I'll be back...!!!

Spy Kid recently told me.. or rather asked me... "Why haven't you written anything on your blog lately.. " Well.. Its not like I don't have anything to say.. Its just the usual infrastructural problems.. Lack of continued, uninterrupted net access.. Who would have thought that someone could suffer from "Network Block" which prevents one from writing something on this vast cyberspace..
Anyways.. to Spy Kid and many like her.. I will soon be back.. Hang on a bit...

LOVE... OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

I think people have this whole concept of "love" and "relationship" pretty messed up.. I venture the risk of making this dangerous statement for the simple reason that when I ask someone why he/she is in a relationship, I don't seem to be getting any convincing reasons.. And then there are people who want to be in a relationship for the funny(tragic???) reason of "I want someone in my life"... HHEELOOOO!!!! Are you living in an island? Mars? Dont you have people around you? Friends, colleagues, family, etc.. Are they not people? What a reason!! I want someone in my life cause I'm lonely..
Should it not be I want someone in my life because I have so much love to give.. I want to meet someone who just completes me and who makes that love worth sharing, makes my life worth sharing?? I think one should fall in love for the reason of love itself.. Love me for a reason.. and let the reason be love.. Now thats what I call true love..
And then there are takes on how that love should be.. Ohmygod!! they are so cute together.. He calls her up every hour to tell her what he ate,drank, whom he talked to.. EXCUSE ME!!!! Is that radio collar a valentine's gift?? Met a PYT the other day who said - "My BF (can't even say boyfriend!!) loves me ssssooooo much.. If I don't call him up the moment I wake up, he gets very upset!!".. Aww!! How sweet.. Isn't it just lovely that her BEE-EFF is an insecure psycho straight out of Sleeping with the Enemy?!
I may be sounding cynical or perhaps you're thinking "oh-what-does-he-know".. Ya.. What do I know?? I must confess that I've had my share of failed relationships.. So probably I do do not know jackshit about love or how a relationship should work... Or maybe the relationships failed because I do know.. Yes.. Thats it.. I do know.. That when I love.. It shall be forever.. It shall be with passion.. Intense and strong.. With all my heart.. With my soul.. A pure,almost spiritual, radio-collar less love.. When.. I do not know.. How.. I do know.. With whom.. I do not know.. Why... I do know..

Every worldy ambition accepts defeat.
I want to be: her wounded soul, her uncried tears,
her broken heart, her nameless fears
her stifled breath, her wasted years.

I want to absorb, I want to drain
From her life, her every pain.

That every night she quietly cried,
that every moment she couldn't decide,
that every time she could not hide,
that every prayer that death defied.

That every blow she had to take,
that every promise she could not make,
that every silence for love's sake,
that every moment when dreams break.

Where reason ends, life begins,
She is - the wind beneath my wings,
She is the voice I touch and see,
My unfounded dream, my reality.

She is the flower never out of bloom
The ray of light in this darkened doom.

And this world is but the ground beneath her feet.

Time - You old gypsy man..

This is dedicated to all those who feel life and time is just passing them by. I feel that at times, when I just want to rush and hold time in the palm of my hand or close it tightly within a fist.. I especially have this urge when its a windy day and I'm walking on a deserted street with a friend.. Talking, chatting or just simply being. How I wish that time like that would just stop dead in its tracks..

The great Gulzar captured in words so beautifully (hardly a surprise now, is it?) the above feeling -

Dil dhoondta hai, phir wohi fursat ke raat din
baithe rahe tasavvur-e-jaana kiye hue

Jaadon ki narm dhoop aur aangan mein let kar
aakhon pe kheench kar tere aanchal ke saaye ko
aundhe kabhi, kabhi karvat liye hue

Barfeeli sardiyon mein kisi bhi pahaad par
vaadi mein goonjti hui khamoshiyan sunein
aakhon mein bheege bheege se lamhe liye hue

Lament of Contentment

Current song playing in my head : - Mitwa from KANK

Shankar Mahadevan's voice rings in my head - Mere mann yeh bata de tu... Kis ore chala hai tu... Kya paya nahin tune.. Kya dhoond raha hai tu

What words! What is it that the heart seeks? What is it that it hasnt found as yet.. Contentment they say, is a state of mind.. Then why is the state of my mind so unsatisfied? So thirsty and hungry for more?

