Melancholy

Have you ever observed how melancholy creeps into our lives on certain days ..
The whole feeling is so subtle yet so distinct. Subtle in the way it shows up, yet distinct in its feeling. Its like listening to a piece of music where a couple of notes drop and the harmony is lost - not that the whole music sounds bad, but its a momentary lapse to sound that would otherwise flow so beautifully into your ears - just the way melancholy shows up. It seems to be something that just doesn't allow your day to be perfect. That's the way I've been feeling these last couple of days.

There's nothing differently wrong with these days , but just that I keep getting these blues from time to time with absolutely no notice and by the end of the day, I feel this overwhelming sense of melancholy. Its so strange that on such days , your eyes manage to only catch scenes in everyday life in shades of grey. That solitary middle aged woman waiting at the bus stop for her bus to arrive, waiting for her day to begin, but with a faraway look in her eyes yearning for that lost youth of hers, that lost love of yester years , her carefree days of many years ago ! Or the young father taking his daughter to school , but today he doesnt have that look of affection on his face and the spring in his step to match his 5 yr old, instead he has a look of worry , a burden of how he is going to really manage taking care of his family in these heavily expensive times .. And there is the old lady who sells flowers early in the morning by the side of the road. Usually the colourful display on her cart mixed with smell of fresh jasmine wafting through the summer morning into my car lifts my mood instantly. But today, I dont see the flowers. I see her worn out face , the many years of hardship trapped into her wrinkled hands , the sadness in her life is expressed through one look at her eyes ..

I was driving to work listening to Dave Brubeck and instead of feeling good about it, there were tears in my eyes. Something telling me that life wasnt perfect after all. But this feeling came without giving me a real problem to solve which essentially makes it impossible for life to be perfect anyway ! I guess essentially you may have everything theoretically - but there is always an element of something missing ..

It could be as simple as that one smile from your partner in the morning, a hug you didnt get from your kids, a call you were expecitng from a friend but never got, just a misplaced favourite book of yours .. these are nothing in the bigger picture and scheme of things but are the perfect ingredients to turn an otherwise okay day into a sad one .. For I have figured that it is these small things in life that you actually live for after all. And maybe thats why your heart wrenches at these pieces of sadness that sticthes our lives together. I wonder how many times do I cry when I see a massive tragedy on TV ? I feel bad , but I dont cry - but when i suddenly catch the sad expression in the eyes of that flower woman sitting at her stall , selling flowers, I actually do have tears in my eyes ..

Of course such sadness in life doesnt help you move ahead in life , it just hinders it - because your thoughts seem to be clouded with the "unfairness" of the world , whereas by and large maybe you've got a good deal but you seem to forget. So with the work week ending this evening, I am making a promise to myself to snap out of this and try to fill up life with some form of happiness , even though that happiness is nothing but an illusion in itself, but thats what moves life really - hope , happiness and love ..


THough I guess even sadness in its own way makes you feel that you're real , that you;re capable of longing , of yearning .. of remembering people, places in your life you may never see again .. of life in itself and the promise of maybe what could have been !

Once upon a Sunday evening

Blowing winds through the afternoon followed by a welcome shower ushered in Sunday evening that was a pleasant surprise atleast weather wise. My balcony full of plants of all sizes and types were visibly pleased with the sudden rain that washed away days of accumulated dust and they seemed to be literally dancing away to the rain song ! Its never the same even if I painstakingly wash them with my watering can, they dont do this dance sequence for me :) This afternoon was especially pleasing because with the onset of the rain and the temperature dropping several degrees to a most pleasant atmosphere - it induced sleep in both my 5 yr old and 5 months old at the same time. And I was most happy to be sandwiched between the two on my bed and sleep for that precious half an hour at a stretch which is otherwise so elusive these days ! But more than the sleep , it almost seemed like the world was perfect with the two boys next to me, the little one's hand clutching at my dress and mouth slidely open and the elder one curled up next to me after one of our many endless fights and kind of having made peace with me afterwards. I never knew till my first son was born that kids could bring in such an enormous sense of peace and joy. I always loved children, to talk to them, to understand their world, but having my own burst open the doors of unconditional love and happiness that I really didnt know exist. I still feel so overwhelmed with emotions at times when I see their innocent faces and breaking out into senseless laughter or the sudden hug or just seeing them .. its so difficult to believe that they;re real some times !

anyway , the superstitious side of me always takes over at these times and I chide myself for being so much taken into them and feel that some harm will come over them if I clutch them so tightly to my soul , so I try to let go - not very successfully all the time, but atleast I try.

today was an overall satisfying day with the foodie in me being satiated with a self cooked lunch of Penne with prawns in a feta cheese sauce and a fresh garden salad with multigrain bread and some Frech cheese - yummy ! it just tasted awesome. I am increasingly falling in love with very fragrant cooking. I realized thats precisely why i just love Thai food because of each of the flavours blending in with each other and the fragrance of each ingredient combined into a superb singular taste. Last Friday, I made this chicken with fresh fenugreek and coconut milk and the effect was a mindblowing fragrance. It was very funny because I had to cook in the morning since I had to go to work in the afternoon (it was my turn to be at home in the morning with my baby), so in the middle of work, I felt like making this chicken and then the whole day I was looking forward to coming back home for dinner so that I could finally have the chicken whose smell haunted me through the day ! You might call that obsession with food - well, in a certain sense, maybe yes , but not in a greedy sense. Just rounding off the week with a good meal !

Tomorrow is the start of another work week. Hopefully I keep my spirit of being patient and determined to not let anything "get" to me - I think that's the key to enjoying what life has to offer. So many times life has gone by while I have been busy being angry at it , but the "moments" in the meanwhile get washed away with that sense of anger or rage. Something that never comes back no matter how much you want it to.

Oh, well , let the good sense prevail and along with it my peace - once upon a Sunday evening so I realized :)