Resilient Hope

Everyone is latching on to empty hope. Hope is what matters, regardless of whether it is realistic or not. Hope is what keeps everyone going and not give up. Hope is what adds wrinkles of dreams to our minds. “This is how life will be afterwards,” everyone says. Everyone thinks it’ll all be over in a month. A month passes. A year. A year passes. Ten years. Ten years pass. It is still the same, but hope still remains. Why does hope still remain? Why is hope so resilient? People break, their resilience breaks, but hope stays. The world has changed irreparably, things will never be the same. But hope… hope does not care. It keeps going, and it keeps people going. 

What happens when hope breaks? When hope gives up? What happens then? Will we ever see that happen? I am curious about the nature of hope. I wonder why, despite little pockets of despair everywhere around the world, the sum total gives rise to hope. What makes up collective hope? Why, when we feel like the world is ending, why do we see it stay alive? 

The Curtain Rod

The curtain rod at our place keeps falling out of place. One of my greatest fears is accidentally stepping on a curtain or yanking it and hearing a crash on the top of my head with a jumble of curtains around my head clouding my vision and making me confused and disoriented. This has been a problem in every house I have lived in, for some reason. The sockets for the rods just aren’t stable—they refuse to stick with the wall.

Every time I look at the drawing room curtains at the two edges of a long rod kept in place over the glass doors, my mind starts spinning as it visualises a spinning curtain rod. The rod transforms into a see-saw, and the curtains at its two edges are engaged in a sort of two-dimensional tug of war as they both try to get to the floor.

The Earth is Flat

Joe is a man who lives at the top of a large mountain. Life is simple and harsh on the top of a mountain. It is about survival. Joe buys vegetables and meat and milk and beer from a shop down the street. Joe is also the public transport system of the top of the mountain. He gets his money from carting people around the top of the mountain. 

What gives Joe a reason to live? Talking to the people he carts around, asking them what makes them happy. They say talking to Joe makes them happy. Happiness is a circle on the top of the mountain. It is not flat. 

When Joe looks down and into the distance, Joe sees a mountain sloping down, and then clouds. Joe thinks the Earth is a mountain all the way down, down below the clouds. That is what he sees, and so that must be true. 

Sometimes the top of the mountain receives visitors from below the clouds. They say they come from a place that is all flat and then all you can see is water till infinity. They call that place a beach. Joe does not believe them. If they show him a picture, Joe says the picture is fake. The Earth is a mountain for Joe, so it must be a mountain for everyone. The Earth is a mountain floating in space. 

Why does Joe believe in the existence of “space”, if he has never left the top of the mountain? Why does Joe believe the meat comes from animals who grew up below the clouds, if he has never seen them? One day I will ask Joe. One day I will ask him why all you can see below the clouds isn't a pile of meat.  

Blue and White Echoes

I look at simple things and write about them. Where is my mind? Walking through a Hindi song, trying to grasp home. But my words want to run in front of me, past what I see. What do I see? I’m trying to focus on a cup in front of me. A cup, blue and white. The handle is white, and the bottom is white, but what makes it distinguishable is the recurring pattern in blue. It seems more like a pattern in white over a blue background. It could very well be a blue pattern, though. Why does my mind feel this way? What makes some shapes stand out from others?

Backgrounds are rectangular. They are bigger than all else. Sounds a little counterintuitive, considering backgrounds often lie in the background, ignored. But they are the biggest thing that we see, that we perceive. 

Anyway, white cup, blue background, white pattern with recurring circles. If you go approach the circles so that you are near enough and the circle is all you see, the white circle becomes the background. Finite blue background to infinite white background. And then there are patterns in blue on that circle. One big blue cross, and then echoes of that cross. The cross echoes in all four directions, so that it looks like one blue echo is eating the next white echo and so on and so on. After all, all echoes feed on each other. each first echo eats the next, and each next echo is born from the first. 

The Fan

The fan keeps on rotating. Why does it love the ceiling so much? Why doesn’t it just fall off—a mess of wires peeking through the hole that is the mouth of the ceiling? It almost seems like its rotation gives it energy to keep holding on to the ceiling. A helicopter flying upwards, but slowly so that it doesn’t break the ceiling. Why do we imagine that the ceiling holds the fan when it’s clearly the fan pushing upwards on the ceiling? The thought gives me discomfort. A push is discomforting, a pull is natural. 

The Trees of Delhi

There is something special about the trees of Delhi. What is it about them that makes them so different from the trees of New York, that makes me miss them? Is it the trees I miss or the way their leaves adorn the ground with their shadows? Am I attached to the colour of the sunlight that seeps through the trees? My imagination is filled with that evening yellow that soothes you. Or is it about the colour of the ground? It complements the shadows, after all. The colour of cement, or the feeling that the ground is made of cement. A stubbly grey is what I’m thinking of. Maybe there’s something about how the colours of the trees go with the various other colours of Delhi. Or how the colours of the trees go with the various sounds and smells of Delhi. All I can think of is some kind of music in the air—music composed by the variety of people around you. What I’m thinking of might not just be the pleasure I get from sight. The synesthesia involved is beautiful. Or is everything just about nostalgia? Nostalgia that grips all your senses. 

Psychedelic Universe

I close my eyes. I see the mountains, and I am on top of one. The sky seems to blend with the mountains, even though the sky is grey and the mountains are white. My eyes search the end of the world but still can’t see a soul. The mountain feels higher than before. The wind grows stronger and the darkness grows. The darkness is mysterious, hiding everything, which is why it seems infinite. 

Music plays in the background. Is it just in my mind? I hear strings. When I imagine each string moving, I feel it on me. A vibration moves through me, the music is part of me. It is coming from inside me. How do I describe the sounds? They are sweet, but not exactly so. The best way to describe them is by condensing them into a harmonic force. A scraping feeling. They make you breathe faster, but in the best way possible. 

I think I am hugging the sky. I think I am visualising infinity in an infinitely less amount of time. The closeness of the hug expands my mind. I look at the mountains again. I was looking at them the whole time. The euphoric feeling enveloping me makes me think I am looking at everything all at once. It makes me one with infinity.

The mountains are covered with snow, with brown and black rock peeking through. The dark patches pinch my mind, somehow make me feel like I am even further high up. I open my eyes. 

Or do I? I think they were open this whole time.