I am in a highly coveted job which many people will give their life for.. I work for one of the highly respected companies in the world.. And my job is supposed to be full of challenging opportunities, avenues to go abroad, highly flexible and motivating and what-have-you.. I work for a fat pay package that enables me to feed my wants and indulgences more than required..

I have friends with whom I go out partying, dinners, movies, etc.. I am not someone who is lonely or left out.. A friend of mine recetly commented - "you're someone who develops a personal equation with everyone you meet".. which basically means that there is nothing lacking in my social life..

Then why do I feel so wanting.. So deprived.. Am I an anomaly? or am I just plainly human.. Wanting more.. Perpetually dissatisfied.. Accursed with high ambitions and unsatiable aspirations.. Is this what my Lament is? -

I am cursed with wanting too much too soon
Trying too hard too often, striving for things that taunt me, just beyond my fingertips
Accomplishing too little, despite my lauded efforts
Hurting people, not helping them

We are the cursed, fringe elements in denial
Defying their condescension, shattering their delusions
Breaking every barrier they cherish, like pacifiers
Yet still, twisted hilariously, dysfunctional specimen

And so we learn the hard way to work with the system
To keep tactfully silent, to flatter, to lie and to compliment
To assimilate and not protest, to be humble, modest and smiling
To please them, though we may never forget,
That we’re square pegs in very round holes

MURDER

She killed me
Not with a gun
Or a dagger
But with a glance
That left me wondering
At the origin of her deadly weapon.

I didn’t bleed
Or scream in terror.
I just melted
Into the mess I was.
To remain that way forever
A puddle of filth, in a dingy corner.

The teardrop

I feel we cry very easily these days.. Out of joy, sorrow, fear, relief.. In pain, in prayer, in dejection and in hope.. Tears that were once rare have become ubiquitous commodities that are wasted and shed way too soon.. A sad novel, a touching movie, a hug goodbye, a hug hello.. Makes me wonder at the weaknesses of human emotions that flow at the drop of a hat.. Some say crying is a sign of weakness.. I dont think so.. But crying all too often is.. Not a weakness of the human spirit.. But of the human mind.. A mind that is not able to understand suffering in most striking form.. A mind that is so fragile that something as simple as saying goodbye to an old friend can have the saline water gushing from the eyes.. I think its time we became more resilient, and saved the teardrops for something truly overwhelming..

Squeeze a tear drop and let it rest
On the tip of your eye
Concealed candidly between the lashes and the lid
A drop of moisture, for you dry charred eye

Don’t let it fall, don’t let it turn into a pearl
Just hide it and let it remain
Let it moisten your eye
Your dead, dreary petrified eye

Squeeze it and let it rest
Let it rest for the child
Who works in the sun
Blazing as his dreams for the future

Let it rest for the unborn
Who was sacrificed
For the sins that she did not commit

Let it rest for the woman
Who dies every night
To live a life by day

Let it rest for the struggler
Whose peace has been snatched
For there are deadlines to be met
Let it rest, a lone honest teardrop

And when the trident of hope, trust and faith hits you
And your feet are cemented in the greens of security
Let the tear drop flow

Let it roll from eye to toe
Cleanse your soul, liberate it of its curses
And the benedictions
Let the tear drop flow

The Epitaph - My swan song

Have you ever felt that this would be last time you do something that is close to you? Like perhaps - "this would be the last song I'll sing"... or "This would be the last time I'll dance".. or "Today would be the last time I cook something special for someone I love".. I felt something like this today.. I felt like it would be the last time I'll write poetry.. I suddenly felt that the creative juices have run dry.. That theres nothing more left to write about.. It was a scary thought..

He sits with a pen in hand,
the paper as vacant as his mind..
I know this silent poet from an era gone by,
I try not to think, but he distracts my eye..
When is it you laughed, oh stranger?
When is it you felt and cared?
Tell me, oh spring! when you heard him last,
This stone cold boy from my wooded past?
He can stand it no more and picks up the knife,
I can feel his slimy blood - his last poem..
As cold metal touches cold skin, I laugh
He's left me nothing to write but this bloody epitaph..

Malhaar - The onset of the monsoon

Like I have confessed before also, I simply love the rain.. The miracle that the skies can hold so much water and just let it gush forth when it becomes too heavy to bear, never ceases to amaze me.. What does amaze me though is the fact that I suddenly felt the strong urge to try writing something in Hindi.. Now, I wouldnt really call my Hindi weak but be that as it may, I'm no Ghalib or Gulzar (whom I consider rockstars when it comes to Urdu/Hindi poetry).. But even then, the urge like the rain became too strong and then I just had to let it forth -

Aankhon mein mitti ka katra,
chubhta tha, khatakta tha;
Band aakhon se kya dekhoon,
Jo khuli aakhon se hi andekha thha?

