Two people, one that I knew, and one that I knew of, died in the last two days. They were both as old as me. One died battling diseases he caught while reporting in Chhatisgarh, and the other out of drunken callousness. There is no difference.
Tarun was a colleague, not a friend. He was kind and sincere, and as I ran around office both frightened and indignant at being the youngest person around, he(as old as me) never let the ingratitude of youth bow him down. I remember him shyly playing old hindi songs on his phone as the editors screamed to him from an unseen side of the office about a good photograph. 

My friends and I trudged to the mountains and swam in waterfalls (one of us in a showercap- more for entertainment than safety). While I stood in freezing rushing water, I looked over at my friend in his protective head gear posing for photographs in front of a rock and as I screamed to him that I loved him, another one sat on a rock and looked at us with a sheepish moronic grin that only utmost fulfillment can produce. I can see our journey like a stop motion film inside my head, expressions changing from surprise to joy to annoyance to drunken ecstasy.
The mountains are magical. Reality in the paths that overlook valleys is outsized and unexplained. I saw myself as a speck in the vast drawing of the Himalayas, as a drop in the river, as a pebble in pathless woods. The spot when you know that you are small and insignificant and you must bow down to a force you can never defeat, a force that is fair, and beautiful, is comforting. 
I spent five days between upside down rose bushes, voices bouncing off each other, orange clouds and pink houses, absurd arguments ending in wild laughter, and a force that set my mind into motion.

But I don't know what is happening to me of late. I'm in a moment and I'm happy but when I start to record/review it in my mind or on paper it starts to disappear and leaves some lingering emotion that starts to claw on my emotional insides. 

I picture myself sitting in a chair outside our hotel in the hills with my friends listening to one of those songs that everyone sings together and drums their feet and nods their heads and smile at one another as you pass the joint while suddenly noticing that its breezy everywhere. I see myself and its a nice picture. But it seems painted. I can't recollect it or feel it anymore. I can't feel the tinge of simple pleasure run through me as I think about lying on a pile of people I love, everyone with half a glass full or empty of whatever it was that poisoned them last night. 

I used to be a patron of good feelings, loyal to exhilaration that comes from exhaustion. Right now I only feel continuous  doubt and a gnawing hope that something is going to come around and blow my brains out of my head. My idealism that was forever my solace has started to be questioned. I used to want my emotions to be like the ones that I saw in the movies. I wanted my heart to be ripped out of my chest, a smile to spread across my face in slow motion, for anger to almost kill me, and sadness cripple my brain. 

But as you grow older you realize that you prefer your passions being milder, your self being functional, but this proficiency is accompanied by a certain boredom or longing for the theatrics that you rid yourself of. You realize that you aren't living for it to be written into a book. That life wasn't literature, or literature itself was just life.