पल

"आने वाली सुबह जाने

रंग क्या लाये दीवानी 

मेरी चाहत को रख लेना 

जैसे कोई निशानी...

हम रहे या न रहे याद आयेंगे यह पल।"

Lyrics: Mehboob 

Sung by: KK

Carpe diem

"A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow", he said, “which you can do today.” This is the man who discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision. Because, what if you’re wrong? What if you make a mistake you can’t undo? Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true. That, by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we're carrying around a giant tumour.

The early bird catches the worm; a stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we haven't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to 'seize the day'. Still, sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying."

– Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

Yesterday

"That era has passed.

Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.

He remembers those vanished years.

As though looking through a dusty window pane,

The past is something he could see, but not touch.

And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct."

- from 'In the Mood for Love'

The Resumption of Time

There will be a day
When your yearning will
No longer choke
Every waking moment,
When reminiscing will
No longer open old wounds.

There will be a day
When you will remember,
But not hurt anymore,
When you will stop mourning,
And slowly
Begin to cherish.

There will be a day
When the heartbeat that
Once stopped yours
Will be laid to rest
Forever...
Then, time itself shall resume.

Endless Numbered Days

“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way...
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun...

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say...”

- Pink Floyd, Time

I look back on forgotten time and wonder how to account for it all. Standing where I am now, at this moment, I have nothing to show. The pointlessness of my life suddenly looms large and it’s not a nice feeling.

So many squandered opportunities, so much lost time, so many mislaid priorities, so much water under the bridge. If I can only put the ‘could haves’ and ‘should haves’ behind me, then maybe I would still have a fighting chance to make it to someplace, if only in my mind. But inertia rules, and I remain, in misplaced complacency, in the place I am now. And wonder where the person I had set out to be, got lost, or left behind.

I listen to ‘Time’ and figure I’m not the first who’s been thinking these thoughts. And I know I’m not alone in my deliberation. There must be others who wake up to the same realization and maybe feel the same way I do. This unknown, invisible company of strangers brings a certain solace. It’s a good feeling. One that almost cancels out the bad...

Almost.

Another Place, Another Time

Another voyage around the sun

And yet my life did pause,

At that place where the sun shone brightest

After which the light was lost.

Arrested in another time

A still frame in my mind…

When forever was a promise to keep

And friendship was sublime.

It’s been a year of sunrises,

But the sunshine stayed behind

At that moment when dreams awakened,

Another place, another time.

Remembrance

Ever experienced that perfect moment when time seemed to stop just for you? When you wished you could somehow capture the essence of that moment and bottle it so you could lift the lid off and breathe in the fragrance every time you needed to feel that magic again?

It’s that slack tide moment, when the tide is neither coming in nor going out; when everything’s simply calm, still…perfect.

The flip side is that it passes so quickly. And as much as you may want to hold onto it for just that little bit longer, it slips out of reach and loses itself in time’s ever-rolling stream and becomes a memory.

I remember, once again.

That perfect moment.

And you.