Watching life go by...

The forties is a dangerous age. An age, where you are forced to take your place in the audience knowing that you would never join the ones on the stage under the limelight, though everything in your being cries to be there, shining away. Yet, one's fate under the stars is to reconcile oneself to being just the audience, to comprehend one's place in the grand drama, to stifle childhood dreams, watching others shine on, watch and admire peers who made it, and your children who will. One struggles, never relating to being just the audience, relegated to the role of the spectator and sits there desperately trying to kill the creator within. And, there are others content to finally be in the audience, the pressure to be on the stage as participants finally lifted so that they can sink back into anonymity, the attention on them switched off so they can enjoy the sheer content of just being a keen commentator of those who shine. And so we age, and so we age...

Srividya Srinivasan 13/01/2016

Little bits of Floating thoughts ...as I catch them

Sometimes, you have to wander very far, fully lose your sense of bearings to long to go back home' - SS [9/1/2016]


There is nothing sadder than realising that home is a person and that the door is permanently shut for you. - SS [ 9/1/2016]

In a relationship, it is not what you ask and receive that delights. It is receiving what you wanted but never asked.- SS [ 9/1/2016]

I realise that every time i talk about a goal, a milestone, security i am forgetting my own mortality and impermanence. I wonder sometimes how i even have the courage or stupidity to dream of the morrow without knowing if i will live to see the end of it. Fragile, pathetic, foolish creatures. Us, humans. - SS [ 7/1/2016]

There is no way you can go back in time and protect your earlier selves. -SS-[ 4/1/2016]

Be a passive observer of your active participation of life. - SS [ 30/12/2015]

It does not matter the number of lives you have led, if deep within, you still feel that you are waiting for your actual life to begin.- SS - [ 26/12/2015]

Our parents are not our anchor,
Our siblings are not our support,
Our best friends are not our siblings,
Our colleagues are not our family,
Our lovers are not our soulmates,
Our children are not our dreams,
Our partners are not our lifeline.
What then, are we finally to ourselves?
What then are we to the world ?

- SS [ 24/12/2015]

All the games our minds play? That's not us. Not really. - SS [ 15/12/2015]

I realise now that you were a detour. A cruel revelation of how the journey could have been, the brilliant difference the right company can make to the journey and discovering what a lovely companion I can be. I still have to come back to the main road, to forget the detour and pretend the rest of the journey excites me, while making do with the company i get.- SS [ 15/12/2015]



 

Restlessness

Sometimes, a deep restlessness overtakes me. I am assaulted by a quickening of my senses, a rush of energy, an intense desire for laughter, madness, adventure, passion, life and completion. My feet long to dance, my mind longs to spar with a witty companion, my body longs for completion, and my self misses coming home to the best of me in another. The restlessness becomes so acute that I am reduced to nothing but an impatient longing and yearning to seek release for the many versions of myself that i hold in check. The moment, the day and life is dancing with million delicious possibilities and the sense of aliveness is too overpowering. I sit down quietly by myself with a cup of coffee in silence, and wait till the trembling stops, and all that longing and energy of what seems like the entire universe is slowly reduced to an acceptable, toned down version that keeps life stable, safe and predictable and where roles can be played to perfection. These attacks of intense aliveness and longing have to stop.

- Srividya Srinivasan 9/1/2016

Do not demand an complete acceptance of who you are, when you do not feel complete yourself

- Srividya Srinivsan  5/10/2015

The tragedy of love

It is only when we are truly happy being ourselves, when we truly love being ourselves and would not trade places with anyone else that we reach a point where we can actually share of ourselves with another. Often, we expect love from others when we ourselves find it difficult, impossible to love our own selves. We ask for complete acceptance in the hope that such acceptance would fill the gaps that we lack the mental courage within to address. We demand from others that they fill our emptiness so that we can become full. But, strangely it is only when we are full, that we reach a place of grace to share. There is an abundance from within, which shares easily. We share truly because it is the most natural thing to do. When we keep taking from emptiness, love and giving becomes stretched and more demanding. Where would you go for love? We find it difficult to appreciate another, because we ourselves are starved of appreciation, and feeling a sense of emptiness. When two people are overflowing with a sense of fullness, there is a real give and take. There is an openness to life, abundance and also the willingness to take. This then, becomes a never ending flow. And, it starts with us. Loving ourselves, honouring ourselves, understanding ourselves. Becoming comfortable in our own skins without a sense of apology. We can make no demands on another until know our own demands better, and what we are capable of giving another. Asking and demanding love, respect and acceptance from another that we can scarce give to our own self is not just unfair but the saddest love story. It is a brutal murder of the very concept of love.

