Two Rivers that knew me

River 1:

The river had seen me, ready to jump off this world

She had watched in her flooded monsoon attire

Yelled for something more powerful to petrify my body

She stared at me, I stared back

A force pulled me,

I was floating on her

From the far-off bridge,

It seemed I was on a ship-deck

Ready to be guided to a place the river knew

She moved, I was stuck on that bridge

She didn't want me to come in her water

Sad

River 2:

This time the river knew me,
I jumped in her, years later,

Met her at a different place
The broad Ganges, she hugged me, pulled me in

I hugged her back, she yelled for no one to stop me

She was the widest, the calmest, the dearest

Pure water that sang about life and death

She carried me on her back, like a child,

The blue sunny sky above, it glided with the river

Down the river I went, under the Ram-Jhula

This time I was in the water, flowing down in the river

Happy

I made it through!

Weaknesses are hard to learn. Confidence is harder to relearn. I guess however strong you are, some things are bound to come crashing down on you. The only measure that marks your strength is whether you can stand even after a fall.
I might look like I am strong at standing through all my falls but I know weaknesses more. My weaknesses have stripped me of my confidence. More I pass through shadier times, frailer I find myself. My confidence is an old dusty rotting coat today. However, giving up on my confidence is a lost battle. I try with what little I have left every day. 

I don't still know how to put a straight face so easily. Believe me, I have days when  problems claw on me so constantly that I can cry about a falling tree leaf! I guess people go about their own ways to overcome the darker days. I just wanted to remember a thing that has kept me going. Someone pointed out to me that there are people with sadder things still fighting out there. People surviving many bitter experiences, so I should gather all my might to stand whatever fall I have had.
Life lessons are called so because you live through them, and you learn one all on your own. They are the hardest and most real lessons you will ever get. But I will look back and say, hey I made it through!

My love is not full circle

My love is not full circle

An attempt:

A point

A line

A slope

A curve

A crooked truth

But

Not a circle

Nothing where ends meet.

My love blows in the wind

Flows in the sea

Where does your love meet mine?

My love is not full circle.

A reality:

A smile

A laughter

A moment of silence

 A trial of grief

A suppressed frown

A heap of anger

But

Not a hug

Nothing where we meet.

My love crosses half the world

Traps you in your sleep

Where does my love not hurt you?

My love is not full circle

Girl on the go

It’s a shame that I live in such a society where girls are still evaluated as a potential employee not because she is most capable for the job but because she can manage time. It has never been a problem for a guy to take a job that requires late hours of duties or travelling away from home but for a girl the same things become bigger issues than they actually need to be. 

 If you are a girl who is as much educated as  a guy and wants to go out into the world and make something out of your life, you my dear friend have invariably faced this problem. I accept girls are biologically more fragile than a guy is. I accept the differences that god has given us by birth. However, if you are going to educate a girl in the same ways as you educate guys, and later on ask her to stay home because she is a girl, where is the fairness in that? It’s like you showed a small kid the gate of Disneyland and told them they can never go inside!

I had a conversation about gender disparities in the workplace with a male colleague one day. I caught him using a phrase such as “like a girl” to a guy. I felt like being a girl was like being a criminal or being weak and vulnerable. Upon a friendly confrontation, my friend says that, “Yes, guys and girls are equal, but can you go home after nine? If you can, then maybe we are equals!”I was dumbfounded.  So, being a girl we needed to follow the time factor theory. I knew we lived in a patriarchal society but I did not ever realize that before saying you are capable to do something in this society and you are an equal to your male counterparts, you need to realize that you wore a skirt! How disheartening is that?

Dear parents and society owners, please realize if you are going to raise your daughters with the same education and facilities as your sons, there will come a day when your daughters will want to go out like yours sons and employ their education to make a life. Be kind then, and let her do what is best for her. Guide her, don’t buy her a watch and tell her the time theory shit! Be brave and let her figure her life out because it was your fault in the first place that you taught her to dream big, now don’t stop the girl on the go!

