Changing Views

I am not a fan of change. This puts me at very uneasy odds with life at best. Life is very little in essence, if not change. My own life, therefore, is a never ending series of losses and draws, with me pitted in eternal denial and stubbornness against the innumerable variables that govern my fate. The struggle to retain the security of the familiar is a hard one indeed.

Given all this, you can be assured that I did not take kindly to my dear parents' decision to move. I had gotten rather comfortable in my dusty room, bereft of ventilation, and forever enveloped in clouds of nicotine and tobacco that had stained, in the span of two years, every surface imaginable in the remorselessly cluttered room.

Nevertheless, it seemed the shifting of homes, and in my case, of tiny little concrete encased worlds, was inevitable.

The move itself went remarkably efficiently I must say. I am not going to dwell much on details there, largely because it was uneventful and I had little to no part in it. Except for maybe taking care not to get in the way of things being lugged and lifted out. Professionals were employed and thing itself transpired without dramatic hitches.

I found myself in my new quarters soon enough. One day I was cocooned in familiarity and poison clouds, and the next day I was in a new world. With a view.

The view from my new room

The new accommodations are a better fit for our family, as it is closer to my father's workplace. But also because it gave my mother much needed space to tinker with the novel organization of our earthly possessions.

My new world is, if anything, the antithesis of my old one. If the latter had been dark and cluttered, the new one is well lit, with a tremendously calming space to it. If the old one had no desirable channel to let in the outside world, this one has three large windows that open to a serene view. The former lair had been surrounded by busy lives emitting a rather loud range of often unpleasant noises. The current living conditions, on the other hand, are somewhat removed from the cacophony of central urban life.

The real surprise was none of this though. The surprising revelation that prompts me to write this post.

It's that I find myself changing now. I like keeping a single window open these days. I find myself sleeping better and have turned to reading after long years of being stuck by my own volition in the world of Youtube videos and movies. The day before yesterday I finished my first book in a long time. It was a good feeling.

I have already started on my next one.

Maybe, just maybe... changing views isn't as bad a thing as I had felt it to be, it seems.

Varanasi

The city of Varanasi lay gloriously bustling behind him. Its ancient walls and streets echoing with the noisy murmur of humanity that had inhabited it for thousands of years now. How many bloody wars had stayed clear of its holy walls? The longest continuously inhabited city in the world itself. What other laurels had this old conglomeration of dwellings, temples and markets accumulated in its rich history? Every which way the eye could see in this place, there was the spiritual attempt of man to reach something beyond his reality. Salvation from suffering. Was that the divine purpose of this ancient place? The assortment of humanity that filled these cobbled and brick lain roads was a curious sight in itself. This city calls souls that suffer to its womb, they say. Men, women and children, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, they all travel from the far corners of the nation to trudge these paths and stand humble among these arcane constructions, no doubt with some personal human purpose that encroaches upon the divine one. The saffron garments of the monks and the sages, wandering with stern intentions, speckle the crowds with their promise of purity. But beyond all, what gave this place the air and enchantment of holiness was that mother of all rivers that flowed through it. Ganga the pure. Or maybe Ganges, as those of a Western persuasion referred to her. The river flowed silently, bathing the saints and sinners alike, and taking all the filth and aspirational rituals of death and life that man could conjure up. She flowed like she had been flowing for millennia, perennial and proud. The chants and prayers from thousands of lips would ring through the city now. It was that time of the day, as dusk spread its golden colours on the rippling waters of Ganga and painted the city a sleepy yellow, the symphony of spiritual starvation would reach its crescendo. And in that moment, the city would resemble what she always had… and probably always will… a beacon of human distress calling out to the heavens.