Bade dinon se mann hai pyaasa,
yeh nain bhi sookhe hain;
Ek ehsaas, ek jazbe ke liye,
yeh saare lamhe bhooke hain.

Aaj behne do in ashkon ko,
Aane do bahaar,
Kabse pyaasa dil banjar thha,
Lo aa gayi malhaar

My God Died Young

As a storm gathered and clouds turned grey
I turned to God and knelt down to pray..
I fought back the tears,
I laid bare my fears..
My prayers went unanswered
My hopes went unsung..
Little did I know then
that my God had died young

Alpha or Omega - Start & Finish

We as people are conditioned to worry about endings.. Be it a movie, a book, friendships, relationships, entire chapters in one's life or even life itself.. Why is it so? What is it that we fear? Is not an end necessary for a beginning to occur? Are these two not different sides to the same coin?
College is coming to an end.. Everybody is fixated on farewells and goodbyes.. Miss yous and keep-in-touches.. Mention that the end is near and a heavy and solemn feeling hangs in the air.. We immediately try our very best to grab hold of the fleeting moments.. Immortalizing the memories in our minds and hearts hoping that time stops dead in its tracks..
Is this whole view not myopic? Are we not being shallow and narrow sighted when we want to hold the present forever.. Have we not learnt that the present we cherish today is the future we tried to prevent from coming in the past? We have... We know.. yet we continue to strive effortlessly to freeze the sands of time as they pour in the hourglass..
Photographs are clicked left right and center.. Trips, lunches and dinners are planned frantically.. But will all this really help in preventing the inevitable?
What does one do then? Wait meekly and passively for that dreaded plunderer called tomorrow to show up and take away all that we hold dear and cherish? Of course not, we hold the moment by making most of it.. By trying and forgetting differences that have crept up between friends.. By undoing the hurt we might have caused with our words and actions.. By healing the scars that our blows might have made.. That is what makes the present immortal.. For it lays the foundation for the future.. The seeds from which the fruits of tomorrow spring forth..
And on that note, I'd like to say sorry.. For all the pain, broken promises, harsh words, irrational comments and violent behaviour.. And thank you for the love, hope and memories..

MEDIOCRITY

It's difficult to write poetry

on a winter evening.

Grey and dull.. darkness falling

Like a furry moth

Enveloping me in a sort of suffocating vacuity

An aching nothingness

That comes from the pent up frustration

Of having to accept... that you're mediocre

I've tried my best

To keep it from you

Tried my best...to piece together

Short staccato sentences with pregnant gaps

And jagged edges

Like a grey winter evening

Struggling to hold on

It's weak light

Because I'm only twenty-five yet

An empty, passionless poet At twenty-five..

Tried my best

So you wouldn't know

But perhaps, you already know

That I can't anymore..

That one can't have writer's block forever.

That it was just a defence mechanism

That I am only a mediocre person

Terrified of my mediocrity.

YASHODARA'S LAMENT... AND MY ENLIGHTENED NAMESAKE

Princess Yashodara was Siddhartha's wife before he attained enlightenment & became the Lord Buddha. It is said that Siddhartha left in the dead of the night when Yashodara was sleeping.. It was the very day that their son Rahul was born. Yashodara on waking up, and realizing that her husband had left cursed herself for falling asleep and vowed to sleep with her eyes open.. Lest he returned...
And return he did.. After attaining enlightenment, he came to the town begging for alms.. The first door he decided to visit was his own.. When his (erstwhile) wife opened the door, he uttered the words "Ma! Bhiksha!" (Mother! Alms please!).. What went through Yashodara's mind is anybody's guess.. Suffice to say that she didnt raise a big hue and cry and quietly gave him what he wanted.. Her husband.. who had left her in the dead of the night with their new born son..who had returned as a monk who had renounced all worldly desires.. who addressed her as Ma.. She quietly gave him what he wanted..
Buddha returned again.. To deliver a sermon in the town.. By this time, Rahul was older and about to ascend the throne.. When Gautama heard of this.. he got scared that his son might get entrapped in the tribulations of a worldly king and decided to take him away...
Yashodara, now bereft of both husband AND son, didnt want to live the rest of her life pining away for either.. and decided to follow... She joined the my enlightened namesake as a Bhikshuni and lived the rest of her life as an ascetic..
One wonders when one thinks of this.. What is enlightenment? Does achieving nirvana mean rising so much above the world that one becomes impervious of another's joy and sorrow? Does moksha entail us the right to decide right and wrong for others? Does spiritual and holistic edification make us so arrogant & narrow minded that we fail to see our own inadequacies? Does enlightenment really complete the circle?
As for Yashodara, one doesnt know what happened to her as an ascetic.. We read that so majestic and mystifying was Buddha's aura that it drew his own wife onto the very path he himself followed.. Perhaps... But one cannot help but think about Yashodara the wife.. And Yashodara the mother.. Did not her heart lament.. Did not her mind sing a melancholous tune:

I await you. It is not commonplace
With breath beheld, beckoning gaze
Hasten to me in form or fury
In blaze, in sweat, in sleet or calm
Where dost thou wander, my tender fawn?

In the maze of people In the swarm of populace
I envy the people you meet.
I drink in my last vision from memory
As lost, as simple as you come
Nourished I resume my quest

I tire myself nevertheless
Faith stands at test, sister patience lays in wait
Eyes hurt yet refuse to yield
Many an evening thus is spent
And defeated, I get back to living

RAIN RAIN.. PLEASE STAY

I simply love the rain... The whole world seems so lush and fresh.. and the soil.. damp & moist.. When the heavens above burst forth with water my entire being wants to jump for joy and cry with delight at the same time.. Rain devastates also.. But where else does one witness such poetic duality of pain & pleasure? Of beauty & devastation.. I always like to think that it rains when the heavens weep... For joy or sorrow... Is a matter of perspective:

The torrents gush forth, yet again...
Asundered & alone, I seek shelter, yet again...
The water flows past, yet again...
The thunder rips at my heart, yet again...
The wind shrieks at my soul, yet again...
Salt water moistens my cheek, yet again...
But I find solace; for Jesus weeps for me, yet again...

THE WILDERNESS... I BELONG

I had gone to Jim Corbett National Park recently... A beautiful place.. One is transported to a silent sanctuary of tranquility & beauty.. Away from the noise, pollution, rage & fury of the city.. Away from the aggressive populace that marches forward in civilization's conquest march.. To The Jim Corbett National Park.. My 1300 sq km muse... I dedicate these lines -

Amidst the hustle of life around,

An unknown sense of loneliness comes over me.

One never experienced before

And yet so familiar.
The city noises are a distant murmur;

That drown in the sounds of the stream that lies before me.

The dulcet sounds of waves lapping against the rocks

Calm my turbulent thoughts.
The lone sun, setting in the distant horizon

Lights up the evening sky

In hues that calm the soul

And relieve it of the day's heavy burden.
And enveloped in such beauty I sit;

Listening to the world go by.

Not a soul around me. And realize that I belong.

THE IDEA

Been long, since I wrote something anything.
Am I worried?Not really.
Do I care to worry?No.
So, no stories, no new ideas no fire in the belly no passion, the twinkle in the eyes unless, charged by something extra-ordinary and how often does that happen?
That one idea that kept me going, helped me live,where is it?
I haven't been consumed, possessed by something in a long time.
Had a chat with myself, another friend; realized I do not write at all unless provoked, or am in a state of constant agitation.
Am much peaceful these days... happy, as a matter of fact.
Is this the onset of creative impotence?I do not know.
What I know is whenever the new story, idea, character has to happen, will happen naturally.
I can't force it... I can't orchestrate it

TAKE ME

The sky stood pissing on me and left sidewalk mirrors so I could see deep within
And tree arms outspread across the heavens listening to the torment
In the crunch of tires what am I doing here all by myself
I cease to grasp any of this at all and the wind rips at my hair the thunder shrieks at my heart
A single tear scorches my cheek everything I have ever known lies collapsed at your door
The day turns inand gives away to a ashen ceiling
I'll be society's whore
If you're my mind's decay

THE EPITAPH

He sits with a pen in hand,
the paper as vacant as his mind..
I know this silent poet an era gone by,
I try not think but he distracts my eye..
When is it you laughed stranger,
When is it you felt and cared..
Tell me oh spring! when you heard him last,
That stone cold poet from my wooded past..
He can stand it no more and picks up the knife,
I can feel his slimy blood, his last poem..
As cold metal touches cold skin, I laugh,
He's left me nothing to write but this epitaph..