Just a thought!

This is not a book review or a movie review or a journal. It is just what I wanted to be poured out of me.

I called in sick at work yesterday Today, it was the weekend. I read a lot these past two days and I watched a lot of movies. I have always felt so revived after taking such a break. I love them, both, reading and watching a movie.

I am always awed by the way a writer creates a character: A character that has a face, a body and a life. How can you so vividly create something that you have never seen or heard of?! How can you go out there and make a person? How do you get to know all the details of these people, their thoughts their lifestyles, the way they think, the way they dress, their likes and their dislikes?

Same with a movie, I am awed with how much an actor can feel the character, the urgency , the care , the warmth and bring it out on screen, every detail and make us believe in the make-believe.

I was reading 1Q84. I watched ‘50 shades of grey’ and I watched ’Philadelphia’ last night and then ‘Her’ today. I read and I watched and I read and I watched and I am so lost right now. Lost in existence between all the worlds I have seen. Moved; Stuck. I am happy for so much art in the worlds. It fills me! It makes me alive with so much energy that I can’t describe it.

When I love a book so much, I read a book slower, word for word, when it gets towards the end. I like to save it for longer, to savor it, To taste the word in my mind. I have cried when I have read a book that I was about to finish! I was scared I wouldn’t be reading it anymore. It’s like losing a person you have come to like so much. May be I sound so crazy, but I am not! May be I am! I feel so much better.

Rain Wrath

Rain is a self indulgent monster. It is the cacophonous conundrum of a thousand drops beating on the leaves of the trees in a dissonant droll. The only thing it knows how to do best is fall. It entertains itself over the fact that it can fall in a downpour or it can come off as a soft drizzle. It is the master of its mood.

Rain is merciless. When it rains, without leniency, it will drench us to our bones; No excuses of a forgotten umbrella or a day in a white overall, it will drum over you too! Rain is a formidable fable. So you better be accoutred when you step out of that threshold friend, you better check if you have by misfortune left your umbrella by the side of the door. You better pack your raincoats the night before to be safer than the safest. Rain never spares you!

Rain gives me the shivers. Rain is unfettered. It knows no boundaries. Rain comes down with all its mirth and all the waffle. It shouts out all its thoughts that it had held on for days in the dark clouds. Neither has it anything cached away, nor any propriety. Rain has no I and no us. Rain is just plain water when we look at it from a cursory vantage. But, I have a history with rain.

I don’t like to get wet in the rain. Rain traps me inside my house. It is a cascading curtain of water that inundates me in a void. Rain is a juggernaut phenomenon that knows how to make me innervated. It makes me envious of all the venting it is privileged to. When it rains, I stay indoors and listen to all the anger and whine it pours out. It is indefatigable sometimes and it goes on for hours.  But, rain is one lucky fellow who can throw any tantrum it wants to and still be normal. Rain makes me want to rain.

The boy who can never grow old

 I was feeling really stressed with my study work and I wanted to put my mind to a lighter moment and take a break. Facebook was boring me. For some reason I had the idea of searching a very odd phrase in my Google search bar. “People who never get old”; May be I was having second thoughts to the existence of Peter Pan.;). The second item from my search list occupied me. I opened the link. I wanted to see someone who never got old but instead I saw someone who is very sick and would die young, a boy who can never get old. It’s not that he couldn't grow old it was that he would never get a chance to!

It was on youtube,a Channel five documentary "Extraordinary people: the Boy who will never grow old". The boy’s name was Stuart Wickison, he was 19 when they took that video. He was suffering from a genetic disorder called the Duchene Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). DMD is a genetic condition that affects only boys. They're born able-bodied and only find out the full prognosis in their teens. DMD is caused by mutations of the gene which produces dystrophin, a protein essential for the healthy development of muscles in the body. Without it all muscles gradually cease to function causing gradual paralysis.