Srividya Srinivasan 05/10/2015

The anchor in the madness

Instead of thinking 'I wonder how my day would turn out ?', It makes an amazing difference to ask oneself, ' Now, what of myself can I put out for the day ? '. Circumstances and events external to us will continue to play. They would happen irrespective of what we say or do. The events happen as an effect of our earlier causes. But, we are who we decide to be. How much awareness of self we keep through the day, and the energies we choose to put out decides where the control of the day lies. Whether with the events themselves, or whether with us. Our energies truly are us. If we choose our energies, the right energies choose us. Every moment then is a matter of choice. This, and only this is our free will, our destiny.

- Srividya Srinivasan 5/10/2015

Test of love

The only true test of love is the test of your patience when you have grown apart. When you feel you have journeyed ahead of the other and the other seems remote, almost like a stranger. When the pace of your individual journeys do not seem to match. When your impatience for the other to catch up and, your sense of pride in having journeyed faster becomes your downfall.  When you want to slow down and journey at your pace, but the other is racing ahead. When, your sense of hope of even journeying together looks both remote and pointless.

That's when the actual test begins.

The exact point where your patience and faith in your love will be questioned. Fraying your combined spirit, a thread at a time. Cutting away at what you think you have built together. When shared memories go for a toss. When a dear one seems a stranger, when you are confused between journeying on or slowing down for the other to catch up so you can journey together.  Is it about the journey, is it about the companion? Is it about the combined journey? Is it your own self you love or did you ever truly love the other?  Was there ever a We?  And, you will know whether you are strong in your love, whether you can weather the storm of self-doubt and have the courage to answer to the bravest question of them all - how much of you did you truly give to Love ?


- Srividya Srinivasan 16/09/2015

Bonds

You know the people we used to be?
The seamless thread that connects
who we used to be,
to who we are now?
It seems to have snapped.

Will you check ?
If it was at your end?
Or, was it at mine?

No wonder it seemed difficult to connect,
we should have known it had snapped.
Guess it was fraying, ever so slowly
as the people we have become
kept pulling at it,
forgetting the people we used to be
who held it in bind.

I turn back,
anxious to reconnect,
worried that we never may
How easily you lose hope,
you say smiling,
as you meet me mid-way.

All it needs is a catch-up,
for the threads to bind.
For time to disappear
and old bonds to re-appear.

And suddenly, the people we are
and the people we were...
Oh ! Never mind.
- Srividya Srinivasan 11/09/2015

They teach you nothing

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to value yourself.
how to love yourself.
how to fight.
how to make up.
how to love.
how much to cry.
when to laugh.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
the value of your desires,
the extent of your denial.
to know how much to hurt
before walking away.
How much to fight,
to turn things around.
And, when to give it all up.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to long within,
to put up with abuse,
to taste the salt of tears
and, the pain of bruises
to just make things work.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to know war,
to know death and loss.
Pain and tears.
To obey the call of religion
and the notion of a nation
when your mind and heart rebel.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how a child can lose its innocence
and how dirty hands can touch
its body and soul
and scar an adult for life.
And, what to do after that.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to deal with falsehood
and what to do with truth.
How to taste success
and how to deal with defeat.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
to love your body
and its secrets,
to be a lover
to know love
to exult in aliveness.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to be lonely,
when your bed is empty
and you are jobless
and your self-worth is low
when friends have disappeared
and you feel all alone
and your life is on the rocks.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to raise a child alone.
how to live in a soulless marriage
how to stifle your desires.
and to kill the conversation within.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
About loneliness.
How to wear a mask
and how to take it off.
About pain that cuts the soul.
About empty rooms and money in the bank
And, no one to talk to.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
in the darkest, loneliest hours
what to do with yourself,
how to dig deep within 
to seek the well of wonder and joy
And, to come alive once more.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you how to trust
when trust is lost
when you down on your knees,
when there is nothing left in you
to reclaim yourself from the living dead.
And, to walk alone.

