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I was always scared of roller-coasters and rides that went too far up into the sky. I was scared of a lot of things, and yet I did them eventually. I’m still scared of a lot of things but I’m sure if I want to, I’ll manage to do them. I’ve learnt one thing over the years. It’s a really simple but convoluted lesson—lie to yourself. Your brain has spent years developing the mould you’re stuck in. It was to protect you, and it worked. It served its purpose. Now, you’re stuck and you want to break out of the mould but you can’t because of the same narrative. It is the same loop of the same things you’ve always told yourself. This is where you lie. You lie to yourself and tell yourself that you’ve never been scared of the thing you think scares you. It takes a little bit of convincing, a bit of a nudge and a leap of faith but it works, more or less. We’re always in flux and always growing, but only if we allow ourselves to grow. Sometimes, the stories we tell us about ourselves are our biggest obstacles, really. How do you lie to yourself though? A friend’s comment comes to mind, “Close your eyes, if you’re dead scared, but you have to try that coaster once. You’ll want to get on it again. Trust me.”

For a long while I can’t put a strict number on, I embraced grey. You could find grey in all I did and all I had. The colour, or the logical lack of it, dominated everything that went on in my life.

There was grey on the clothes I wore, and the shoes I kicked, and the bag I put my stuff in and yet, it did not stop there. For you know, grey was in my decisions and my experiences.

I made choices—ambiguous ones. I did things that did not fit well on either side. That was the worse kind of grey for someone who views life in binary, but I was stuck. You see, I was walking a fine line.

In everything I did, I walked the line. A misstep here and I’d get splashed in overwhelming colour; a slip there and I’d be covered in the nothingness of black. The line, however, was always coloured grey. The line started to feel like home.

On a random evening some weeks ago, I pulled open my closet door, and I ignored the stack of grey t-shirts sitting in the corner waiting for me to pick one of them up. Without thinking, I wore the most colourful of all my clothes that day; I wore maroon.

I met you that evening, and since then, grey doesn’t feel so attractive anymore, and since then, colour doesn’t feel so overwhelming anymore.

One morning, I woke up. I woke up only to look out the window at the sky which had not felt bright in a long while. I woke up to a kiss—an honest one. I opened my eyes but I decided to not get up immediately. Not out of laziness, no. On the contrary, I wanted to savour how peachy I felt, how inspired I was, and how happy I knew I could be now that I had felt it so clearly. One morning, I woke up to a sky that felt brighter and bluer than any I had seen before in my life. One morning, I woke up happy.

Perhaps, I dream too little or maybe, I know too much about how the world works but when I’m asked about the kind of writing that I want to pursue or do, the first answer that comes to my head is—an utterly selfish one. I don’t do things for others. I don’t write for others. My head is far too heavy to think about anyone else’s life. Any change someone ever attributed my words to have brought in their life, I strongly believe, would’ve occurred anyway. If not for the nudge of my words, then by someone else’s, and if not for that, then eventually, of their own accord. The clay’s virtue is to take form irrespective of whose hand is on the wheel as long as the wheel keeps spinning.

I looked at the sun, slowly turn from the morning pale to a bright yellow. I watched the sky, change colours about ten times in ten minutes. I watched a man, calling birds as he threw food in the river. I watched the birds, flocking and squeaking in unison. There was more to life, I thought, as I sat down to express it as best as could. There was more to life, I learned, as I failed to find words like I usually would.

I do not know what all of you talk about. I do not know much of bigger ideas. I am nothing but a small man who knows his coffee and hopefully, his words. To have an ambition, I do not know. All I know is I like doing things without thinking where they lead me. I am nothing but a small man who knows his coffee and hopefully, his words. To love someone, do not know. Despite my escapades, I am unaware and in my ignorance, I am learning. I am nothing but a small man who knows his coffee and hopefully, his words. To save the world, I do not know. On my best days, I can barely hold my head and myself up high. I am nothing but a small man who knows his coffee and hopefully, his words. To be happy, I do not know. I smile this second and I cry the next repeating endlessly the chore of everyone before. I am nothing but a small man who knows his coffee and hopefully, his words.

