Aspirations

The horizon is far, but the sky is even farther,
The euphoria is overflowing, but control is not worth the bother,
The travails of this effort exhaust, but show now, as much as a sigh,
For, is not fatigue indistinguishable, when the spirits are high.

The steps fall rapidly, yet softly and assuredly,
By noon the distance seems to vanish happily, reassuredly,
The peak seems but a few thousand steps away,
Insignificant before the thousands already under way.

There are times when it seems but a distant dream,
But you shrug it off, knowing life is the biggest dream,
For now, all that matters is getting to the peak,
And keeping quiet till your achievements can speak.

Constantly flirting with life, and its every moment,
Not quite sure how every minute, hour, of it went,
But dancing in the arms of destiny everyday,
You are sure, the top of the stairs isn’t far away.

At every step, yesterday’s memories haunt,
And with failures from the past, incessantly taunt,
Unflinchingly you persevere, knowing well the end is near,
And far above, the first tinkle of success’s bells you hear.

You keep fighting on each step, rushing through each door,
As the promised dream gets nearer, floor by floor,
You finally reach the top, take a breath, and look around,
Neither contentment nor disappointment, absolutely no sound.

The emptiness that engulfs you, is so stifling,
And the disappearance of joy is more surprising,
If all eternity could be compressed into one single moment,
You are already through that now receding moment.

Back to active blogging after a sabbatical of exactly one year!!!!!!!!!!!!! This one was promised a year ago to Meghna and is dedicated to her. The last one year has been a thrilling roller-coaster ride plunging more to newer depths and never quite scaling new heights. What matters is i have managed to come out in a single piece and am back to blogging. So Meghna enjoy being a Beacon again.

Cannibal

For a second, all seems quiet in this primeval forest,
But only a second, silence is something they all detest,
Each to itself, noise is their only music, their only protest,
For, asking for understanding, is too formidable a request.

Above the saplings, beneath the vines, I finally reach a clearing,
Only to comprehend, it is the end of the jungle I am nearing,
There was once a time, when it stretched to the ends of land,
Ages ago, before it was within grasp of man’s lusty hand.

But things have changed, and so have the times,
All that persists, is the pungence of its ripe limes,
The grandeur only remains in the great oak’s tale,
As a witness to a relationship now nearly stale.

Gone are the days when the flora swayed in the breeze,
To the tune of young birds celebrating their release,
Days when the daisies couldn’t wait for the sunshine of spring,
Nights when cuckoos shivered, at what the winter would bring.

But the birds, grow tired soon, and shall no longer sing,
They find the tree too stuffy, to  even rest their wing,
Deafened by time, the trees too are now beyond caring,
Although they admit, the separation is beyond bearing.

The squirrel meekly watches, as the birds go their way,
Leaving the old peepul behind, for people to log away,
It looks up one last time, at the slowly receding pack,
Now more than sure, nothing will make them come back.

One such a ground I stand, a slave without a conscience,
Greedy, slogging for the greedy, who demand obedience,
Sweating, I continue, hacking away at the roots that feed humanity,
So that my children’s dream can soon turn into a concrete reality.

Although any reader would surely put this under Gazebo, the place it rightly belongs is Mirror, because not only is this about the environment, it is more about my own life than anything else. The message and the rest of the stuff is merely camouflage over a more sinister story of my own life. It is as much about an educated woodcutter and the ecological balance, as it is about two people whom I value more than my life fighting with each other, unable to bear each other. There’s a lot more to say, but that will have to wait till I get some comments .

Threshold

The morning breaks out into a clear blue sky,
And you decide, today is the day, to give it a try,
So you begin, to prepare a schedule, fix the time,
By the time it’s done, the clock strikes noontime.

So busy, engaged in imitating yesterday’s work,
That you forgot, to try and make this schedule work,
Perhaps a little later, maybe the evening you decide,
Another of those opportunities that chance was denied.

Soon the sun too begins to get rid of its glow,
And you’re still busy, catching up with the flow,
When the strength gets weak, and the morale is low,
You coax the schedule to make its clock go more slow.

The sun is unwilling, but the moon cannot wait,
That’s when you realise, that things aren’t right,
You and chance part ways, hopefully only for the night,
Hoping tomorrow would show it in a much better light.

Just close your eyes, and think of the day goneby,
Look at the roads not taken, and ask yourself why,
Then open your eyes, an look above at any star,
And learn to ask how near, instead of how far.

Make sure atleast tomorrow takes you forward,
And doubt not, if progress can only mean onward,
Just because something seems to snap every time you try,
Doesn’t mean there is reason enough to stop and cry.

Because there is always hope, and abundance of it,
Awaiting to be useful, whenever you deem it fit,
There’s always sunrise tomorrow, to emerge from this darkness,
Because every morning you stand, on the threshold of greatness.

This one was a close contest, but I guess the universality was what pushed it into Gazebo from Mirror. This happened to be another of those ways life wakes you up, when you are sleeping at the wheel. In this case it was in the form of my employer. I was happy that I got into a nice comfy job, and had started to neglect my research, justifing it to myself with some or the other excuse. When all of a sudden, when I was almost asleep during an Induction Programme(why do things always strike me in sleep?), I half-heard the word ‘Threshold’.

At that instant, all my sleep vanished aand thoughts suddenly started flowing. In 15 minutes, the whole poem was ready, and once I read it I couldn’t help but agree that it really reflected the sad state of affairs that I could call my present life. The reason I am posting this today, is that I have finally climbed the first step to greatness called ‘effort’. Today morning I finally acheived the breakthrough, I got myself the schematics to the circuit board that I was searching for more than a year. They say life is what happens when everybody is sleeping, so too it did, today morning at 3AM, I finally got the schematics.

Anthem

Happy and sad, about being sad,
Certain and uncertain, about being glad,
Enraged and composed, on being compared,
Desirous and content, of being ignored.

Anxious and patient, to do nothing,
Hopeful and scared, to learn something,
Curious and nonchalant, to create something,
Hopeless and expectant, to need nothing.

Delighted and bereaving, the ensuing joy,
Unabashed and bashful, on being coy,
Flustered and pleased, for being complacent,
Farther and nearer, to becoming self-distant.

Pained and relieved, on feeling the hurt,
Cheerful and grim, for heeding the heart,
Cleansed and stinking, from the hidden dirt,
Restored and fatigued, from all this effort.

Surprised and humbled, by this sudden success,
Filled and emptied, by a renegade excess,
Stirred and propelled, from an expected failure,
Interested and bored, in the promised cure.

Seen and unseen, all of my actions are known,
Heard and unheard, they converse with the unknown,
Touched and untouched, they want me re-living,
Kindness and neglect, they taught me giving.

Liberated and chained, I live in parole,
Till life and death, get tired of my soul,
Faithful and blasphemous, I shall continue to pray,
For, spoken and unspoken, there’s lot more to say.

This one is dedicated to me, to the Jekyll and Hyde within me, so that puts it in Mirror. How often have we felt multiple emotions over a single incident. I don’t know about others, but every single incident in my life has always made me think and feel in two or more ways. Sometimes a whole range, starting from shock, moving to horror, then waning into pity before fizzling out into mere sorrow.

I understand that I am one, but my consciousness refuses to believe in it completely, and thus leaves scope for repeated reinterpretations of one single moment. What purpose retrospection serves, to what end is introspection useful, I still know not with conviction. But what I do know is that this is the truth that my life is all about, the feelings that my story is all about, this is my song, my anthem.

Abyss

The day was quiet, very much like the silence it brought,
Soaking in the serenity that my existence has long sought,
I wished music would beat noise to be today’s first sound,
As I compel myself to fight back and win lost ground.

Forgiveness is alien, something I feel ashamed to ask,
Surprising, how speaking suddenly seems a difficult task,
When the reluctant words are forced to hide,
The mind has no choice but to dumbly abide.

The shame gets me thinking, “why this reluctance”,
Why do feelings and words maintain their distance,
Some times I feel the feelings are ready for a confession,
But most often it turns out, they stop short of expression.

Everyday I am aware that the remorse does exist,
Yet I choose to ignore it, as if shrouded by a mist,
And I probably have the willingness, but not enough courage,
After all, I cannot guarantee my future relapse into rage,

When the doubt creeps in, it throws me into two minds,
Making me question, “is it the act, or the guilt, that binds”,
Leading me to think of the repercussions, if you choose, not to affirm,
And thus I languish, neither able to deny, nor able to confirm.

I notice you searching for that regret in my eyes,
You see it, but lying or not, you cannot surmise,
Because it is was true, they could surely have been spoken,
Instead of hiding behind an apparition, that was already broken.

All said and done, the fact remains that it is still left unsaid,
And that’s what bothers me every night when I go to bed,
About never having a chance, by the time I get the courage,
And whether I want to stall, till things reach such a stage.

This one is again dedicated to Divya. A continuation of what started with Chasm. So I guess that makes it one more for the Beacons. Many times after words escape our mouth, we wish we could do something about it. Maybe get back to the person and apologise, explain your side of the story. Somehow in most such cases we never get around to doing it. Atleast not until it is too late. And then we wish we could have done so, one day before, one hour before, one moment before. But that moment is gone and will never come back. So I guess if you want to say something to somebody, there’s no time like NOW.

Orbit

Few people know, that fearlessness, is what comes at the end,
That’s because very few of them have gone around the bend,
They haven’t yet known a height from which they can never descend,
Never been in a position from which no preparation can defend.

At first there was the excictement, of doing something great,
But after a certain point, even the euphoria begins to grate,
The joy slowly distills, and eventually dilutes the fervour,
And you wish it would just get over, and do you a favour.

The real tension begins when all the exccitement subsides,
As your mind starts getting twisted on never-before rides,
It keeps getting at you, till you can take it no more,
And all of a sudden, deserts you, a little shy of the shore.

The euphoria and tension are gone, that’s when the fear begins,
In the battle between confidence and fear, suspense always wins,
The uncertainty that surrounds it, is too close to fear,
To let even hope know, that, it also is as much near.

When all of these pass, all that is left is complete silence,
A silence so timeless, that each second knows its distance,
When you can hear your own heartbeat, and feel it racing,
You begin to accept, that any noise would be worth bearing.

From the womb of such a silence, is born despair,
One that is lurking behind those masks that you wear,
Always waiting for that one chance, to corrupt your soul,
Knowing well that death can be your only, and last goal.

When the despair dies, it pours its life into resignation,
That state of giving up to the almighty, eternal damnation,
When all you can do, is merely marvel at your utter helplessness,
From that rockbed of helplessness, come the sprouts of fearlessness.

This one is inspired by the storyline of the novel ‘Orbit’ and would probably fall under Gazebo. In a sense all it does is merely re-narrate the stages the protaganist goes through. However deeper into it, there’s an observation of what goes on in each of our lives. How we react to different situations, and the emotional graph during suchc times is what the poem talks about.

One Step

Looking at myself in the mirror, I see myself all wrong,
Causing me to doubt the truth I had known for so long,
When left seems like right, surely something isn’t right,
Maybe it was the reflection, or perchance the angle of sight.

Confused and bewildered, I step out onto the street,
Looking forward to any person I could happily greet,
But the picture I saw, sent me into shock,
Perhaps the first time my smiles ran out of stock.

All I could see were hundreds of faces lined with worry,
Thinking of a thousand more ways to even faster hurry,
Clockwork, the next foot was up before the previous one could rest,
And I probably understood what they meant by ’survival of the fittest’.

Everybody it seemed was busy running after time,
Regardless that their watch would run out sometime,
They know none who has caught up, but it doesn’t matter,
They care not for the logic, embedded in such a matter.

They seem to believe that the heart is out of the question,
And therefore talk through their minds, talk sans emotion,
When the words escape, finding their way past the filter,
Consideration and propriety are forced to run for shelter.

So what if it made the other person feel hurt,
Couldn’t they see, their own heart was anyway hurt,
They thought others would understand the pain from this lesson,
Alas, the others, they too had filters, and saw only the agression.

If only they took one step towards those walking away,
They would find atleast one person coming their way,
Even if nobody turned around, it would be worth the effort,
For them to know, there’s somebody trying to heal their hurt.

This one definitely belongs to Mirror(though I have doubts it probably also falls into Gazebo, am having a lot of these overlapping ones nowadays). It all started out on my last day in Bangalore(for that period of time). I had by then become convinced of my opinion that BMTC conductors were the nastiest people on earth, and that they seemed to derive a sadistic joy from uttering the most disgusting things and behaving in the rudest manner possible. On that fateful day everything changed(or atleast everything about the opinion changed on 2nd May 2008).

There was this bearded middle-aged conductor in the bus while I was getting off at Vasanth Nagar, and he had the most congenial attitude I had seen in anybody in a long long long time. He greeted every single person in the most courteous way, and I must admit he was probably chivalrous to the core when it came to the ladies. Right from a student to the old lady unable to walk up quickly enough to the bus. I could see the happiness manifest itself suddenly on all their faces. It was probably that moment that I felt if only everyone everywhere could be like him.

While I understand that being Government employees and lower-level employees upon that, people like conductors carry a lot of angst with them. An angst that comes from long hours of consistently bad work environment, thankless irate customers lack of recognition and a pitiful pay to boot. This however doesn’t give them the excuse to pass off all of that pent-up fury on customers, most of whom have no other viable option and have to therefore bear all of it with a closed mouth. These conductors were appointed to be the customer-end face of the organisation, and if not for general well-being of the society, they should atleast behave considerately for the sake of the organisation that pays them to treat theh customers with respect. They seem to neither care for the organisation or for humanity in general, simply because nobody seems to care for them.

And it is not just the conductors, if every passsenger spoke gently and considerately to every conductor, they would feel like reciprocating and vice versa. Why are we always waiting for somebody else to smile first, somebody else to greet us affectionately first. If everybody shouted at everybody simply because the other person was also shouting, the world would be the biggest cacophonic fishmarket of the universe. Every time you smile and reply to somebody instead of answering with a grim face, you are unconsciously improving that person’s morale, uplifting that person’s spirit. This poem is dedicated to that Conductor of Route No. 290, who made my day. Wish everybody would follow suit. Change begins at an individual level.

Nightfalls

Nobody seems to understand, though it is a simple fact,
It seems they believe you’re a party to this daily pact,
Going it appears, into nothingness at the hint of dawn,
Happy that the sun is breaking out on another morn.

