So yesterday, I decided to do something after a long long time - a self directed Yin yoga session for myself. I'd had an argument with a friend and i was feeling all kinds of feelings from anger to sadness to the stubbornness of a child to hurt and pain of a woman - everything. At some point i even sobbed in my Pigeon pose. But great music and a calming session later i was slightly more whole that when I started.
And by then the sun had set and the moon should have been up in the sky. I stepped out of the porch where I was practising and was searching the sky and the old grandmother from my homestay asked me what I was searching for. I said to her in Balinese : Mencari bulan (im searching for the moon) And she said, back to me : satu bulan tapi banyak bintang (one moon but so many stars).
And i don't know what about that sentence stuck with me for so long - so many stars, but one moon or one moon but so many stars. I don't know if it was a comment she made for herself or her situation in life or for me and what i should be focusing on. But there was just some beauty in the way i felt about that statement.
I was on a long phone call with my best friend, Adithya and we have always lived and will always live away from each other. We decided to do this list of questions that apparently lead to love. Funny, because I already love him to bits. BUT, it was such a gorgeous exercise to go through anyway. So we spent 2 hours on the phone going through this list and one of the questions was to describe your life story in four minutes. And as I was answering that question, I realised that I see my life in phases - which is NOT a new thought that has occured only to me, i know i know. But I worded it out as "a journey home that was a path lined with pebbles like that fairytale where every pebble leads to the next". I was talking about Hansel and Gretel, thank you Adithya for pointing that out. This is my version of Will Smith's pursuit of happyness and my way of saying "this part of my life...".
So this pebble of mine is called finally setting out or maybe it should be called mencara bulan. Searching for the moon. You know how through our lives we are being prepared for things. There's something to take away from every lesson, that can then be used for the next project or phase of life - everything, every one, every experience adds to our lives. Sometimes in ways we can see, but often times in ways that are hidden to us. I believe in my pebble story and also that every pebble of mine has lead to the next.
After a long time now, I finally feel like i belong or I am doing what I set out to do or what I was meant to do. But here's the thing about chasing the moon - it is crazy hard and most times you can't spot it and then every now and then it vanishes altogether and you need to in that darkness find your own light, while the moon slowly emerges again. Never in my life have I been as fulfilled as I am now, but never in my life have i questioned myself as much as I am doing now. This is the most supported i have felt in my life, where people and places are holding me together, but it is also the most pushbacks I've gotten.
There are times I feel like i can achieve everything i have set out to achieve and then there are times where I am sitting and staring at a ceiling thinking - what the hell was i thinking when i decided to jump into this vastness. But in the last few months i realised how important this decision was and how much it has added to my life. I see myself in a brighter and softer light now that I have decided to leave the regular course and swim to a different shore. This is the light that guides me on moonless nights. A couple of days back i was sitting at Kempegowda International Airport in Bangalore, I broke down in front of gate # 32. I thought about how every one is getting married and having babies or vacationing all over the world and planning their upcoming trips or renovating their houses or tending to their gorgeous house gardens, while I have packed all my belongings in carton boxes stored it with multiple friends and i'm trying to start all over again this time with no company transfer privileges backing me up. All alone on an island where volcanoes erupt frequently. I suddenly didn't see how this was logical or well thought out or sane - I then had a conversation with a friend over the phone who distracted my mind for a bit and spoke to me about how we had watched a recent episode of Chef's Table and tried to inspire me with how even the Chefs that have worked with renowned Michelin star restaurants have had these moments of utter despair and self doubt and how they managed to make it past all that to create what they eventually created.
