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.