moajaza

[moajaza]

some of my favorite woven tapestries, by Cecilia Blomberg:

Point Defiance Steps

Mates

Rising Tides

Vashon Steps

[moajaza]

I'm literally begging you, please be weird and queer, online and offline if you can, I want you to live life being as fascinating as possible

you'll only be alive for so long, please spend some time being odd

[moajaza]

Firefighter demonstrates how to put out a kitchen fire

[moajaza]

This is the kind of reply i want!

[moajaza]

why do i stub my cigarettes

Someone once asked me:

"Why do you stub your cigarettes?"

For a second, I wanted to give that person a very manufactured answer which would've been completely unrelated to my real intentions of stubbing my cigarettes but then I decided to be as honest & as vulnerable as possible.

"I think, I stub my cigarettes after I am done smoking them for a very simple reason... Closure.

I cannot live with the idea of 'my' cigarette still burning after I am done with it & maybe it is also related to my emotional state.

I have always lived my life 'in parts' with people I was close to or intimate with and one of my greatest fear that used to haunt me with them was… that one day I will be abandoned without any closure. To a certain extent, I had no problem with them 'using me' but I couldn't stand the notion of incompleteness that was caused by the other person because deep down I knew.... if I would be the one left behind without an ending... just like a cigarette butt that is still burning on a busy road where it will die within its own open-ended temporal existence, then my heart would absolutely shatter into million little peices and I would eternally remain tainted by that experience.

But life is never what you want it to be. Even after being careful with my fears, I still ended up in circumstances I was so afraid to experience. I realized that there is no such thing called closure. It only exists in the form of a desire which remains unsatisfied no matter what you do. So now I am a pathetic product of my undealt insecurities and I stub my cigarettes because somewhere inside my head I know that I will never be able to finish 'something' with someone in life, but atleast I have the power to finish 'my' cigarette.

So I stub them, for a disillusioned notion of closure that I will never have."

We live in a world where everyone is capable of loving and that's what makes them capable of leaving too. The question is...

How do people leave?

Do they stub their cigarettes or not?

Think about it.

[moajaza]

Love and Acceptance

There is a saying that states that a person is known by the company they keep. While this may remain true, it may only truly begin to do so once one understands the reality of having themselves known by their own selves – a truth I have only recently started to realize.

We have always heard contrasting views regarding acceptance, with being told, on one hand, to simply accept ourselves as we are, and on the other to be with those who help us to truly see ourselves as we are, thereby helping us accept our own selves. Come to think of it, though, shouldn’t these two contradictory views be taken into consideration with regards to one another in as complementary a fashion as possible?

Acceptance of myself has never come easily to me. In fact, it has only been a little over a year since I have come to accept myself as I am, and lesser time still since the concept of ‘self-love’ has made itself known to me. Once the two as a part of my own self came to be realized by me, it was a feeling I could only describe as truly liberating.

Rather recently, I have come to realize a lust for life, one which has me curious for all that this one limited human life that we have each been given offers; I have found myself yearning to live it to the fullest, in various forms, from varying aspects.

For quite some time, I had attributed this to the nature and quality of company I have been keeping from the past five months or so, even going as far as to consider a single person being the sole reason behind my, dare I say it, Contented Happiness. 

While a will and desire to be truly alive may be attributed in part to the nature and quality of relationships forged, it only works complementarily with the nature and quality of understanding formed with oneself. Perhaps, I do not make much sense at the moment, but to me, it seems to be the most obvious phenomenon to exist.

As an individual, the last few years of my life can be said to have been a ‘dark place’; one where I, myself was confused as to who I was and wanted to be. I could not understand my own thoughts, let alone accept them. I found myself in search of people who could and would do it for me – perhaps show me that I could be loved by loving me, in turn teaching me how to love myself. Only now do I realize how absolutely ridiculous the idea seems.

Somehow, things happen in the strangest of ways, and it is not possible to stand by somebody whom you do not even know – because a person who does not know themselves cannot possibly be known by another.

A person is defined by the company they keep. Indeed, it is so; that does not necessitate that the statement be understood in the exact way in which it is said. That is to say, the relationship in definition is not limited to the way in which the company one keeps influences them, but rather in itself implies that the company one keeps is defined by the person, their acceptance of their own self, and the degree of love which they feel for themselves, whether conscious or not. It is only then up to the kept company to define the individual and help them to soar – relationships are not forged in order to help one stand, but rather to walk, and eventually fly.

Someone recently asked me how it is so that I have so suddenly begun to look forward to life and all that it has to offer, and I answered her by attributing it solely to the existence of single, special someone. I could not deny it, as that is a part of the reason. 

The company you keep cannot define who you are until and unless you are first able to accept and define who you yourself are; they help to further it and enable it, by knowing you and accepting you – it creates quite a lovely cycle, does it not?

It has barely been five months, and I am still quite overwhelmed by everything. 

[moajaza]

A PORTRAIT OF THE GRANDFATHER I NEVER KNEW

For KOKA...

i know you as the spaces

between my words,

invisible punctuation

pushing into the silences

that stretch too short

for the things not said in them

i know you as the shadow of

a peepal tree spreading cool 

relief over the summer-thirst

of the land, you carried in you

pockets - one bereft of five rivers

that quenched its longings

i know you as the echoes 

of voices thundering across

the dinner table, rippling over

the landscape like clouds

threatening to cut short the

ripening of hesitant crops

i know you as the withering

of the strongest, deepest roots;

the distant, rumbling dust storm 

of expectations that collapsed,

a fort crumbling under the weight 

of its own angry demands

maybe, unfortunately,

i do not know you at all.