They know not, that you neither come nor go,
For, aren’t you the companion they don’t know,
Although always around, they never observe you stay,
Likely too busy to notice being abandoned by the day.

Left to yourself, you wouldn’t even talk of the day,
So I decide to let you for this once, have your say,
Everytime I think of my meeting with you tonight,
Visible yet shrouded, the possibilities taunt my sight.

Every dialogue in our conversation remains etched on my mind,
Realistic, believable, unlike the path to you that I had to find,
The yearning was probably what made every step seem new,
Directing me through an unfamiliarity I thought was you.

All the while thinking of questioning a reputation you deserved,
Yet, upon seeing you, my speech suddenly becomes reserved,
Ever expecting the ordinary, I stumble upon your surprise,
Vacant in expression, I could scarcely believe my eyes.

Each time you reluctantly reveal to this world your heart,
Reaffirmedly they wait, for morning, to see you depart,
Yielding your identity, for those that condemn you,
Never once bothered, that the same ones despise you.

I now understand how it must feel, to be hated for the light,
Glad though, that I made an everlasting friendship tonight,
Happily in the company of your blindness I shall soak,
Till I find truth, the one hidden beneath your cloak.

This ones is dedicated to two Beacons, Chint2(for the content-inspiration based on his poem Talk to Darkness which affected my life in a way I cannot even describe[the kind of stuff that should be made compulsory reading]) and Meghna(for her acrostic poem ‘Nightfalls‘ that was so simple and sweet, that it made me revisit the times when I used to write simple little poems in school).

This one describes my “one night with the night”, but being a very abstract one, you will find multiple points of reference for it, the night as a person, as a state of day, as a manner of living, as an object of fear, etc. What made the most impact on me was the way I thought about night previously, and the way I do about it now, such a contrast, and I guess I have ‘the day’ to thank for such a drastic change in outlook.

For those who have been wondering where I have vanished, musst confess, the writing never stopped, only the posting did, so get ready for a small deluge(couldn’t post what I had written due to many consistent technical and other glitches).

Sad Cypress

A few years ago, they took me away, cuffed and chained,
Only doing their duty, they knew not how much it pained,
Days, weeks, months I have sat, staring at the bars,
Awaiting the day to fly and converse with the stars.

Alas the bulb above my head tell me neither day or night,
And the minutes seem like an eternity to ponder my plight,
Of ever leaving this room, my hope has lost all sight,
Atleast they offered me a few hours of this artificial light.

None would listen, they wouldn’t believe that I was innocent,
I should be ashamed they thought, I should be repentant,
They were shocked at the lack of remorse on my face,
Knowing not, that this ignominy is more than I can face.

They parade me around, an apprehended dangerous criminal,
And my chances of walking away are sealed, almost minimal,
Standing in the dock, of the portals of law, supposedly called justice,
This was my last chance, and I really hoped I could do it justice.

Sadly all they believed was evidence, one given by circumstance,
It confounded me about why they denied truth a chance,,
It finally came down to my word against the evidence,
That was their value of my life, a gamble with providence.

They questioned my testimony, my character, my credibility,
And separated from it, every shred of believability,
There I stood, spoken, unheard, untouched, ravaged,
Following their orders, hoping my soul would be salvaged.

Alive, alone, death seemed the only one who was proud,
The only one unafraid, to call me its friend, aloud,
But God knew, and I knew, the difference between justice and reality,
And that knowledge was my compass, in the journey into infinity.

This one is for the Beacons, dedicated to Agatha Christie. The title is from one of the episodes of her detective Poirot’s serials. Somehow the moment I read the title, it reminded me of a lot many things that I used to dream about. And surprisingly, although it might seem odd, one of my childhood influences that left a lasting impression on me, namely, Tolstoy’s “God sees the truth but waits”, had nothing whatsoever to do with this one. The relation to that struck me when I was typing this post. But come to think of it, it does seem more and more like a versified form of that.

I always used to have this idea, probably from reading too much of Robin Hood, and such other stuff, about what I would do, how I would behave if I was imprisoned wrongly. Somehow all my life(even today) I keep getting this fantasy idea of myself as a vigilante after getting released for some crime I didn’t commit etc.  But thinking practically of a scenario where I couldn’t get out to do all that superman, batman stuff, this was what I could come up with. Maybe this is the way it will be.

Corridors

Walking away from today’s corridors devoid of light,
My chances of fully breaking free seem but slight,
Finally a flicker, the sunrays begin to draw myriad shapes,
While my mind is busy scripting one of its greatest escapes.

Although my shoulders sag, bogged down by ruthless time,
The heart hangs on, knowing memories are never past prime,
The anxiety, the anticipation only add to the confusion,
As life leaves me to wander, in search of an illusion.

Decades have passed since you’ve forgotten their meaning,
And so you decide to take a walk back into the beginning,
You take the first steps forward towards going back,
Wiping away the grime, whitewashing the memories now black.

As the black becomes whiter, and the uncertainty lighter,
The credibility intensifies, but hope grows no brighter,
But there is nobody beside to recollect those years,
To bring back yesterday’s laughter and share its tears.

The past walks through the window grill, mocking my desertion,
Bringing back haunting remembrances, attempting a diversion,
Challenging me to prove myself again,
By going barefoot through these ravines of pain.

Today the corridor is filled, with many more like me,
Playing the sunlight, played by sunlight, just like me,
Right behind the nearest door, my redemption looms,
While those still alone, peep into the empty rooms.

They find a clean blackboard, devoid of words,
Awaiting a chalkpiece, to etch out new worlds,
And those empty chairs of a hundred bygone dreams,
Where others will sit, to create tomorrow’s dreams.

This one has me stumped with a dilemma. Do I put it under Beacons because I was inspired by somebody, or under Mirror, because I experienced it myself, or under Gazebo because many others are experiencing it? Quite an amount of history this one has. To begin with, this one was yet another one that came to me, during those endless waits for employers to get free enough to interview me. However this happened not at the employer’s place but at the consultant’s place. I was sitting in the Dewdrop office waiting to be sent for the Dell interview when I had to wait for nearly 2 hours. As is the case I had brought my book along expecting such a wait.

The first thing that struck me was about a guy(my senior in college) who was in love with this girl, during college, apparently things didn’t go well, and atleast she called it quits. One year later, this girl came to the college to give her Wedding Card to a few lecturers, and co-incidentally the same day this guy also came to the college on some work. You should have seen his face when he heard about it, whiter than a blank sheet. I was in the class that day(yes, I sometimes did such a thing as sit in the class, when I got bored of bunking) and happened to see him dragging his feet along looking into one classroom after another, tears welling up, remembering the old days.

It would have been fine if this story had ended there. However a few days back I happened to go back to the college again on some work, and happened to walk past the classrooms, out of curiosity, out of nostalgia, I just looked in, and at that moment, that day flashed back in my mind again. Funnily it made me look back into the classroom trying to rewind my cassette of the same rooms, and I found things were different only at a very superficial level. More than anything, for me it was about those dreams that we all dream, of becoming somebody, of doing something, of getting somebody, and how after a while it mostly all fizzles out, probably doused by a liberal shower of reality. Yet those in those rooms never stop dreaming, probably because they don’t yet know, and maybe because dreaming is such a good thing after all. Perhaps it is the only thing that is ours to change whenever we want.

That about rounded off the story of how the concept came about. But the story doesn’t quite end there. What had happened in the Dewdrop office was merely the concretion of the concept and storyline itself, the actual lines and their interplay had to wait  for a while. Yesterday due to  sudden torrential rains, there was a power outage and by the time I got home it was already nearing midnight.  I don’t know why, but I got a wild idea, and decided to try it out. Probably because I wanted to complete this one and found myself ‘power’less,  I remembered those history textbooks I had read which said people like Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar studied under the streetlight and  cleared the IAS exams and so on. I decided to try something on those lines. But unfortunately even the street lights were out, so I had to settle for the next best alternative, vehicle headlights.

I was sitting with the book in my lap in the busstop, and whenever a vehicle passed by, I would get to write about 3 or 4 words a line. The rest of the time I would spend thinking about the continuation or the next line. Just when I had got a portion of some line, a vehicle would pass by providing just enough light to put down those words. That was also fine until the clock neared midnight, and the vehicles got very scarce if any at all. So I packed up, came home and with the last bit of battery left in my cell brought it to a conclusion by getting it out of standby every 10 seconds that its backlight went into power-saving mode. No sooner had I finished it, within 5 minutes, the power came back. Guess some things are meant to be out of the ordinary.

Broken

The smile seems so real, but its happiness isn’t,
The tears definitely real, but their sorrow isn’t,
When the eyes stand deceived by mere expressions,
You wonder how really deep are all those emotions.

The happiness, the sorrow, are but simple reflections,
Of many a misplaced attachment, unknown affections,
Of a waning devotion requesting a newfound zeal,
For too many actions and their consequences to deal.

One by one, the seams holding you together begin to give way,
And your life itself seems to have given up and gone away,
For, you couldn’t convince it to hold on, much longer stay,
Leaving an apparition behind, it left your heart and went its way.

Alone you walked, alone it walked, each to their own way,
It smiled, you frowned, at how much it still held sway,
You get immersed in work, and life is busy with its play,
But the straighter the road gets, the farther you go astray.

The moment you smelt trouble, you tried to steer away,
You thought you could remain a stranger by keeping it at bay,
Unfortunately it’s indefatigable, always making its own way,
You only reach as far as proximity, before it catches up someday.

But rudderless, soulless, you keep on getting nowhere,
And the emptiness within, is more than existence can bear,
Just another scorecard, measuring time, moment to moment,
While the watch competes, ticking away at your lament.

So when everybody’s watching, eagerly expecting the smile,
The unconscious acting involved considerably delays it a while,
Thus you pretend to drink it, stirred, not shaken,
From a cup, that is long since empty, and broken.

This one continues where the previous one left off, at the person beneath that mask. This one for the Gazebo deals with what most of us become after sometime. We all start off thinking of being somebody, doing something, and on the way, we get tired of the waiting to be that somebody, to do that something, and so decide to take the shortcut that always seems to popup nearby however farther we go. So we sell our souls, if only for a moment, for a day, for a lifetime, and get at the destination, to find ourselves without one.

Having got there or atleast nearly there, we look back and think whether the means were worth the end, specially since we had our conscience tormenting us all the way through. The destination doesn’t seem as attractive as it did, when we were along the ’straight’ road. Now it somehow seems tarnished, rather blemished with our own corruption. This one is for those moments when we went astray.

P.S.

I forgot to add, this was my 150th poem on this blog, and its been exactly one year on WordPress.

Coated Gold

The widest smile fills your face, atleast till they turn their back,
Then the grimness hiding right behind, proudly comes back,
Not just the face, it claims more than its share of your mind,
Confident enough, to this defection, everyone else was blind.

It’s not often that these subdued expressions get a chance to relax,
The consciousness holds a tight rein, keeping them from getting lax,
Forcing them to stay till they seem convincingly imprinted,
Then the mind itself relaxes, happy at the facade well implemented.

Sometimes a frown, acting for an uninhibited glee,
Sometimes an earnestness, when waiting to flee,
Sometimes a grimace, pretending for appreciation,
Sometimes a twinkle, to cover up the deprivation.

Clenched teeth, all grinding against repression,
Sunken eyes, both hiding from depression,
Drooping ears, eagerly anticipating a decision,
Talkative lips, silently conveying indecision.

A collapsing mind, feigning absolute lack of fatigue,
A troubled conscience, pretending to belong to the league,
An anxious heartbeat, faking regularity and precision,
A determined life, practically without a mission.

Some stay for a few moments, mere fragments of time,
Others linger on, stubborn to the end of lifetime,
However long, each of them leave their mark,
Those rings of age, deep inside, behind the bark.

Few can read, the moment between the blink of the eyes,
For the rest, this hidden being, they are none the wise,
It is only when the sword is separated from its bejewelled sheath,
And heated in the furnaces of truth, can you see, what lies beneath.

This is another one for the Gazebo. For those who thought it was senseless, it was supposed to relate to the mask that we all wear through this play called life. Masks of happiness, masks of sorrow, masks of surprise, of delight, and those of anger, of despair. The reason I call them masks is because they are emotions that actually hide the real person underneath them, giving the person shade, while pretending to be the person.(went through something of this kind a few days back, and felt my system merited some cleansing)

The concept could probably be related to the ‘Facade’ portion of the ‘JoHari Window‘, in the sense that the portion not known to others could either be positive or negative, that is only known to the person itself, and therefore the covering to cover the positive or negative aspect of it from the observer. Just because an object is coated with gold, need not necessarily mean there is a baser material beneath, there could also be a possibility that gold was simply coated on gold itself, for what purpose, with what objective, each person knows in their own hearts.

Ascension

The clock may have stopped, but time still goes on,
And always more of the road, appearing from the horizon,
The moments seem but milestones running out of distance,
As you strive to extract more from life than existence.

You have long since quit the race, running against time,
Realising that everybody has to lose this race sometime,
Your body slowly begins to abandon fatigue, so does your mind,
So you set out, to see if any fallen travellers you can find.

Looking around, you certainly find no shortage of this kind,
Ones whose departing failure had conveniently forgotten to remind,
That they were just a few feet away from the doorsteps of glory,
And this was the moment, their chance to rewrite their story.

And so you walk along, helping them see the way,
Encouraging them to walk that extra step today,
Telling them the pain in their sore feet would go away,
That a joyous rest was ahead, if only now they would stay.

Many years of failures endured, a lot many naysayers heard,
That your very presence seemed like the first positive word,
Your first few words were encouragement in bountiful excess,
Their first new steps already leading them to success.

You showed them how far they could go ignoring the pain,
That success wasn’t a fluke, they could repeat it again and again,
Made them believe they no longer had a use for their tears,
Now they only thought of the laughter in the future years.

You have always wanted to give more than you got from life,
So your contentment lies in helping others rebuild their life,
You move on, knowing there are others on whom you can depend,
To help a fallen fellow traveller to start afresh again and ascend.

