A Note On Why I'm Reverting To My Real Birthday On 20th August

By Sadho Ram

A decade ago, I made a decision to celebrate my birthday on the 1st of January despite not being born on that day. At the time, it made more sense given my journey. For those who may not be in the loop, let's just say, it wasn't all that pretty. You can read more on the link above.

A decade has passed and I've gone on to celebrate every 1 January since 2015 as a way to mark my 'birthday' with the loved ones in my life.

However, things have since changed — for the better.

My horizon is now vibrant with the arrival of a new Moon that has brought greater joy in my life. And so — to paraphrase the words of Christopher McCandless — I've decided I'm going to live this life by being free of the shackles of my past because the simple beauty of the present is just too good to pass up.

But above all, what matters is that I'm truly happy now and I want to share this happiness with her. And I'm not going to hesitate to make any excuses if that means I get to live a life filled with abundance with my partner.

I was born on 20 August 1986, among my mum's happiest moments. I no longer wish to undermine this memory of her, given how I've reclaimed my sense of identity.

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have, for a decade, indulged my whim to celebrate 1st January as my birthday. You all have been kind and understanding with it, and I hope you all will offer the same understanding now.

Thank you.

And since it's my birthday today, let me be the first one to wish myself the happiest — a long overdue — birthday :)

You may send me your birthday wishes either via Instagram or Twitter.
And if you would like to send gifts, here's my wishlist 🐒

A Note on Waiting and the Joys and Sorrows of it.

By Sadho Ram

Waiting, for some, is a process of experiencing joy, for some it is merely a process of evolution of the self by acquiring what one is waiting for. But for me waiting has been all sorts of different kind of things. Like others I’ve had joys and while waiting I’ve evolved too. But it somehow has always felt like a slow severe pain in the chest. And yet I’ve waited for everything that I’ve ever wanted in my life, regardless of whether I got or I didn't, whatever was that I had wanted at the different waiting junctures of my life. I’ve waited so much, working my way through to get whatever I want, that at times I've felt I should just give up, that I shouldn’t wait anymore for anything.

But no, I haven’t given up on waiting or waiting, so I’m still waiting; now for a whole new awakening to embark into a journey from where I know that my life will take all those turns which is only going to make it what years and years ago, lying over the vast spread of due laden grass in the fields of my village, beneath the gaze of winter sun on my face, I had dreamt and promised to myself. And now somehow, somewhere down the line, the waiting for me has gradually turned into something else, a sort of different pain, not in the chest anymore, no. But somewhere deep within; it pleasures me now, keeps me going, gives me strength, and provides me with a hope that my waiting will finally yield the result(s) I’m seeking. So I wait, hoping and holding onto whatever that I’ve now with and within me.

It’s a strange phenomenon with waiting. There is always a sense of uncertainty attached to it and yet we wait.

Currently, at this very moment I wait for her. And I’m waiting for my birthday this August.  I’m waiting to hold her in my arms once again, and to feel her warmth once again. For waiting is all I know that I have chosen to do, not because there isn’t any other option but because I’ve  promised to stick to waiting through thick and thin, and work my way through it for that new awakening, no matter how long it takes, no matter how short it lasts, I’m waiting... I’m waiting.

I remember about exactly 11 years ago I had waited with bated breath to get to my village to take one last look at my mother’s pale skinned face, who was lying dead, covered in red, inside her room. That was the time, probably the first in my life, when I experienced the sorrow of waiting. Because when my wait had ended, she hasn’t come back to life, as I foolishly had thought. The sorrow of that waiting was much deeper than I had imagined it to be, or maybe it was just too shallow. Because I remember I didn’t even shade a tear. But at the cost of being honest, it was that I couldn’t shade a tear, I just couldn’t. I had gone silent, partly with sorrow and partly with the realisation of the great loss. It was silence that had engulfed me, and had consumed the basic ability of a child to cry.

Since then a whole decade have passed away, actually more, and life is not what it was back then, so am I. Emotions have evolved, feelings have changed, I’m different too. But the silence of that day is still within, caged somewhere in some corner of my chest. It still breaths, still lives on. Although now that day of my life seems like another lifetime, it’s a whole new life now that I live. For I haven’t given up on waiting or waiting...because I know that the sorrows attached to waiting are gone now, all it now has to offer are the joys of waiting.

She is coming here to see me, to be with me. My woman from west, who have promised a new world to me and to whom I’ve pledged my life and every single joy of it. I’m waiting to experience the world she has promised, and I’m waiting to live up to the pledge I’ve taken in her name. On my this birthday, I will finally experience the joy, the ultimate joy of its kind, when I take her in my arms, tangle my fingers in her tresses, and plant the kiss that I keep playing in continuous loop inside my ever active head time and again. I’m waiting to become one with her.