I lost my paternal grandfather, my koka, when I was seven. He loved me, I know he did, because that's my strongest memory of him - overarching, complete love. For the longest time, I refused to compromise that ideal image of him in my head. He was the one person who seemed, from what people told me, most like me, and I lost him before I could know him.

As I've grown up, I've had to realise that he wasn't perfect. He was incredibly flawed, incredibly human, incredibly fallible. His love for me did not negate much of that- in fact, it highlighted his inherent, sometimes subconscious hypocrisy.

Writing about him is difficult. It's not painful, per se. It's an exercise in having to introspect into many faults of my own. 

[moajaza]

Tokari

After a break of more than two years, I have finally decided to write again. This time I wanted to start with something related to music, and as far as I can see myself getting butterfingered while trying (read: failing) to play instruments, I ventured on writing about an ancient instrument primarily found in Assam.

That is, a Tokari. Tokari, is said to be originated from the Sanskrit word Tonkar. Tokari’s are of different types, but the form of Tokari found in Assam looks like this –

It does resemble a guitar, with a more mythological resonance into it, and particular spiritual and devotional songs related to it. The Tokari doesn't have a set date where it was found, but it had been passed down for hundreds of years, even before the Vaishnavite Movement had broke out. Srimanta Sankardeva*, a great philosopher of Assam, based his renditions of Borgeet** on the foundations of Tokari Geet (the songs related to the Tokari Instrument). According to which its a folk instrument, which is used as an accompaniment of the songs sung while playing this instrument. Even though most of the parts of the instrument is made out of wood, the part covering the small body is essentially made out of the skin of mongoose, which is sadly, hunted down.

The strings are known as “Guna”, being the most important part of it, the sound emitted is very peculiar in nature, because of which the strings are tied up in a strategic manner to standardize the pentatonic notion found in music as such. Tokari is supposed to have four strings or gunas, and each guna has their own names – ing’ola, ping’ola, xuhoma, xudhoma. These strings are conjoined and grouped into two accordingly, such that they have two distinct musical scales allotted.

These strings are positioned at particular distances, and the tiny spaces where they are confined to are known as “Ghura” or “Saraswati”. The pick used in Tokari also needs to be of a specific size, and it’s known as the “Lakkhi."

The Tokari Geet are the songs that are sung to the rhythm and the sound of the Tokari. They have a sense of spirituality in nature, and most of all influenced by stances of Buddhism, Vaishnavism. The set of people who sings these songs are commonly known as Boiragis, and they are most often nomads, who has sacrificed whatever life they are living to their Gods.

While these songs have many nuances of Shivpurans, Doltapurans, they also talk about how the body belongs to the very material of earth, and the mysticism attached to the colossal transient system deviant of it.  

Two links which you could listen to :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dikXPbsIQ

A fusion mashup - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu1QDul3Et4

*Srimanta Sankardeva - A philosopher, a dramatist, a playwright, a scholar, and a religious/cultural reformer of Assam, who also led to the advent of the extremely popular classical dance - Sattriya and a form of folk theatre - Ankia Naat.

**Borgeet - Songs which had been created specifically by Sankardeva and Madhavdeva

[moajaza]

💯💯💯💯💯💯

[moajaza]

DIFFERENT TIME, DIFFERENT PERSONAS.

What happens to a child after midnight?

He was a chill guy.

He woke up, it was 7:00 A.M.

“Urghh, school.” He dragged his body from the bed to his washroom, looked at himself in the mirror. His face spoke volumes about what he was feeling that very instant.

He was sleepy. So sleepy he would fall down before he took his next step to whatever he was going to do.

“Do I need to go to school today?” He thought as he dragged himself towards the next room, where he usually changed.

Excuse or not, he had to go to school.

Then he realises that he was already late for school.

Soon he was dressed and in no time he was at his school.

“Raat ko kab soya tha?”

“Raat? Subah 3 baje toh sone gaya hun yaar.”

He struggled to stay up, all his classes were the same to him.

“So damn monotonous, I wish I was at home, sleeping.”

Soon, the clock struck ten past two and it was time to leave for home, finally.

He talked to his friends, hearing only about half the things they said.

“I really need to sleep.”

He couldn’t help it, he was a tired guy, one who did not think so much deeply about the world.

This was who he was after noon. During the daytime.

But what about when it was night? When people sleep? What did he do?

“What happens when people die?”

“Is she thinking about me too?”

"How come the things that make us happy don’t make everyone happy?"

“If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?” 

Soon, he started crying, reminisces about his friends leaving him, an ex-significant other breaking his trust. He started thinking about all this stuff, no wonder he stayed up until 3 in the morning.

How could anybody sleep when he has so much going inside his brain?

I think it’s just a teenage phase, I don’t know, but all I know that I’m really not the only one.

Are you the same?

[moajaza]

Welcome

Never have I written a blog, these are just rantings.

What you are about to read below are the viewpoint of the life of a mentally depressed kid, who used to be fun, social with people, but then some people happened, trust issues came up, he could not trust anybody with his thoughts and feelings, knowing that people would judge them, but then he grew away from the fear of people judging him, and then he started this blog.

No not everything will be full of negativity here, I am an optimist too, just that I have a hard time to vent out in front of people because they leave but your words and your memories don’t. I do not intend to seek any attention, do not judge me. If you want to continue, please do, but do not keep this in mind that I am here to seek attention, please do not empathise if you don’t want to.

Hope you enjoy your stay here.

Regards  

Shubham R.                                                                

P.S. – Please don’t expect any use of rare words, my vocabulary is quite limited.