This one is another for the Gazebo, something that I hope I can continue to be when a few years are gone by. This poem is inspired form two sources, the title, from a concept in Stargate SG1, namely Ascension, and the body of it, from the character called ‘Divya’ in the movie ‘Naa Autograph’. I guess the title conveys a lot of things relevant to that character, and hence I thought it might be appropriate.

I pity my regular readers because the next few ones are going to be more and more abstract ones like this. But then only for a while, maybe only the next 3 or 4 poems.

Moontide

Tired for the day, as the sun lets go, of its fast mellowing beams,
I begin my daily walk, past my life’s long-abandoned dreams,
Some just stare, some greet me with a smile, some with a tear,
Some try to stop me, demanding to know, why I left them here.

Not knowing the answer myself, I just try to keep moving ahead,
But there always seem to be some of them, wherever I try to head,
An answer I know not, but their circumstances I do,
That moment, and its lifetime, nothing else I could do.

They force me to remember my journey, and the winding road,
And the stranger’s reality, that my dreams everyday forebode,
AS I let them fall, like tears, each of them grabbed the sand,
Seeping into it, washing the dust off my mind’s hinterland.

Behold, the uncertainty disappear, the path ahead begins to clear,
Refreshed, renewed, the promise walks to its fulfillment near,
When the loitering wishes finally find their destination,
They drink into a new thirst from the well of anticipation.

When the tender saplings just begin peeping into their story,
Its time to point their tiny offshoots onto the path of glory,
Show them the need, the opportunity, they won’t ask why,
They’ll lap up the sunshine, and reach out for the sky.

Heads above the clouds, they no longer know a season,
All that they trust, believe, is their tiny seed of reason,
Their flailing arms are overladen, bearing the fruits of yesterday’s action,
Some too raw, the sap of discontent, some too sweet, oozing satisfaction.

I stretch my hand to pluck, but they have grown beyond reach,
I had never imagined, my own sky my dreams would breach,
I only hope, the winds of dispersion don’t carry them out of sight,
Such a pretty sight, solitary dreams basking in the moonlight.

If anybody got what I meant, please tell me, will be glad to give you hundred hugs. This one is another for the Gazebo. Yet many times when I re-read it, it seems to fit more into Mirror. I shall leave that choice to those who believe they understood anything at all in the first place. A lot of it seems from my life, but at times,(I mean my most depressing times, I wonder if I knew such days at all).

Messengers Of Mortality

At the break of dawn, life has already begun,
Amidst the victor and vanquished, the task is half done,
Those unfortunately alive, are pre-occupied with the dead,
To notice the direction in which to futilely head.

The unborn generations would readily believe,
From the earth, there’s a better way to leave,
Than by a downpour of bombs across the distance,
On innocent civilians, who offer no resistance.

A flood of blood, that tears mother and child apart,
You wonder, whether anywhere lies hidden, a human heart,
Among the debris, try as much to atleast find,
The word ‘kind’ is surely missing from mankind.

Everyone’s awaiting to fight their blood brother,
In an encounter that will obliterate one another,
The planet will be left with only peace and tranquility,
After we humans perish, the messengers of mortality.

We fight amongst ourselves, unheeding the reality,
The reason for our clash, we lack proof and clarity,
That it wasn’t fair, our conscience will stand as surety,
If only we were to eliminate our uncompromising vanity.

This one is another for the Gazebo. Seems many are coming that way nowadays. Anyway, this one was written, again on request from a freind in College. She had asked me to write an essay-kind-of thing about the Iraq war, and being as lazy as I am, I told her I couldn’t write an essay, but I would write a poem since that would be less tiring.

So I set about and the first thing that struck me was the scene of the war itself, I was supposed to go on and on, but then after the beginning I just kind of got bored, and later could never get back to it. For those concerned with chronology as I am, this one was written around December 2004. So that makes it another one from the archives.

A Bride’s Farewell

You are the brow of a tide, in our happy family’s song,
Glimpses of you, in our memory shall remain eternally long,
Bedecked in finery, you’ll soon be drawn away to your abode,
The worthiness of a Bride’s Farewell and goodwill we bode.

Be caring and sharing, be busy in mundane existential chores,
But carry forth the majesty of your ancestors, across family shores,
In thoughts of us, and words with him,keep your duty at the fore,
That itself will fill us with life, enthralling our heart’s core.

You were brought up amidst an atmosphere of amity and feeling,
Towards your new responsibility, prosperity you should bring,
With tear-filled eyes and a choked voice, we bid you away,
In right or wrong, joy or sorrow, be with him, along the way.

There will be moments, when circumstances are really tough,
And you think, for all the pain there isn’t joy enough,
But never give up, follow the ideals, and set an example,
In lineage history, praises of you, will surely be ample.

This one is another for the Gazebo. I had written this in 2001, as a request for Pavan Chetty, for his sister’s wedding, and ended up liking it so much I gave a similar one for my sister’s wedding. I use the word ’similar’ because from then till now, the only thing that has changed is one single line in the third paragraph. I had given my then collection of poems to my English teacher to comment upon, and she, a self-professed feminist, commented about that one single line, she told me it was too much chauvinistic. In fact I had only put in that line, because the scriptures suggest so, but nevertheless, that comment got me thinking, and I did something that I haven’t done more than twice in my life.

I changed that line a good 2 years after it was written, and today I must confess I fell better about it. Probably since I had been made to see the matter her way, this poem should be dedicated to Ms. Usha Ramani. But the reason I put it under Gazebo, is that it is the way I visualise the concept, the moment. It is the way I believe is good for everyone concerned, as also my own personal desire.

Chasm

When the silence sets in, on a world darker than the night,
Every word sets out, in search of that elusive spark of light,
They fervently search every word the mind can harbour,
And find their quest for sound, getting all the more harder.

They finally leave the shore of belief, out into the ocean of doubt,
More quiet than happy, for, had they not forgotten how to shout,
It has been quite a while, since a smile replaced their laughter,
A while, since every sob had been replaced, by a tear more softer.

As long as their courage couldn’t swim, their fears wouldn’t sink,
It seemed the only thing still afloat, was their ability to think,
To think, over their every word, till it could be refined no more,
To silently spell every letter, till their parched throats grew sore.

He followed behind, hoping to convince them to stay,
Only to find his own tears, gladly joining their way,
All he could do, was wipe them away, and pray,
That his prayer, would find its voice one day.

Why couldn’t anybody else see the noose, at the tip of his tongue,
One from which every minute, every protesting word was hung,
Unspoken martyrs, all of them, for a cause long since lost,
None of them would ever know the value, of effort’s real cost.

Prisoners from birth, each of them learnt to speak, fluently, silent,
Correcting each other, on what the nuances of expression meant,
Composing into tune, what their every syllable sung,
Silencing their music, till its very heart quietly wrung.

A chance meeting with a stranger, led them to the destination,
And there they laid their brethren to rest, in calm decimation,
His heart, and soul, forced his eyes into celebration,
As his ears first heard, that primeval cry of liberation.

Another one for the Beacons again. This time it is for Divya. I came across a post by her titled Mute, which beautifully conveyed certain thoughts that I myself have long been feeling. The poem however left me with another additional thought. What if that person finally found those words, but couldn’t blurt them out any longer, because he was physically what the poem calls him, MUTE?

What if he could no longer create sound, and wanted to do so just one more time? To maybe, apologise, to maybe tell somebody how much he loved them, to maybe cleanse his mind of all that accumulated thoughts waiting to be sounded. But then, by the time I reached the ending, I myself felt so sad for him, that i decided to make it a ‘filmi’ ending. One of the things that happens to me sometimes. Guess that way there will atleast be one less reader who felt sad the poem ended the way i did.

This poem was titled after the depths of the throat from which voice emanates. Most often we believe that it is from the abyss of the throat from which words are generated, but sometimes, sound is created from a place far more deeper, the bottom of the heart. Such words live long after the sound has dissipated, like the voice that echoes after a long decade of silence.

Oblivion

Walking amidst the sights, I nearly felt myself lost,
Gypsies all around, selling trinkets at an enviable cost,
The sun was just beginning to rise over the last tent,
Such an aura of heavenly joy to this beautiful day it lent.

I strolled, from stall to stall, searching, expecting the ethereal,
Somehow, it seemed to me, nothing was any farther from the real,
Atleast I thought I believed so, until the moment I set eyes on her,
Frozen stiff, I wondered how people could pretend not to bother.

My feet pushed me, forcing me to join everyone in the play,
The more they tried, the more detached I got from the fray,
My mind couldn’t have been more still, in such a stormy water,
My body, just tiring, from a day that was getting slowly hotter.

She was looking at a curtain, seemingly admiring the intricate lace,
While trying to push back her hair, which was slowly taking over her face,
By doing so, she gave me the first complete glimpse, of her face,
Maybe this was what they called distortion of reality, of time and space.

I got so close, I could almost hear her, and her infectious laughter,
Whatever the reason, it was surely something my heart was after,
She moved on, leaving me behind, soaking in her fragrance,
Floored, somehow, standing as I was, was an effort in pretense.

Sometimes, I felt she might turn back, catch me staring,
But some reproaches, despite the joy, are worth bearing,
Sadly, happily, she just walked on, oblivious to the world, to me,
Years away now, her enduring smile, is the only thing I can still see.

History, they say, repeats itself. So here I am, back to Aparna, guess the while has again come a full circle. Guess these Beacons never give up. Although I would have wished that this episode was true in its entirety. It is however not so only on one point, there was no Aparna in it. That however is only what lets me take the imagination to the next level, everytime I remember it.

This was an incident that happened when I happened to visit an exhibition, and found one girl who kept smiling more as the day got hotter. All around her, people were getting more irritable with the passage of the day, and here was one woman, who seemed to derive more happiness as the day moved on, it was as if she drank in the day. Though I long left the purpose of my visit there and simply spent the day following her, just looking at her, she was, it seemed, oblivious to everything, specially the likes of me, lost in her own world. Hence the title. Makes me remember Aparna, everytime I recall that smile(since the event was long ago, I can no longer recall her face, only that permanent smile, so it makes it all the more easier to transpose that with Aparna.

Frontier

It is already late, but the night is still young,
But my mind can’t go on, already high-strung,
When the words begin to find the dawn, the day,
I know that tonight, sleep has found its way.

The morning brings me a paper I nearly seem to know,
And so I begin writing, furiously from the word go,
I try to remember the order, down to the last thought,
I can only do so much, the fate of the result, I know not.

Day after day, every morning, I religiously ran the run,
All for this one day, when I had to even faster run,
Short of breath, I pushed myself with one final burst of speed,
Useless, maybe next year, another attempt to try and lead.

Standing near the podium, I begin to uncontrollably cry,
The winner steps down to console, saying, atleast I did try,
I hold my medal hard, feeling its heart, already stone cold,
Wondering how long I had to stare, to turn it into gold.

Every attempt I made, there was already somebody better,
And his record, tomorrow somebody else is going to better,
Is that what life is all about, always being ahead of the rest?
If so, I must admit, life is a very very badly designed test.

Is that all that matters, setting goals and achieving?
Running against yourself, against the world, competing,
To put every moment of life on a scale, upon a benchmark,
To compare and consider, before you can again embark.

Why can’t life be about enjoying the second, the moment?
About learning and sharing and improving your talent,
About the surprise of letting each moment lead the way,
And giving our satisfaction, the chance to forever play.

This one is also dedicated to Aamir Khan and Amol Gupte, already among the Beacons. Had earlier written one that not only was too much abstract for my own good, but it also failed to cover another important aspect of the drama, the human angle. The unquenchable thirst for betterment, for rising above the mundane, and conquering the stars.

It often used to make me wonder, why we need to compete. To prove to others what we have got. Why can’t we just do what we do, at the best we can do, and let the results speak for our efforts, rather than have a benchmark appreciate our efforts. Why must the yardstick of one’s effort always be the measure of another’s effort? Why cannot people find the satisfaction of having done the best we could do, as a good enough yardstick? Why must the reward for our efforts be always contingent upon the comparision with somebody else’s efforts? Why cannot the joy of watching our efforts fructify itself be the reward?

The poem was titled after that invisible barrier we set for ourselves, and spend an entire lifetime trying to cross it. In the end we will never know even if we have, because it is invisible. It is the end beyond which we can never go, and yet we refuse to believe it, and expend every valuable second we can trying to accomplish just that. There is nothing wrong, with such an effort, infact it is a very complementary part of human nature called endeavour. The problem begins when in the process of endeavour, we forget the simplest of joys, the smallest of joys that life holds. When we forget the satisfaction that effort itself is supposed to generate, and find solace only in the accomplishment, rather than the journey, that is when, competition becomes death itself. For without finding true joy, there is no greater purpose for life. That is the moment when the very accomplishment itself is the death knell.

I still remember the 100M running race in school, when one guy(I somehow managed to forget his name, like always) was competing for the all-rounder medal and had to win this race compulsorily(it was the last of the track events) to get the medal. While practising the previous day of the race, he happened to sprain his ankle, which put paid to his hopes of the medal, something he had worked for every single day of the year. Race day. The whistle was blown. I saw something I will never forget for the rest of my life. All the runners held hands and walked the entire distance, step by step, and slowly, lest that guy’s ankle get more strained, and at the very end, lifted their right foot, and at the count of three, set it down. It is another matter that in a highly controversial decision, Praveena Sir adjudged that since Ravi Kanth’s foot had come down a fraction of a millisecond before the others, he was the winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Well, nobody said life was fair. But it is moments and gestures like these that aim to set right that imbalance that matter more than winning or losing.

How many times have we seen Donovan Bailey stop running to attend to a fellow-runner who twisted his ankle? How many times have we seen Lance Armstrong get off his cycle to help someone who had fallen off theirs? That day, in school, I learnt what sports was about, what sportsmanship was about. It definitely was more than today, now and gold. It was about life, about living, caring and sharing. About humanity.

It is this same feeling I get when I remember my Board Exams. How many people can you mention, who were studying to be rankers, and how many people can you mention, who could-have-been rankers, and yet set that aside to help others who could barely pass to do so. I can mention a minimum of two, off-hand, Harshavardhan Dawar and Sainath Choudary. These were two guys who could have aced any exam centum, every time they wrote it, and yet chose to spend the days before the exams helping clarify other guys’ doubts. Anytime was never an interruption, the night before the exam, the day of the exam, the hour before the exam, no time was an interruption, and no doubt was too silly. It was this humanity, that anyway we can pass, atleast let us help others also do so, that touched my heart, and even today, I never send back anybody who comes to me for help in a subject. If I don’t know what that means, I will take it upon myself to first perfect it, and then teach the person, but never send them away saying, I am competing myself, sorry can’t afford to spend time on you.