Just like the sense of uncertainty is attached to the process of waiting, there’s one very distinctive trait attached to it too. It’s the test of the mettle a man is made of. And currently, I’m testing my own mettle.

...because, folks, all I know is that I’m waiting.

Of Yore and Of Hope [Emotional Atyachaar]

By Sadho Ram

Author’s Note: The below posted narrative is one of my personal experiences. It happened with me about a year ago. My motive behind posting it here now is nothing specific except that I’m participating in this month’s Indiblogger Emotional Atyachaar and Weblog's  Sleepy Sunday contest. Though partly sad, partly mad, but I enjoyed completely while writing it and I hope you all enjoy it too.

Have fun reading it, friends!

Part 1

On the 4^th of June 2009, I was in Pune, about 170 kilometres away from the suffocating humidity of the furiously sweating city, Bombay, and it was warmly cold in there (yes, warmly cold).

And for the first time in 3 months I found myself almost so very close to shivering (in the season of summer), and so naturally it was unbelievable for me but it seemed like magic, I mean the feeling was something I had only experienced once in my life (I will get to that too). So the first thing I ask myself,

“Man, am I not supposed to sweat?”

And then this thought appeared into my mind,

“Maybe not”

Because I was in Pune, where the sky was frigidly blue and was smiling as vibrantly as my animated heart, which was so filled with the fragile but sturdy thoughts of that girl, Sasha, whose mere glimpse were enough to send me into the world of serendipity and romance.

I first saw her on the very first day of my new class in my college, which was held in our Auditorium.

I was sitting on the first row, waiting for our new faculty to arrive, and chatting with others quite loudly, when she walked in and while the entire auditorium went on just as it was before her arrival, I (trust me, friends) somehow went into an unknown state of quieten trance where calmness took over me and my eyes followed her to the third seat from the left in the third row and then remained constant there on her charmingly simple face. I had completely lost it… my senses were somewhere, while I was out of sync with the nearby happenings and my heart was drooling when all of a sudden (when the guy seating beside me kicked me with his leg) my beautiful dreaming world came to a screeching halt and brought me along with my senses to the middle seat in the first row. As I came back to my sane state I realised that the class has gone silent and everyone was staring at me (including our new faculty who, I don’t know, when had walked in).

Here I must confess, that I had to literally force myself to stand still (given my condition a moment ago) and at the very first glimpse of our new faculty further demanded that I now must force myself from laughing out loud while not to blurt out the obvious (WTF).

You see, our faculty actually looked just like the character ‘Jack Sparrow’ from the movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ (I know all this sounds weird but I’m telling you this is what happened).

And so from that afternoon, Jan 14^th, 2009, I have been simply watching her, while she played games in her mobile and took notes simultaneously, though I did confess my instant feelings for her to few of my class mates and other friends outside but I somehow was not been able to gather the courage to go and tell her all that how her presence and absence, both, made me feel.

That how her confident voice made me nervous when she spoke in class (which she did very rarely), that how lucky I felt when she unknowingly looked at me even if it was only for a second, that how badly I wanted to go to her and just say, how special she is to me, but somehow I just couldn’t say.

Why?

Well, (including the above mentioned factors there was something else too) that I actually wasn’t ready to repeat the same scenario of my perplexed past, in which I once had felt the same emotions sparkling inside my 4 inch tiny heart and then was left to moan after being used like a mere toy for a little fun.

It was the month of December 2005, when the pathos came into my life hiding behind that innocence, which, without any qualm, ridiculed my days of adolescence.

******

Part 2

‘Excuse me, are you Gopal?’

A sugar like voice knocked at my ear-barrel and the spoon, with which I was feeding myself, stopped just inches before my open jaws (yes, pretty BIG mouth I’ve). I then looked up and for a moment I forgot to blink my eyelids.

There she was, standing just before me, on the other end of that round table in which I was busy gorging myself just like I did daily, but that day it was different and also new but somehow it felt surreal, because, I thought,

“This can’t be real”

And so just to make sure that she was actually standing in front of ME and asking if I indeed was who I was (Gopal at that point of time and Sadho at this moment), I looked on both sides off my shoulder and when I found no one there, my heart suddenly started pounding so heavily that it seemed like it was going to burst anytime now.

‘Excuse me, I am talking to you, are you Gopal?’

That sugar like voice once again knocked at my ear-barrel and this time it slowly made way towards my heavily pounding heart.

