the buzz

I've been meaning to talk about my first snow for ages, but life kept getting in the way.

1.14 am: I've a lite head ache and a huge deadline arnd the cornor but I've shoved it all aside for now.

Life, is so full here. Laughter, people, curiosity, new experiences, old friends, deadlines. No matter how stationary or relaxed things look, there is a constant buzz of activity. And thats what makes life and living it so special. Even when the dumbest person is silent, whether he realizes it or not, there are thousands of tiny thoughts, feelings or involuntary happenings going on in his/her mind. 'Calm' is only a hypothetical description of a feeling that a person gets when he is too dumb to notice the noise.

Grad School is an amazing place. With so many students studying in it, everyone sees it differently. Some see it as freedom to drink, freedom to experiment, my roommates think it is the perfect place to enjoy independence and watch interesting movies/play fun sports or make friends. Unfortunately, due to inexplicable reasons, I am passing through a phase in my life when I feel I need to learn. I get satisfaction when I learn something new and it gives me immense joy and thrill to put A and B together and find a C on my own. Most of you are wiser than me and have probably experienced this phase before. Its the phase when you just can't take an answer. An answer just gives you the raw material to frame a question and the questions always lead to other questions. From big things like the origin of matter or the effectiveness of religion to the smaller things like why people behave the way they do, everything is a question. Many of these questions don't have answers but you still keep asking them in the hope of learning something new. This is an ultimate phase because you make sure you learn at least 2 new things everyday and hence thousands while it lasts. This hunger to know is actually a hunger to think. A need to apply your mental abilities and enhance them by finding more fuel for them to burn on. It is a very busy time when you really don't care about what you deem as the 'mundane' things and only jump to grab the bigger things. The mind, in this phase is ultimate and where you began learning as a responsibility, it now becomes a passion. In short, you are really 'buzzing' all day long.

That day was to be just another day in my life. I slept at 3 the night before after intending to read a paper but ending up spending hours on wikipedia. The 'buzz' was definitely on. I was dozing on my couch trying to recover from almost a week of nearly sleepless nights, 3 hours later, the buzz of my phone wakes me up and as like a woman who has slept for only 3 hours would do, I answer 'hello' in the most sleepy voice I can, partly intentionally to let the caller know the intensity of the felony he had just committed . An excited voice tells me, "get out and enjoy the snow."

I am suddenly completely awake. The 'buzz' is back. My senses sprang back to life as if they had been telling me to turn them on since ages and I was keeping them shut for three cruel hours. Within seconds, I was out the room and house. As I went down the stairs, the buzz was still on. 'I wonder how snow will feel. Imagine my mother's reaction if she were here! I bet xyz doesnt know its snowing , Or maybe he must be intentionally ignoring it and acting 'unexcited'. What an idiot....'. The stream of thoughts just goes on. I reach the ground floor and as the door opens, millions of thoughts in and out. Subconsciously I walk to the door because my feet seem to still remember what I had come down for and the door opens and chill air and ice hits me, freezing my thoughts.

There was silence everywhere. Silence different from the silence you just witnessed in the iota of time that you took between the end of the last paragraph and the beginning of this line. Silence, that is also very different from the one you will witness if you go to 'your nearest Bahai temple.' This was different. It was as if the buzz had stopped. I could see white dust falling from the skies, it touched my skin and felt cold, it went in my mouth and tasted like water and it came to my sight and made me get the feeling that this was what I was actually born to do. It was an amazing feeling that you could get when you are stuck in the coimbatore, cross cut road signal traffic for hours, are totally frustrated and suddenly all the cars around you vanish and there is complete silence. Snow was nothing like I had imagined. I expected it to be like rain,distinct balls of white ice that fell to the earth. It was nothing like that. It was like cotton, so light that to use the word 'fell' would almost be as cruel as calling a person who has slept only 3 hours. When you look up, it shows you exactly how high the sky is and you can't notice more because small snow flakes cover your face as soon as you notice this detail, as if telling you that you have thought enough, you have toiled enough and that it was time to just admire beauty without questioning it. There were no deep thoughts in my head, no feeling of cold and no amazement or disappointment. I was surprised at not being surprised at it. It was nothing like i expected and yet I had a calm feeling that I was just here and that I was not to compare what I had expected and what snow really is. For the first few minutes, the snow vanished before it hit the ground as if saying how impure our 'buzz' had made the earth and how it was too divine to mix with the earth. After some minutes, it started settling on the earth as if showing me that if it covers the buzz, the world can be a much better place. I just stood there, for moments, minutes, almost an hour, thinking nothing, enjoying for once, complete solace. No 'buzz' came to my head. For the secondtime in my life, I truly witnessed silence.