They ought to.
They ought to teach you
how to ride the wave of success.
how to raise a child in gentleness.
how to bask in the sunshine
without guilt or denial.
how to feel good about yourself
And, to offer your hand to another
and to believe in togetherness.

And, yet they teach you nothing.
For, they do not know.

- Srividya Srinivasan 11/08/2015

Waiting

I waited.
You did not come.
I waited,
alive in my awareness,
passionate in my impatience,
with a secret smile on my lips
that spoke of my longing.

I traced the impossible,
my hands running over
my body and soul,
that I wanted you to enter
at will,
I waited for you to come home to us.

The future that seems so beautiful
would never be.
The sunlight as it catches your eyes,
or the laughter that easily escapes my lips,
or the lightness of our feet as we dance along,
Are they, just hidden longings for a life
that was never meant to be ?

Our future is in the now,
in the promise in our eyes,
the restless beating of our hearts
as time teases us with her games.
The walls of our little world
that we have created in our minds,
fashioned in imagination,
rooted in fantasy,
a place, where time stands still.

As destiny joins Time in her teasing,
and I wait for you alone,
May be,
somewhere,in another world,
you are waiting for me.
impatiently, eagerly,
creating a little world in your mind
for me to come home to.

I come alive in the waiting.
I die in the waiting.
May be, the soulless stranger
that I brushed past by yesterday
was you,
cold and listless,
and indifferent to the outside world,
and worn out from waiting for me.

- Srividya Srinivasan 23/07/2015



Back to childhood

Let's go back to where we started.
Let's go back to start the game once again.
Let's go back in time
when there were no losers and no winners.
When we could fight with each other
and make up in a minute,
Where friends were for keeps,
and the days stretched endlessly
all under a golden sunny sky.

Let's go back to old times,
where we all knew each other.
Let's go back to old times,
where we just let someone in
to join the game.

Let's go back to a time of innocence,
Let's form a circle like old times,
where we could all see each other.
Let's start the game once again.

Let us go around until we are breathless,
and our heads spin with the whirling world
And, O let us whirl some more!
Let us run again till our legs ache,
run until our chests seem to burst...
And, then let us run some more!
Let us laugh till we ache,
and till the noisy sound of our laughter
is hushed by a stern adult,
and then, let us laugh at that too.
Let us giggle until we cannot stop,
only to giggle some more!

Let us dance until we cannot stop.
And, O let us dance some more!
Let us stomp with our feet
and drum with our fingers,
Let us sing loudly and noisily,
let the air ring with our off-key notes.

Let us go back in time,
let us climb a tree,
and dress up in pretend clothes.
Let us talk into a mirror again
and pretend we are kings and queens.
Let us pretend we are pirates and warriors,
Let us just clown around.
Let us scribble on the walls,
and paint the ceiling,
Let us turn cartwheels,
let us walk backwords and
talk utter nonsense...
Let us build castles in the air
and in the sand,
Let us jump into a puddle
and blow some bubbles.

Let us eat and drink and be merry,
Let us run and hide where they cannot find us,
Let us hop and skip and jump and jig,
O Let us just go back in time !

Let's go back in time
to a time where time stood still,
where the night was young
when the stars came out,
and we were all still out at play.

Let's go back in time
where the grime from the day's play
was wiped at the back of our sleeve away.
When our noses were buried in a book
and our heads in a cloud,
where our tears dried up quickly
and a bruise magically went away.

Let us go back to a time
when we went to sleep
with a smile on our lips
and a head full of dreams.

- Srividya Srinivasan  20/07/2015

Scars of happiness ?

She had no scars to show for her happiness except her laughter lines

 - Srividya Srinivasan - 9/7/2015

Coming home

She made a home in her head and did as she pleased. And, whenever she was lost she would simply come home

- Srividya Srinivasan 9/07/2015

Life Beckons...

What makes you come alive? What keeps you going ? Is there hope in your heart still or has the weariness of the world attached itself to you like a limpet leaving you afraid and passionless? Do you wake up with a smile and stars in your eyes after restless, feverish soul-searching in the night? Do you dream, dream beyond what is possible and beyond the narrow confines of your jaded existence? How old do you feel? How much in love can you fall? How much step is there in your dance, o how many notes left in your song ? Have you decided to sit by and watch others dance or weep at the dying notes of your own swan song?

