When I give the Word.

I was taking my daily walk with a friend, biting into the delicious chocolate frostik, when suddenly she said something and i replied pretty dramatically with a few heavy words here and there. She stood there and stared at me for a second, giving me a 'what the hell is wrong with you' look. i said, "well, I'm a writer, I'm allowed such things." I've never refered to myself as a writer ever before, and i doubt i can for atleast another 5 years. But that one comment led me to think, why at all, did I say that. Well now, I'm not particularly a boaster, nor do i actually think of myself as such ( does this comment make me one?).I do not do cool things like play an instrument, dance all those complicated dance forms, click away to glory with an expensive DSLR, or play with colours and preserve a view on canvas. I want to confess though I take pride in calling myself a writer. She asked me, "dude, how can anybody write, I mean why do you write at all".

Well, here goes. I SUCK at expressing myself, I think writing covers that area. Or so it should. Apart from that, it opens a completely new world of possibilities. You can be anything, say anything for or against anyone, and they'll be reading your blog liking it. That is the power of the Word. When Written properly it has power to move nations. Gandhi, long back used this and sent a letter to Hitler. Martin Luther King made extensive use of it, so did a certain bored female who had nothing better to do. writing is actually a very twisted thing, its like wet clay, mould it in anything you want. If read carefully, it can probably map the writer's brain right in front of you.  It is like an eternal private joke with yourself (yea that's forever alone talk). Anyway, imagine the power one can get, by merely twisting words.

Also, to a writer, it doesn't really matter whether people like what they write, because if you start writing for yourself, you don't care. People might have different reasons for writing, some really serious ones, some for soul searching, some also to wile away time. Me? I don't have any such fancy motives. No i don't want to take over the world, I'm not a lonely little girl in a big bad world, nor do I have to put across a message that will make your life easier, reader.
I'm just,Me. I am Shivani Bansal, and Writing makes me happy.

The Mighty Me

I walked the sea of red,  shrouded by the gold gleam,

The weight upon my head, bore me down every second I stepped.

The sceptre in my hand, and the velvet coat,

Followed the girl in white, as she swung her flaxen rope.

Dropped to the chest of the man I felled,

Her eyes pouring down on me, with diamonds of grief.

Did the right thing, I took 20 heads

 my kingdom, grateful.

Her eyes took mine, and held them like gravity

Told me a hundered stories with but a single drop,

Caressing her cheek.

Slowly slid her hand to her father’s side,

Touched the hilt and made it pure.

The sabre kissed her neck as she made rubies.

The rings I bore, the pride.

I watched it settle to a pebble sitting there.

As she gave her head, she took mine,

Buried it 6 feet under, and shamed.

I drank that night, the elixir drinking me,

Saw her eyes, as they bore into the stone I had in me.

Pierced it like the sword at my hip,

Gleamed like the gems I had.

I took to white, at the sacred ground, bowed my head.

Walking the path of destiny, years after I gave up my stones.

I saw her, the girl in white, looking down upon me.

Stabbing me with her eyes, tearing down

The Mighty Me.

Giant of The Sea

She fell down the rabbit hole,

 scraping her arms against the wall.

In over her head, she couldn’t find a way,

That’d lead her closer to the ray,

Of the giggling sunlight that bounced off the water,

That reflected off the scales of the Giant of The Seas.

With a seductive eye, he laid upon her,

The venom rushed through her like exhilaration.

She’d fall from the skies into his arms,

Be lashed and bloodied, her mane flowing,

Like water on her shoulders, and velvet on his face,

She’d fall towards him and into his arms.

She saw the sights, of a story untold,

As she fell down the bottomless hole,

She saw the things of past before, of things that might,

Again behold, the sight of her falling ashore,

Near the light she thought she’d be,

Into the arms of The Giant of The Sea.

My world or yours.

