Language: Thou art a true beauty

I grew up in Calcutta. Naturally everyone around me was either born with music, literature or some form of art in their soul or stuck around long enough to imbibe and feign the part, until they actually started to reckon with it.
I grew up with Rabindra sangeet, Nazrulgeeti, Michael Modushudan Dutto's Bodh kabyo and other great laureates and their endless works.
As I grew older, I found that most of their works were translated to English, either by the laureates themselves, or as a befitting homage.
As a curious child, I rushed to read, compare, and explore. I was devastated with what I discovered. The text, the beauty, and the magic that was attached with the original work was gone and robbed, and only a besmirched shadow was left behind. I concluded at a young age of 14, that language has a beauty of it's own which can never be mimicked or the heart of it can never be copied into another language. And prized it as one of my truest discoveries.

A decade or so later, I discovered that I have the joy of running. I met wonderful people through this front. But, I digress.
I met an expatriate via running, and she was trying to get a hang of people's names. This lady introduced herself as "Bahar". She further explained that it means "the season that flowers bloom". Which I thought, at that point of time, a beautiful way to describe the same.
Running gives me a sense of tranquility, and things that my subconscious otherwise doesn't have time to think about, gets way. And, something similar happened. I pondered on the phrase, "Aap aaye, bahar aayi" and I realised the full blown meaning of it and I was stumped, maybe momentarily even slowed to a stop. I realised it means, "Your soul bears so much warmth, that the flowers chose to spring into full bloom to resonate with your soul."
I'm yet to learn how to handle the depth and gravity of "that" statement. I'm still pondering as to howf, for decades I've said and heard it, and never wasted a second to assess the gravity of the same.
I was always prejudiced about translated prose and how their meanings were perpetually lost. However, this time I was so wowed by it I couldn't think of anything else.
So 14 more years later, from the last time I had an epiphany, here I stand, corrected.
Life, you amaze me.

Her Alibi

When I was 12 years old the 2nd most phenomenal movie had released - Matrix (1st obviously being Terminator 2). The movie satisfied such a deep innate question in me. I have often had the will to believe "Life is not what it seems", that we are all on the wrong path wasting time reading, studying, earning and the "Architect" has kept us all busy with these mundane everyday chores of life. I was so confident that any day, any day now I would step on this real piece of information - that we are living a lie, that this is a dream, that we have been looking at it all wrong our whole lives, that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth but the other way round, that our entire thinking needs to take a major hit. This thought of mine was blown up and presented to me and to the world as a US$463M grossing movie, that plagued into this very subconscious and gave us what we wanted on a platter. That we might be having a desk job in an office where we are just another person in a cubicle; but we are definitely "so much more than what meets the eye", that just may be, just may be we are "The One".

When I was 15 years old, the doctor told me I had appendicitis and it needed to be operated. After the shenanigans, I was operated on and my mum told me that the operated appendix was sent to the lab to check if it were malignant, standard protocol.Weirdly enough I day-dreamed that it was cancerous, and that that's why my life had not been how I would have liked it to be - I didn't have great many friends, I didn't do as well as I would like in my studies, I wasn't very athletic/sporty, I wasn't a musical/dance prodigy like I would like to be, I sketched ordinary like every other kid. I thought this was the answer that I was waiting for all 15 years of my life.7 days later mom informed me rather reluctantly it wasn't, like it was obvious that I was healthy. How could I tell her that she had just dashed my perfect alibi to pieces?

I am 26 now, I am still healthy. I have suffered enough losses to drive a person insane yet I am not (maybe that's what is wrong with me! That's an article for a different day I guess). I am still not a musical / dance prodigy, I am still not athletic / sporty, I am still exactly everything I thought I was that made me just another girl when I was 15 years young. I still don't have that magical answer - and somehow I have always waited for that perfect answer that would make life seem sensible / fair for without it life just seems like an endless charade of meaningless acts of being mean, robbed and looted of your sanity.

Mario Puzo said, "...with some impunity, insult an older man who has already been humiliated by life itself and will not take to heart the small slights of another human  being. But a young man thinks these offenses mortal."

That was me when I was a teenager, I wouldn't settle for mediocrity even though I myself was mediocre. The dream that was so alive, approachable and glimmering in my eyes, that I could taste it when I blinked; has been carved out with a butcher's knife while I was screaming and writhing in pain, yet no one could hear me. They were silent screams of desperation and frustration, no one heard me for there was no one to hear me. I was in my own social vacuum bubble and like "Tom" of "Tom & Jerry" fame; I had locked the door to that one and ate the key to make sure no one entered or left.

I asked my mum once, "When someone writes a story and sees it enacted to the dot of its depression & frustration does it sadden the creator with the misery of their story, the misery of their characters? Or do they enjoy how beautifully the spectacle plays out?"

Mum very calmly answered, "They marvel at their artwork."

I retorted, "Is that how God feels?"

She replied very wryly, "Of course!"