The beats of your heart!

I'm one of those lone wanderers who loves to go on long rides alone - just me and the bike. The moment I get up from my bed every morning, I mumble a short prayer - after which I say a brisk hi and good morning to my soul. I respect my private space. I like to sit in the quiet to spend some time with myself even in the middle of the busiest day. Last month, I covered two thousand kilometers in three days. Of course - on my bike, and yes - alone. On the second day, I was in Kerala - on top of one of the tallest hills of the western ghats. All through the journey, I was running and re-running scenes from my life because I had so many questions I needed answers for and I was on the verge of making one of my life's toughest decisions. But when I saw those clouds and all the jaw-dropping green around, I quit thinking. Yes, I went blank. The chilly mist was shaking my bone and marrow, and it was hurting me - but it felt strangely good. Something brought all those legions of butterflies in multiple colors towards me and the creaking sounds of the wild crickets were growing higher in their pitch. I smiled my best smile of the year standing there surrounded by that divine calmness of the morning. 

Those sweet whispers from my soul resonated in my ears adding beauty to the moment. It solved all the puzzles just like magic. I was immensely happy. The decision was made. I spoke it out - to the butterflies first that were swarming around me. Then, to the air that was refreshing the morning. And, to all the vegetation and the lovely green my eyes could see. I repeated whatever my heart wanted me to say. I said it aloud. Louder still. Then the Sun started coming up and its rays filled the morning sky. And I kick-started my bike, continued with the journey more happily. 

To be truly happy, you should follow your heart. You need to trust and blindly obey your heart. The whole world might toss you with truckloads of opinions both ways, but it falls on you to carefully train your mind so you listen only to the beats of your heart. Before you do any thing - you have to believe from deep within that you can do it, it should occur to you naturally straight from the deepest portals of your heart - or just quit doing it. See how the little birds learn to fly! When the time comes, they just jump out of their nests closing their eyes, flapping their wings - slowly and quickly and then slowly again till they find their right rhythm, and in the end - there they go flying and singing to the most beautiful places!

It might sound extremely illogical but it is absolutely true that your heart never lies. You could try a thousand tricks to misguide your heart to believe a lie to be the truth, but it wouldn't oblige. It wouldn't allow you to wrong anyone either, because compassion flows out of its all four chambers. How I wish the viles of the mind are completely doused as the human race continues to progress and evolve through history! We don't need great inventions anymore - all the advancements we have seen in all these years are enough! What we sincerely need is for all men and women to carry the fervor of the soul's warmth in their lives every breathing moment! When that day arrives, we would - in truth - see that utopian world where kindness, laughter, fun and love would be found in bubbling abundance.

Why I Like The Prostitutes More?

On the starry evening of that serious day, we were together. My dad and I. The cab was racing the twenty six kilometers to Coimbatore so I could drop him at the railway station, say tata to him as he boards the Blue Mountain train to Chennai, and come back to the hostel before the closing bell of the much silent study hour. In the cab - we talked about life, the universe and a lot of other things. But what awed my dad more was a statement I made when we discussed in length about the idea of marriage. I told him -"Appa, I wouldn't mind marrying a prostitute if that is where god leads me to!" Though I have been slowly reeling away from the concept of religion day by day, I have always been a firm theist. I was, then, a nineteen year old and the girth of my ideologies had already started bulging in shape with its toughness and strength.

So yes, I wouldn't mind marrying a prostitute! There are strong reasons behind this positive assertion. From all the conversations I have had with the sex-workers as part of the many activism drives, I am affirmative of the fact that they are all awesome women out there - caged by the curse of the disparities born out of the vehemence of filth and debauchery emanating from the very same society that we, as proud members, are party to. Everyone has a story to tell that would just move your soul and break your heart to pieces. In the world of a prostitute, the words - love, kindness and care - take an altogether different dimension and meaning that are much practical compared to the hypocrisies of the many households where you hear frequent theoretical rants about morality and upright behavior.

Prostitutes, despite the cruelties they are being subjected to almost every day, are modestly simple and honest about their lives. You have no idea of the shame, torture and abuse they have to bear from various cruel men who come often to jizz out the heat. The majority of the society sees them as scum, but to me, they are just like every woman - only that they are more beautiful. Yes, they have feelings; yes - by virtue of being women, they are more sophisticated than the men; and yes, they cry quick - but when they cry they do not do it to create a scene, twist the truth or solidify a lie. There is absolutely no falsehood in them. They present themselves as they are - without any underlined caveat. They do have their own value system - the more you observe and learn from them, the more you would be enamored by the depth in the character they tacitly showcase.

It is truly disheartening that the statistics behind the success rate of rescuing these wonderful girls from the red-light area is not so glamorous. There is a certain rehabilitation center in Badlapur - now functional but without legal license - because the government was pressurized to shut it down. Reason, the pimps who run the show have ministerial connections. You should go there and see it for yourself. Every woman rescued from Kamatipura tends to go back to being a sex-worker again because the society does not accept them. These pretty women, when they are out in the world, meet two kinds of people - there is a larger group that sees them with disgust and there is a smaller group that sees them with sympathy - both extremes from two different spectrum of thought. Imagine how dangerously unsettling would this be to their minds that are, in real, quaking like a fish freshly out of the already troubled gutter water. How idiotically unscrupulous even the supposedly good lot amongst us also are - that we tend to show that lax sympathy to people who are in critical need of compassion and acceptance!

There are people amongst us who would hide their deviant present, just to look good in front of the world - but quickly point judgmental fingers to taint others when they make a far lesser mistake. Believe me, there is no such cheap drama and vanity seen in these women. They are like pearls stuck inside the suffocating flesh of the sea shell. They need to be loved just like how any damsel in distress from those fairy tales would yearn to be loved by her knight in the shining armor who would valiantly come crossing all the seven seas to rescue his maiden and take her away. Away - into the woods, to a place where there would only be bliss and the story would end with the lines - and they lived happily ever after. From all the tenets of love that I have known over the years - a person's present should not matter much as long as she is sincere about what she does and regrets her mistakes, the very thought of giving even the slightest damn about the past to judge somebody's character is highly sinful by any standard, and appearances do not count at all - because a lovely woman is not the one who is flawless by the set norms of the society, not the one who has an attractive shape and skin tone, not the one who has a lot of wealth - but the one who by her magical strides simply adds beauty to her man's life by the truth she brings in to beautify the relationship. I bet all these women who have been forced to live their lives in those small dingy private rooms quenching the lust of strange men just to win their daily bread are quite capable of being those ideal women the heart of any young man would want to woo and take home - only if you could be wise enough to see the roses beneath the thorns.

We hear lectures on true love everywhere, our movies wouldn't sell without love, all the songs we listen to are dipped in love. But what is depressingly sad is that none of us would want to imbibe the essence of love into our souls and show it in action that one could truly love. It is time we got up from our slumber and lived our lives on a higher note, for a higher purpose - negating all hypocrisies and moral deviances.