Stuart in his wheel chair

The narrator says one line which hit my mind so hard, “Although his body is failing him, his mind is focused on living!” I felt so bad for the boy when I heard that line, there are many young people his age who give up on life without an effort and a dream, and there he was, the boy who had a dream to become an artist and to make his work speak a message of strength, that weaknesses can be overcome but no time to live and to get old. Sadly, in August 2011 the boy was found dead in a lake. It is said he drove his wheelchair into the lake and committed a suicide.

Stuart had said “No one knows the meaning of life, you are born to die. What about the in-between?? What about the living?? Well.. I am here for that, not the rest.  I am not here to suffer.... I am here to make an impact!” Hats off for that boy’s words. However disabled his body was, he had a spirit to fight for his dreams, may be he didn’t live up to his words but those words meant a lot coming from a guy who was as much as a non-living object in a corner without the help of his wheelchair. Stuart gave me the feel of harbouring a dream, a dream to live up to. He rekindled the power of spirit for hard work. With such a little time to live, he made me realize of al the due dates in my life, the date of my next assignment, the due date of those vivas and those exams coming up, of course i am not going to die, but i can only live and work hard before that date comes. I can do nothing after that moment passes, it will be like i died as than examinee and can never ever live to give it again!!!

You might say I am getting paranoid watching that kid’s documentary, but it is just that everything has an expiry date and we should realize that and make the most out of everything! thank you Stuart. May your soul R.I.P.

P. S. The Documentary is in three parts on youtube.

Part One - http://youtu.be/ZWQK3KcRcr4

Part Two - http://youtu.be/AqjsBUj2pvw

Part Three - http://youtu.be/diZE5Tskg3A

A heart

A heart

A ballad I sing to you today,

Of misery, grief, pain and tears,

About life.. and about death..

....

With its heavy flapping wings of grey,

Fear covered the world to darkness infinite

Ignominious, suffocating and depressing

There was a heart

This was once gay with pride

Bright were the feelings

Moments with flying colours

That pride outshined the world of blackness

And there was bliss undefined!

BUT,

Today..

That heart drowns in an ocean of tears

Throbbing and twitching it chokes in a dungeon

The dungeon, a body without a soul

A living corpse with the remnants of its broken dreams

The soul, somnolent and almost vanishing

Life was a deep threat for it,

Living- the greatest curse!

Crying had become a habit.

However,

Tears were scarce now

As long it had been since that heart wept

So long that tears dried!

Instead blood dripped out of it

Alas! The little heart all scarred

With unfulfilled promises and utopias

Broke one day and death arrived

Dressed in black. Like in night mares

That had blurred ghosts and graveyards;

That had devils and hell in it.

Still...

What would be the difference,

To abandon this hell to accept death

To free that heart of all its sufferings

Set it into salvation, solitude of happiness!

Because, a body without a soul is ambiguous,

And a heart without happiness, hostile!

For even a clock without hand is useless

So what use is a soul without a reason to live?

But. No,

Death hated to kiss it

And life was unfriendly too

It was darkness and disease, searing winds and downpours,

Shadows creeping on the everyday of it,

Flames of guilt scorched it black

Pain...

No one noticed, no one knew,

Its reminiscence was still o’er there

Just a drop of love

A wisp of happiness

And the darkness could be ditched

Just to smile again Oh what miracle could it be!

The Sims Freak

I have always been a computer game freak. However I am different from others in that I am not a fan of computer games. Nonetheless, I am such a computer game freak who gets stuck to the screen once they start.  It is not that I am an excellent computer game player; it is just that I get hooked.  the case is that I don’t play well and when the game ends, I tell myself that I will play better this time and start the game again but the process goes into a vicious circle and my eyes get pasted on the computer screen to this extent that I won’t notice when the sun had risen or when it set.

Since last month I am occupied with an online social game on Facebook called “The Sims Social”. Before Sims came along, I was a loyal facebooker. But after I have Sims on my plate these days, I hardly ever scroll my homepage on Facebook!!!