Shake your lethargy. Come alive to innocence once more. Believe past your own jaded cynicism. Pretend you are young once more. Jump up with a spring in your feet, fall breathlessly in love again. Let the colors of the world wash over your walls, brushing the greys away. Let the sunlight of hope flood through your doubting self, o let the music play.

Dance till you ache and drop, laugh till you cry. Sing till your lungs burst, and journey till the very road ends and dream by the moonless starless nights. Sleep with a secret smile on your lips, your body flush with the imprints of lips. Come alive, my dearest ...reclaim yourself from the living dead.

Life beckons.

- Srividya Srinivasan [ Morning Hope] 10/07/2015

The ache for a companion

'I wake up in the morning. A small heaviness in my heart that soon snowballs into a deep welling pain, that almost threatens to choke me. I mentally shift my consciousness to a happier frame of mind. I need to. The duties of the day await. As the coffee pot bubbles, my spirits lift and sink like the boiling milk on the stove. My most precious part of the day and I feel incredibly lonely. I am happy to be by myself, to be myself. Joyous about the million things being me implies. It is when my pot of happiness and sorrow bubble over that I long for a shoulder, an answering look in a companion's eyes, the squeeze of a hand, the occasional brush of teasing lips on mine, the promise of laughter, life and hope. None which I was blessed with. In my moment of triumph or in my moments of pain, I long for my feelings to matter to someone.

 I want to matter to someone. I want hugs. I want kisses. I want to belong in someone's arms.  To ramble every day nonsense. To talk  profound sense. To be held tight like i matter. I want to feel like a woman. I want someone to embrace the warmth and sunshine that is in me. Instead, i have this cold feel of automation that is a dead marriage. I know what awaits. The grandfatherly brush of lips against me, or the giggly schoolboy and the abusive, indifferent sadist. My heart aches so much that i fear it would burst.

The birds chirp in the morning hour and in that silent heralding of the dawn my loneliness is overwhelming as the swirl of coffee fills the air. Most mornings i love my aloneness, but i hate the mornings of loneliness when they come. They are overwhelming. everything seeming grey, meaningless. I see couples going for their morning walk, a simple act of togetherness and i long to be one of them. I know i would never have that simple pleasure. I can only watch on with that ache, an outsider to that blessing called companionship. I feel like a widow with a mentally dead partner who is physically alive, like a woman divorced while still married. I feel old and beaten. The sun is not yet risen and tears sting my eyes.

My phone rings and i pick it up. There is very little to interest or excite in the conversation. I know what we will speak. How it will be. An automated conversation. Played out every morning. I dare not say anything or ask anything or even be impatient in my desires. I have to be careful with the other who is like a child, an abusive child who can hurt me due his insecurities. If I am bubbly, excited, alive or eager, i share that mood. The days i wake up feeling this deadness, i try to fake it. To summon a feeling of normalcy. It is important. For his sanity. For my child's sake. For my safety and sanity. For the drama that we need to play for the world's sake. For the failure that we cannot show to the world, yet again. For the kindness i need to summon from deep within against an abuser because i am mentally stronger than him and kinder. And, because I can. And he cannot.

I need to strengthen myself from the pain of abuse and i need to continue to make him feel good about himself, boost his self-image because it is so fragile. So i shrink myself a little more, and clip my wings a little. I need to. If this has to work, i cannot fly the skies with a companion. He would not only doubt if he can fly, he would make me doubt if i can fly, and if i had ever flown, and all the while  i would remember the innumerable heights i have soared and the blueness aof the skies i have known. I need to clip my wings so that we are both broken without wings and we could forever beat our broken bodies in the ground. That is the only companionship that is possible, that is the promise of the tomorrow.

Around me laughter spills. There are couples dancing, their eyes flirt, and their hands own their patrner's bodies in familiar, unfamiliar ways. I sit amidst the whirling couples, a lonely married spinster. I would have given anything to have a man, hold me with pride and joy as we twirled away. I think of all the ones who would have loved to have me in their arms. But i ache alone. I turn to look at what should be the joy of my life, he is fast asleep amidst the crowd. I can only politely refuse the offers of other gentlemen and ache alone for arms that i would never know or have.

These are dark secrets i can speak to no one. No one cares. And, they will not understand. They have not lived the million lives i have. They do not know the hundreds of times i have fallen and risen. I wake. I exist now. I come alive in occasional moments sparkling with my old vivaciousness, my mind and spirit free and soaring. Then, the raised eyebrows of society reminds me of what i should be. They look at my bare arms, they look at the fact that rules do not apply to me and why they should. And, the old familiar icy coldness descends in to me. I remember that i am a married woman, a woman in a dead marriage that i can scarce talk about.

