Kash Laga...

This relates to my experience with a certain cinematic work by the name of "No Smoking", directed by a bloke named Anurag Kashyap (Yes, the bloke who gave us DevD.)

The moment I completed said movie, I knew only one thing: that my mind had gone blank, completely.
I did not know whether I had liked the movie or despised it;
whether I wanted to cry or laught out loud;
what I was doing calling up people frenetically, standing on the roof top;
what I wanted to tell my friend I called up in the US;
what I wanted from life (ok, that I never really know I guess!).

Thus, I was left in a daze, a long, extended phase of unknowing-ness and unthinking-ness.

And then.
One remembers a particular track in a particular sequence of the movie.
One procures it soon enough.
Gives it one listening.
And then lives in that comfortable little universe, for the next 27 hours. And counting.

"Yeh jahaan phaani hai, bulbula hai paani hai...
Bulbolon pe rukna kya, paaniyon pe behta ja behta ja...
Kash laga, kash laga..."

One learns two new words in the process of starting to decipher the magic encompassed in the above, and what precedes and follows it.
"Phaani" - Mortal.
"Kash laga" - Take a drag.

And with that, one sees a muse revealing herself from behind the mists, with a seductive, inviting gesture.
One finds the path through the haze that fills the air.
And the path leads here:

The world is a maze of many things.
Among them, prominent ones include several forms of perfunctoriness, unintended and/or unneeded obligations, and many of their uncles and aunties. Also resident in that consciousness, is a whole joint family rooted in one word, "expectation".

Just when you are staring at the night sky, gaping at the void that fills the air and your most internal recesses, comes along the muse of the night.
And whispers to you gently:

"The world is but a dream. It is a beautiful, and compelling kaleidoscope of many different colours, none of which is real. You are your own servant and master.
You owe it to yourself, and to Him for all that He has endowed you with, to make the most of all that is there in and around you.
Thus, dear little boy, do your thing, make love to all that touches your divinity, for that is all that matters. Live. Do not let this moment pass."

"Yeh jahaan phaani hai, bulbula hai paani hai...
Bulbolon pe rukna kya, paaniyon pe behta ja behta ja...
Kash laga, kash laga..."

Edit-1:
In reply to a friend who felt that the post somehow encouraged smoking et al...:

"Encouraging" smoking is perhaps the last thing that one intended to do with that piece...
The girl, the muse, the haze, is all in the imagination that all of us are blessed with...

The following forms the core of the entire post.

"The world is but a dream. It is a beautiful, and compelling kaleidoscope of many different colours, none of which is real. You are your own servant and master.
You owe it to yourself, and to Him for all that He has endowed you with, to make the most of all that is there in and around you.
Thus, dear little boy, do your thing, make love to all that touches your divinity, for that is all that matters. Live. Do not let this moment pass."

All it says is, one needs to find one thing that defines one's existence, and adds a sense of purpose to what would otherwise be just a wait till the clock strikes 'the end'.
And the world, with all its bondages and chains, need never stand in the way of you and that one thing, for in the end, you are answerable only to the voice within. In the context of you and the salvation you seek, the world has to be irrelevant.
We are all here for a limited time, and so is the world. Why must one limit one's dreams, one's ambitions, one's aspirations and efforts, by something as fleeting and transient as the world?
Thus, go ahead, and indulge in that one thing which completes your being; which is in effect the path you have chosen to your immortality.

"Yeh jahaan phaani hai, bulbula hai paani hai...
Bulbolon pe rukna kya, paaniyon pe behta ja behta ja...
Kash laga, kash laga..."

I hope you now see in the lines above, the para that preceded it.
In the lens that 'figurative'-ity gives me, 'kash laga' is anything but smoking...

PS: One finds an uncanny resemblance to this concept in Bachchan sahab's Madhushala, when he says,

"Madiralaya jaane ko ghar se chalta hai peene wala,
Kis path se jaoon asamanjas, yeh hai woh bhola bhala,
Alag, alag path batalate sab, par main ye batalata hoon,
Raah pakad tu ek chala chal, pa jaiyege madhushala..."

Once again... the quest is not to find a pub to get wasted... but to find the one thing that shall lend an existence growing increasingly meaningless and numb, some semblance of meaning and purpose.

Cheers duniya! :)