And then i realised at no point while making this decision did I think it was "logical" or "sane" or "well thought out". I just went ahead and did it and i am in the process of doing it. When people ask me where I found the courage to do this or that they are jealous of my life and want to live this life - I tell them, you can you just have to deal with all the other uncertainty that comes with it. And I know that is shit advice to give, but it is exactly what I did, closed my eyes and jumped and swam - and I am still swimming. My late grandfather's favourite quote which is also the one inscribed on his grave says "I have miles to go before I sleep" - that's where i am right now. And a part of me hopes that is where i will be in the creative process for the rest of my life - hopefully financially I won't have miles to go eventually :)
Bali tests everything. She tests your willpower, she tests your passion, she tests your discipline, she tests your patience, she tests your spirituality and tests your dedication, but most of all - she tests your love for her and your love for yourself. Those that come to Bali either are welcomed by her and held or are rejected immediately. And I know a lot of people who haven't connected with bali at all. But when you come to bali to start a new life - that's when she starts testing you. Until then even if you were welcomed before you're on honeymoon with her. And she is doing that to me - every day now. Each of the four periods of the day she asks me - how badly do you want this.
If "trust the process" and "have faith in yourself and your dreams" were mantras for me earlier - they are prayers for me now. Especially in bali, you have to trust the process and have faith else you can have a full fledged business plan and bali won't support you. Unlike the corporate world, this side of doing things has no set pattern, has no set success story, has no accurate guidelines and no correct directions for when you arrive on crossroads. If you've always listened to signs when they've spoken to you, you need to do just that and work and wait and watch. It's amazing how our ability to listen to those signs diminishes the more we live our life on set patterns. Some lovely old italian gentleman once told me - even if you are walking to the same coffee shop for your morning coffee, take different routes on random different days and just that itself will help you find magic in small things.
In some beautiful book I had read, the author talks about how there are always ideas floating around our heads (makes it sound almost harry potter-ish) and that whether we are struck by that idea or not depends on how open to magic we are and how open to receiving that magic and running with it. And if you're not open, these unopened letter-like ideas will go float around someone else - who might have the courage to run with the idea. It just seemed to be as such a good way of encouraging yourself to keep yourself more and more open to ideas from anywhere and anyone and anything.
Now working on a big project everywhere is the same. It's a lot of planning, it's gathering the right set of people to work on it, it's setting goals and timelines and following through, evaluating mid-way whether a particular line of experiment is working or not, encouraging team members that are doing well, trying to help those who are lagging behind and asking those that aren't adding anything at all to leave - these are all the same steps we take in all projects in life. The beauty about starting on your own and following your own path (provided there are no investors and VCs to answer to just yet) is that you can allow factors that can not be quantified a go at influencing the project and allowing some magic to play out, to allow that rhythm to flow, to allow patterns to form and disperse and then form again and then break away again - and be ok with it.
As always I forgot why i started this post - i'll be terrible at writing a book eh? I'd be so distracted and all over the place all the time! Mencara bulan - ya. The thing about chasing the moon is that we all dream of doing it, but very few of us have the courage to actually do it. I'm not applauding myself here or blowing my own trumpet - because frankly i haven't achieved anything yet, but just the fact that I have taken this step is worthy of being counted as an accomplishment. One of the other questions in our list of 36 questions was "what are you biggest accomplishments in life" and I listed this as being one.
One of my all-time favorite movies, I think I have said this before and I think I also need to write elaborately about it sometime, is Tamasha. And in that movie at one point, a storyteller tells a young Ved, the protagonist of the movie (so beautifully written by Imtiaz Ali) :
आत्मा एक हो जाए
तोह इंसान कब तक अलग रह सकते हैं
भटक ले रांझा जंगल-परबत
कर ले वीरानियों से वास्ता
मगर मिल जाएगा रास्ता
चलने लगेंगे पाऊँ
और आ जायेगा रांझा एक दिन
हीर के गाँव
Sometimes there isn't an easy way to translate other languages into english, but I'll try :
If spirits become one (or unite)
how long will two beings stay apart
Even if Ranjha were to roam the forests & mountains
and be at home in solitude
He too will find a way
His feet will begin to move
And one day he will arrive at
Heer's village
(Heer and Rajha being Punjab's version of Romeo and Juliet, but so much more!)
There is of course a romantic angle to this couplet but there is such an endearing message for those who seek to fulfil a dream and have the courage to step out of the ordinary mundane scripted existence that so many of us are living today. For if you have the conviction to follow the messages and the signs and look at the many stars while searching for that one moon in the sky, you too will arrive at your destination, one day.
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