Silence Of A Night

Silence of a night more noise it makes. To the men who can hear it wakes.
Drawing the attention it forces ‘em to listen And then it communicates
Whisper it is but a loud sense it makes I am you. I am you. I am you. It says.
It provides evidence of my living. Satisfies unattended long lived craving Explains; happiness is by giving.
Self is real not by its image but by realizing; Seldom deduced in the quest of meaningless.
Silence is dead when the night passes away.

And I go to sleep in the busy day.

On what basis do we connect with people? Why do we like or dislike ‘em?

As emotional beings we connect with people emotionally; we hardly ever think about the reasons for our involvements. We know very little about this world, and more so, about the people we connect with. We seldom ask why they love us? Why they hate us? Why they respect us? Or why they treat us the way they do?

Each one of us lives in his/her world that is built on perceptions, where we prioritize people and decide who to love or hate. Perhaps this shouldn’t have mattered if those private worlds does not influence our world. Unfortunately or fortunately, they do, as these worlds cannot exist in isolation; the connections to the other worlds are inevitable. I wouldn’t dig into socio-psychological or metaphysical theories and observations made by the learned; however I would put forward the thoughts that are occurring to me.

Let us inquire about on what basis we perceive people and how rational are we in doing so. I could think of the following factors that help us perceive people.

Pre-conceived Ideas—we construct a personality image (or drawing a connection) listening to the stories or gossips about a person even before seeing / hearing the person. Gossips or stories either can build his /her image or can destroy it; sadly, truth is irrelevant here.

Physical Appearance— I believe, it is the biggest of all the influences because we tend to instantly like or dislike based on his/her appearance. However, during a course of time the perception would change. More often than not, physical appearances are deceptive.

Social judgment— some people enjoy the acceptance or praise of the society, some do not, and some face the wrath due to which the way we perceive is influenced. It is not necessary that the way a group of people perceives is right.

Observed Attitude—this is the strongest of all the influences. For, we go beyond the above-mentioned factors while perceiving a person; we observe a persons portrayed characters in action. Here the question is how anyone would validate the portrayed character. As, we wear masks so skillfully; we portray ourselves differently at home, at office, when we are with friends and so on.
Perhaps, as we grow up we would choose some or one of the above factors more than other factors and create our world.

Not fully convinced by the above factors, for, they are not all. I am force to think about a factor that is beyond the above, which is highly intuitive, instantaneous, and comes naturally to us that help us to decide whether to like or dislike a person. I don’t know if it exists. If there is no such a factor then, how can we explain those crushes, why do we fall for one person so intensely without even knowing the person properly?.......why that person suddenly becomes the main concern. . .Perhaps, we are in a quest to find a world that can come into ours; and the slightest possibility we see we succumb.

Well, I really don’t think I alone can comprehend how we perceive or on what basis we like or dislike other worlds… Please put forward your own theories on the subject in comments.

On Waiting

I am working late today, as late as it is 3 in the morning now; no, I am not in a night-shift I came to work yesterday at 11AM. Sleepy and exhausted I am waiting for a response from one of our vendors who are launching a project I finished tonight (they told me that there are some technical issues in launching it). However, it is not about the project that I want to pen down here but about waiting.

What is it?

Waiting is just a state of mind it does not connote activity or in activity. For instance, a student could be busy preparing for an exam and waiting for it at the same time. Who likes to wait, surely none. But, everyone is and has been waiting for something or the other.

Picture a bus-stand or a train-station where everyone is so eager to reach his/her destination. It’s a good place to observe different moods of the waiting people depending upon who and the purpose of their traveling. There are occasional travelers (People who are returning from a foreign land or going to a foreign land, people going to vacation, an interview and so on) these people are usually (expressive and noisy) cheerful, nervous or anxious. Besides, there are routine travelers such as office goers or sales executives who are seemingly unexcited: ‘In this class of travelers you would see most of the people expressionless as if they don’t exist until their vehicles arrive, and of course some are expressionless even otherwise :).’ I believe they are cheerful or anxious because they are thinking about destinations or other things but not for the fact that they are waiting. Waiting itself cannot be essence of any feeling. Most certainly, it is no fun or is it?

Personally, I have waited a lot and I am still waiting.

Reminiscing my early school days (kinder garden), I can distinctly recall the images of my school, the classroom, the window, the compound that had a sliding board and a see-saw, and the most looked upon thing was a small gateway to the gate. The window was the only thing that helped me to get pass the walls of the classroom. My mom used to drop me at the gateway and stand there looking at me till I got inside the classroom; once inside the class room I used to run to that window to catch a glimpse of her, and from then on I used to wait looking through the window till she comes back to pick me up.

Thankfully, I grew up and learnt to sneak out from the school and wandered (although I used to be afraid of getting caught but I enjoyed every bit of it: getting lost in those never ending roads and finding the way back, looking at madaris performing tricks, climbing trees, making friends with dogs....). Because of the fun and excitement I discovered, I started to plan the next day, and used to be awake waiting all night. However, later, my onward looking parents for my good quarantined the fun and excitement I had discovered.

Growing up itself was a wait. When I was in my primary school, I waited to be in high school, when I went to high school—high school! Wow, what a tumultuous period that was, at the threshold of adulthood i.e. between nowhere, fun filled and confusing time—so I waited to be an adult. With the adulthood came responsibilities, new desires to fulfill, and I am waiting to fulfill them.

Philosophically, “life itself is a wait, but an interesting one.”

You know what, I got a mail from that vendor and I need to wait until next week for a response.