But sometimes, many things just remain dreams. All shouted and done, absolutely nothing will change about this scenario. Only new actors, new backdrops, the story will always be the same, self-improvement over community-improvement.

P.S. Thought this would do it, unfortunately, there are still some more angles to cover, so you can expect the Part-3 some time soon.

Multitude

Pushing my bag underneath, I climbed onto my berth,
Crawling slowly, I dusted it for what it was worth,
Stretching my legs, I turned around to have a look,
Nothing out of the ordinary, so I got back to the book.

Forty pages later, it was getting more and more boring,
I closed it, dreading what the next pages would bring,
I watched as a hawker passed, chips around neck, like a string,
What a racket, I wished he would just sell and get moving.

Bored, I climbed down, nudged the old lady and sat,
Opposite me, a toddler sat, ah the noisy little brat,
Bleary, flustered, I was nearing my point of frustration,
When the train slowed down, pulling into a station.

That’s when I noticed her, staring out of the window,
As if searching for the ends of the fading rainbow,
Stretching her hands out, to feel the rain,
Oblivious to the train, now moving again.

At the far end, the tea vendor was nearly shouting,
And the toddler, probably chided,  was now wailing,
The old lady, dozing, was beginning to fall on my shoulder,
I really didn’t care, I was busy myself, watching her.

Hands still outside, the water was dripping from her fingertips,
The pure delight, all the while sparkling white between her lips,
There were a thousand people, and sadly, nobody was watching,
The thousand-odd ways those drops were trickling, bouncing.

As if self-conscious, the rain stopped, she turned round,
Wiping her hands dry, she finally began to look around,
Having seem them all, her gaze now came to rest upon me,
Held my breath, she stared, stared, stared, and smiled at me.

For that single instant, unbeknown, I too stared,
As if challenged by those eyes that so dared,
Transfixed, tacitly we sat, eyes still glued,
Together, yet so alone, in this multitude.

This one is for the Mirror. Happened on a lonely journey to Hyderabad. Guess that was the only noteworthy point about the journey, besides making me wonder of the many times when we are in the middle of a bustling crowd, and yet never feel more alone in life. Of the times, when we are alone in the room, simply staring at the ceiling, and yet the heart feels congested in the crowd.

The prisoners of our own thought. The travellers of our journey. many times we have company, more often we don’t. So often we take it upon ourselves to feel alone, when surrounded, and other times, so together in each of our loneliness. This one is dedicated to those thoughts. Ones that separate, ones that celebrate.

P.S. Don’t know her name. She smiled, I smiled, she laughed, I laughed, Hyderabad came.

Undesire

Come to me not, as the cascading waterfall,
Whose beauty lies, only in its own downfall,
Whose bubbles only froth, when its heart is filed,
Whose very purity, is always questioned and distilled.

Come to me not, as the charming breeze,
That moves around with a restrained ease,
Only once does it get, to caress my face,
After which it always seems to lose pace.

Come to me not, as those droplets of rain,
Those that pretend to fall, only to rise again,
Those that seem to revel in sharing your fun,
While all the time, silently blocking the sun.

Come to me not, as a blooming white lily,
One that survives, by being adored silly,
That yields its fragrance, with an effortless smile,
Knowing that the end is only going to be a while.

Come to me not, as an innocent child,
As if waiting to be liberated from the wild,
Laughing aloud, at my ceaseless effort,
Crying abandon, at my inner discomfort.

Come to me not,as the now blazing fire,
That kills all else to fulfill its own desire,
Knowing, in its heart, nobody to embrace,
Unknowing, how tomorrow’s hunger to face.

Come to me not, as the benevolent sun,
Though a source, it is only another one,
Seek me, hunt me, find me, however afar,
Let me know you, for the light you are.

Another one for the Gazebo. Hoping for the day when people would stop associating Divinity with objects and people,and start realising the true form of it right within themselves. The day when they will stop waiting for some messiah to come and show them the way, and instead start making their own way towards the light, one good deed at a time, one human emotion at a time.

Iscariot

One by one they emerge, slowly walking out,
Stopping and asking each other, the way about,
Though they all profess to have one common mind,
Consensus is something humanity may never find.

Only yesterday, it seemed we walked a common road,
As I trace without you, the path that we once rode,
With everyone else beside us, most of the while,
The last day which I knew, ended with a smile.

I only wish the rest of it wouldn’t be so vivid,
But then, the truth could only be more lucid,
I had done what I had, my own failing,
Nothing, I was sure, could prevent me falling.

Like falling pillars, they left me behind, one by one,
While I looked around, hoping to find atleast one,
Long gone, they were afraid not, to support me,
Afraid, they would be labelled another like me.

I failed to understand, what part of me was unpardonable,
What portion of my soul, was completely uncleansable,
Why my very sight, was to all, unbearable,
Why my very name, was from now unhearable.

In one lifetime, I did more than make up for it,
But nothing seemed to allow them to forget it,
Though I reside in everyone’s heart, they ignore me,
Atleast until the day they are forced to stand beside me.

For one single deed, my entire life hung in the balance,
While everybody else watched, in pretended silence,
If it was only life, I would have given without hesitation,
They trampled my life, only to get after my reputation.

Another one for the Beacons. This one is dedicated to many people to whom history has not been so kind in its treatment. The first name that comes to mind is Judas Iscariot, someone who is portrayed as the lab specimen of how a person shouldn’t be, and the very name is reviled. The same can be said of others long after him like Hitler and the like, whose very names must compulsorily be associated with evil, else the world would outcast the person defying such an unwritten edict.

Coming to our own epics there are some names that come to mind. Firstly, and most sadly of all, Ravana. To put things in proper perspective, Ravana was the master of all the 4 Vedas, as well as the 64 Upanishads, as well as master of a great many arts apart from being a formidable warrior, unbeaten in battle. Atleast that was the case until he came to meet Rama. A person who had neither of the above-mentioned qualifications, except probably being an equally good warrior with the same track record. The only sore point being Ravana had kidnapped somebody else’s wife, probably something the equivalent in today’s world would have hardly got him a year or tow in prison, for illegal confinement of a person violating her freedom of movement in the country. An act for which he is made to seem like the epitome of all evil, somebody whose very name deserves to be uttered in disgust. How silly it would seem in regard to some of the things being done today. Despite that he put in all his efforts and loyalties into the battle, purely trusting the words of his sister who told him a half-truth. How many of us would do that I wonder? I also wonder how nobody notices the nobility in that. Despite that he might still have got away with it, had he not been betrayed by his own brother in a fight among equals. A brother whom people have come to regard as saintly, simply because he was in the hero’s camp at the story ending.

Another name that comes to mind is Karna. This was another person who should have got his fair share of praise, if history had not conspired to steal it from him. He was a man who lived by his word, and sadly died by his word. A perfect gentleman who happened to give his loyalty to someone who recognised his worth, and his word to a mother who had shamelessly abandoned him at birth. Knowing well that he had a chance to turn the tide of the war in the favour of his friend, he chose to spare the life of nearly each and every Pandava, simply because he had given his word. An action that ultimately cost him the war. I hope I need not mention him being a far superior warrior than Arjuna, at whose hands he fell when weaponless and defenseless, and yet remained a man of his word to the very end.

The reason I mention a brief biography is to highlight what I feel is the injustice by history to these people whom it turned into outcasts merely on the premise of a single bad action committed by them. Why do we see nobody naming their children as Karna or Ravana, or Hitler or Judas for that matter? And why do we see them naming their children after spoiled polygamists like Arjuna and Krishna, or person’s who abandon their wives who followed them loyally into the forest like Rama. As you can probably understand everybody commits mistakes. That’s what makes them human. The ability to also forgive such mistakes and accept their consequences is what establishes the victim’s humanity. Is it not sheer propaganda of the victorious sides that gets history written this way, that people would shudder before even utter these infamous villain’s names. God forbid, you are caught supporting anything they stood for, or are caught appreciating them for what they were, you know your name too is on the list.

Why can’t people see the positive in everyone, and improve from it? Why can’t they learn the good from these Ravanas’, Karnas’, Hitlers’ and Judases? Why can’t they learn to love the humanity in these people, instead of fuelling their own hatred and being worser human beings themselves over an account that history fictionalised. One of the most beautiful things I have heard somebody speak and still follow to this day is “learn to hate the quality, not the person”. The quality is but one among the many that the person had. The quality is one that many of us have, though we deny it all our lives. Why can’t we learn to hate greed, lust, treachery, rather than hate people who seemed to be filled only with them? Is one single action so bad that a lifetime of good done atoning for it still doesn’t equate the balance. Is one single action so bad, that all the good done before it was a mere pretense that can be written off to mitigate not even a fragment of such an action?

May some humanity prevail over those still searching for the way.

Broken Pencil

Fresh from nowhere, it came, baggage in hand,
All I could do was gape, just letting it stand,
Though invited, yet so unwelcome, it would never understand,
While every passing second was encroaching upon its land.

It looked me in the eye, but asked not for pity,
Only shelter for a while, in this now strange city,
Seems only yesterday, it had grown up in this lane,
And today’s sunrise was already mocking it again.

I let it in, harbouring the tiniest hint of a doubt,
And watched as it struggled finding its way about,
Seeing it stumbling around in its own home,
I wonder, all these days, where it did roam.

Relaxed and settled, it asks me what I want,
But this time, it is something even it can’t,
So I smile my best smile, and force myself to say “Nothing”,
If my wishes had wings, I really wouldn’t need anything.

But the tears are something that I still don’t remember,
For, asking it to leave, was the last I could remember,
Surprisingly, I had to be content with crying alone,
Because no one else would accept it as their own.

Out, on the road, it stood just simply staring at me,
Was it pity, sympathy, or merely anxiety for me,
I would never know, because I had to open the door again,
I couldn’t just live every night, imagining our common pain.

So, in, it came, waiting for me to kick it out again,
In this matter, there was nothing I could do to restrain,
Me, I have other things horrible to bear,
Atleast that is something, we both share.

This one is dedicated to Amol Gupte and Aamir Khan for giving this country ‘Taare Zameen Par‘. For showing people what mattered more in life, specially in this country. This was something that had been troubling me right from my childhood, when I would open the paper in my 2nd Standard and read of students hanging themselves to death for not securing a particular rank, or for failing in a particular subject. Right from then I have been wondering what kind of environment produces such parents who put the fear of life or rather sow the germ of death into their children’s minds over a mere number, that might even if true, be merely an addition mistake of the clerk, a printing mistake of the press, or worser still, an irritated evaluator trying to put a value over a year or more worth of the child’s effort within 15 minutes.

Alas such a system should exist where that was all a child was worth, just another commodity. My cow gives 10 litres of milk, my car gives 14 kmpl mileage, my company gives 12 days casual leave annualy, my child gets 98.32% marks or better regularly. Indeed that is what children have finally been reduced to, pawns in a game of oneupmanship with their neighbours. How much did your child get in Maths, do you know how much my kid got in Geography? Is that all there is to a child’s life? Get up in the morning, go for early morning tutions, get ready for school, return from school, get ready and leave for more advanced tutions on the same subject again and again, until the very numbers and words appear as monsters in their dreams.

This poem is titled after a memory of my own childhood, wherein upto the 4th Standard we were supposed to use only pencils, and everyday before each session of classes began, the teachers used to sharpen the 40-odd pencils and put them in the pencil box, for us to collect as we entered the class after the morning prayer. We would all rush to get our hands on the pencils first, rather than the books. Probably because, the books were all the same, but the pencils weren’t. Some were sharper than the rest, some were longer than the rest. Everybody wanted the sharpest and longest pencil for themselves. Weren’t the rest of them also pencils, weren’t they equally useful if not immediately in the condition they were. We never knew then. Atleast I know now. A child’s life too has become like a pencil in that box, there is that constant competition that is created to be the tallest and sharpest among the rest. Unfortunately no parent or teacher seems to realise that the more you sharpen a pencil, the shorter it gets. Alas they seem to care not, that the length of the pencil is its very life, its childhood.

Although this poem was initially supposed to cover my heartlfelt feelings on the subject, something deep within stoppped me from putting everything down immediately, it was probably too much even for me to bear. So it turned out into a very very very abstract rendition of the fight every child has to fight between following his dreams, and being reluctantly awakened to their parents expectations of them, thus being forced to push the dream from their lives and fill it with words and numbers. But not for long, as these dreams continue to haunt them everyday, in the many forms of other children they see, other children that they hear about, other lives they only wish they could live. This one is also for all those dreams that have no voice.

So this poem should only be treated as the first in a series of installments on this topic that I will soon be bringing out. Hope that will soothe my anxiety to more human levels.

Pair Of Wings

Sad, dejected, half-heartedly, I continued to walk,
Wishing I had somebody, to whom I could freely talk,
Someone human, someone imperfect, someone fallible,
Someone who believed in the concept of impossible.

Someone  who sympathised with the mind’s inherent weakness,
Someone who empathised about society’s ironclad harness,
Someone who realised that living itself, was life’s greatest progress,
Someone who yet understood, why everyone, must someday digress.

I suspected nothing when my feet never touched the ground,
My mistake, I believed that such a thing shouldn’t astound,
What else were dreams for, if not to fly,
Where else was a freedom, none need buy.

Though you weren’t mortal, I thought it mattered not,
Apparently that was the first flaw in my thought,
Thought the days, the clock, was running out on me,
You never worried, time wasn’t something you could see.

Maybe the problem was, you couldn’t feel at all,
You could foresee the mistakes, but not stop the fall,
You wish so much, to correct me, comfort me,
Yet I am more astray than even you can see.

Not just a lifetime, we are completely lives apart,
And so I only wish you too had atleast a heart,
For, that distinction between our souls divides us,
So that we must exist, neither as one, nor as us.

You never could get those embracing arms, not even a conscience,
Thus we stand, thus we float, my body in between, like a fence,
So I decided, to ascend, leaving behind all bothering things,
Sadly proud, of having finally got, my own pair of wings.