‘Oh, ‘m sorry, what? No, I am not Tejpal.’

(Yup, bloody me) it was the first line that flushed out of my (BIG) mouth and in reaction to it, her face displayed the signs of disbelief and her eyes got widened.

‘Are you deaf?’

She shot at me and in reply this time it was I, who had to widen my eyes.

‘What?’

I shot back at her.

‘I asked …are you the Gopal?’

She threw another question in reply.

‘Of course, I’m Gopal, the or not, that I don’t know.’

I said it with a tone that even surprised me (don’t know what it did to her), as I thought,

“Dude, I sounded pretty arrogant there, didn’t I?”

And which could have been enough to send her off on any other day but as I said “that day it was different.”

‘Listen, I need your help. Can you please ask your friend, Zahid, to stop following me? I have tried telling him myself, but he seems least interested in listening to me.’

She said and was about to turn and leave (I guess).

‘Wo, wo, hold on, lady, Zahid, and my friend? Who told you so? I don’t even know him properly.’

I, in complete company of instant surprise, immediately shot back at her and she at once stopped and looked at me, with only innocence in her eyes.

‘But that girl in my class said, you two are ...’

I cut her in middle.

‘Listen, I don’t know why the girl in your class told you so, but the truth is that, you can ask anyone out here and each one of them will say that We, Gopal and Zahid, are not friends.’

*****

Part 3

It was fine till there. And my life would have been as smooth as it was minutes before her ‘excuse me’ approached me, which infected me with the terminal bug called love. But, I guess, it was not supposed to be like that and so I promised her that I will try to talk to him (even though I really didn’t know the guy at all).

She smiled and turned to leave but instead stopped abruptly and said,

‘Thanks, hoping to see you around sometime.’

And I stood there like a box watching her leave and fixed my hypnotised eyes on her (she had the most curvaceous figure I’ve seen in my entire period of life) till she disappeared into the crowd outside the canteen.

Three months went by, we became friends and then one day on the eve of Valentine’s Day, I finally proposed her in front of the entire college. She said yes and I felt like, I have conquered the world.

But the euphoria lasted only for few weeks, as one day when I accidently bumped into her and the Zahid in a pizza store.

I was shocked (understatement) to see her cuddling in his arms and when I went near to their table in the corner, she after seeing me, didn’t seemed to care enough as if… as if I was a total stranger to her.

‘What the hell is going on?’

I, after standing there for like almost 5 minutes (which in reality seemed like an eternity), shouted at them and pulled her away from his arms by grabbing her hand.

‘What do you think you are doing?’

I once again shouted at her.

‘Seems like you are as blind as deaf you were on that day in canteen, Tejpal.’

She said while jerking her hands off mine.

‘Hey, Zahid, look at his face, poor baby, I broke his heart, touché.’

She continued her verbal attacks on me, while Zahid continued to enjoy the show along with others, who seemed as insensitive as those pizzas, that they were piling themselves on.

My mind had lost its basic understanding and so it wasn’t able to decipher what was happening and I could not believe what my ear-barrels were listening, and so I thought that I am dreaming, yes, I’m dreaming (oh, how I wished and still wish that I was dreaming) and it will be over as soon as I shall open my eyes, but I wasn’t actually dreaming and neither could I open my eyes, because, I don’t really know how to open those things which never ever closes (you see, my eyelids remain half opened even when I am sleeping).

‘But why, Neha (yes, that was her name), why did you play with my heart?’

I somehow asked her, while trying to garner the audacity to stand still.

‘Huh, you still want to know? Well, I was a bit bore by my monotonous life, where I only dated hunky guys, so just to freshen up it a bit, I, as you said, played with your heart for a little fun.’

She delivered her last part of dialogue as innocently as if I was a mere plastic toy straight out from her cupboard and so has no feelings whatsoever, which stays as its owner keeps it and remains silent even if its owner beats it.

But I was not a toy and so I finally fell on my knees, tears dripped out of my red eyes and I chocked as if I was about to die (this is true… you see, I had genuinely fallen for her and given the factor that she had the figure any woman would be jealous of and any man would kill for, besides, I’m an emotional man, so this – chocking down – was bound to happen).

She left with Zahid, hand in hand, leaving me alone more than I was before she had come.

And so, since then, almost half a decade have passed by, but those blunt memories of my yore are still so sharp that it leaves a cut mark every time I try to walk by it, ignoring unknowingly and sometime even intentionally (can’t help it), with a companion which I quite often choose in these days of my chilling solitude.

