What it takes

She revisited that place tonight. Its been months since she was last there, but it feels like she's never left at all because she instantly feels safe and at home there. And then again it could have been years because she's changed so much and so has her life, its hard to remember the person she used to be in minute detail. The hopes, dreams and wishes dissipated with time. It was here that she had said farewell to the fancies of the young her before she stepped onto the threshold of adulthood. Back then she'd been craving something real in life. Living it in her mind in theory was something she'd had enough of. Her heart craved something that would turn the beautiful candy floss that her thoughts were made up of into something more than an illusion-give a more believable base to them.
Today she wishes she'd never looked beyond what she had then. Dissatisfied though she was, she'd been happy in her soul. She still believed in believing, in love, in happy endings, in the fluttering of hearts, of your heart feeling bigger than yourself, in having true feelings towards someone. It was these beliefs that had been her driving force-the sparkle in her eyes, beauty in her life, blush in her cheeks, dance of her limbs.
Right now, right here, that illusion and that she is shattering-it has been for quite some time now, like a glass wall hit by a car in a hurry. So it was with her, she'd been in too much of a hurry for the experiences that she settled for less and in turn got heavily disillusioned.
Every single time that she came here in the almost forgotten age, she'd write letters addressed to nobody in particular, each weaving a tale of her world, incorporating every whim, fantasy, dream, hope, belief. Its to find them that she's returned today, clinging to the last strand of hope which tells her that on reading those letters, some semblance of the lost her will be rediscovered. She scrambles over to the spot next to the willow tree where she'd kept them imprisoned, hidden from the world. Her hands start digging the soil, getting dirt underneath her carefully tended nails, which she does not pay heed to. Its the least of her worries now. One hand pushes back the long hair streaming into her face as the other, clenched in a fist against her heart tries to control its thud as she desperately wishes for the wooden casket enclosing them to remain. She feels a flash of joy as her hand hits wood and the familiar dark brown box with the tiny butterfly carvings appears before her. Her anticipation grows as she opens it and sees the small pile of colored folded sheets of paper. But as she picks one up, this changes into a feeling of dread. Her throat suddenly goes dry and her eyes well up with tears which without notice give way, blurring the words on paper. She can't bear it-her former happiness and optimism might make her feel more alone and lost than ever. What will she do if the largest piece of herself outside her body fails to have the desired impact and instead appears shallow to her? How much will that break her? Will there be anything at all be left after that? No. She can't make herself take this great a risk.
She now stands up, still holding the letters, dusts soil off her knees and skirt and walks into the water until she is calf deep in seawater and then holds them out in her hands till the wind blows them away, depositing them onto the surface of water where they float. Now her dreams are free to take whichever form they want. Now they are unencumbered. All of herself will come back to her when it wants to-when she is ready for it. Though this is not what she'd come here for today, she is more relieved and at peace than she's been for a long time.

By Nirmitee Mehta

The Edge of Sorrow's Blade

          In 10^th grade we did a poem in school called “The Soul's Prayer” which talked about a person wanting to experience every joy, every sorrow- every single emotion that life can mete out.

                   “Spare me no bliss, no pang of strife

                    Withhold no gift of grief [I crave]”

          Why, I wondered then, as did most of my classmates, would anyone ask for so much pain? If you are going to receive what you ask for in full measure, why not just ask for the happy bits and live a complacent life?

          I wondered much the like when I heard a song  where a line went

                   “…And when I’m at the edge of sorrow’s blade

                     Show me how a heart breaks”

          I pondered over the meaning of this line, each successive time I heard the song and my views on it changed gradually, from finding the songwriter raving mad to being more and more intrigued and enamored by the melancholy in the line. Call me a mush but any song lyrics or poignant lines in a book that talk about hearts breaking move me to an almost teary state. Somewhere along the way I’ve starting wanting to feel those very emotions I read and hear of. I don’t know if I’m just being morbid when I think so, but tragedy and the utter……despondency you read about or see depicted in films is rather attractive at times. It draws me into its soul and sifts through my mind until I can no longer think straight.