The motto of The Sims Social is: Build a home. Build a relationship. Build a life....The game involves living a virtual social life. The virtual person that we must raise is called a Sim. The Sim lives in a virtual town called Little Havens. We must keep the sim happy, well-fed, clean and relaxed. At this point our sim is inspired and can earn more simoleons. Our house value goes up when we buy new stuff. We will be shifted to a better street of the town when we have higher house values.... OK.. lots of talk about the game.. this blog is not about the tutorial of the game.. so let’s focus on something that came on my mind.

Gwen Lewis (My Sim)

In comparison between “Gwen Lewis” ( my sim) and my real life form “Rashmee Silwal”(me ;) ), my sim is more successful in life. The real world involves a lot of turmoil, problems, mess and unnecessary stress. My real life form goes through hardships everyday but my sim has nothing to worry about when she is inspired. She works like a robot and earns like Bill Gates! She is a successful sim. She has a home with everything she wants in it. She has a lot of BFFs, a lot of close friends and even a few frenemies. She has a steady relationship. Overall she is a socialite. She is one lucky bastard who lives in a virtual heaven. To make my sim what she is, I have played my part well. I am not being witty but I have fed her even when I am hungry. I have kept her tidy even when I am being a slob in reality.

 The thing that makes every Sims player go on is because they want a larger house, better stuffs and want to have the best-Sims- life ever! This whim pushed me so far that my sim is the richest sim among my neighbours. In reality, I have become the Sims-guru for the newbie. LOL but it’s freaky. The only achievement my real life form acquired is a celestial new tag of “The Sims Freak”.

Being a sims-guru is a harder part to play. To be a player of that calibre, one must sacrifice food, water and sleep. It is an unholy Tapsaya in itself. Moreover, living two lives at once is conflicting. It’s like being Rajesh Hamal for one hour and being Rajnikant for another! Now, that’s a very conflicting part to play, isn’t it? If anyone can understand the situation, it is another sims freak or else Hannah Montana!!

Wrapping up, I only have to say that it’s just a game and every player will lose their loyalty at some point. I will too. May be after that I will be a loyal facebooker again, may be a different game patriot or may be an anti-gamer in all!!Whatever it is, if someone will ever ask me about a virtual life, I’ll always have that tinge of joy, the chill in my spine and the Sim’s loading music playing in my ears. It will be a game, a home  and a life that i always loved. And I will always remember that line:”Inspired. Earn more simoleons” it’s all the way from Sims to life.

Happy Sims Playing to all!..................

Rustic Red

Rustic RED

Rustic RED; My blood surges.

Hot. Flowing. Pulsating in my veins.

Expressing. Colouring the whites of my eyes.

Ruling. Defining the rage in my soul.

Rustic. It is Rustic RED.

                When the red sun pops out in the morning sky,

I am birth. I am victory.

When the red wine pours out exotic bottles,

I am rich, I am lax; I live.

When the red blood stains Earth with scars,

I am death. I destroy. I end.

                                

Being nobody

     There’s an undefined adventure in taking a galli in the city and walking alone. Have you ever done that? It’s a type of meditation for me, I walk and I notice that my eyes are everywhere.

                I notice a cute little girl with her cartoon printed school bag and her colorful tiffin bag clutched in one hand, walking to school. That girl must be in wishes to learn the rest of her alphabets. She must be three. She walks behind her mom her hand glued to the achal of her Ma’s sari. A vague nostalgia comes to my mind, a past my own when I used to be three tailing my mom everywhere.  The girl has a cute smile and pigtails with white ribbon-bows on each one. I miss my father, I miss the way he used to comb two bunches on my head on holidays, I miss the sweet glycerin on my lips he would put and tell me not to lick it away( which I secretly always did :P ). Ohhh!! What a life I have lived I thought and I walked away. I was somebody back then!

