"By the River Piedra I sat down and wept"

“All love stories are the same,”

says the last line of the opening chapter. Yet, from the moment you turn the first leaf, the book ensnares you, take you to its custody and stir your inner piece in the least disturbing way. Finally when you come to the last leaf, it leaves you with such an urge to look back at your love, choices and decided destinies and lure you to question them according to your heart’s new found measurements.
Love, as Coelho sees, is the ultimate devotion that makes all the other devotions worthwhile. For him, choices are those that shape your journey and drag you into corners where you unknowingly longed to be. And patience for him was a not a walk in the Sahara dessert on a mid August morning but a sweet preserve of a long ago time that refreshes your heart and mind when the present discourages you to reach your waiting point.
From the surface, it was like any other love story. An encounter of a girl and a boy, childhood best friends, who were in love with each other even before they came to know what love really meant. The story was about their quest of digging into their individualities and realizing the length and breadth of love; a kind of love that can overcome every other physical and imaginary boundary and change someone for the better without making him or her feel lost.
If Coelho were a saint, his specialty would have been the balminess of his words. His optimism is not something dreamy and high above the ground. Be it ‘The Alchemist’ or the ‘Witch of Porbello’, it was the same cozy warmth of human goodness and the beauty of the human mind that sparkle through his dictions like the rising sun over the springtime Pyrenees.
Having read only three books from Paulo Coelho’s lengthy collection, it would be rather stupid to call ‘By the River Piedra I sat down and wept’ my most favourite. When Pilar sat by the River Piedra and wept, I wept too, for a love I sometimes took so much for granted. And finally when she beamed at her lover who was walking towards her, I smiled myself the same smile and convinced myself that the weeping was worth it. Before closing the book, I sent Shabs another ‘thank you’ message for gifting me a piece of my own conscience.

Surprise! Surprise!

Spending a lazy weekend, trying to figure out the reason to be attacked by a pony in the middle of a busy Colombo road, I began to realize, that let alone beasts, I do lack in good judgment when it comes to people around me. The behaviour of the beast, I thought was very much pardonable as it was very likely that he must have been tied to a nearby tree the whole day under the scorching, capital city sun. So, in a wild moment of freedom, who would say no to a little bit of jumping and juggling around the walk-way in front of the public library, enjoying teasing and terrifying the gorgeous girls who pass that way on their way home.
Honestly, when I saw the four-legged creature at a distance, not for a moment I thought he would gallop at me or try to knock me down to the ground nor did I imagine it to jump at me from behind for the second time. But most of all, it was a sight to see when the armed man in the uniform ran into the library terrified of the unarmed soon colt-to-be.
On my way home, very much lost in my own world inside the crowded bus, I dug out a scheme to avoid a third attack. After good fifteen minutes, with a feasible plan in my hand, I convinced myself that it’s time I adopt the colt theory for people too.
As petrifying as it may sound, at least I learnt a few good things from the hullabaloo; that is the first attack may not be the only attack, never take the look of innocence as the actual innocence and that never be complacent with your judgment about people and their hidden ferocities and of course, a back up plan always places you at least one step ahead of your opponent.

Forever, we remember

Those who died in battlefields found their glory and immortality in their death. They left behind families who lost their sons, brothers, husbands and nations full of people who take their hats off at the mention of their names.
The stars and the medals, once glistered on their shoulders became heirlooms, to be taken out and polished once a year; to remind ourselves the fact that they treaded on this earth, to die knowing that their sacrifice spared our lives.
The calendar is full of days that mark or commemorate people and incidents that changed the tide of the history of the mankind. For a country like ours that had been searing in the ugly flames of a thirty-year-old war against terrorism the Poppy Day is not only to remember those who died in the World War I, but to recall and honour those who laid their lives at a stake so as to let you and I breathe and walk freely on this ground we call-the motherland.
Wearing a poppy flower so close to your heart for one day does not make you a real
patriot. As the redness of the flower symbolizes the streams of blood that seeped through war fields, we are in debt to each drop of blood they shed and each bit of grit they had, to take bullets on the chest and ribs.
Perhaps, they did it out of love or out of honour. If their difficult call was to die, then the call of their families were even more difficult ; to live to see their sons, brothers and husbands die, worse still go missing, and live forever with their memories.
Calendar days are good to remind things we keep forgetting. If they had forgotten their duty, at least for a wee bit, you and I may not even be living.
The mothers who still expect their sons to cross their thresholds, the wives who yearn for the affection of their husbands, the sisters who dream to disappear in the embrace of their brothers, the lovers who die for their beloveds’ kisses and the sons and daughters who had never seen their fathers keep enlivening the legacy of those who now lie sleeping peacefully under the stars. Peace for them is when they are being taken care of, supported and guided until they come to terms with their pathos and loss. For everyone of us, this is the call of the hour and the call of the honour and love.

Slot board life

Until November came and knocked at my door, I hadn’t realized what a sprinter, time is. When I sense a flimsy aroma of Christmas happily dancing in the Colombo air and the monsoon makes its way down to earth from sky, I, the lazy one as always, sit on my bed cross-legged and find myself already thinking about 2011.

How often do I find myself thinking about trivial things over and over again when the more important things go unnoticed and forgotten? How often do I get accused of being opinionated and how often I wrack my brains thinking of ways to come out of it? When looking forward, I realize that learning to plan the remote future is far easier than learning to live in the immediate present.

Becoming a shape-shifter to accommodate and tolerate the egos and hypocrisies of the people around me is an art I am still mastering. Be it at the university or even inside the editorial, accepting people for what they are is something that has to be practised constantly. When it comes to friends, it is always easy to take them for what they are and see them through even if you can see through them. But treating a stranger in the same way is something closer to generosity.

Conflicts are natural when you move among people who have brain waves of different lengths and textures. Be it a simple reason or a critical one, confronting a friend is always more difficult than confronting a mere acquaintance. But at the end of the day, I should make sure that I do not take a sore work-heart home.

After all, life is like a slot board and living is dropping the correct word strip on the correct slot. It seems to me that the coming days are all about figuring out the right word for each place.

The end and the beginning

When the year ends for the others for me it begins. Passing the last few moments of the twenty-second year of my existence on the mother earth, I begin to realize that birthdays become such lackluster affairs when you grow up. And I begin to see that forgetting the day you were born is perfectly normal.
I look back once again and count out the hearts I have won and the hearts I have lost within the past twelve months. I think for a moment about the friends I have made, the exams I got through and the line up of exams I am still to get through; another year, another line of exams, a bagful of new challenges wrapped in the same old wrapping paper of work, family and studies.
My Poetry Diary tells me that it’s time I get ready for the next Gratiaen. The plot inside my head tells me that it needs some sheets of paper to lie down. I would think and think again whether it is the right time to start off something which can lull the little balance I so vainly maintain. Sometimes, it is really difficult to wait for that call- the call of the heart, that tells you everything is under control and that the time is ripe and the winds are perfect to set sails.
Birthdays always have an element of surprise in them that can keep me excited for the next twelve months. It has nothing to do with counting the greeting cards I get or the presents that find lodging on my table. Birthdays gives me the much needed assurance that friendships don’t expire in different geographical or professional conditions. Birthdays tell me that like vintage wine, little fraternities only grow too precious with time.
They make me feel old in a good way that with every single year I shed behind me, I have a story to tell, and a history to rejoice over.
When I turn twenty-three tomorrow, I should be thankful to all who make me live and all the trouble-makers and heart-breakers who make me feel all the more alive. It may be one step towards death, old age and frailty but at the same time, it certainly is one kilometer closer to maturity, seniority and familiarity.