Abhey Gupta

Category: Reflections

Prose reflections and journal notes — on love, solitude, work, meaning, and the search for some quiet liberation.

  • How to Deal with the Odd?

    How do I feel?

    This question is bigger than anything else — or it has become so.

    I believe — as much as scientists don’t — that children are born with certain memories of a past birth. But what nobody believes is that we are also born with certain feelings: dominant, and predominant. And that, in fact, is true. At certain times, I strongly feel that I am depressed; but every attempt to understand it has resulted in one, and only one, answer: this is just how it is. I am born like that.

    Like a sine wave, I am happy and sad — maybe not at such regular intervals, but I am. So, to answer how I feel is, at the same time, thoroughly relative, and unanswerable.

    The problem is this: we are taught so many things, but we are never taught how to live alone — how to embrace fear, how to embrace the odd. We are only ever taught how to deal with the even.

    I will write a series of posts to unravel these questions — and I hope to find some curious people, with the same mindset, along the journey.

  • A World Without Memory

    I tried to imagine a world without memory. It is strange, and unsettling — but not impossible.

  • Live & Die

    Live & Die

    I thought this time I’d get through it, but like the cycle of day and night, I am bound to fall again and again. Wondering what is so devious about it. I heard, “Take a bow and trigger it. You will get to know the arrow.” Principles to restrict, but all they do is fall blatantly. I wonder what’s in the bog of time; all I know is to fill me with something special to realize who I am. To the end, what it takes to get through all the chaos and live.

    I believe, a will to live and die.

    Living in a Mess

    I am confused all through. I am drifting apart from the regular me. I am forgetting the difference between good and bad, as I was always perplexed by it. To my situation, to my path, often celebrating the tears of sadness. If I am all the devil, I assume, I wonder what is next in the hellfire that I’m living in. Yet, call it a life to choose between two, is another lie. I’m surrounded by clouds of lies. Often I want to break free of all, but lies are all they are. But that’s all I’ve got for now.

  • Beginnings & Endings

    There is a Coldplay song — “The Scientist” — that I have been listening to for a long time; and every time, it hits me hard, and makes me wonder about beginnings and endings.

    Is it merely a concept — a particular thing happening within the framework of time? Or are we actually bound by some existential feeling, about the metaphysical boundary of beginning and end?

    I know there is no single answer to it — just like Albert Einstein’s efforts toward a Theory of Everything. But still, I choose to believe that we can work in the direction of understanding the concept behind it.

  • Peace of Mind

    Another day.

    I was delusional, and lost; my wandering mind was trying to contemplate the word “peace,” and its purpose in the context of life. I started reading some articles on spiritual awakening, and later succeeded in reading about Kundalini Tantra — but somewhere in there, my wandering mind was unstoppable in trying to understand the purpose of life, and the many variables tied to it. So I began listening to some lectures, and, as a result, I found a talk by Osho on “Peace of Mind.”

    I found it really interesting. Listen, if it calls to you — and share what you feel.

  • Why Do We Seek It?

    This is the most important question we need to understand — because the why, and the what, behind my saying that everyone is looking for a single end goal (whether they realize it or not) is the very answer that moves us closer to it.

    Suffering is the primary motive at work here. There could be many others, but for the sake of simplicity, am I considering a single motive? I would say yes, and no — because suffering itself is not simple to explain, and it does not even refer to a single thing, or a single action.

    So now the big question is: what is suffering? Is it something we don’t want, or don’t desire? Is it love, hate, or both? Is it hope, despair, or both?

    Pretty confused? So was I — and that is exactly where the search begins.

  • What Is Moksha?

    The question is not about understanding the meaning of Moksha, but about understanding the underlying concept of liberating your state of mind.

    Moksha — also called vimoksha, vimukti, and mukti — is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism that refers to various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. (Wikipedia)

    But Moksha is not just a word discovered by saints or sadhus; it is, rather, a quiet part of everyone’s life. Believe it or not, everyone around us is working toward a single end goal — call it Moksha.

    What is more important is to understand how easily we choose to ignore it, and mistake one of our milestones for the end goal of life.

    The beauty of it is this: how many times have we wondered why we aren’t happy after achieving something we longed for so long? Why success so often comes with the sadness of it being over? Why it is so hard to come to an end?

    Think again — and I hope you will realize that these were never the real end goals. Moksha was.

    Everything we are attached to is one step toward it. And we will look for the longer answer together, in the articles to come.

  • Special Is You

    Today, I woke up with you beside me. I didn’t notice anything unusual; I didn’t feel anything special. Then you reminded me — it’s the 12th of August, our sixth-month anniversary.

    Oh god, I forgot it.

    Then I thought: how, and why? And now I know why — because with you, my every day is so special that I don’t feel anything “special” today. Special is you, to me — not a date. Special is your smile, not just a reminder.

    You are so special that I want to do everything for you. I didn’t feel anything unusual, because you are so usual to me; it is unusual, to me, that I am with you at all. Often, when you sleep, I lie by your side and watch you — and trust me, every time, I think of just one thing: that I am so lucky to have you. You are so unusual that I am still not sure how I got you.

    Babu, I love you.

  • Happy New Year, My Love

    We are welcoming a new year, carrying so many beautiful memories of the last — and I am lucky enough to have one memory that will stay with me forever; and, as lovers say, till the end: you.

    Last year, on the same date, around the same time, I happened to be with my friends in Goa. While everyone was busy in drunken talk, I was looking at the waves on Baga beach. For a moment, I was filled with loneliness and solitude — but then your smile came across my thoughts, and I was calm, like the sea after the waves.

    The year 2015 gave me so much — so many memories — but the one I just told you will always be with me. We had many quarrels, and each one taught me one and only thing: that I can’t live without you. We made many important decisions of our life this year — telling each other’s parents, getting married, and being ready to do every small thing for it. I scared you many times with my anger, and I am hopefully looking to fix that in the coming year, for us.

    I am certainly not a very expressive person, but I will do everything for our small family — and for our extended family as well. I am not making any resolution this year, because I am very bad at keeping them; but I want to promise you one thing: I will put in every effort, for us. And I am looking forward to my most beautiful year, 2016 — because I am marrying you this year.

    I don’t express myself very often this way, but one of the many things you have improved in me, is this.

    Happy New Year, my love. I love you.

    I will embrace everything of yours — love or hate, care or anger, passion or quiet.
    I don’t love you only when you are loving, and caring, and sweet;
    I love you for everything:
    your angry face — I just want to tease you;
    your sad face — I just want to hug you;
    your tense face — well, you know.

    You are not something to me — you are everything.

    The farther I see you, the more I yearn for you;
    the closer I am with you, the more I fear losing you;
    an estranged desire to have you,
    and the little things I do to make you mine.
    The way I dream about you, the more I feel you;
    close or far, whatever you are,
    I imagine you mine, even more —
    and in the little things I do for love, I love you more.

  • Best Thing in My Life

    Undoubtedly, you are the best thing that has happened to me.

    I know it is very hard to live life with me, but I promise: I will keep trying to understand you, more and more — and not to be so serious.

    I really want everything to work out well. I know it will — but somewhere, somebody has to take the pain of it, and I don’t want it to be you. So I will.

    And no doubt, because of that, I am no longer the very cool person I once was; but my love for you hasn’t changed, not a little — it is the same as it always was, and as it ever will be.

    I love you. And I am sorry for upsetting you.