 It’s a fascination to walk in a Newar residence.  On those stone paved streets with towering houses on both sides of the street, anyone must feel like a tourist too deep in fascination with the Newari Culture. I myself looked like one. The heavy backpack on my back, water bottle in hand, and the guts to walk in some galli of Kathmandu on a July afternoon!! However, nothing was in vain; I was enjoying everything; people carving on wood, shops with all kind of shiny metal barrels, the jewelry shops after every 5 blocks in a Newari street, the smell of good food wafting out of the houses that have been squeezed in together and the wrinkled faced of the bajais concentrated on  spinning cotton wool  onto their charkha. And here I am walking, alone. In this street I am nobody. Among the thousands of people walking in Kathmandu I am just another walker with a question mark for a face.

                At last I end up on the main street again. It is a feeling of finding yourself again. What a relief!!! Then I walk again; this time I window shop and feel the weight of my empty wallet. My thoughts wander to that one day when I had had a need of weeping over all my broken dreams and assumptions and the-never-to be- true-fantasies. I wonder how many of these people walking here with me must have broken dreams; broken watches; broken finances; broken homes; broken marriages; broken relations. I walk and I wonder. Just right then comes a pitiful child with a limb twisted skywards. With the healthy limb, he waves an empty bowl towards me in plea for some spare coins I must have. And yet again that little guy makes me feel broken. More than offering him money I am in the sorrows of this harsh world and how lonely I feel. That empty bowl he waved at me reminds me of my empty dreams and I run away from that little guy, I run away as if he is some horror movie character and I never look back at him again!

                Finally I board a bus; I am nobody on this bus again. Like me, all these people in this bus with me must have places to go to. May be some have a happy place to go to and may be some have a sorrowful destination. I wish I could get on any bus and go to some place I have not seen. But then wishes are only to be wished for, some wise man told me some day. I calm myself and catch the butterflies of my wandering thoughts and put them back into my mind-box.  I choose a seat by the window and sit and watch the racing motorbikes as the bus moves out of the city.

At the next stop, the seat next to me gets occupied by a well dressed man. I try to fall asleep as the bus moves on. However my neighbor has intentions of playing a game on his shiny iPhone, and with the familiar sounds I could bet he was playing Angry Birds. And then we drove on, me with my broken plans of falling asleep and my seat partner with his frail attempts of breaking glass and wood to kill pigs for dinner tonight! He was desperate!

                As I sat there trying to look as if the scenery that I had looked upon the millionth of time interested me, the conductor came asking for money. “28 kilo, KU”, I say. And pay my money. The guy sitting next to me seems fascinated by the fact. Later he starts talking and I find out that he is a pass out from the same university I am going to. He has been abroad and recently came back to get married. He says he won’t come back to Nepal. Says, there aren’t qualified jobs for people like him. He tells me how talented people are back at USA. He compares the degrading life here with the lives of Americans. He talks about the failing politics of our country and the never ending feuds of the government and tells me that people here are not disciplined. I nod, smile and make small talk to the gentle man. He tells me of his work. Then he takes his shiny iPhone out again and shows me pictures of the research laboratory he is currently working at. There are an array of bizarre equipments on the tables, which he says are for cloning, DNA separation and things I cannot remember at one shot. So there I was, stuck on my seat with a wise man for company.

                Then that person talks about my field. He asks me whether the industries in Nepal make Cetamols or not? I felt like hitting him on the face when he asked,” The industries here only do the packaging. Is it not so?” after explaining to him the various things I know about the pharmaceutical industries he spoke again. “Whatever you may say, I have noticed this after my eight year long stay in USA that the medicines there are so precise and effective.  After all even a paracetamol costs a dollar back there!!!”  I wished I had missed this bus. I desperately wish I had stepped out of home an hour late. He waves good bye and gets down at some stop. “All the best”, he says before going. And he gives me that null feeling of me being nobody.  I stare out of the window and in my inner vision I am caught between who I really am and who I wanted to be! My brain drowns in the noise from the honking cars speeding away. I am nobody! I am nobody! I am nobody! And I fall asleep