Skipping meditation

When I first held her, I fumbled. She didn't come to me for I was not deft. I looked around to see if anyone was laughing. Assured, I returned to my endeavor.

I find myself nearly voodooed by her. My days are spent yearning for the evenings. All day, I long to get a grip of the witch. She sings to me, waves to me and smiles to me every time she passes my eye. It's as if she tempts me, and teases by disappearing for a split second. I crave not to let her off my sight, so I roll my eyes with her. But once she's behind my back, I'm restless. So I turn my wrists with fiercer animation and my legs have to oblige. I hop, I land, I hop, I land. My legs like it when they can feel the ground. But I can see her only when I'm off it. My heart is anxious. I don't want to lose sight of her and this fuels me to go faster. The firmness in her voice grows as she begins to whiz past me. The music now flows. If I close my eyes and listen to it, it's as if I'm being served lashes. But the pain is sweet.

And once the sweat begins to trickle down my forehead and wets my eyelashes, she grows resplendent. The feeble light of a setting sun, filtered by the sweat pearl impregnates the space between her and my eyes with colors as brilliant as a rainbow's. And the tale of striving turns into a saga of gratification. Now I can't feel the pain in my legs. I can't see the faces or hear the voices around me. My world has spiraled inwards. She emerges in her glory and I smile and lick bliss off my lips. She has kissed me. I have touched the zenith and I'm quenched. I halt. I'm panting. I lay her on the ground and sit by her side. Her passive self is serene and I touch her gently. Then drawing a deep breath in, I twitch my brow and rise up.

When I joined the neighborhood gym last month, for the nth time in last 5 years, once again with a 'firm' resolve to round my shoulders and flatten my lower abdomen, the trainer handed me a skipping rope. "3 sets of 100 and then come to me". I fumbled withe the first few. I looked around to see if anyone was laughing. Assured, I returned to my endeavor.

In three weeks' time, I have grown so fond of the rope and enchanted by what she does to me that I long to hit the gym like never before. The few minutes of insane skipping prepares not only my muscles but my mind to hit the machines. The routine is tiring and energizing at the same time. In my earlier attempts to learn meditation, I had come to associate stillness with the art. But this recent experience with the rope has taught me what I now call 'skipping meditation'.

SMOKE

Virein fancied lying in a big lounger, in an unlit room, before a huge LCD screen, his circumaural surround-sound headphones hanging by the skull, a remote in the right hand, a cigarette in the left; he took a liking to smoking with his cigarette dangling between the forefinger and middle finger of his left hand, felt a symbolism in what his shaky left hand finger did to the cigarette, rings of smoke waywardly rising up, much like the cigarette did to the colloids in his head. In darkness, in solitude and in burning tobacco, he sought and discovered repose. Light would bring to fore, malevolent visions, company chaotic emotions and abating cigarettes a fear of being harrowed of his delirious calm.

Awakened by thirst on a dry April night, he stood shaky, rubbing his brows and swallowing his tobacco laden saliva. His sweaty armpits and chest were itchy, and as he ran his fingers through his unkempt body hair, he felt his nails sharp, breathed a puff of warm air around and staggered to the fridge. As he gulped half a bottle of cold water, his body jittered and he sensed his soles burning; he spilled some water and stepped into the puddle and suddenly a wave of youthfulness ran up his stale whole. His one eye opened wide for an instant and a warm tear wetted it, he shut the fridge door, smeared other eye with his moist finger. Now he could see.

As he sat back on his bed, he felt like he was elsewhere before he woke up. He had been dreaming again. Of the faraway hill, the deserted hut with a slanting wooden roof, a creaky door, built of left over planks fastened with rusted nails and wire, which allowed but a steak of moonlight into the room, as Virein swiveled his head to music pouring in his ears and swooned eventually. He had just dozed off in his dream when he woke up. Yes, he could follow the trail.

He walked out to the next room, switched the CFL on and half closing the door behind him again, pulled his cane chair and settled into it with a cushion under his bums. Stretching his legs out, planting his bony feet on the table, he grasped the TV remote and started surfing the channels. The dim light from the adjacent room, lit half the wall in front of him, and that gave him the same eerie feeling as the moonlight in the hut. Leaning to his right, he found his pack of Marlboro lights. As he looked out at the tree through his window, he could sense the breeze playing with the leaves; he stared on for a while and then smoked away.

He made an effort to rise and walk out to the balcony. It was cool outside and the next drag brought him a gasp of pleasure as he wondered where the wind might take his smoke, mix it with scents of flowers in the night sky, odors of decaying bodies somewhere, blue-black smoke from the demons of road at night, the leviathan trucks and perhaps more little wisps of smoke breathed out by sleepy menaces running the menaces. And almost as if the wind clutched his wrist and drove him, he climbed up on the railing and began to imagine to fly, fly in search of his last puff of smoke and the one before that and ran his tongue on his dry lips, musing how it might taste if he inhaled it again with his mouth. In the small grooves in the grill, he fixed his feet and swung his arms wide, a gust of cool breeze hit him in the face.

Gusto!

He could fly!

He knew he could fly!

 

iPod bean-bag tea

I live in two worlds, or as I come to think of it, perhaps more than two but not one. I had spent the day, I hope my seniors at office never get to know about this, in the library scanning journal after journal, sticking to a book for a few minutes and searching for more the next moment, my iPod fixated in my ears, my mind fixated on the various contrasting lyrics, while my eyes scanned and absorbed more words, more phrases, as I attached meanings, separately to the words read off the books and the words poured into my ears via the iPod, which though I felt the desire to switch off more than once, but couldn’t.

Was I searching for peace in rumble, patterns in chaos?

I was half lost in the fantasy world, but half alive in the tangible world that pricks, to remind of its presence and either soothes by reassuring there is hard ground, not far from the wielding mud of the mystic world, or irritates by way of sad enlightenment that the other world is lost in translation as the half tired eyes open to frightening light.

I wanted tea.

I struggled out of the bean-bag which when I looked back at, was giving me a false sense of terror; bean-bags take the shape of our body and looking back at the large depression I had caused in the middle I was irked enough I had to feel my bum to reassure myself I had not grown drastically out of proportion.

I needed tea more. I walked up to the dispenser. I took two tea bags and added no sugar. I needed tea, I didn’t care if it was or not tas-tee!

It was caffeine my body had ordered and I obeyed.

Some people like to gulp their tea down, some like to take it in slowly, sniffing the aroma and gazing into vacant air. It’s about the sense of rejuvenation, the feeling of revival.

How I drink my tea, I have noticed, is often driven by my mood.

From the carefree laziness of the afternoon, an old familiar sense of unease was settling in. While I am not the best of disciples of discipline, missing deadlines I set for myself irks me no end. I wanted to get to my desk quickly and bury head into the paper I was reading and had left unfinished. So, I was gulping my tea.

Not good for the tongue. Burnt!
Not good for the palette. Burnt!

Dinner tonight, I thought, would not taste. Good in a way for I would have one temptation less to leave my chair and hit the mess. But I could still relish the aroma. A smile followed a frown. What could I do to keep my sensories in check? Pick a straw & suck up some hot tea and burn my nostrils!! What was I doing with my tea, I wondered. Was I smuggling back into the lazy fantasy world?

Nooooo
I shook my head and blinked my eyes twice and walked up to my desk.