It is a town that you'll probably read on the back of a Hindustan lever product, like an outlet, and forget as soon as you graduate to the ingredients or even before. I don't know. But its a town where hundreds of girls in a hijab are educated. A town where by the chandragiri river 5 college going students would sit on the shore, under the bridge, and throw stones in the water. A place rightfully called the 'God's own country' houses such a town called Kasaragod. It has open fields where the grazing cows are disturbed by the nonchalant kids playing cricket. A place where you find houses of all possible colours and sizes, a place, a reflection of modern India where a small town life and city life goes on parallely. Where people are willing to help random strangers accustomed to concrete jungles cross the real ones in slippers. Where coconuts and big mansions are a daily sight. A state, longitudinaly located at the shores of the Arabian sea, kerala has two main sects of people. Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. Now this is a very abstract distinction that I could make to know better about the state as a whole. The town, Kasaragod, redefines simplicity as never before. It almost makes you wonder what if you were in place of a random stranger you see walking on the road, going to school. How different would life be. Its almost amazing to think how precisely things work out for people, because even one little change could lead to completely different life journey with new goals and accomplishments. With new concerns, contexts, worries and personalities. But here I am sitting in an air conditioned innova, with headphones on, writing this, rather than that girl in a hijab with a packet from a grocery shop , walking home and wondering about what to cook for the night.
This in a sense leads of to conclude that people live in their own heads. Every single person has a different world and different perception towards life. It is difficult to understand because of its large magnitude, in terms of the whole world. But then again, our brains can only process so much. Or can it?

Into the night

Im here, on my way back home from manipal and I just crossed a place called ansoti, which probably doesn’t even figure on the map. Frankly I’ve had a history with trains, when I was a kid and a train would come on the platform I would be amused how I felt that I was moving and train wasn’t. Then physics happened and I realized that it wasn’t something magical about me, but something called relative velocity. Then came a time when, whenever a train came on a platform it was time for vacations to end and it was time to go back to hostel. Back to my friends, back to what we called ‘central jail’ but wept like, well girls, when we left. Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya.

Then came a phase when the whole meaning of travelling in trains changed for me. It stopped meaning what it usually does and became travelling in locals in Mumbai. It meant fighting for place to stand even when there were seats available(who am I kidding-they usually weren’t).It meant hanging out of the doors and reaching the destination in one piece, it meant earrings for Rs.5 and vada pav for another 5.

Trains have always brought about a rush of memories to me, and at the same time, creating new ones- real and hypothetical. Now, when I sit in one, I realize how miniscule I am, there are so many different lives, so many different peoples and their own different world who come and travel together. When I was a kid, at the end of a journey I would probably have made friends with people in mine and next two compartments. Now,  here I am, sitting on my own little berth and writing. Trains are like an intersection of so many lives completely different from each other. It is that common point where everyone exists in equilibrium with others. They have different backgrounds, different reasons to travel, different destinations, but at that point they learn to co-exist. That is human nature, I think under all the fights and everything we are as ONE. We are like grass blades, separated at the tip, but conjoined at the very root.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Soulful Music, Or a Musical Soul?

How good it feels when you are listening to your favourite piece of music and you can point out/ predict the minutest change in rhythm. For me, music has been an ultimate bank of emotions where one could find, overwhelmed and subtle, expressive and deadpan emotions. It is like a time Machine which once opened will fill you with all the emotions you once felt when you heard that song, you might not remember the context itself, but the music would remind you of all the things you experienced that time. It might be a visit to your hometown, a teary goodbye, or even the sight of your crush. It is, in fact, amusing how a simple set of sounds tactfully spaced can bring about a stream of memories you might have consciously, or subconsciously , pushed to the back of your mind. Somehow it envelopes you in its soulful beauty and induces different emotions in different people.Some People may feel more energetic and inspired while the others could get completely lowdown, some might even completely stop listening to that particular song or artists if it reminds them of something they can't let go of. I think, it is not the content of the song, but the sound of it that brings about the innermost memories in people. It is the music that lulls you into its own world which somehow is entwined with your own. It is the rhythm of beats which resonates with that of your own soul and makes you feel in harmony with your own self. Music is a pathway to your soul, or has it always been there?

Resting not in peace

Very recently i realized being peaceful and sitting in peace are two different things, just like keeping quiet and being silent, or maybe listening to something and hearing something. For economics students it might be easy if i say that being peaceful is a flow concept. But when i come to think of it, i doubt that any normal person is peaceful, ever. 99% people let the environment around them affect their moods, and if they sit somewhere quiet, or beautiful, or someplace that might get them in touch with their own being, they are sitting in peace. But it is only the 1% of people who find the world within themselves and are the ones who are peaceful, or live in peace if you may. And the more i mention this word, realization sinks deeper that peace is a highly improbable state to achieve these days. The reason still being unknown to me, i would partially blame the technology like everybody else does. What intrigues me most, is the fact that , knowing all this, we don't even TRY  to be in a state of nothingness. When someone says Im resting, they probably mean that they are relaxing their muscles, or lying down to stabilize blood pressure, but never do they stop for a second, and THINK. Or more precisely try NOT to think consciously or sub consciously. Never do they try to be at peace with themselves, never do they stop judging every tom dick and harry who walks their way, never do they try to REST IN PEACE.