Intricate.

That is what it is. A web. A web of black and white, of friendship, of wrong, of right, of nothing mattering and everything mattering at the same time. You pick one string up intending to solve it, it brings along another friendly little problem from its cupboard. Its favorite one, I suppose.

In my mind.

They all exist together. As if they never want me to remember them as different problems. As if all together, they make ONE problem, and that is of a problematic time. Then, are they really one little/huge problem? Am I deconstructing them far too much?  More than it could possibly shred into? Am I the problem? Is everyone else the problem? Are we all, put together, the problem? 

People.

Miserable ones. All of them. Miserable at solving things, miserable at ignoring them. Although they rank from smart to smartest, they all are as of now, pretty miserable. Brave little fighters still, I must say. Some, over anxious, some... stupid; plain stupid. Some pulling memories out of their brains like Dumbledore would; only to kill their mocking birds. Though some of them have Phoenixes, I must say I am dam proud of! May all of us be blessed with peace. Peace of mind. 

Pebbles.

Each one I want to wither with
Each one I want to crystallize
Each one, a little similar, a little different from the other
Each one, my own
Each one, distant
Each one, for each one
Each one for the keeps

Has anyone noticed? All vehicles have this expression on their face. Like....

Ambassadors have this fake exaggerated smile on their face: like they don't like you, but their parents told them, you're an important relative. So the smile's a must, as if the entire life was a family ritual.

 Public buses have this grim office-wala smile on their faces: I don't care how ur night was, pay what you have to and make my day financially survivable.

Autos: they're always pouting like those run-of-the-mill slim factory product hot women. Only, they're far more street smart. Haha. 

Since the time in my life realization dawned that I am lonely, I've wondered why. I've read up blogs and psychology excerpts, had discussion with closest of friends and random bar-mates.

 Of the concerns that developed through these for me to explore, I'll mention the second one first: I am probably not an interesting company.

 I've thought about it in-depth. Seems, a girl who looks pretty quite often, is an entertaining performer in parties, paints, sings, writes, expresses better than average, is not interesting enough. I'd add, not interesting to herself. Maybe all that I do, I do it for others. I must for that matter figure out what it is that I do for myself. (We're not considering the time I spend alone doing all this, coz we're looking at 'end of the day time' here.)

 That said, the primary concern appears to be that I have never lived alone. I have never been left alone when that was 'supposed' to be done. I grew up in a family where everyone was an insomniac and I as the youngest, was put to sleep earlier. I always slept with my mum since she was a divorcee and needed my arms to sleep in. By 'earlier' I don't mean nine thirty, I mean 12am or beyond. I would go to sleep amid loud television or a jugalbandi of classical Indian and jazz blues appearing from various rooms in my house. Those times have passed. I no longer live with that eccentric-night creature family I had once started out with. 

But the need for company at the end of the day, remained. Then came friends, love interests, and passions. All of which kept me up. 

Then came one day, I realized, I had been skipping from one of them to the other while all of them had their turn of solitude. And since I did not know solitude at the end of the day, it came across as loneliness to me. I am fine with solitude in the morning, the day and the afternoon. Its the nights that haunt me. 

I may go anywhere, do anything. But I must have a living being to come back to. And for that matter a living being I WANT to come back to.That, amongst other things makes me miserably dependent. 

Hope this self-imposition does me some good. I pray to this dark water spread out across my eyes outside my window, I pray to the chill that runs down not only my skin but my heart too, I pray to the vastness of the creator's intimidating nature of creation, I pray to power of all our sleeps and solitudes put together, come intimidate me, put me to a nights sleep preceding the ever-so-hopeful mornings, give me a little poetry for my pen where I lament and I enjoy it. Cradle me to a happy myself, a content myself.

  I'm really putting in a lot of effort. 

When I sit giving abstract inapplicable advice to victims of situations that I haven't been through or am at present not going through, I never ever take a wild guess that the penny is coming right up into my palm from the fountain, only a few months later maybe.

And even if I have experienced the situation I am advising about, how can I advice someone on it, because I can never be that person, I am only best at being me. And that person is the only person who can best crack being him/her self.

But comparison, experience and experimentation has always been the bold-lettered process in the books, hence, we never forget to say 'told you so' or 'try this out'.

I truly wish, hope, pray, it works out like that. I wish advises are easy to take and follow, I wish advises bear desired results, I wish all people can be used as baits or examples for all. 

Because if there is any truth in similarity, only then can advise, as a method of success, succeed. 

Pens and papers and a plethora of regrets
Lovers and shudders and a basket full of old songs
Smirks and teapots and years of fairy-tales
A rain-full of talkatives and you and me and them
and all of them who dared, 
who wanted and who didn't.
who made castles of sand
who waited in the wind
who smoked umpteenth smokes clouded by money...
who left you unanswered
they all fell in it.
They all fell in love. 

An election candidate does not need to come to a podium to tell you he/she is with the people in their problems. A kid does not need to take special classes in specific subjects. A father does not need to take time out on Sundays to sit with the kid and tell him stories. 

People don't need to do these things when the relationships and situations are the way they're needed to be. They need to do such things to bring things to a required state. The drill in fact, is, first you do things to build it. Then it is build. And you no longer do those things. As soon as you stop doing what you were doing, the structure starts decaying from within, inch by inch. When the decay finally becomes noticeable, you start doing stupid things like standing on the podium and buying expensive gifts and putting aside a golden bit from your precious time.Perhaps, forcing yourself at all this; making the experience look like an obligation.Hence, round and round the puppy runs. Building, destroying, rebuilding until it ceases to exist. 

In making this effort you end up thinking all that you are doing, is fake, is forced, it is not as effortless as it seemed in the beginning, when building it for the first time. re-building anything from trash is difficult. The marks remain, the crevices show, there is always a suspicion that the weakness of the damaged structure prevails even after the repair. 

All, that is needed is to maintain. So that there is never a need to repair, to over-do, to feel fake, to feel forced. 

It is like cleaning the loo of your same old apartment every alternative day, so that a day never arrives when you are forced to get professional people and pay them fortunes to clean your age old shit with acid.