This one is dedicated to Nicolas Cage and his intriguing eyes and wonderful performance in City of Angels. The movie joined my list of all-time favourite movies, for one simple reason, it has the first pre-requisite, a sad ending(something I call a KB ending, Indians don’t seem to have caught up on that front yet, since there are hardly any recent movies that have made it to this list with the exception of ‘Gamyam‘.

This poem was my own interpretation of what I might possibly do if faced with such a dilemma as Meg Ryan faces in the movie. Although it takes the premise further, hope it is justifiable in the name of poetic licence(the point that if in the movie, angels could descend into mortals, surely we too can ascend into angels???).

Fable

When you close your eyes to the world you know,
Thus opening them to a world you will never know,
You cannot control the direction your mind can go,
For, here, control is something you must forgo.

Sweltering under the sun, you long for some shade,
But your over-eager mind, you fail to persuade,
Surprisingly, you feel not, the thirst, the heat,
And neither do you feel it burning your feet.

So confusing, awake or asleep, you know not,
All you can do, is avoid that very thought,
Aware or ignorant, is something you care not,
For this thing seems to evade every thought.

Though the mind seems the only one in control,
You know not, if it can itself control,
When every single is enslaved by its thought,
Liberation would seem only an afterthought.

When the mist covering your eyes finally clears,
You start to believe they were merely tears,
Though their reason, purpose, you cannot now recall,
You content yourself that atleast the veil did fall.

Sheer outlasting joy, for there is nothing to see,
Because things aren’t what you believe them to be,
When every moment you doubt what you feel,
You fear how much more the truth will reveal.

You know not, whether to trust, the mind or the heart,
And yet there is somewhere you must surely start,
But every beginning seems to be an end,
As every moment creates its own legend.

This one is dedicated to Robert Miles for giving me Dreamland. A masterpiece of simplicity, in an era of synchronised, synthesised multitudes of sounds pretending to be music, and  the loudest among those cacophonies  pretending to be its very soul. I mention simplicity , not because of the layers, but more because of the  spartan  manner in which  those  layers have been relegated to an unmindful background, while  the  bliss of music occupies centrestage.

This poem is named after  one among those masterpieces in the album, which i guess might have  defied infinity if stretched, because of the beauty of the arrangement  where every single note that reaches a  crescendo, immediately  segues beautifully into a diminuendo of the next octave and carries on in that fashion until you believe it will go on forever if Robert Miles didn’t have pity on our souls to end it, so we could go on the journey again, instead of one single journey into forever.

P.S. Mr. Akshaye Khanna, if you are still reading this blog, please note that i also dedicate poems to MEN, in fact even the next two are to be dedicated to men, so please update your opinion

Shades of Silence

When the matter is confusing, and our opinions fight,
Much time is spent agreeing who is in the right,
Though you assure me you do not mind,
I doubt, the silence in your mind.

When the times are bright, and moments, many to enjoy,
Laughter often doesn’t do enough justice to the  joy,
And so you just let each moment smile,
I like, that silence in you smile.

When the weather is rough, and familiarity new,
I wish our reservations would be more few,
Though I cannot control my own thoughts,
I want, the silence in your thoughts.

The truth is something, that we both shall miss,
Something we lost, when I broke the promise,
I thought that would take you by surprise,
I see, the silence in your eyes.

When the difference are too big, to softly speak,
And humility seem, like a virtue of the week,
And yet I find you short of words,
I fear, the silence in your words.

When every moment needs a lifetime to stay together,
And we scarcely believe, even a moment we can weather,
Everytime I talk, of us growing apart,
I know, the silence in your heart.

If existence was a dream, everyone would be a fairytale,
But face to face with reality, dreams  will always  pale,
And so, when they tell you of my death,
I hear, the silence of your breath.

Had promised my dear friend, that i would rip off a lot of concepts from his site and reproduce them in a new and mangled manner here. Though it hasn’t yet come to that, this is another effort at first running through the titles of his posts(of which i must say there are many more that impress me, guess Yanni must take a break, i mean i guess Yanni must be relieved) before getting to any of the concepts actually talked about on his site.

The moment i saw this title on one of the posts, i knew this was something i badly wanted to write about, the different shades of silence we come across. Not that we can grade silence, but there are so many nuances in silence itself that makes us wonder if silence was really so silent after all.

So this is another one for the Beacons, dedicated to Dreamcatcher, for letting me so kindly reinterpret a beautiful theme of his, well only the title has been rehashed, but soon maybe the content also will be.

Just give me time. 

Sunset

When the day grows tired, and decides to leave,
The night is more than ready to help relieve,
The ending was too simple, just like any other,
For, each of their lives, were shortened by the other.

Every day was a new fight, every minute new territory,
Only for a day they enjoyed this transient victory,
For, to even contemplate rest, the next battle was lost,
Such was the price that this incessant struggle cost.

Though each one is less than happy to go,
They know there is no way they can say no,
They go their ways because they will surely return,
There is no way this fate of theirs, they can overturn.

Though this is a cycle that will forever repeat,
They never wonder why they both can never meet,
All they know of, is an assumption, a hazy transition,
Something that spares each of them, the difficult decision.

Sight, they know not, to see each other,
Speech they know not, to greet each other,
Desire, they had not, to feel each other,
Fear, they need not, to meet each other.

That the two of them, were so separate may seem so strange,
But they really had nothing in common to atleast exchange,
Despite their wishes, they were forced to remain silent,
For, they know not, such barriers how to circumvent.

Deemed to never be together, they preferred themselves alone,
And nothing described their lives better than forlorn,
Strangers to everyone, there was no sympathy they would get,
For the only friends they both had, were sunrise and sunset.

This one is again another for the Gazebo. Simple it may seem at first, but if you looked deeper, you might realise whom i am talking about, or rather why i am talking about what i ma talking. Initially things might seem as clear as day, but the more we look at some things, the more night we begin filling into them.

We begin to ferret out questions from every answer until there is no question that can be fully answered, and our life becomes filled with that big question of what caused all of this. Was it possible that if we were less curious, the world would be a simpler place to live in, a more content place to abide in?

Bye

You step away, and I believe it will be forever,
Forever seems alien, since I can’t even define ever,
Walking back, I cannot trace even a single footstep,
They just seem to wipe themselves away, step by step.

I try asking something, but the words disappear,
I try recollecting, but all the courage turns to fear,
Probably the fear, of causing one final displeasure,
Or maybe your reaction, an inability to measure.

Foolishly, disregarding caution, I let my dreams fly,
As if seeing through them, you give a fitting reply,
Being dreams, they are already prepared for such a demise,
But this one is just too much, even for them to surmise.

Every passing moment is a riddle, puzzling to its own very self,
For, you know not, the number of times I question myself,
Being unanswered, the doubts pile with every new moment,
You realise not, these queries, or how much they torment.

I decide to capture every moment, until the last glance,
But I know not, against fate, whether I stand a chance,
The eyes get distracted the moment you begin to speak,
For it is now the ears, that all of my attention seek.

And thus I stand, when you begin to walk away,
My feet utterly confused, whether to follow or stay,
The mind is inconsolable, but the heart sheds not a tear,
Though a lifetime apart, it knows you are always near.

When distance is an illusion, a mere matter of perception,
Every step away from me, is just a victim of deception,
And so I let you go away,
Because, I am, the only way.

Most often in everybody’s life, there comes a moment when we lose somebody close, and wish we had a chance to say goodbye. Or when somebody who leaves with every intention of coming back, never happens to. More than the act of saying goodbye, what we fail to realise is the sorrow of spending that last moment. How many times have we separated from someone knowing it will be the last time we will be ever seeing them, hardly a handful.

On how many of such occasions did we already know beforehand that we would never see them again in our lifetime, maybe one or two, or maybe none. Suppose you got to know days/weeks in advance, somebody you cared for, was going to leave you forever on a particular day, what would you do? What preparations would you make? How would you plan your last moments with them? What would you say? What would you do?

This poem is about one such opportunity granted perhaps by God in His more humorous moments, to get something I never could plan for many years ago, get a lasting last glimpse. The last time I saw those two people, I never knew it would be the last time, and was never prepared enough to depart for a lifetime.

But God being what He is, gave me another chance at life, by sending me advance notice of my last glimpse of a person who I would say, peculiarly resembles both of these two people, given their extremely different characteristics. So I spent the last whole week thinking and thinking over what I would do when I see Snigdha for the last time in my life. The outcome of those thoughts, this poem is therefore dedicated to her and those underlying Beacons.

Leaving Atlantis

To walk away from there, you never let anybody even suggest,
The very thought, there was nothing you did more strongly detest,
So when the day finally came, you wished it was all a test,
And kept hoping everything worked out for the best.

With every single step, the feet grew heavier,
Requiring quite an effort to simply step on the next,
With increasing loneliness, the mind grew even heavier,
If only to turn back, you could think of some pretext.

For some moments, you never wanted the stairs to end,
For, in such culmination, you seemed to imagine your own end,
In other moments, you hoped they wouldn’t any longer extend,
So that this despair, this uncertainty would finally end.

Nobody told you it was a journey, a very long one,
You always thought of it as a moment, the last one,
Every moment you had known, dissolved into nothingness,
Every ray of light you had seen, was hiding from the darkness.

With the darkness as companion, you were never alone,
The trip made you understand, darkness was never alone,
There would always be fellow-travellers just like you,
Travelling with it, to a world neither of them knew.

You still wonder, if you were chosen, or if you chose,
To walk away from them all, former friends and foes,
Your ears kept ringing with the onslaught of a deafening silence,
To break its monotony, all your shouting made no difference.

Those chosen, and those who chose, was the journey different, you wondered,
You would never know for sure, for, truth isn’t something that can be pondered,
With the thoughts slowly drying up, the mind has nothing to tend,
And then, you begin to doubt, if this was the way you wanted it to end.

Another one for the Gazebo. A very disparate interpretation of a person who decided to leave Atlantis after vowing all his life of never doing so, and after laughing his head off derisively at anyone who dared suggest such a thing. What is it that leads him to such a decision? Can it really be free-will if everything was already pre-ordained? How does one leave Atlantis? Abandoning Atlantis where else does one reach? Finally, what is this Atlantis I am talking about?

Hint: Loosely based on the movie “Leaving Las Vegas”

Promise

Many years ago, I made myself one,
Though initially I told it to no one,
It is one of those things that needs no telling,
They seized it, like an idea that needs no selling.

Only for a few decades, one lifetime, I had thought,
And yet I cannot even count the daily battles fought,
It seemed every victory was only an encouragement,
Every step ahead, another test in mind management.

People might say, forget it, they are just words,
They were never supposed to have an afterwards,
But a word once given, remains given forever,
Something I will never be able to deny, now or ever.

The clues, my lips may play around with, and converse,
But your name, it shall always remain hidden in this verse,
Many times, from the temptation, mind does almost cave,
But worry not, this is something, I’ll take to the grave.

You have never seen me, the way you know it is,
And we have never talked, the way it really is,
Perplexed, though you don’t, you know it but you don’t,
I am sorry, but in this matter, the secrecy is paramount.

We have never talked, I said, and so you never suspect,
And what puts you off the trail, is probably the respect,
With too many dead ends, you don’t know, whom to expect,
Which suits me all the more better, in fact just perfect.

But every secret has to die sometime,
So too will this one, after a lifetime,
But until then, there is something that you will never miss,
The story of the person, behind this unbreakable promise.

My first post in the new year. Though it might sound like gibberish to most of the readers, one of the ones that give me the most personal satisfaction in this new year. I feel like as if a considerable portion of the weight i have been carrying has been shifted to the blog’s shoulders.

This is another of the Mirror ones which is truly mirror in almost every sense. This is the closest i have ever come to telling my story. Though it had a more than a thousand chapter, one for each day, this was something that was like the overlapping theme connecting them all together bound by a promise.

It tells of the difference one single promise made to my life, and how nothing was the same again. It would have been simpler, people would say if the promise was broken, because then i might have got much more happiness than now. Alas such a happiness would never have lasted like this one does, and will keep doing for as long as i live. Even afterwards, the happiness will show through every line that i wrote about it.

Every so often, we all make promises, how many of them are ones that make us commit ourselves for a lifetime. And on how many of such promises do we maintain our commitment in the letter and spirit of the word given? We will never know the satisfaction of successfully maintaining our commitment on the ones that we do, but then, that’s where the actual pleasure in the whole game lies.

Being a winner without even being able to know it, receiving the reward without even existing to accept it. It makes every single temptation that we come across seem like the test of a lifetime, because that’s what they are, ones that try to break the determination of a lifetime. It also makes every single temptation we overcome like another little step towards our very own star trek, and mind you stars are never very near.

Santorini

To the casual observer, they seemed like a pair any other,
If it wasn’t for that singularity, they wouldn’t even bother,
Like all the others, they seemed immersed in their own world,
With the occasional interruptions reminding them this world.

They seemed not, to understand concepts such as time,
To indulge their senses thus, there hardly was any time,
For, they spent every valuable second, one moment at a time,
But the clock was ticking, and they knew it would soon be time.

Building walls around them, against death was no good,
And to waste it in such an activity, life, was too good,
They knew, that, for time, life was a regular food,
And so needed to make the best, before being gone for good.

For everything they said, something more could be read,
From what snatches you hear, everything seems so well-said,
All that needed to be, all that was, would eventually be said,
And whatever still remained, would forever stay unsaid.

To say time was of the essence, would be an understatement,
To claim they were dreaming, would surely be a misstatement,
They realised, and prepared themselves, for the final arraignment,
There was a lot more distance to even grasp any contentment.

From their sheltered cocoon, they never tried to venture out,
Yet in both their minds, there lingered one common doubt,
Which of them, would be the first, to finally leave,
Bestowing the other, with a chance, to briefly bereave.

Or perhaps, even death could be put to shame,
If they had already flown, by the time it came,
Maybe it would chill death’s own bones deathly stiff,
All they had to do, take a deep breath, and over the cliff.

This one is for Priyanka, the last of the KiDNAP(not the last you will read about them, but the last for quite a few months). With this i conclude the Beacons series on KiDNAP, and hopefully move on to other things. The first thing i am sure she will ask upon reading this is why me? as would any other of them, but thats exactly the tricky part.

