to stay inert. You are feeling hopeless, but not hopeless enough to give it all up.

The reading on your emotional-meter is somewhere below the neutral, as you have simply put your mind on an auto-mode and are sleepwalking through the daily chores banking on the muscle-memory. It is all manageable.

But you are distracted…and disinterested, as if ‘there’ but simply ‘not there’. As if a part of you is detached from all the activities you play a part in. A part that is still sensitive enough to feel, but has been starved to near-death because you can’t afford it in the world where desensitization is a survival-strategy.

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On such days, when someone asks you “What happened?”, you simply say… “Kuchh nahin.” 🙂

So…the festive week finally ended.

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As expected, it was messy and hectic. Met a lot of the ‘kith and kin’, and again witnessed all sorts of people and…their minds at work! And then there were also the ones who belong to the breed of what I call ‘the sulking hulks’ – the disgruntled annoying ones who have a complaint against you for all that they think you should have done.

After meeting one such, I was asked on our drive back home “But why are they so frustrated?” Well! The answer lies in one simple concept.

All relationships are about ‘Give and Take’. People get frustrated when they perceive that they have received less than they have given. They feel violated, and there is no feeling in human realm worse than the feeling of being ‘taken advantage of’.

But interestingly, people also sulk when they only take and do not get opportunity to ‘give’. Yes! Don’t be surprised! As they say “Gratitude is a burden”. And that’s why if you want someone to feel good in a relationship then you have to give in proportion to what you take, and…also allow that person chances to ‘give’.

Yes! It is all about that fine balance of ‘debit and credit’.

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Well! Some months back, a reader said to me “I love reading your blog…It helps me sort a lot of my confusions on relationships. What is at the base? Psychology naa”?

I said… “No! …Economics.” 🙂 

It is believed that on Sharad Purnima the moon and the earth get very close to each other…so close that the moon rays can shower certain mystical healing properties…  

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Unfortunately, I am too old to believe in everything told to me and intelligent enough to question every matter of faith. But I for sure can’t easily refute the healing part…

For sure, nothing is more nourishing than being in presence of people who you want to be with and who, in return, also want to be with you!

Late in the night, on the terrace, sitting in a circle, surrounded by mere outlines of large trees, talking about everything that doesn’t need the tiresome attention…I discovered that the unadulterated company of nature and nurture by the company of your own is enough for moon of any night to develop a healing prowess.

Well! As we did bottoms-up with our glasses of presumed amrita -touched milk and walked down the stairs, descending back to the sounds of televisions and the promised milky-light of the tubes…the first thing I muttered was…

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…Damn you Edison! 🙂 

“Standing at the place where you spent your childhood is an unexplainable feeling”…  

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Although all the houses in the lane have changed, you, without an inch-tape or a camera, can discretely remember and explain how it was earlier…

Images keep leaping out of everywhere…of a ‘friendly someone’ excitedly waving from a window…an ‘affectionate someone’ at a door rebuking you with a hint of smile…a ‘respected someone’ sitting in the balcony from dawn to dusk presiding over life in the street…and a ‘special someone’ peeping from behind a curtain looking at you covertly…!

You can see them right there…alive…moving…talking to you. And then your reverie is broken by a voice asking you “what happened?” and you nod sideways with a smile and say “nothing”.

As you are going back, you look again at the street everything about which has changed except its address. You look at all the stranger-faces occupying that piece of land, who are looking though you as if you are just a pillar, and you wonder if all that you had lived years ago had really happened?

And then you look at that one debilitated house that has remained the same…and you heave a sigh of relief…

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…that is interrupted by the feeder that…a builder visited it only last week.

“Sometimes you simply want some notions to stay as long as possible”…!  

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If I recall what has made me lose my temper the most, it would be either when ‘I am misunderstood’, or in…‘road rage’. Yes! I simply abhor people abusing their freedom on roads, and I don’t really mince words if I am an involved party.

So, the other day, again I could feel my breath speeding up when a man driving a scooty emerged from the wrong side and almost dashed into me while I was driving. Although I felt he was the one at fault, still I pressed my lips tight…bowed my neck…and said “sorry”.

Well! It wasn’t for him; it was for his little son standing in the front space. I could feel how much he would have hated to know it was his father’s fault, and to see him involved in a brawl with a stranger.

It was for that little one…because…

In the times to come, he would come to know that his father is also a flawed mortal, and he would grow up discovering his unique dynamics of his relationship with him.

But for time being, he is that one word irreplaceable – ‘Dad’…

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…a girl’s first love…a boy’s first hero!