Exist Loudly Today.

Sometimes we just sort of just exist, not live, just exist. Don’t we?
But what I ask of you today is to exist loudly.
I know some days it’s just tough and it’s okay.
The world is so rough after all.
It isn’t sad, it isn’t happy, it’s just numb.
You just exist there silently.
In your own world, breathing heavily.
But I ask you today, to exist loudly.
I ask you to speak whatever you feel.
Even if it is nothing at all.
Share it with someone you want to
Or seek a therapist maybe?
Tell your parents about it.
Or if you think they won’t understand,
tell them to take you to someone who will.
Siblings, friends, relatives, lover.
Until it gets over.
Find help.
Or write it out.
Talk. Please.
Depression is not sadness or loneliness.
It’s the yearning to be left alone.
It’s the tiredness that makes you sleep all day.
It’s feeling colourless.
No anger. No frustration. No tears. No smile.
It’s a body without soul.
It’s blankness. Emptiness.
You know you are loved.
You know you are cared for.
And most importantly, you know you haven’t done anything wrong.
I know you feel helpless.
You sometimes want to kill yourself.
Death will only transfer this depression to someone else.
Let’s not accumulate these thoughts and suffocate them in our minds.
Shout.
Cry.
Speak.
Write.
Or run.
Let it all out.
Go to your terrace and feel the breeze flow.
The sound of air, deafening your ears.
And making your eyes go smaller.
Give your soul another chance.
Until your breathing stops on its own,
listen to the life’s music and dance?
All I ask you is to exist loudly today.
Just today.
Go out, and sip a cup of coffee with someone.
It’s been a long time, since you’ve won.
Let’s fight another battle today.
Trust me, you are not in love with your bed.
All you need today, is smile as a med.
Just today.
Even if you don’t know what to say.
Exist loudly today.

 

Footnote: With the death of Chester Charles Bennington on 20th July 2017, I was moved. Depression is a real thing. Definitely. We start existing and we stop living. Lets start existing loudly today. Fight our own battles and help each other through these battles.

A Place Like No Other

The clock hits 3 at night and he’s been wide awake. He has been lying supine and staring at the ceiling, with an open travel magazine resting on his chest. Page opened to his first published photograph. Proud moment indeed. Yet, he was thinking about nothing at all and thinking about everything, all at once. Sleeplessness captivates him. With the thundering sound from outside, his soul runs elsewhere. Despite of the fact that he was here, traveling in the mountains, like he always wanted to. But like each night, tonight his heart was lost, wandering somewhere entirely else.

The place where his stomach had ached laughing, for every time he remembers. Where he stood talking with his friends, late at nights. Sometimes, not just talking but shooting at each other through guns on the computer screens. The place where nights often turned to mornings just by walking around from the basketball court to the football field. Place where friends turned into brothers.

Boys Hostel at School of Planning & Architecture, Bhopal | Picture Courtesy: Umang Goyal

Yet today he lay here, peacefully in the hotel room. Controlling the talab – the invoking of his feet to get up and go out in the woods nearby. To put a cigarette between his lips and inhale the taste he had been told to forget. This urge to burn his lungs had been common now. Even though it has been 4 months since he left smoking and that place where he smoked for the first and last time. He wanted to go out and see, who would meet at this hour of the night near the city lake. Who else like him, cannot sleep in the cozy hotel bed. His stomach grumbled with hunger, so he decides to go out and eat. Then he remembers the midnight meals with the online football matches. The ink of thoughts is spilled again over his blank mind. Those four years were something nobody can take away. Those moments, have settled in his abrooh – his conscience. The endless Memories take a stroll and like every night, he falls asleep thinking about his Hostel Days.

The Concession Agreement

And just like everything ready to eat, it was neither too hot nor too cold. It was warm, you know. Just the way people like their food. I did not have to blow at it or keep it in the microwave. Perfectly warm. But I did not want that food. I did not want that thing in my life. I wanted something hot. Hot enough that the melting lava from the volcano envies the engraved depth it causes in my heart.

With these internet of thoughts, I reinvent my habits. I don’t feel stupid and frustrated sitting in one chair all day. Playing with words that mean nothing to me stopped bothering me. Copy pasting them from one page to another, so that big personalities can sign under these printed words and earn money by their signatures.

As for me, I just sit there only to realise the warmth of it. The way it is neither too cold nor too hot. The way it does not make an impact in my heart and my life. And with my final contract making in process, I sign a contract with myself –

“I won’t go back to making contracts again, until Force Majeure Clause is applicable.”

– Srishti