Each poem dedicated to them has one characteristic of their personality cleverly woven into the narrative that it escapes all but my own eyes(of course the casual reader[people who dont personally know any ofthe KiDNAP] would not know any way).No prizes for guessing what this one is about, though i would be mightily be surprised if anyone guessed the entire premise on which the poem is based.

Another of the titles that i so liberaly borrowed from Yanni. Dont know what i would be writing if it wasnt for him(have personally found that unattractive titles lead me to write less expressive poems).

November Rain

Such a shower, would normally seem out of season,
But he had long since stopped searching for reason,
He knew not when he lost it, cared not if it lost him,
A lot more important things had already left him.

He clearly remembered the day, as if it was happening today,
He knew not, they would no longer be one, by the end of day,
A misunderstanding, he told her, begging her to stay,
But in this matter, she had nothing more to say.

He was walking back, alone, when it began to rain,
He continued, for, weren’t they both the same strain,
One, unwanted by the sky, living a fall from grace,
Other, unnoticed, in search, of a now lost embrace.

Joining the earth as a stream, it would never again be the same,
Walking back from a rejection, he found no one else to blame,
Never the old form, even perhaps if it did evaporate again,
No newfound love, could erase, heal, the old one’s pain.

In its life of a few minutes, it changes and rewrites, many a fortune,
In a span of many years, he will never face a greater misfortune,
Every drop is saturated, with so much potential to live for,
Every moment is torturous, the next hasn’t any better to offer.

Those whom it caught unawares, scurried, running helter-skelter,
He hurried not, there was none left for his heart to shelter,
But it will soon be quenched, and people back to the asphalt,
Not him though, his life had already come to a final halt.

Condemned back to earth, it slowly meanders its way to redemption,
To even expect a glance back, would be the pinnacle of presumption,
For many years to come, people would never see such a November rain,
It was something he would relive, every moment, again and again.

This one is dedicated to Nisha, another of the KiDNAP. The Beacons never seem to stop glowing, beckoning, atleast for one more time, till Santorini is done with probably tomorrow. Am surprised with myself seeing the amount blue on the calendar widget for December, and there are still few more to come. Guess thats the luxury of being jobless.

When someone who you thought was yours forever and ever, suddenly decides to call it quits and never wishes to see you again, what will you do? This is an attempt to capture what i thought one person i knew might have done in a (to use an economics word) ‘free market’ scenario. And besides it also deals with another of my favourite topics, rain, and how both the rain and this guy are not really much different fundamentally, as they arise from the same conditions.

Another of the titles that i owe to Yanni. Somehow whenever i get short of titles he seems to be waiting to remind me of one.

The Spotless Mind

Pretending it wasn’t over, was not going to be much use,
For, to feign forgetfulness, was not his cleverest ruse,
The floods had stopped, but the wreckage remained,
And everything around him, had forever been stained.

Over time, even the wreckage, may finally get cleaned,
But the scars, he knew not, on whose side they leaned,
They seem engraved, every time he remembers them,
And seem to fade, every time he begins to forget them.

He never seemed to know, was she a moment, was she a memory,
Whether what he remembered, was the reality or just a story,
And those mementoes, supposed monuments of romantic eternity,
Were they all fake, or just piercing questions about his own sanity.

The separation should be clean and final, they both did agree,
But memories are no verdicts, that any court can decree,
Nobody can fairly expect thoughts to suddenly vanish,
Even if they determined to steadfastly try and banish.

Did she too think as often about him, he wondered,
Because every so often, towards her, his mind wandered,
Did she ever think,of walking back the track,
Like he did, every moment of wanting her back.

Like a chain, every single memory clung onto the next,
Unable to get them to leave, to forget he had no pretext,
He understood how she must have felt, unable to forget,
But somehow, not remorsive enough to merit any regret.

Helps not time, the more it passes, darker grows the stain,
No sooner does he forget, it can’t wait, to remind him again,
How simpler  life would be, if he could leave her behind,
And start afresh, a new beginning with a spotless mind.

This one is dedicated to the next in the KiDNAP list Komal. Will the Beacons never stop? Hopefully i will get over them when the next two get posted and done with. Somehow kid myself that this is the way it will always be. Somehow end up not getting fooled at all.

This one is about a crisis that most of us face. Assuming an impossibility that i would face such a situation, this was a kind of intrapolation of how i would react and what i would require to survive thereafter.

Silver Lining

Tired of running this race, every single day,
You wish, for a while, the time would just stay,
Or atleast wish you had a stronger pair of legs,
Ever thought, what a boon it is, to simply walk?

Tired of finding your words, heedlessly into the air blend,
You wish some of it, in pristine silence you could spend,
Or atleast wish you possessed a more commanding voice,
Ever wondered, what a gift it is, to merely be able to talk?

Tired of enduring, the endless litany, that you daily hear,
You wish that every word could, in some small way endear,
Or atleast wish you could turn deaf to all this drivel,
Ever asked, what it is like, to never know sound?

Tired of watching, constantly registering what your eyes see,
You wish that this world, for a moment, would leave them free,
Or atleast that the mind spares it, to into an eternal sleep,
Ever realised, how many thousands, sightless this earth abound?

Tired of thinking, of processing a reaction for every emotion,
You wish your brain could, for once, stop its silent commotion,
Or atleast devoid itself of any thought, like a clean new slate,
Ever pondered, how fortunate you are, to be atleast able to think?

This one is another in the growing list of dedications to DreamCatcher. Also another for the Beacons. Had promised him after quite an endearing chat that i would write up some feelgood sort of thing to cheer him up, and here it is.

This one is about the little things in life that many of us take for granted, and how we expect  the entire world to change for our desires to get fulfilled rather than realising the magnitude of good fortune that already is ours.

This one was to make DreamCatcher wish to start writing once more, because only those who know what it is to not be write as like they could know the pain of seeing a lot of potential writing going waste.

Resonated

You know it not, by the darkness of night,
You hear it not, so does its footstep fall,
You hope you can see it in the brightness of day,
So you sleep, hoping morning will solve it all.

But the sun brings not, any new pair of eyes,
And more than last night, you are none the wise,
The suns aids not, merely blinding your sight,
Alas! On this thing if only there was more insight.

You wonder, which of your senses will it greet,
For, it is too much distant for your mind to meet,
You wonder how it moves, can you hear its feet,
Sadly not, it is more silent than your heartbeat.

The air, you think, but it is too petty to desire,
It burns with an intensity that ashames fire,
You dip yourself into it, it is smoother than water,
Yet hard as ever, a blend of the earth and ether.

You see it not, because it has no form concrete,
And nobody has measured ts dimensions complete,
Yet not for a moment do you doubt its existence,
Because that would question your own existence.

It moves not, but is always in constant motion,
Yet it is pushed around by your own emotion,
Try as you can, and will, it is immune to change,
Yet such a permanence in your life seems strange.

Unseen, unheard, it follows you, on every path you take,
Like a shapeless shadow, it haunts you, for your own sake,
Its constant interruptions, may or may not cause hesitation,
Left with no choice, it is your only chance for salvation.

This one is dedicated to DreamCatcher. Another of the Beacons. Had promised to write him a foreword for his future poem ‘Resonance’,and so here it is. I cannot even guess what his ‘Resonance’ will deal with, but all I know is that it will surely resonate for quite a long time, and hence the title.

This one is a kind of riddle. Started out as fun,and got more serious towards the end. Besides it is one of the few poems of mine that have a mysterious subject that remains concealed even after the end, this is because that is the way the object i am talking of remains in real life also. So put in your guesses and i will surely confirm if any of you hit the jackpot .

The Eternal Sunshine of

When darkness becomes a stranger to the night,
And there no longer is an end to broad daylight,
When the moon and the stars separate upon a fight,
And yet he never doubted his future was bright.

If there was any indication of the events about to come,
He would never have believed the person he would become,
And that day was not very far off from today,
It was too late, to divert, too late to change his way.

He thought he knew her from the very first day,
And so couldn’t believe it would end this way,
Surely a joke, by fate, indulging in naughty play,
Or was it for real, for true, he could never say.

All that he knew, was that, the sun had set,
Set on a life, he never could fully forget,
The rains, they would never come, he had bet,
Alas, such drenched dreams, they leave him wet.

Barely in control, she turned around and walked away,
And found that they had indeed walked a long way,
A few more steps, and maybe, she could somehow end this day,
Memories, if only her mind could keep those vultures at bay.

She hesitated, turning around would seem most awkward,
But maybe it was the only way to move on, take life forward,
Why didn’t he ever look back, and see her pause,
Pondering a reprisal, fighting her own lost cause.

Though it mattered to none else, it mattered to her,
When the first tear fell, it wiped away her anger,
The clouds being spent, split. watching the two pine,
And let through between them, new rays of sunshine.

This one is dedicated to Deepthi, another one for the Beacons, and the second in this series. Saw the movie yesterday, and fell in love with the concept as well as the execution(felt sad for another reason though). Decided the title was too good to pass up a poem on, and since it was anyway a too big title for a poem, i decided to have double the fun by splitting the title and using it for two poems.

Although the next one was supposed to be The Spotless Mind, had a conversation yesterday after which i changed my mind, and decided to finish two quickies for DreamCatcher, titled ‘Resonated’ and ‘Silver Lining’. After which i will get back to the KiDNAP series as well as other long-pending ones.

For those not yet done thinking, this was about the simple ways in which a lot of relations breakup,and the small steps that people hesitate to take to get back on track. It is about how there is still hope every single day, if only we retraced our steps and found a common ground, maybe even if that means standing on each other’s feet.

Nothing

It was trivial, I though it didn’t even merit such a fight,
She thought not, and refused to acknowledge my plight,
I tried telling her, that she knew not all the facts,
Unconsciously, she told me, that I knew nothing.

I tried telling her, about my pain, my lifeless days,
I tried convincing her, in quite innumerable ways,
I tried showing her, all my heart’s hidden pain,
Unflinchingly, she told me, that I felt nothing.

I tried asking her, about the reason for her fears,
I tried promising her, there would be no more tears,
I tried questioning her, the reason for her stand,
Unwavering, she told me, that I understood nothing.

I tried assuaging her, it was all my fault, a mistake,
I tried proving her, this time my tears weren’t fake,
I tried asking her, another chance at love, at life,
Unruffled, she told me, that I realised nothing.

I tried showing her, there was still a reason to smile,
I tried coaxing her, to think things over for a while,
I tried requesting her, that we needed another try,
Uncaring, she told me, that I deserved nothing.

I tried forcing her, to force herself to reconsider,
I tried begging her, she had a lifetime to consider,
I tried reminding her, of promises we made each other,
Unmoved, she told me, that she had promised nothing.

All that I had asked her to feel, she simply denied,
It seemed every action of hers, compassion defied,
I tried telling her, we were inseparable, for this lifetime,
Unperturbed, she told me, that we both were nothing.

This one is dedicated to Aruna. Seems the Beacons are getting more of their dues back with every passing week. More than the Beacons, this one was particularly the beginning of a series I will be bringing out in honour of KiDNAP. Was simply sitting idly at home and going through the Beacons, and found that apart from what i had written mostly in college there was hardly any new content on the KiDNAP.

So i decided it was time they got a fresh lease of life from reading something on themselves.(it must be noted that none of these poems actually represent what they are in real life, and are only mere visualisations of whatcould be, in case certain characteristics of theirs got into freeplay. The order of this series is purely alphabetical, and hence i request that people don’t waste their already strained grey cells, trying to figure out a pattern out of this. The rest of the poems coming up in this series are

2. Eternal Sunshine of

3. The Spotless Mind

4. November Rain

5. Santorini

After they get their dues, will be moving on to other things equally close to my heart.

Icarus

The closer he went like a light-craving moth,
The farther he seemed from her, like her wroth,
Like the helplessness in him, his actions had wrought,
Less better tidings, the day’s moonlight brought.

There was once a time, when his life meant sunshine,
And sorrow was something he never could define,
The days were to him, rosy, cheerful and sublime,
And he never felt the need to measure such a time.

And then one day, he wished upon a star,
Committed for his life, to an object so afar,
All that he wished for, was one single meeting,
He knew not how swiftly his wings were melting.

Watching it alone, day after day, at midnight,
He had no one, to share, to unburden his plight,
He had no idea, that this was beyond his might,
He only had the destination, imprinted on his sight.

But she was human, more than a twinkling star,
And though face to face, she was never more far,
She looked through him, noticing, yet ignoring,
And the pity, sympathy, was beyond his bearing.

Thus began his descent to earth, feather by feather,
Such a rejection, even his hardened wings couldn’t weather,
Deserting him, they floated like brush strokes by an artist,
It was nearly morning, approaching with its forgetful mist.

He had never believed that a star could be so cruel,
That it would challenge his own heart to such a duel,
The body was anyway gone, along with those feathers,
The soul however, would join other such unlucky brothers.

This one is dedicated to Akshi, (another one for the Beacons) whom i last happened to see sometime in March 2003. Although this poem in no way reflects her original personality(which was much more sweeter than many of my poems allow), somehow when i began writing, it was always her image that kept flashing until i was done. And therefore i decided to give it a little bit of humanity, although this was supposed to be a completely sad version, i changed it at the last moment, to spread the sorrow both sides of the fence.

Delirium

Silently through the night, her formless hands creep,
Searching, feeling for him, through the lands of sleep,
The darkness around, its not an easy rival to win,
So, finding him, she waits, for the right time to begin.

She knocks on the door, knocks on every window,
He ignores her and sleeps, but she just won’t let go,
She continues to bang the windows with her incessant silence,
And so it turns into a battle between each one’s patience.

She knocks, he sleeps, till even sleep deserts him,
Both sleep and his patience, they abandon him,
Left with no choice, he wakes up, and opens the door,
For, this morning, he has lost, he can fight no more.

Forced, beyond his control, he decides to co-operate,
How far she will follow, he cannot even estimate,
She is beside him, above him, around him, all along the way,
She prodded him, cajoled him, and kept him in the fray.

Every second she is around, is his daytime,
And without her, he knows not, any other time,
They talk, they discussed, they argued, all in silence,
Their laughter, tears, they know not the difference.

With every single footstep, she grows more younger,
With every single stride, his feet get more stronger,
Once arisen, he no longer has any sleep to forsake,
And unable to sleep again, is he ever awake?