As exciting as eventfulness is, and as much of a learning experience the last few years have been, I found myself emotionally exhausted, and always en garde. If you’ve ever walked in a bustling city, you know how you’re always looking over your shoulder. That is how the last few years felt. Even today, I read older journal entries and can’t help but wonder how much was happening all the time. Maybe, it was all in my head. It is unimportant where the storm brewed. The important thing is that there was a storm, or at least, the uneasiness it brings. Perhaps, I’m too hopeful and this is exactly what the calm before the storm means but I like the calm. I like flowing freely through the day without a care about what will happen next. There are small ups and downs that keep coming but no existential war is waged and no larger chaos is handled. Even if this is a phase, I like it. I like knowing I’ll not be sitting on the floor on a random evening because everything seems too heavy and overwhelming. It’s just a mellow sort of feeling; you know, the way streamers flow wherever the breeze makes them go? That’s how I feel right now—not in control, not wanting to be in control—just flowing, calmly.

You’ll do good, kid. You’ll grow up just fine. I know going up to people and saying a simple Hi seems like the end of the world but you’ll make friends. You’ll make friends who stick by your side for years. I know you act all high and mighty as if you’re somehow better than them but you secretly wish they invited you just once. They will. You’ll go out and have fun and travel and go places and do things. You’ll do everything. Don’t be overwhelmed. Just keep doing what you’re doing. The idea is to be blatantly yourself. You’ll learn. You’ll be better. Then, better is all you’ll seek. Even if you don’t change at all, the bottom line is, you’ll do good. Everything that feels like the end of the world will eventually be a little stumble out of your comfort zone. Maybe you’ll fall, but you’ll get up. The world won’t end. One day, in what will feel like a hundred years from now, I hope you sit and look back on how difficult you thought it all was, and I hope at that moment you tell yourself what you should’ve said all those years ago, “You’ll do good, kid. You’ll grow up just fine.”

…and sometimes you never find closure. You can ask for it, demand for it or even beg for it. You can throw the largest tantrum in the history of tantrums only wishing to come full circle but it won’t be that way. Do you know what you will find though? You’ll find friends and a table filled with beer. You’ll find yourself meeting people you thought you’ll never meet from places you may never see. You’ll start to spend nights under the stars more often than you ever thought you would. You’ll find a good place to go to every day. You’ll find a life you never thought you could create, and you’ll find yourself lifting yourself up to maintain it now that it’s there. You’ll find a lot of things if only you take a good look at them. If you do that, you’ll have an epiphany. Sometimes you don’t need closure; sometimes, you need a great breakfast to start a better day among a series of extraordinary ones, and that is enough. One day, finally, as you listen to a song on your morning commute, you’ll realise—closure wasn’t something you asked for; closure was something you gave yourself.

Hello, friend. I’m a work-in-progress. I’m a canvas with some strokes on it. I’m the dollop of paint that happened to fall on a corner.

Hello, friend. I’m the odd note that makes the piece go wrong. I’m the sheet of music, marked all over like it was done by an amateur.

Hello, friend. I’m the bad prose and the hollow plot. I’m the bland characters and that extra adjective.

Hello, friend. I’m a lot of things, and I was a lot of things. Before a dollop of paint, I was a blank canvas. Before the odd notes, I was a blank sheet of paper. Before the bad prose, I was an idea.

Hello, friend. One fine day, I’ll be a terrific painting, I’ll be a breathtaking symphony, and I’ll be an epic manuscript. Until then, bear with me as I rid myself of my imperfections.

Hello, friend. I appreciate you sticking around. Thank you.

Recently, before I sat to write, I decided to make some coffee in the usual routine. I noticed a crack had appeared on my coffee-stained mug, stretching through the base, and almost touching the side. I didn’t remember dropping the mug. I’ve always been most careful with it. It is the mug I use while writing, and it has been so for years. It broke my heart for a second. I checked it for a second, rather carefully. To my surprise, the crack didn’t break it. The crack didn’t matter, as long as the mug did what it was meant to do. It may break eventually, I thought, perhaps, devastatingly so but today wasn’t that day. So, I poured some coffee into it, and I began to write.

