Bhava

Happy News!! 🎉🎉

Hello! Well this isn't a poem (you have already figured it out). Bhava has hit 1k and to be more accurate then I guess it is 1.5 or 1.4k.

Now let me open up a bit too since Bhava is all about emotions and feelings and me being closer to the moon makes me a very emotional personal.

So Bhava was just an escape poetry book. Smriti is too but I will talk about it later. I started Bhava in the monsoon season (I don't remember the month) and in those days I didn't feel good about myself and how my life was going on. Each day started by me being very negative and empty. Back during grade 10 if someone would have predicted me to change in such a drastic way, me and my friends would have laughed. I used to be very particular about how I look. If my hair would be displaced a little, I would comb it again till it was perfect. A bit extreme but I was like that. But as soon as grade 11 and lockdown started I started to become very lethargic, I would not comb my hair for days and had lost interest in wearing outfits. Also I had become very lazy. Now I do have a reputation of being lazy at household work but that increased a lot in 2020 eventually making me gain weight and affecting my mental health.

I am not good with expressing feelings directly to people. Even my school friends would hear me say in a very poetic fashion so I turned to poetry. My school friends and family have been really good but somehow there were certain aspects which they never understood. The points below are some of the recurring themes in Bhava.

1. Purpose of life: You ask this question to random teens they would answer JEE/NEET or any career. Some would say to be rich and travel foreign countries while some would want to have girlfriends and chill. There are also a lot of people who have good ambitions and dreams but those answers could never become my answer. I always thought myself to have something different like there was something waiting for me outside, something adventurous and maybe a little magical (not like Hogwarts; a little esoteric). In fact I still feel the same but I just don't know what. Now having a career is one of my primary goals but there is something more to it too. A lot of people told me that I had been influenced by books so I must get out of that thought.

2. My Past life connection (@Shivran86 you know it but here's some more to it) : Now from a very early age I always wanted to know who I was. I even took some quizzes only to get results like being a French artist or murdering someone for money. (lesson: don't trust the internet quizzes. Take buzz feed for entertainment). And this even continues today. My brother knows about my past life quest and he had even asked me what would I do by knowing it. Truly speaking, I just want to see it as a movie. I don't want to transport back in that time and repeat it all again. I just want to experience it and also I believe there is something incomplete in my past life - something I have left there which I need to do in this life which also connects to my "purpose of life". You might call me weird but I would go and connect myself to every female character in history. I thought I was Maharani Ajabde, Jhansi ki rani, Padmini (go laugh about it, I still laugh about it to think myself to be that brave and beautiful) and even Mastani (I am cringing). But now I know I was a woman and dance was a part of me too (there is a very interesting take on this). Also Bhava has a lot of poems reflecting on past life which are hidden I guess.

3. Dance: Well I guess almost everyone knows me to be an ardent admirer if the arts. I have been dancing since I was 3. In fact I can proudly say that I have been a dancer before I started my formal education. As a child I used to be shy to dance in front of people making me focus only on nritya. Bhava was missing and that's why I named this book Bhava. Yes Nritya has Bhava in it but there are dancers who are hesitant to show their expressions on stage. As I had begun my training since three, my feet were good (no not a good shape or something but I could follow footsteps fast) but zero expressions. This continued till grade 8 where I moved to Kolkata and the beginning where I opened up to dance and theatre. My first performance as a solo dancer forms the basis of Smriti's first dance (Apsara one). The transition which Smriti goes is similar to what happened to me just that Smriti wasn't very shy like me but just didn't think that she would be that good. Now in 2020, I thought it would be wise to stop dancing due to science when my own mother was against my decision. I felt sad that I didn't continue something which was a part of my soul. So I gained weight, my flexibility reduced and I felt detached. Dance is something which had brought me closer to myself. I don't know if you feel the same but it just makes me feel divine from within.

There is a theory in my dance book which mentions Moksha through dance where the dancer aspires to merge with the almighty through dance. That's where the divinity part comes from. There is one thing I am sure that dance was a thing in my last life too. It appeared in a vision like dream as well as my experiences through it.

It's November 2020 and I learnt a lesson. What matters the most is what your heart wants. (Maya di do you remember you mentioned it in a comment?) I have spent nights crying about me not being able to have my social life the way it used to be in Kolkata or not dancing and being hard over myself due to school. (My school is like Kota schools) but now I realised I am not made to go in that traditional path of studying and getting into NEET. I am a creative individual. I can't be like the rest. That does require a lot of guts and I haven't fully begun to leave my fears and insecurities but I feel one day I will. There are shades of mine which will unravel soon and the veil will lift. (Okay that does match a little with Kama and with a poem I wrote on sensuality. I forgot the title sorry)

Finally a big thank you to all who have been reading my poems as well as being my friend. People come for a reason and I shall always be grateful to you all. I would love to tag you all but I don't want you all to get unnecessary notifications. Also thank you once again if you have read till here.

Bhava will end by December I guess because I am no longer negative and sad. I will be bringing my things from Kolkata to odisha and I don't want to be unhappy about leaving it without a goodbye. Life is sometimes like that; incomplete chapters. Also since I am shifting to a new house I need to say a goodbye to a lot of things. My hills might miss me so will my terrace and the starry night sky but I guess I will find a way to connect.

Here I bade a goodbye. I mean a temporary one.

(P. S: I started to do Bharatnatyam again)