This one is dedicated to Snigdha(another one for the beacons). Not for what she is, but for what she represents. She has such an uncanny resemblance, that seeing her laugh, brought back memories of two people whom i had last seen in March 2004 and March 2005 respectively. Though i know what they are doing today, and though i see  both of them whenever i want in my mind’s eye, just closing my eyes and walking with them, yet, seeing her laugh brought back those memories of watching those two persons laugh, the twinkle in their eyes.

Though this is one for the Beacons, ihave deliberately not put her photo for 2 reasons,
1. I don’t have her explicit permission to do so.
2. Just seeing her photo may lead many of you to realise the March 2005 person i was talking about(too much of a risk).

Although there were quite a few already completed and ready for posting like Icarus and Santorini, i decided that this must be a quick job, and went to work on it today morning. Since it is another of those zombie abstract styled ones, most of you might feel this as utter non-sense. If you feel so please let me know, will be glad to clarify. Because there are more than 3 layers to it, and it would satisfy me if such over-complexity simplified should not be understandable.

Dreamcatcher

He begins another day, fishing in the waters of his mind,
He knows not, if that lost object he will ever again find,
It will never repeat, even if only to again remind,
Only its memory, a vague sketch, it leaves behind.

He walks not, in this journey of a thousand miles,
For, this isn’t the earth, to journey on his feet,
Around every corner, it is teasing him with its smiles,
He stops not, there are a thousand more identities to meet.

Somehow, it seems to be him, every part of it,
As if taken by himself on an unearthly visit,
He is a stranger to himself, like his quarry,
Only, his prey never pauses even once to tarry.

To believe it was false, would test his imagination,
But it was true, leading him to a new destination,
His efforts each time, would never reach culmination,
Since he could never stop it from re-germination.

A dream is not his guest, to come home towards him,
Instead, it is the door, that from yesterday awaits him,
If he never reaches, it will still push itself ajar,
To show him the next door, not quite afar.

He sometimes believed that he was living through it,
And yet he clearly remembered breaking away from it,
He would walk through one, and walk into another,
And could no longer distinguish one from the other.

Alas, the dreamcatcher, he knows not the meaning of rest,
Every single moment, every single dream is another test,
The remains of its body, his thoughts may clasp,
Its life, its soul, no human mind will ever grasp.

This one is another for the Beacons. It is dedicated to a dear friend also presently titled ‘Dreamcatcher’. Had promised him that i would rip off a lot of inspirations from his blog, and here i begin with his name. This one is about the dreams that we all dream, the biggest one being life. And how we never realise we are walking through the dream, and instead wish for other dreams to take its place. Had only planned to limit this piece to this when i suddenly found out yesterday that i had been tagged. And surprise, it really was Dreamcatcher back again.

So i set about replying to his brand new post, and decided to compose a welcome-back poem for him, and here it is(he knows who the star is, and who the child is)

life slowly halts as the sun goes down,
and the night descends upon the town,
galaxies apart, he knows not its is afar,
the little one waits for the promised star.

the bright star looks down,
at the child’s stubborn frown,
no consolations, no words of renown,
could excuse the kid being let down.

only a month more, the star had said,
believing which the kid went to bed,
weeks past a month, and yet no star,
ever so hopeful, the window was ajar.

the star came through, but the child couldn’t see,
and so wrapped in his little dreams, it let him be,
waiting for the day, when it would set him free,
as always, a fingerwidth above the tallest tree.

So Dreamcatcher get ready for more.

 

Black Light

The next batch of them stepped out of the cave,
The first steps they were taking out of the enclave,
Everything went blank, outside, it was just blinding,
So unprepared for things that were now emerging.

Things they never heard of, things they could never believe,
Sights and sounds that their minds would now never leave,
It shattered all their myths, shattered all their cherished beliefs,
It rewrote them, and taught them, facts were the only beliefs.

For them, from now everything in life was just another question,
The only way it answered each one was with another question,
It formed a chain of questions leading all the way,
And every diversion they took was another new way.

The road stretched out for ever with no visible end,
And the light around them was all they could depend,
For years on end, its expansiveness they admired,
And wondered to themselves, how the feet never tired.

They never knew, what they were in, was called day,
Because from it, they could never grow apart, astray,
Through all its bylanes, they would never know the way,
Whether they knew anything about it, they never could say.

The more they explored it, the lesser they knew,
And yet everything they uncovered seemed new,
The more they drank, the more thirsty they got,
And yet, where its charm lay, they comprehended not.

Gradually each one of them began to miss the night,
And wished, for a few moments they lost their sight,
Where were those days, when everything was more than ample,
Back in their cave, their lives had been so much more simple.

To begin with, this one is a paraphrased, versified form of a comment i wrote on Aparna’s blog. Had promised her at that time that i would get back to the topic when i found more time, and now comes that time. Below is the extract of my post then:

knowledge itself is by no means qualitative. it neither creates nor destroys, it just shows people a path. it is what could more properly be likened to light.

imagine a world where everyone was living in darkness(maybe in a cave of simplicity, maybe in a well of contentment), and then one fine day somebody finds a way into a place called light, a place that improves matters and yet complicates them. a place that tickles the restless and thereby hastens change.

it is because people felt too stifled by the darkness of the cave, maybe too bored, that they chose to seek the pleasures of this new city of light called knowledge.

unfortunately theirs proved to be a journey of no return. there was nobody people any longer knew who could shed their cloaks of darkness for these new shimmering dresses called knowledge and soon outgrow dozens of these tight-fitting robes and find a way to get back their cloaks of contentment.

it was an addiction that refused to darken, a disposition that could not anymore brighten. it was the simplest form of organised chaos. one that exploded out of itself only to implode into itself.

the people used to the confines of the cave could never get enough of this newfoundland, because it had no walls, no roof, it spanned an eternity, it spanned the entire horizon, and a flexible one at that. the more they walked the newer the horizon got, but thats all that happened, there was nobody who could ever get to the end of the horizon, to realise that it was one big circular dream that revolved around itself.

thus ended the legend of the cave dwellers, ones who could never wait to get out, and those that could never find their way back home again.

Hardpressed for time as i was on that day, i never could follow it up even afterwards, as different other things caught my fancy, but life being what it is, had to come back to this in the most unexpected of ways. Personally i have nothing against knowledge. Whatever i am today was made possible because of the knowledge that i have gained along the journey.

However, the kind of psychotic that i am, i keep alternating everyday between the quest for my scientific hunger and the thirst for contentment that keeps drying up my throat every other moment. The entire point of the above was more a dialogue between myself everyday, a dialogue between contentment and ambition. Knowledge that by nature has no quality, by its force of power, proves itself as the most deadly temptation human beings ever knew.

It pushes every person beyond their limits, in a supposive bid to increase their happiness. Happiness people believe comes from awareness, from the uncovering of the secrets locked into everything they can and cannot see. Alas, they realise not that contentment too is knowledge, but then nobody goes down that lane, probably a dead-end. It would not seem out of place to expect that people who set out on a journey to keep away from a dead-end, even though that is possibly the only terminal they will ever come across in their lifetime. It presents itself at every turning, and yet the more they see it, the more they choose to ignore it.

Soon will reach a point when everyone would have forgotten what the word satisfaction means. The next generation already believes satisfaction means the beginning of a new pursuit, not the end of the previous one. Anti-progress, anti-development you may think i am. But like i said, what hurts me is not actually the knowledge, but way people choose to selectively imbibe harmful bits of it. Progress is not bad as long as it includes everyone on this journey. But to hoard it up, even when on a full stomach, only to ensure security for tomorrow’s hunger, while many die in today’s journey is what hurts me. It is that contentment that i am talking about.

That is the true sign of a knowledgeable one. One who can share having had his fill. One who can lead others over the roads already travelled by him, instead of walking ahead on a lonely quest of self-fulfillment. Sadly i find this vanishing at an alarming rate among the travellers of knowledge-land today. Everywhere in the world, there is somebody suing somebody else about a patent, about a copyright. Whatever happened to that anachronism called “greater good”. Has it been relegated to the dusty pages of a book that the librarian forgot all about? Or must it be brought back from there only to be sullied by scheming politicians looking out for the greater ’self-good’.

Though i find this abrupt, i cannot help but end here, for now, as a series of disturbances are pulling me apart from the computer and hope to put in some more, both as a poem and as its appendix, probably on another day, when my mind can no longer bear to merely think over to myself what i feel, like it was today.

Cinderella Man

You are struck by one, and then another, blow,
Perhaps a result of lettings things to go slow,
In retort, in return, a harder punch you try to throw,
Feeling it sailing across, you begin to get back the flow.

Those that back off, are the ones that get knocked out,
Those that fight back, are ones who will finally walk out,
They wipe off the blood, and get back on their feet,
They carry their scars, and their next opponent meet.

If everybody backed down, right after the first punch,
This world would be populated with a losing bunch,
If everybody gave in, to their every weakness,
Nobody would even know, the spelling of success.

Every victory is, but, a seed,
For a new quest to eventually sprout,
Every obstacle, a parasitic weed,
Growing up on a nutrition of doubt.

You decide it must be plucked out, weeded,
But failure is not the one to stay uprooted,
It twines its roots deeper into the mind,
Its branches spread out, to forever remind.

But to those for whom failure is merely another event,
One that repeats for those who only choose to lament,
With everything vanquished, there is still another weakness,
One that refuses to get over its special human fondness.

Despite the successes, the one battle all must lose, is death,
Only the victorious have the luxury, to neither lose or conquer,
But nobody is really a victor, until their last breath,
There are always battles to fight, weaknesses to conquer.

This one is dedicated to James J. Braddock and Sukanya(both fighters in their own ways). Initially Vijay anna was waxing eloquent about this movie, so i decided to see what it was all about. And needless to say it was worth every pirated minute i spent on it.

In every corner of this globe, in every walk of like, we see people who refuse to die out, who refuse to spend an eternity wallowing in mediocrity and decide to stand up and make sure their point is heard(mera number kab aayega?). Such people are more often motivated by the results of failure(whose very thought in their minds are unimaginable) and the future that it portends.

It was to this end that Mohammad Ali one said (am paraphrasing) “In a fight between equals, only the person who knows what it is to lose(the fall back into mediocrity and most certainly deprivation) can come up with the winning punch”. Although this is a breed that can never die out, wish it would spread at a faster rate, but that again can only be done by fate.

Perfect Harmony

A different language, where letters are unnecessary,
One where words are dispensable, a mere accessory,
Where every single word is complete in itself,
And no sentence is required to express oneself.

Where the silence speaks louder than any word,
And the sound begins to seem like an afterword,
Where the feelings speak louder than any thought,
And the instinct leaves no thought unthought.

If sentences were all that made up a conversation,
To believe this, your mind would need no persuasion,
If only every thought had a word as destination,
It would bring every single desire into observation.

Like the fragrance in the air, after the first rain,
When the clouds come back singing their refrain,
When all the pedestrians curtail their walk,
For the earth and the sky to begin their talk.

Although largely subdued due to the thunder,
They show no signs of quietly going asunder,
All those who rush for shelter, get closer in a huddle,
And listen to its humming song in every single puddle.

Pitter patter they beat and pound in a rhythmic code,
Like the everglad tidings that the monsoons forbode ,
Splashing its joy on the rare passerby who does stop,
Showering its own happiness on all, drop by drop.

Why is it that only the earth always gets wet and dirty,
In this conversation where both are equally thirsty,
Alas! There must be an end to this ceremony,
One that so closely resembles a perfect harmony.

This one is about my favourite topic, rain. It is about the conversation between the sky and the earth, and the unique kind of language they use. Although this language is not limited only to these two, but is infact an inherent aspect of nature as a whole, i chose to explore it as a conversation between these two only, because of my mania for rain.

Dilemma

Every dream needs a sacrifice to begin,
And every sacrifice needs an objective to win,
But is not every dream a sacrifice in itself,
Does it not relinquish its life to fulfill itself.

And every sacrifice is but a dream,
A dream that fulfills another dream,
But not every dream realises the sacrifice,
That the previous dream had to sacrifice.

When such a dream gets shattered,
And even its fragments get splattered,
What happens to the sacrifice done long ago,
Must it follow its dream and likewise go.

When the sacrifice itself becomes a dream,
And the dream therefore must be sacrificed,
Is it right to consider the sacrifice sacrificed,
Or does the sacrifice live on, if only as a dream.

Is any dream worth the sacrifice,
Or will mere dreaming itself suffice,
Is there any sacrifice worth a dream,
Is a person alive enough for such a dream.

We choose to sacrifice because we dreamt,
Did we ever sacrifice because others dreamt,
Sacrifice was a mere tool to get the ultimate prize,
Therefore we never dreamt to be able to sacrifice.

This is probably the most non-sensical piece of language that you have probably read till now(won’t say ever, because i am confident of writing loads more of such gibberish). Frankly initially it was supposed to be a fun poem which was to be built on an interplay of the two words. I had this concept from quite sometime, that every one of us have lots of dreams. Some that we barely remember, others that are more clearer, and others that we will never forget.

Dreams in this context are supposed to also include desires that are long unfulfilled. A lot of times, to fulfill these dreams we need to make sacrifices, and many of us think either then or retrospectively, whether the sacrifices we made were worth the dream that we set out to fulfill. Quite often we find that this is not the case, and that a lot of times it was pure satiation of the dream that drove us to the sacrifice rather than the actual worth of the sacrifice.

So as the poem progressed, it began to confound me even more, by the kinds of meanings each sentence was assuming of itself. By the time it was finished, i could no longer relate to the above lines as the poem that i had set out to write, it seemed more and more to me like a complex philosophical question about the very nature of the two terms, and the extent of their symbiosis. So much for a gamble on a fun poem.

Strangers

They couldn’t resolve it during the day, their plight,
And so it was that they parted ways one night,
Try as they did, they couldn’t let each other out of sight,
But forced they were, to get as far away before daylight.

How long this way they would stay, no one knew,
But surely to both of them, this was something new,
For, without love, one seemed a stranger,
And without life, the other seemed even stranger.

To a thousand and more hearts, travelled lonely life,
In every single one, there was only turmoil and strife,
To a thousand more beings, travelled lonelier love,
But every single one, seemed already dead somehow.

