Monday, 3 February 2014

Let's Chat About Death

I have written about this subject before and that was a long time ago, I suppose in a way it’s a nice thing to know I don’t have to address this issue too often in my life. I have always said love and death are two uninvited guests and most of the time love enters your life and produces unimaginable pleasure and death; well quite the opposite, grief and pain, which you are never, prepared for. I have
also come to believe over the years that there are moments when those that love you the most also hurt you the most. So in fact we are basically living in this circle of pleasure and pain. How you choose to handle it and who you feel is worth suffering for is really a personal thing, which only you can answer.

Death can be a guest that arrives with prior warning too, so if you have a sick old relative who is in final stages of cancer, it’s pretty much a transparent warning of mental preparation to be ready for the ultimate result. We usually allow our minds to adjust to the knowledge and imagine how life will be if that person is no longer with us, we even become less selfish and want them to just be out of their suffering. In the end death seems like the best possible solution to this treacherous disease your dear one is going through. 

What happens when death announces itself completely uninformed and worse of all, it takes the life of a young healthy person. I believe there is no clear answer to this question. It’s Gods Will as we have read and heard time and time again. Can we honestly let God off the hook every time such a case is heard of? Excuse my inappropriate insinuation, I do have faith in Him and also pray for forgiveness. Nevertheless, it’s very difficult to accept death when those left behind are spouses, young children, unborn babies and parents. The rest of the world will mourn and make peace with the demise of this young person, but what about the immediate nucleus who have lost a key piece to their puzzle of life? A collapse occurs in the life of these individuals and the science of karma is questioned yet again. 

I agree that the person who passes away has completed his karmas in life and once their account is settled, it is time for them to go home. I believe in this spiritual scientific theory. I also believe good young people leave us far earlier than others and apparently the explanation for this is simply that God has sent pure souls down to earth in order to clear away darkness (which He has also created himself) and once these “pure” souls have completed their duties and cleansed enough on earth, they are called back to join God. I honestly try very hard to understand this theory and some days it makes perfect sense. Then there are days when I am just devastated and none of the spiritual seeps through and all I can think of to comfort myself is how our body and flesh also get tired and simply want to give up.

Can you control the mechanics of your body? I don’t think you can and what you really can never know is when the heart will stop beating and the rest of your organs just put their hands up. Medical science and spiritual science are forever playing a game of right and wrong. What one needs to understand is that even if a soul can live on, in the real world we cannot live without the physical body. We will miss the person in it’s entirety and the wife will miss her husbands body and his warmth that makes her feel safe at night, the child will miss the man who plays football with him, a mother will miss the conversations with her son and so on. 

Accepting death was never easy and it will continue to be the hardest truth of our lives. Are we ever prepared for death, well not at all? 

It may be true that the purpose for which the person who dies has been accomplished, and he / she has achieved all they desired on earth, but what remains unchanged is the contract they signed up for is still unfinished. God may have put a disclaimer on the contract, but there is never a waiver in the terms and conditions to say that one can leave as and when they please and no penalties will be incurred. There is always a loss and this is the loss I find exceedingly difficult to fathom. What wrong has the unborn child done, to come into this world and have a mother who is in grief and no father altogether. Is that the karma of an unborn child or is it the karma of the mother who is bearing the child in her womb? 

It is a great mystery we will never know in our living days and when we finally do discover our answers, well we are no longer able to share them with our loved ones.

From all this morbid talk I have learnt that life is indeed too short, far more beautiful than we think, you have no idea what’s waiting you at the end of the road and if we are unable to actually understand death in it’s result, should we not say all the things we cannot say if death has taken over?

I may die tomorrow, this is a fact and no one can question me on this statement. However, if I am alive today I wish to think that people will one day remember me as a good person. It’s funny how when we are alive, we are tirelessly trying to bring together all those people that will not shake hands on something, just because they choose not to get along. At my funeral though, you can bet anything that all those people and many more will be there and most probably be making heavy-hearted conversation at the cost of my death. So we come back in a circle once again. Love and Death are uninvited guests to a party of some sort, and bring people together on earth to celebrate or mourn. 

Don’t let your death be the celebration to bring your loved ones together. If God has a plan and he does bring good souls on earth to make them eliminate darkness from others lives, be that light and spread the love you may not be able to spread tomorrow; for who knows what’s in the offing! I do not wish to speak of you in past tense; I prefer to love you in the now. 


Saturday, 1 February 2014

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Untitled 2

A dream is a wish your heart makes
Action is the command your mind takes
Response is the way your heart shakes
Improvement is when the soul wakes
Results are real, not fakes

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Negatively Positive

Failures are merely more memorable experiences
Perfection is the edit button in your head that sometimes needs to go on pause
Tears are necessary to detoxify the soul
A good cry indicates that you are still alive and not living dead
Pain is strength being tested
I haven’t lost my way; my directions have just changed
An answer need not be further than in your gut
Disappointments are a reminder to make new appointments
A Monday is as beautiful as a Sunday, for they both promise a new Day
I’m not upset with you; I’m merely getting to know you better

Thursday, 9 January 2014

Tears (Inspired by a character from the film "12 Years A Slave")

A salty warmth
Trickles down her cheeks
Words on tip
Curl back in
Shivery spasms
Tighten her lips

A waterfall of hurt
Heavy lids
Glassy eyes
Her soul slowly dies

Soft whimpering sounds
Drops of grief
Some lost
Some found
Quiet weeps
To ascending wails

Her heart can no longer hold
Hold back no more
Her tears bring warmth
To the icy cold

I've lost my children
Let me lament
It's my torment

I've lost my freedom to die
At least let me cry

Sunday, 29 December 2013

13

It’s gone away in a blink this year that was 2013. I admit in the pit of my stomach I did know 13 was going to be a lucky year for me, despite my superstitious dislike for the number in general. Nevertheless, unequivocally 13 was the year for Thoughts Translated. A dream that was a size and half too big for my petite structure has embodied me like a Lycra glove and kept me busy for the past few months and hopefully many more to come. Thank you to Him for leading the way and thank you to all those beings that smothered their energy all over me and continue to inject me with daily inspiration.

