Convoluted labyriths of perception

Some dreams are so bad that when you gradually wake up and sense the real world isn’t that bad, you’re thankful. Somedays you wake up you sigh and say, “What the heck! Another day’s dawned, now I have to live through it!”

Living through half of today (till this minute as I punch at the keyboard) has convinced me that I’m going to mess up any work that I undertake today. There were two tubes lying in my ice-bucket and I sweeped the whole lab looking for them. I even looked into the ice bucket but couldn’t see them. I freaked out totally; I wasn’t gonna start doing the three-day experiment from scratch now.

Then I made some tea for myself, took deep breaths and told myself “I’m not dead yet, I gotta manage my stuff”. Lo and behold, as I returned to the lab and opened my ice-bucket, I saw my tubes smiling back at me. The mutant DNAs that I so lovingly made to clone into vectors. It was a big relief but my mood was still low. I don’t know why, maybe I do know but what the heck!

It’s not easy to estrange or be estranged to someone you’ve loved. But hey! I guess the reality is better than wishes and I gotta get over it. It reminds me of the Eagles’ song Get over it but that it’s not the same context. I’d lost interest in music for many a month, or so I felt till I heard a couple of songs. Two hindi songs have captured my attention like it hasn’t happened in ages: Tu jaane na (I liked it better till I hadn’t seen the video. Movie: Ajab prem ki gajab kahani…interesting name) and Hai Junoon (Movie: New York). Hai Junoon struck just the right chords in my heart and last night while listening to it, I couldn’t help but reach out for my guitar, dust it, kiss it and say “hi buddy, it’s been a long time”. My fingers (soft again from the non-playing) couldn’t take the string torture for long and are still hurting but what the heck I was playing “hai junoon” and junoon it was till my throat went sore from the high pitch singing.

Also these days, there’s a new found love for compositions of Eagles and Mr. Big. Alone, curtains drawn, feet tapping to the beats or maybe even dancing and the music filling me from my top of my baldness to the tips of my toes. After The Thrill is Gone by The Eagles and Going where the Wind blows, Twenty-five Years by Mr. Big at songs that I relate to these days.

Sigh! Just the very though of the exhilaration I feel at such times has begun to alleviate the melancholy right now. I know what I gottta do. Take a few minutes off the lab-work now, sit outside alone in the warm breeze, listen to the rustling of the leaves and watch the birds and insects and humbly accept, “what a beautiful world” (in 10-15 minutes that is).

I’m glad to be alive and to witness the myriad complexities I see in creatures, objects and people around me and in my own self.