goldenboy

“How much awake am I?”

It might sound like a ridiculous question.  

However, it is one of the most important questions for me now. “How much awake am I?”

I wake up in the morning to find that I have been throwing empty blows in the air in the night, fighting someone in a vivid dream, shrieking expletives, half-sleeping half awake trying to chaff out the dream from the reality and reality from the dream. 

In the day, I am sedated with psychiatric drugs, and wonder if it really helps me to suppress impulses or strong feelings that these drugs control?

At other times, I snap and throw a tantrum, “knowing” that I have the perfectly right reason to lose my temper. 

Some days I sit in front of the computer, reading in bulk on some topic that fascinates me for a few months, related to religion, philosophy, magick, and on other days try to free myself of all dogma, conditioning, ideology…

There are times when I “know” that I want to be a journalist, and there are times when I am sure I want to become a theatre artist.  

And as the days turn into nights, nights into days, as sleep returns me to a sedated world of medication, as I lose my temper “finally” and then a job, as my aspirations change, with the seasons, I search for the true I.

Am I what I am when I am sleeping – too scared a child defending himself? 

Or am I the man who walks on the streets and goes to work, confident that he is sedated enough to keep steady on his two feet?

Or am I the potential journalist, or a theatre artist in the making?  

Or am I the person who quests for the right knowledge, just a person in pursuit of something he doesn’t know about?

Am I the guy who in a bad temper, would not stop perhaps in doing something stupid? 

Am I anger, confusion, curiousity, ignorance, confidence, fear?

In all this, whether I realize it or not, I am one thing – Awake. 

(“that one thing that stops one from going insane” as my therapist Uma once said)

Like a Lighthouse, in the midst of a sea-storm and even when the sea is calm, there is a light inside me that watches over all the emotional tides that arise and fall within me. At times, that light is so dim, you can hardly see it. 

But the light survives.

And after every major disaster in life, after every storm that engulfs the mind, after every fire that sets my heart afire, I catch a glimpse of that light.

The light I mention here is not the Conscience or any other construct or judgements of the human mind.

It is just an awareness of the convulsion of my body as I retaliate in my fear. It is the relief that I experience when I vent out my anger. It is the alertness of my body that I feel when I feel a lot of anger. 

It is that shrug of helplessness and the awareness that I know not the way.

‘Simply being’… angry when I am angry, sad when I am disappointed, happy when I rejoice in my heart, or afraid when I fear…

Not ‘wanting’ to be something other than what I am. Living in the moment, accepting it or knowing that I don’t want to accept it s it comes, and not judging that…

That perhaps makes the light shine brighter. That helps me to allow myself the freedom to be as I am in the moment, allowing life to be as it is naturally. 

And the extra light that it sheds, lights up some way, a path… that I choose to take or not to take, and thus shape my destiny.

I don’t call that fatalistic, do you?

Why does a certain piece of Music, a certain object of beauty strike some chord within our hearts, affords us a glimpse of the feeling that could best be described as ‘Divine’?

Perhaps finding such a Muse, is a rare blessing indeed. And I feel lucky about having the opportunity of seeing such a “Divine” face everyday.

He is just a common person like you and me. I have known him for more than 5 years. He is the owner of the Cyber Cafe I visit almost daily. Initially I thought this is just another same-sex attraction. But later I found there was more to it.

He was not just a beautiful face, but a noble-heart that reflected in the contours of his face and grace. And for over 5 years I have drunk from his cup of beauty daily.

And the enchantment, ‘the fever of the soul that takes over my body’ at the mere remembrance of his lovely smile and the innocence in his eyes, is incomparable to any other joy.

And when I was asked to make a list of all my favorite things, I mentioned about his face just after the Sun, moon, stars, daylight, darkness, trees..

How can a man live without seeing beauty? And how could I have survived if God had not made that beautiful face?

And I ask myself, what more do you need to cheer you up, what else do you need to live for, when you have tasted the glimpse of the Divine…

“I read the sacred prayer of your faith, the Namaz, everyday in the contours of your face. You are my link with the Divine.”

Today I dropped in at the Humsafar Trust ( http://www.humsafar.org ), an NGO working for people with alternate sexuality.

I was a regular visitor there at the age of 20, almost 9 years ago. I was then exploring my sexuality, and here I met others who had the same sexual desires as mine, yearned to be socially accepted- first by their own parents and siblings. They were as eager as I, to read novels wherein a boy would meet a boy and live happily forever, instead of the usual boy meets girl story. Photographs on the walls expressed gay love, two men in a romantic embrace or a kiss, which meant the world to us. 

Visiting the Center after almost 9 years was like another Homecoming. Though the environs and the crowd have changed drastically, here was the place where I had met my first boyfriend, and my feelings for him had grown into the pangs of pain that is first-love…

Here I had met another gay guy who would be my closest friend for the next 9 years.  

This was the place that had made me feel confident about my sexuality, had helped me reclaim my life from all the self-hatred and guilt.

Why hadn’t I visited the Center in all these years? Why had I become content with a couple of friends in life? Why had I got stuck in my small world? Why wasn’t I able to do something for the Organization in return?  

Questions galore. And I have no real answers.

-x-x-x-  

Still the Center has a lot to offer me. Met two lovely people at the Center today and had a pleasant conversation. 

-x-x-x-  

Good Tidings!

BasicIndia ( www.basicindia.net ) decides to meet in Uma’s absence too (she is in Germany). And that is cause for cheer. Talking to Sudha on the phone today felt so good. Just what I needed, in a painful hour of loneliness biting into me…  

And when I see such a kind gesture my heart feels grateful, and in gratitude wants to return the gesture of kindness, to somebody else who might be as lonely or in pain but has no one to turn to.

And in my prayers I ask for this sense of gratitude to linger… a while longer, till I am able to hold somebody else when they need me, and bring a smile on a face as a smile lights up mine.