Aside from the obvious boom in my life, I like to reflect as we all do on a year that has gone by and offer my Thoughts to all of you.

As with all my years, 13 taught me a lot. I have often addressed friendships in my writing and given the highest regard to this relationship after family. I have lauded my own fortune and bragged about how lucky I am to have certain individuals in my life. 13 has possibly been the biggest test of my life as far as this subject goes. I have written about the theory that encompasses this relationship but 13 made me live a lot of what I actually wrote about. It’s been a live journey where I was the protagonist of peaks of pain and pleasure. I learnt that people don’t actually change; the truth is we just get to know them better. This is applicable in the good and the bad. In the end what I concluded was that one can never really know anyone that well and therefore you must never get totally naked for anyone unless they are prepared to accept and love your soul. I speak in a bitter tone, but in all honesty the truth is often a bitter pill, but once you’ve swallowed it, the effects it has on you as a person are filling you with peace and harmony.

Continuing with peace and harmony, I learnt in 13 that your mind and body need to be in sync. You cannot live with your body if your mind is not happy with it. I apply this theory to all aspects. If you feel you look fat, it’s your mind that’s sending those thoughts in you and therefore you mistreat your body to try and lose weight. You may control it in the short term, but eventually you gain it back because the mind is never completely happy. Similarly, if you are a sports person and push your body harder than it can handle, again your mind is playing the power game and it’s all good to push your limits and try to be super woman, but it’s also sensible to listen to your body and press the stop or pause button at the right time. You have a body that you must feed in the physical sense, but you must also feed it positive energy. This positive energy only comes from your mind. When the body or mind collapse, the other is left in the limbo and it’s very hard to survive just on one.

13 showed me that second chances are golden. We all make so many mistakes everyday, and we quite often learn from them too. Ideally one would not make the same mistake twice but a lot of us do. In our relationships we tend to hurt those that we love the most and if life gives you a second chance to remedy this hurt, consider it a blessing.

13 asked me to pay attention to the details and spend time alone. You know when magic occurs; it tends to occur silently and can either be at super sonic speed or at snails pace. Either way the key is to pay attention. I saw my nephew walk in a matter of seconds, I produced a book in silence, I went back to running by carefully analysing my defects. It is very important to spend this time alone and separate yourself from the solutions that the world offers you. A tailor made solution will always fit and last longer. Therefore, giving yourself this time alone helps you to create the magic for yourself and at the same time you can focus with your personal lens and not the universal world lens.

13 took off many masks. Positive thinking is paramount and I stick by it. However, often we engineer ourselves so harshly to believe in the positive of everything that we forget to actually believe it’s okay to not be okay.  This trap we fall into makes us wear a mask. Layers get added on until one day we actually collapse from the toxic layers of plastic you have applied on yourself. There’s nothing wrong in failing, because one only fails after they have tried, and trying is better than giving up.

13 was an extremely technological year for me, I mastered the art of being active on more than six social media networks and using their benefits to increase my blog followers. In this process I observed the artificial nature of online marketing and the disastrous effects it can have on inter personal relationships. I openly admit to loathing IM and all such forms of communication. I use it because otherwise I would be off the wagon of survival in this day and age. Nevertheless, I personally make sure I speak or have a face-to-face conversation with all those people who matter to me and find the time to do it.

13 taught me how to let go and forgive myself. Giving to others is my motto but I know I can only give so much. Therefore, I give what I can, take what they can offer me and forgive them and myself at the end of it. It’s a simple mathematical equation that in the end always leaves you with no regrets. Say sorry, say thank you and smile.

In 13 I discovered how knowing yourself better will help you to know others. I think I am still discovering myself actually; finally coming to terms with my real curls, my not so perfect figure, my weakness for old Bollywood music, my inability to have a cup of coffee at home and always at a coffee shop, my secret love for retro book stores, my desire to buy all the sports shoes in the world, the kick I get from defying my comfort zone and so many other unpublished secrets that each of us has.

All in all 13 started off slow and steady, gave me some good tests mid year, slowed down and relaxed me fairly well towards the summer, elated me so much in the autumn and simultaneously kicked me hard in the ass towards the end of the year. Thank you 13 for your lessons, gifts, warnings, eye openings and above all endings that promise new beginnings.


I read last week that the new trend for 2014 is not to have resolutions but to have a theme. A theme you stick by and follow all your plans bearing in mind certain thumb rules that qualify your theme. Can we all do that for 14? I will try my best and what I promise is to keep sharing Thoughts, good or bad. Happy New Year to all and thank you!

PS. 13 also taught me that 14 is on it's way and if you were not able to do something this year, don't give it up and pursue it in the new year. :)