I thought the trick with time was to never have too much of it on my hands. The idler my moments, I believed, the idler my thoughts. It was in jumping from one task to another, and from one place to another, where I found peace, momentarily so, until I lost it again. That was when I learnt that it was neither in the abundance of time nor in the absence of it. I learnt, it was in the transition. It was in the movement. It was in that little moment between still here and almost there. That moment right there was my moment of peace. That was where I wanted to stay, always.

I often catch myself looking out of windows but not at anything in particular. You know, that moment when someone is just looking outside; staring. They’re not looking at something, just outside. You know, that moment at the end of the day, with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or a pint of beer in their hand, and they’re just looking outside from the porch or the window or the terrace. That little moment when they tell themselves, “Life’s good”. I often catch myself having one of those. I hope you do too.

I’ve learned that it’s my inherent nature to become dissatisfied with whatever goes on around and in my life eventually. So, I’ve learned how to embrace the phase where I am still in love with whatever goes on around in my life and create some record of how I felt so that I don’t forget when my nature kicks in. It’s been a week since I changed cities. It’s been a greatly challenging but epic week. I love this new phase, and I believe it is of utmost importance to share happiness. I’m happy. I may not be so tomorrow. I guess it’s with everyone. We often forget how we felt about something or how we felt on one particular day because of the phase, and in the end, we end up forgetting everything we really, truly cherished. It is my resolution, not a new years’ resolution but a personal quest to not just focus on but remember the good. It is important to remember it. You know what? We have it backwards. You focus too much on the good, you lose yourself when the good starts to disappear. You have to remember the good. It helps when it gets bad.

You’ll build homes where people were never meant to live. You’ll build homes in other people, on a particular table of a cosy café, on benches in parks no one visits anymore, and on streets you remember so well you could walk with your eyes closed. However, like all homes in the history of homes, you’ll leave them behind, and you’ll go further. Sometimes, the home will outlive you, and sometimes, you’ll outlive the home. It doesn’t matter which way it goes. If you come back and find the home isn’t there, a part of it will always stay in you, and if the home stands the test of time, anyone else who calls it one would find a part of you in it. Even if you return and the home still exists, somehow, it won’t feel the same. It won’t matter which one of you changed because home isn’t a place, a feeling, or a person; home is a moment in time.

There was a little boy. The little boy was digging. The shovel in his hand seemed a little too big for him, and the weather was cold, and there was a little sore right where the little boy’s little hand met the handle. The boy was digging.

A man passed him by, a slightly older man. This man believed the boy’s digging was hard work. He started clapping as he saw the boy dig further.

A couple of students were returning from their classes. They saw the old man clapping so they rushed to see what it was all about. They peeked and saw that there was a boy digging below, and so they started cheering for him.

The boy heard them and stopped for a second but then, he continued toiling. He dug further, and deeper. It wasn’t long before there was a crowd but the boy was so deep down below that he could only hear a faint echo of applause. That, and his constant striking of the Earth. He kept going deeper.

Until the boy got tired. He was exhausted. He dropped the shovel, and he sat on the soil below him. The ditch was dark, and it was only now he started to realise how the time had passed.

The boy looked up. “”Hey!”” He shouted. No one could hear him, and he still couldn’t remember why he was digging. He started climbing up. As he climbed, the crowd started to feel an err. The constant clinking of the shovel had stopped.

The little boy kept climbing out, and for a while, his world-view became that of the vertical tunnel. He could only see the circular top, and through it, he saw the urge to get out. After a long climb, he came out.

He huffed and puffed and looked around. Those who waited gave the boy some food, and water, and wrapped him in a blanket. A while later, they asked him why he was digging. “”I do not remember. I think I started on a whim, but that was years ago. Now, I am tired, and I want to sleep,”” the boy said.

The little boy went to his house, and climbed into his bed, and slept throughout the month. As he slept, the only thing he saw in his dreams was him in the ditch, digging.

One day, when he felt rested enough, he woke up. Then, on a whim, he picked the shovel up. He walked out of the door, and without a word to anyone, he started digging.

