Amma

Oh Maa Devi I surrender to you
You brought me here
You gave me all I have
You made me what I am

Who am I to complain now
When I know you will be there for me
Whenever I need you, wherever I am
Despite whatever sin I commit

I am grateful to have had you in my life
You brought me into this world
With your labour and your vitality
To give me the opportuity

To experience this life that I must have asked for
In a previous life that wasn't replete
But I must have forgotten on the way
That this what I came to complete

I can't express my gratutide
Better than to be the one you want me to be
And to give you the best
That I can possibly give

Ivanukku Thanniyila Gandam V2

Thaniyaa padukka thembu varla
Thirumbi thirumbi paduthen thookkamey varla

Vayiru neraya saapittu paduthen appavum varla
Kanna pinnannu kudichittum paduthen, okkali vaandhikooda varla

Gajnava pathhavechu izhuthum parthen innum varla
Yeadho super sarakkunu kuduthaanga adha  nakki paarthen nithame varla

Kuthhavechhi ukkaandhu indha sodhanaya ezhudhannu kelambinen
Feelings vandhuchu aana vaartha onumey varla

I see me and the guy you think is me

Hello people,

People who love me, those that don't, those that don't give a damn
Family, friends who care, those that don't and those that pretend to
Neighbors that adored my music
And those that called the cops when I played it loud

I have a truth to tell
This will hopefully fill in the blanks
 And give you an answer to a question you often asked
"Why are you like this?"

I have always pretended to be someone
Coz there are things about me that I cannot wear on my sleeve
But I'm sick and tired of this act
So I want to tell it all

I am manic depressive
I was given the label two decades ago with a prognosis
As bleak as the prospect of the sun rising in the west
Prophesying I had about five years , maybe ten

I was scared when I heard that
I thought many thoughts
There started opened Pandora's box
And mayhem time began

A period of rapid transformation had started
Exploring hitherto unknown paradigms
I went far and wide into the labyrinths of my mind
Sometimes it was fun and sometime scary

The high times were swell
There was a lot of drinking and dancing
But the lows were hell
With no energy to do anything

With a staple diet of alcohol and marijuana
Self medicated and self satisfied; I had found a way to ride the waves
Whether they helped or hindered I don't know
But that's the history that has landed me here now

What I have learnt is that I was scarred for life
In a society that has a narrow bandwidth of acceptable behaviour
I was swinging way off the boundaries
Up sometimes, down sometimes; barely resting in between

With people around, my motto was simple
"What I show you is what I choose to show;
There are other dimensions that I don't."
Coz I know I myself stumble through them myself

Its been a herculean effort to stay alive
To bear the stress of hiding from a judgemental society
And tolerating the resistance to live a life of hiding
And knowing that was much more to me than this

Most people won't get what I'm trying to describe
Unless they have experienced a condition on the same spectrum
Those of them who haven't had such an opportunity usually do the same thing
Judge me on the basis of my behaviour and their inability to see what I have

So the moral of this story is simple
People like me are struggling everyday
Just to make it alive through that day
Without showing talking about it much

When celebrities come out with their stories of depression
There are enough people to embrace them
There's a whole lot more of us mere mortals
We would also benefit from your understanding and support

I can never argue well

The moment someone counters my statement, my view is expanded to encompass their perspective. And then it takes a while before I can truly understand and integrate this new view with what I already know and offer an updated opinion. But in some situations I blurt out a counter argument only to appear as if I know it all or know it well, a knee jerk (pun intended) reaction to cover the insecurity due my ignorance. I've come to realize that most conversations happen in this mode. All I need is some good language skills and I can start spewing out words and try to make it sound like an intelligent sentence. Often there is no idea that I try to express in words, its just a barrage of words which starts almost automatically and I have to think of some idea on the go and supplement the barrage with more words to finally portray the impression of having expressed an opinion which I am supposed to have had when I first opened my mouth. And it works, if my intention is only to lob the ball across the net. This is a game.

True conversation must feel very different from this. I suspect there will be a lot of silence between words.......and that the silence will be the gap when the ripples of the counter point sink in and subside .....and equilibrium gets established.....before I can offer a counter-counter point which is not a knee jerk reply but a true response born out of the view of the depth which I can see only in the absence of the ripples caused by the insecure attempt to respond immediately.

Heart Vs Mind

Did your heart ever want something that the head was afraid to ask because it was scared of what it thought it might hear in return?

Love at the time of grief?

Why try to force love when you don't have a stomach for it?
Why not try to come to terms with the fact what is now and real?
Love happens when it happens, like meditation. The only effort that is required is to create the conditions for it, like planting a seed and giving it water, shade, protection etc. And the seed sprouts one day. Grief in itself has so much to teach if you can stay with it instead of trying to run away from it by creating the illusion of love or whatever else. In fact grief can teach more than love because your imagination is always about love and such comforting emotions; whereas grief is what happens in reality even when you try to avoid it. Like death. Someone close to you is going to die sometime or the other and you cannot avoid death or the grief that it brings. That is certain. But love has no such guarantee. And anyway both of these are emotions with a certain shelf life. Both are bound to disperse once their lesson has been imparted. The question is - were you awake when the lesson was being imparted? Or were you dreaming about love when grief was delivering its lecture!

Did a deep diagnostic check today
heart-o-meter, mind-o-meter, body-o-meter all doing fine
yet all-of-these-coming-together-to-create-a-worldly-success-o-meter didn't crank