Oh to be alive

He couldn't breathe. He sat down, holding his head in his hands and letting the feeling of exhilaration just sweep him off his feet. In fact it was not so much about being swept off the feet as it was about letting the feeling sink in: The feeling that he had finally given in. He prided himself in being different from the crowd, in fact not just him; he felt his friends of both genders felt different too and why not?  They all had an extremely healthy, balanced and well, to use a cliché, a different upbringing. Thanks to that and the fact that he was a boisterous creature, with a natural knack for making friends, he had managed to keep Cupid at bay. To put it more aptly Cupid had been quite unsuccessful in afflicting him with even a single arrow, dipped in the so called potion of love. Whether he had managed to hedge the arrows, or they hadn't really been aimed his way, was a debatable point. He hadn't succumbed in school or college either and even at work though h...

It was everywhere. There was no escaping it. I had deliberately cut myself off from the world in a way and thought not reading the newspapers would help, imagined that shutting out all sources of information would perhaps make things better. Well, better is a word hard to come by of late, worse being the more ubiquitous one, when one looks at the daily scenario. So not having followed the news for a really long time, for reasons as mundane as bad reportage, slipshod follow ups, corruption and the like, I unfortunately, only came upon the horrendous Mumbai-rape case three days after it actually happened. Turmoil in heart, mind and soul is the only way to explain the feeling of unease that washed over me. Disgusted and disturbed in equal measure, I tried to follow up every little morsel of material that was being shown, aired, and written about the sickening incident to understand if this was going to in any way lead up to stricter laws as was the mood after the equally inhuman act i...

It is that time of the year yet again, where there will be the same antiquated lip service to the way the country earned freedom, long drawn speeches on how many made tremendous sacrifices and how a large of number fought to get us our basic rights, and how we wouldn’t be where we are today, but for them. Almost every word of it is true, but does that fervor really hold everyone in its sway, the way it did or the way it should, perhaps not. Is there a nationalist agenda other than hurling the choicest epithets at each other by different political parties in the name of professing an undying love for the country?  Are there any programmes or policies worth their salt (for that is where it all began) that systematically encourage the building of national character, rather than individualized fragmented short sighted goals, that only fuel the fire of divide and rule (a legacy from our erstwhile rulers). There will be yet again, symbolic respect paid at every nook and corner, whi...

This seems to be the common lament of almost every adult today, but particularly so of parents, who are at a loss to understand what is happening around them. Where and when did the most prized and cherished part of life, suddenly vanish?    Once upon a time there were people who wanted this to be the most prolonged part, almost akin to an extended sojourn, in a journey, as it encompassed the best of everything: innocence, carefreeness and most of all wonderment. This sadly is not the case anymore. Of course in the days gone by there was the urge to reach that line, the forbidden line and hasten the process of crossing over into adulthood, but when childhood beckoned one reckoned it was far more interesting to turn back just that one last time! Now far from the lines being distinct, they are almost unrecognizable, sharply blurred and/or  fast vanishing. There is an indescribable hurry to reach the former finishing line. Earlier there was the much awaited, bated...

Most coffee-time or living-room conversations begin or end on a note of complete frivolity today, what lies in between is not even worth a mention. Rare are the places where one would bump into energetic youth discussing a point heatedly or even for that matter any adults doing the same. At the outset it may seem like the days of yore, when discussions revolved around a cause; a cause that may or may not be of direct consequence to the person endorsing or opposing it. Yet it would churn up a debate of sorts, fire the neurons, and even pump enough adrenalin. But a closer look reveals a strange malaise that is afflicting everyone, not sparing anyone: a malady of decadence in one form or the other. What seems to be spreading like an uncontrollable virus is the increasing breed of well-toned, well heeled, clinically manicured unisex humans, whose only calling is indulgence. Not for them is any talk of what led to them being a free thinking group of people, not for them issues that wo...

A hiatus, a sojourn does help one discern. There’s more to the world beyond, among the valleys and ferns. Verdant meadows beneath the stark blue firmament. The sounds of ravenous birds, fill the air with fulfillment. A rush of water through a crevice churns. A breath of freshness embedded in the foliage hidden around a turn. To be alive amongst these heavenly trails, is close to being a chosen one… ©Copyright Suverchala Kashyap      

Myriad experiences, nuanced and glaring, soothing and jarring, sprinkle our lives the moment we are born. In fact, some theories have proven that even before we set foot, actually head into this world, (as not too many cases are breach births, hence pun intended), we are sequestered by layered experiences; each of which bring along their fair set of added, minuscule particle sized, sub-experiences, as I choose to call them. These, once out in the open then start working their magic or sinking their poisonous darts into the hosts, as the case maybe and slowly, but very surely, people start building on these blocks of experiences and start perceiving the world around as good, bad or ugly and apply perhaps the same contextual, see-through glasses to perceive themselves. The results can be alarming, annoying and/or assuaging. Depending on the degree to which the mixture of life pouring through the sieve that one puts it through or sometimes prism that one shines it through: the con...