And, I know my past was like a bad dream but unlike the bad dreams, I’m yet to get over it, and so the pain of yore continue to haunt my times of hope.

Death and Solace, the Paths.

By Sadho Ram

Author’s note: - The article is not intended to hurt the sentiments of any person, male or (especially) female. It is about my personal experiences and the views depicted here are solely mine and I take the sole responsibility.

I have been saying this for a while now that ‘love’ makes a man lonely and ‘hope’ makes him stupid. And it is ‘faith’ which makes a man blind and after all these alterations ‘life’ offers him nothing but death. Still he continues to follow them; history is there to prove it, even while being constantly ditched by them.

Now few may ask –

‘Why so? Doesn't he have brains?’

Of course, he does and a damn dazzling one. But, damn, it doesn’t prove to be of much use when he is gripped by the naivety and consistent ignorance which in turn makes him do things he would have never done if, only if, he would have had not walked the path of – Love, Hope, Faith and Dependency.

Now there are actions which can’t be explained, no matter what, but still they can be performed in a way which would minimise their effects. Yet man all around the world will never even try to do so.

Like he will never stop loving the woman who betrayed him, stabbed him and even robbed him of his mental peace and emotional ease. And he would never leave the path of hope of getting her back even when he knows that there is nothing in this world which can bring them together once again. And he would probably threaten to kill anyone who would dare say anything which goes against the woman in whom he has his ‘complete’ faith even if the person is telling the truth.

But this is not enough. What comes after is that the same woman, whom he calls his life, abundance him and leaves him to suffer and die as a parting gift. He would still be in love with her and would still hope she will complete him by giving a last glimpse of her before he finally closes his eyes.

Allow me to say – ‘What a waste!’

I pity man (also myself).

Yes, once was a time when I, too, have had walked the same path. I, too, was in love. I, too, would sing in my dreams and would hum her name while walking the barren streets. I, too, would dance while taking a shower and would used to romance with the flower. Yes, I, too.

Ah, what pleasures would I get when she used to hold my hand! The heart would start beating twice the speed whenever she had to get close to me to whisper ‘things’ in my ears. Every whisker on my face and every vein in my body would feel the electric effect whenever any part of her full body would collide with mine. And, in those moments, I always thought –

‘This is it. This is life and everything else is but futile.’

But, it wasn’t. Everything, which I had thought was futile, except her, proved to be life. And, though, today, I don’t no longer sing in my dreams and neither do I dance beneath the shower but I am now ‘content’ with myself than I was back then with her. And though, I have left the paths of – Love, Hope, Faith and Dependency, I still am living hale & hearty. You may ask –

‘So, Sadho, How did you achieve this Contentment?’

Well, then I would say –

‘It wasn’t easy, friend, and it wasn’t tough either.’

It was the summer of 2006, when another set pathos came into my life hiding behind the innocence, which, without any qualm, ridiculed my days of adolescence. Since then, almost half a decade has passed by, but those blunt memories of my yore are still so sharp that it leaves a cut mark every time I try to walk by it, ignoring unknowingly and sometimes even intentionally, with a companion which I quite often choose in these days of my chilling solitude.

But, one decision changed my life forever – the decision to – Travel. Travel not to go anywhere, but to go. As, the great-great affair is not to love but to move.

Hence, I became a vagrant rambler. As travelling gave me a contentment which I came to observe came from nothing but travelling. And, I found solace in books and in people who in some way or the other were a reflection of what I considered myself to be. This couplet by ‘Rahul Sankritayayan’ says a lot and it also encourages me to move often –

"सैर कर दुनिया की गाफिल, जिन्दगानी फिर कहाँ?
जिन्दगी गर कुछ रही, तो नौजवानी फिर कहाँ?"

Translation

“Travel the world, oh, ignorant, where will you get this life again?

For life is something if it remains, but will there be this youth again?”

For he, Rahul Sankritayayan, may be dead today and also forgotten and his words lost (thanks to our ‘Great Government’ because of which his out of 150 published books not a single one is to be found in any of the book store or even at national library. Worst, the net, too, doesn’t have much about him) but he was the only one who travelled the distance between India and Tibet on foot, and not once but many times.

No, he wasn’t insane!

He brought back hundreds of Vedas and Literatures and Language books which were stolen from Indian and smuggled to Tibet. For those who don’t know, he is known as the world’s biggest traveller, ever and is considered the Second Buddha.

So, now you know how I achieved this contentment. As of now, I have travelled far more cities than the total sum of years in my life and have lived in more villages than any of you, who are currently reading this article, can ever imagine (If you want I can prove this).

A Traveler Bard’s petty experiences for you