          Every so often, I think all of us sit with earphones on, listening to a sad song, reflecting on the poignancy in the words, making a music video in our mind about the situation, around it and the part you play in the tragic melodrama.

          Maybe the reason why pain, sorrow, heartache-all of them, fascinate us so much is because all of us want to see how far we can all go, how strong we can prove ourselves to be, until what point will we be capable of going before falling completely apart.

          But we never really will know how much we can bear and how strong we are until we face it, will we? The human spirit never fails to surprise its keepers.A line from the book "PS-I love you" really shows you how, when Holly tells her sister Ciara-If your husband died, you would cope if you had to. There’s nothing brave about it, there’s no choice involved.

          And that’s the way it is, whatever pain that’s meted out to us in life, you learn to cope with it if you have to. Because there’s no choice involved. And because survival is our primary instinct. So really, pain should not scare us that much at all…


-Nirmitee Mehta

Secrets Beyond The Shells...

Have you ever wondered how much this Universe we’re a part of contains? Is it a measurable quantity, definite and quantized… Or does it go up to infinity and beyond? How often, during the everyday routine of our somewhat predictable and uniform life, do we think of, or go on a quest to discover, the secrets that lie beyond the shells we’ve created for ourselves?

The first time I acknowledged the vastness of our world was when I came across the existence of the secret society of the Illuminati. For those of you Dan Brown readers, I’m pretty sure “Angels and Demons” rings a bell. To fill the others in with a brief idea, The Illuminati is an Enlightenment-era secret society founded during the late 18^th century. Dan Brown’s renowned novel involves one of the protagonist’s attempts to retrace the steps of the "Path of Illumination", a process once used by the Illuminati as a means of inducting new members; as aspirants were required to follow a series of subtle clues left in various landmarks in and around Rome. Having found the Illuminati a rather gripping notion, I felt but compelled to research more in the field.

The basic concept of The Illuminati is to "enlighten people", or to infiltrate enlightened individuals into their secret society. They have been rumored to aim towards being the most superior in their era. Their objective is to be treated like Royalty – a modern society of Kings and Queens, to be worshipped by the common “non-enlightened” people of the world.

The Illuminati Diamond

The prevalence of the secret society, believed by many to be a form of modern Satan, in today’s era remains ambiguous, but conspiracy theorists have provided a handful of cryptic evidences that suggest their existence even now. It has been proposed that a number of famous people, the most influential in their field of work, have come together and joined forces towards the Illuminati. This has been decoded by the fact that they are known to leave esoteric Illuminati symbols and messages in the work they perform. For example, the famous hip-hop star Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” music video has a still in which a stripper is seen making a “V” formation with her legs while dancing on a pole, framing the image of an inverted triangle, which is considered one of the most profound symbols of the Illuminati. It is also very interesting and obscure to note that the Illuminati has even left its mark on the dollar bill, as is shown below.

A more undaunted testament of their entity was seen during 1995, when The Denver Airport (earlier called Stapleton International Airport) in Denver, Colorado, was reconstructed. There are several conspiracy theories relating to the airport's design and construction. A brave display of Illuminati symbols and paintings depicting one-world government raised the potential of the then-flickering subsistence of secret Satanic societies.

Theorists have also furnished answers for the 2012 prophecy. It is believed that 2012 is more the beginning of the New World Order than the End Of The World. 2012 is when the Illuminati will finally rise from secrecy, and using their mass-destruction tools (swine flu rumored to have been one of them), will remain the only humans on Planet Earth, to enable the perpetuation of a smarter (in their opinion) human race.

But then, of course, these are only theories, the truth could possibly be far from what has been adduced. It's viewpoints and ideas like these that make me want to discover and learn more, to get out of my comfortable space and swim in the river of endless perceptions that lie beyond my little world. It confuses me now, but perhaps, some day when I feel the most determined to do so, I will. :)

- By Chahita Lalchandani