You know what? Sometimes life throws a curveball and there’s no other purpose besides one thing—to make you feel the worst gut-wrenching in the entire history of gut-wrenching. You’d be sitting at an arm’s length with someone you know like the back of your hand, and you’d not say a single word. You’ll sit there, both of you, pretending to be strangers. At that moment, nothing comes to mind—no self-help article, no psychobabble bullshit, no epic mantra for positivity, and surely not a verse of poetry. There comes only one thing, in that one hour, and that is one large cup of disappointment. Call it fate, if that helps you sleep at night but remember this, you’re only kidding yourself because this is your life—a banal ballad of baseless probabilities and numbers you can’t see. There’s no grand meaning; there’s just that day when life decides to throw a curveball, and nothing else matters.

So you know why you feel what you feel. So you understand why people do what they do. You’ve spent years, inside your own head, truly trying to develop a sense for it. You know now; you understand now.

But sometimes, you want to just let out a sigh or tear of cluelessness but you know yourself too well now. You may be clueless about everything but not about what goes on inside you.

And sometimes, you want to just let out a fit of anger because someone did something and something happened but you understand all of them well enough to let it slide. You may not understand everything yet but you understand people.

The problem is, you still feel what you feel and people still do what they do, and there’s not a damn you can do about it. So, you let out a sigh, and you keep walking. I’m sorry no one ever told you, buster, empathy is a double-edged sword.

I wish you a love like a chilly winter night where warm conversation in a warm blanket won’t let you let out as much as a sneeze. A love, like the first ray of sun on the otherwise misty and hazy hill which leaves its lifelessness in a second as it sees the yellow warmth over it. A love like the puppy who walks in that sunlight, feeling a plethora of feelings all of a sudden. I wish you a love like the one that makes him jump with joy as the morning sets in.

I wish you a love like the stormy sea. A love so passionate that it is ready to destroy even the hardest of rocks in its way. A love that feels so cold and often, so salty but is not afraid to splash around and make its mark on everything it touches. I wish you a love which doesn’t get calmer with the rain and only becomes more enticed to grow and consume everything within it. A love so fierce and free nothing compares to it.

I wish you a love like the little town where nothing ever happens. A love that is deceitful and cunning as the narrow alleys you enter to steal a moment of embrace. A love that makes you run away from the prying eyes of your friends who are all over town. I wish you a love like the warm cup of coffee in a fancy café and a love like sizzling street food. I wish you a love like the very life you have, eventful and spontaneous.

I wish you a love like the dry desert. A love where even when you’re alone and left behind, the feeling stays with you. A love like the last drop of water on a shrub which is never consumed rather protected. I wish you a love so fiery it turns everything bland and colourless, and which brings cracks to your life as it slowly leaves like that last drop on the shrub which despite all protection and shade, evaporates away under the blazing sun.

When all of it is said and done, I wish you a love that makes you get out of your bed and look at yourself in the mirror. A love so personal and strong it rushes straight into your heart as you stare at your reflection. A love for yourself so infinite, all those phoney infinities are put to shame.

I adore winters. Although, I’m always sick and unwell for most of them. I love the chill in the air, interrupted by gradual sips of tea, coffee, booze, and warm conversation. I love how ruthless the cold can get at times as you’re out and about, sitting with your friends, feeling the cold slowly spread around your entire body. Winters in the hills is another experience altogether. The misty roads in the morning and evenings. The slight hazy filter over the entire city. The feeling when you wake up in the morning and want to snuggle in the blanket for a while longer. The feeling when you finally hit the bed at night, and snuggle into the blanket yet again. All of that, and an over-abundance of extra warmth all around you. Everything slows down, and then just stays like that for a lot of months. That’s what I used to think earlier. It has come to my realisation lately that calm and cozy winters won’t make as much sense if the summers weren’t passionate and crazy. As I took yet another walk around town, embracing what is allegedly my favourite time of the year, I realised that you need to be spiraling for slowing down to make sense. With that epiphany, I appreciated summer which is something I had never done before, and maybe, just maybe, I missed the hyperactive energy and eventfulness that had disappeared as the chill began to set in around me.