I weep no longer. Tears are still a sign of hope. My tears have dried up. I wonder how long this can go on ? And, then you came in to my life. Reminding me of all what I was. Bringing a promise. And, I ache for you now. I ache for the life I know we cannot have.'

Mitra stopped reading. She had forgotten the presence of others in the room. The child snuggled up to her for warmth, not understanding the words but sensing some deep emotion. Dia and Margaret had not spoken a word. Dia got up slowly, and went out. She came back with a glass of water which she silenty handed over to Mitra.

It was then that Mitra cried. Like she could never stop. - From 'Six Tits' - my upcoming novel

Waking up from the dream

I know that this is a dream.
All around me things are swirling.
People rushing by.
Intent and purposeful,
living their lives.
All around me people are feeling.
Thinking. Acting.
Laughing. Crying. Dancing. Wanting.
In a trance I watch.
Just observing the drama.
I speak and yet my words seem faraway.
My thoughts float.
They come and go.
Whimsically, I act on them
or just let them go.
I know that this is all a dream.
I am just a character.
Just like all the others.
The events, they come and go.
The perceived emotions,
they give them color.
A meaning. A value.
The events they come and go.
They touch me not.
I am but a dream.
And, in that awareness,
the question emerges,
Who is this Me that is aware of the dream?

-          Srividya Srinivasan 3/6/2015 

Dance of my life

I am laughing,
the moment holds me in thrall.
Alive, beautiful, full of promise.
So achingly beautiful,
that words fail.
My eyes crinkle.
my smile widens
as my spirit dances...


Past the yet-to-settle smile,
a rush of pain sneaks in,
needing but a split second,
Loneliness follows behind,
casting a vulnerability so fragile
that I can scarce breathe,
A million memories flood in,
a million aches...
I freeze.


Dancing in the moment,
I ache.
Dancing in joy
aching within.

A million aches
familiar and new.
A million joys
holding me in thrall
as I ache.

- Srividya Srinivasan 31/3/2105

Flirting with Time

I rushed about madly,
scared that time was running out.
Time stood still watching me,
waiting for me to come
to a standstill.
I do not perceive its pace,
amidst my frenetic one.

Everything is a blur,
my heightened awareness
screaming its aliveness,
into my being.

I stand in the middle of it all,
calm and still.
All about me is the whirling madness
as Time rushes by.
I wait for Time
to come to a standstill.

Everything is clear,
my heightened awareness,
whispering my awareness
into my being.

We are even.
We are one.
In the stillness.
Time and I.

- Srividya Srinivasan 14/03/2015

Calm

A great calm has descended over me,
casting its spell amidst the madness.
I no longer rush in to add my bit,
have lost the eagerness to explain,
to be understood.

I am an observer now of my own
small dramas and the world's dramas,
a part of it all, and yet not quite.

My grouses first went to a corner
and hopefully,
have slunk away forever.
My victimhood has been abandoned,
the cross slowly disintegrating
out of misuse.

I have lost the need to compete or compare
my former selves to this new self,
except, in recognition of this dawning calm.

I embrace my older, volatile self with love,
and ask her to find a place beside this new me.
Her motives are genuine, even if she does
wear her emotions on her sleeve.

And, we sit in companionable silence,
my older selves and this newer me.
content to just be.
Watching. Observing.
Drinking it all in.

Others.
Myself.
Me in others.
Others in me.


- Srividya Srinivasan 14/03/2015

The Single Mother

The single mother sings a lullaby for two;
the strong one the child turns to,
the man of the house she has to be,
the gentle one the child turns to,
the woman of the house she has to be.

Her fears are not to be her child’s,
Her tears are to be her own,
shed in the dead of the night,
all alone.
She dare not long for herself,
nor dream anymore.
Oh, what can the future possibly hold?

Giant shadows of fear
chase her through the night,
as the world asks, is that right?
Oh, how could you be so bold?

As the darkness falls,
and the walls close in,
The single mother
sings a lullaby for two,
She who sleeps with
her eyes wide open,
beside a trusting child.
She, sings a lullaby bold.

- Srividya Srinivasan, March 2, 2015