In vain did the relentless love strive,
For, not a single one it managed to find alive,
It seemed every single person that life had known,
Seemed determined to live their life all alone.

There were no more smiles, no more tears,
Only moving corpses, living out their fears,
There was no more guilt, and no more repentance,
For, nobody was even sure of their own existence.

Nobody cared for the day any longer,
And the echoes of night began getting stronger,
For, without life, of what use was the sunlight,
And without love, what else was there, but night.

But neither was the sun out of sight,
Nor was everybody deprived of its light,
For, can there be any love, devoid of life?
And devoid of love, can anything have life?

This one is another Gazebo kind, with a superlative focus on a single aspect. What if, one day, love and life decided to part ways? Was it possible, in the first place? And if so, what would come of such a happening. Were they separable? Is there any living being that is totally devoid of any kind of love? Is there any being in love that is not alive?

People already know the answer to these questions, and therefore the focus was to examine in a very superficial manner what would happen when these two inseparable things were indeed separated. In fact they seem so inseparable that they start to seem to be a single thing.

Abracadabra

Encore! She cheers after another amazing trick is done,
And the magician is ever eager, to please the little one,
He turns his hat topsy, tossing and shaking it a while,
And slowly pulls out a wonder that makes the girl smile.

The hall begins to empty, “one last time” she pesters him,
And for the first time, in his eyes, tears begin to brim,
Down the years, many a child had come and gone,
But never such a one, like his heart had now won.

Such satisfaction in his craft, he had never before found,
Than by just watching this little one sitting spellbound,
Alas! The day came to an end, and she too got up, determined,
That one day, the secret of this enchanting magic, she would find.

She went around and asked everyone she could name,
But the answer they all gave, was invariably the same,
“Grow up little child, and you will know all there is, to know”,
Persistent though she was, she couldn’t bear an immediate ‘no’.

She counted not the days, for, like minutes they sped by,
She courted instead the knowledge, whenever it came by,
Helpless, the magician watched, as she slowly wrecked her dream,
Asking himself,why people were never satisfied living the dream.

The dream that she had so long come to lifelong cherish,
Was through her own will, own mind, beginning to perish,
For, the charm of magic, lies in the beauty of the unknown,
A fantasy, that disappears once its truth becomes known.

Because truth leaves on her such an indelible stain,
The very sight of it, can inflict on her a remorsive pain,
There will always be other kids, to charm and to entertain,
But, this one, will never be able to feel the magic again.

This one is another autobiographical one, with a little ‘gazebo’ kind of angle to it like most of the ones on ‘Mirror‘ have. It is the versified version of a story i cooked up to explain my concept of love during one of the long conversations with Nisha Ahuja. I was trying to explain to her the reason for the stand i have taken, as also the reason why the girl i love must never know it(not the stand, the point about the love).

To begin with, neither am i a magician, nor is she a little child. But the whole poem is a metaphor of the ‘need to know/right to know vs. the consequences of the knowledge’. The crux of the arguement was that if i loved a girl, she had the right to know, because it was upon her that the love was being showered upon, so obviously she deserved to know where the rain was falling from(maybe because she liked, maybe because she did not want to like it), right? Unfortunately, a little lunatic that i happen to be, i do not subscribe to that arguement, and so came up with the story of a magician, who’s charming a child with a trick.

The focal point between them both being the ‘magic’. The child, although wonderstruck by all the mumbo-jumbo of the trick wishes to know the secret of the trick, where the ‘power’ for the magic comes from, and maybe whether she too can perform it one day. And so she sets about obsessed with one day uncovering that little secret the magician carries, the power of charm that he wields over her. The magician of course wishes such a day never comes to pass, when this kid no longer is in awe of his magic. And so wishes day and night, that the child never grows up.

It was put to me, that such a thought on the behalf of the magician, was nothing but selfishness., pure and unadulterated SELFISHNESS. To show the kid the trick again and again, and tempt her with its stupefying disbelief and yet never want her get to the secret of the same. To create a desire in someone and nurture it personally, and wish for that desire to never be fulfilled, only because the magician can again and again further that undesirable desire, was what else if not selfishness.

I had only a few simple lines of arguement. A few lines that will initially sound so insanely impossible and so impractical that it will be immediately rejected, out of hand. But just allow it to simmer for a while in your mind, and also add to the simmering a fact that you are dealing with a wierd kind of relation, and maybe someday you too will be convinced of it. My point of view was that the magician was being selfish, all right. But he wasn’t being selfish for his sake, he was being selfish on behalf of the girl, a manifestation of the girl’s own selfishness without her will or thought for her own benefit!(i know it can seem kind of supreme idiocracy to call a person ’selfish’ on behalf of someone else, but just hang on, and read the rest of it).

Lets assume the girl has now grown big, and has learnt that magic is nothing but a load of trash, and it involves mere ’sleight of hand’ and is an insult to the rational intelligence of a mature human being. Being a twenty or thirty year old, have you ever gone to a magic-show and never felt that it was al one big fraud and only because you couldn’t stand up and shout what the fraud was, you were sitting down, and thinking to yourself what the angle to this trick was. Atleast i have never seen a single adult drool unashamedly with mouth agape at every simple little the magicina performs like the little children do.

So if this girl now no longer feels the magic(she may still ’see’ it as magic, cause she cannot perform the trick herself, but she will no longer ‘believe’ it to be magic), who stands to lose? Let us put that question to both the parties involved, the magician and the girl. The magician first. There always were, there always are and there always will be little children for the magician, to show off his tricks, and take them to a world they never will again be a part of. There is no dearth of children, and there is no dearth of magic. The girl now. She will never again be able to see a magic show/trick without suspending her disbelief, and even if she did, she would never be able to do it, without regaining her disbelief. Such a suspension even when rare would only for the most astonishing of tricks, and never for simple ones(such a pity, that now in her life, magic is no longer just magic, it is now categorised into amazing tricks, bearable tricks[the 'been there, seen that' kind] and boring tricks).

To conclude in a line, for the magician there will always be others, for the girl there will be no more magic. It was that selfishness i was talking about. Borrowing somebody else’s selfishness and using it on them because they never know at the time that such lack of selfishness on their part(wishing to never grow so they can live in magic all their lives) would ultimately take away all the ‘magic’ that their life now has. Because, in order to understand magic, you have to first lose it. And it is such a loss you can never get it back in your life again. Innocence only stays until willed away, knowledge haunts till death.

So, anyway whatever you choose to make of it, woudl only like to say that, the whole story above was only one part of the actual reason for this poem. Only one half ofthe poem deals with that aspect, the other part of it, through various randomly arranged lines, deals with my schizophrenic nature of living in a “Neverland” and having these “Peter Pan”ish ideas of a life that is never short of surprises and magical ones at that, where angels are no longer fictional sketches of a hallucinating mind but are characters i wish i could talk to and maybe even fly with, and when i can simply chase butterfiles down lush green fields that span upto eternity and so on and on and on.

Guess its time i stopped here. Its becoming more and more like prose blog, specially with WordPress giving such a small textbox that i can’t see how long i have rambled on. So that’s it for now. Wish i could tell the whole story about that side of me, but maybe more pieces of it with another poem(another Mirror one to be precise).

 

Goodbye

When the words come to an end, there is no sentence left,
When the memories come to an end, there is no thought left,
When the feelings come to an end, there is no emotion left,
When this love comes to an end, there is no life left.

From your life, from your heart, when you threw me away,
I had only one choice, to let you have your way,
With all your force, when you slam the door on my face,
You believe and you know you are long past the grieving phase.

You think you have finally bid goodbye to your tears,
And that I will just be an image down the years,
You think you have bid goodbye to all your fears,
And that no deeper than this can sorrow pierce.

You think that you have bid goodbye to my smile,
But in the process have yourself forgotten how to smile,
You think that you have bid goodbye to my joy,
But in the process have forgotten how to enjoy.

You think that the goodbye warrants this distance,
And that your mind will maintain that resistance,
The more times you think that we belong to history,
The more it seems like the beginning of a new story.

Because this isn’t a decision that only one can take,
And love isn’t an object that we can make or break,
What you have bid goodbye is the fury, the anger within,
But that realisation will only come, when the ire wears thin.

But don’t worry, I haven’t yet said that goodbye,
I will always wait for that frustration to pass by,
Only when we both decide to call our lives a lie,
That’s the only time, we both will ever bid goodbye.

This one is another of my autobiographical ones. However, with a twist. It so happens that this one is one of the few ‘unautobiographically’ autobiographical ones. For those to whom it seems a little above the head, i would just like to explain that, in my concept, we will never be on ‘conversant’ terms in the first place. So the very thought that we may split is absurd in itself.

However, that is exactly what this poem is about, taking an absurd point to its logical conclusion. I understand that such a conclusion in the most diplomatic terms could be termed as ‘absurd conclusion’. But then this isn’t about being politically correct or about being astute. This is about being frank and true to my heart, in case an impossibility becomes a possibility.

Mortal Angel

If such things were true, an angel’s life should be a fairytale,
But you don’t find them more different than this one’s tale,
Like those winged-one, you don’t see her fly away,
And you begin to really believe she is here to stay.

Ignorant were those who said angels have no feelings,
Probably they believed angels weren’t living things,
Maybe they hadn’t talked to one, or listened to one,
And so felt that one angel is like any other one.

They never could see the smile leaving her face,
Never could see her in the moments she couldn’t face,
When the odds weren’t even, and she began to shiver,
That’s when she seemed more human than ever.

The tears leave a stain as they roll down her cheek,
It is not her chin but some humanity that they seek,
She wipes it away because you would not believe her,
But wishes it to flow because you cannot understand her.

Those words that you said, they didn’t cause that anger,
Because you never believed that she knew about anger,
You never expected that one day you would see her tears,
That those tears would finally harden to make her fierce.

Soon you see those tears begin to dry,
And notice her anger begin to die,
You see the pout leaving her folded lip,
You realise how mortal she is to the last fingertip.

Her smile forgives you without a single word,
Her laughter begins to again fill this world,
You begin to ponder when she bids you farewell,
Whether it was already one day with a mortal angel.

This one is another one on “Little Miss Sunshine“. After she commented, i thought i should write something more, since the previous one conveyed so little of her “multi-faceted” personality. Besides, it was too much truthful to be a poem, so i decided to add some spice this time and make it more fictional(unfortunately it still ended up being as nearly truthful as it can get).

I still believe that she resembled Drew Barrymore when young. The photo above is another proof of the same, although she refuses to do any more than simply deny it rather than back it up with adequate proof. I won’t argue on that count because she never lets me lose an argument, don’t know why.

Mesmer

She is gone before your eyes can even blink,
And yet she is the only thought you can think,
You stumble upon everything, already in a trance,
And become yet another slave of her glance.

Every time you look around, you see her beckon,
It’s only this one time, one last time you reckon,
Alas, you realise not, the power of allure,
And the enticing number of times it can lure.

You search for her, the source of this spell,
In which direction to go, nobody can tell,
They too are in the same well, in which you fell,
Trying since ages, to somehow break this spell.

You wonder, what eyes they must be, ones that can enchant,
While the rest of them are repeating her name like a chant,
If only for a single day you were given the reins of fate,
What would you not do to get out of this state.

To step aside and learn what keeps us all prisoner,
Like a never-ending melody that addicts the listener,
To find out why we follow her like obedient sheep,
To discover the keys to those secrets her eyes keep.

Alas you are no closer than the farthest among us,
Maybe because our destinies have deemed it thus,
Hanging forever because none of us know what is the hook,
Searching forever because none of us know where to look.

Tied forever because none of us understand the knots that bind,
Or maybe because it is all an illusion, the creation of our mind,
Thoughtless in our minds, we can neither surmise,
Nor forget her, the one who could mesmerise.

Back after a long long long break of a few weeks. This time not only is it on my current muse “Aparna“, it also happens to be one of the very few and rare ones by me that are confoundingly abstract. Personally, i found the meaning in them only after completing it, it seemed to have taken some srt of recognisable shape only after it was finished completely. So for those of you who don’t understand a single line in it, don’t worry you can simply ask the line you didn’t understand and i will be glad to be of assistance(i too was in such a condition for a greater part of the poem, left me thinking this poem had absolutely no concept, no continuity of thought, no clarity or direction, until the moment i got done with it) Those who manage to figure out what it means in the first reading itself, my deepest salutations, for being able to do what even i couldn’t.

In brief, this is about a set of people who were proud of their control over their mind, and find that they are incredibly trapped/mesmerised by a force they always believed was in their control. They fail to realise it is their very control that holds them prisoner, while all the time they blame a spell, on a person who never cast any.

Enterprise

To build up the house, card by painstaking card,
To prop it up often with every card you can discard,
And watch your budding smile come to a freeze,
When the house is toppled by the slightest breeze.

The cards lie fallen, scattered in a heap,
Waiting for their shepherd, like lost sheep,
Alas, the shepherd thirsts after an imaginary stream,
And will only get back to them at the end of this dream.

The road seems crooked, and gets even more winding,
And the end seems even farther, every new morning,
With many bylanes to tempt those that wander,
And a scorching sand to make any stream meander.

While others laughed away and chased butterflies,
You followed the path, the direction the eagle flies,
While others stopped to enjoy their dreams of another day,
You kept walking, kicking little stones out of your way.

Pity and hope, your two eyes, watched them play,
Perhaps that joy would be yours some day,
If only you persevered and worked harder each day,
Ahead lay all the games that you and life could play.

You think of those who wish to see you succeed,
And those for whose sake you need to succeed,
And wish they stand beside you when that day does arrive,
To share with you, the feeling of truly being alive.

You never understood why the day begins with a yawn,
Because for you, it signified the hopes lurking in the dawn,
When the days get weary, and the world gets tired,
You are just getting ready to perform, all fired.

You close your eyes and begin your life’s greatest performance,
And strain your ears for the applause from the audience,
Hearing none, you open your eyes to an empty hall,
Happy maybe, that no one was around to see the tear fall.

You sacrificed an entire lifetime for this one moment,
And nobody was present to appreciate how every second was spent,
In that moment, you see the sacrifice, the lifetime all gone,
But wipe away the tear, because you know the show must go on.

You brave the wind, brave the frost, every single day,
Freezing to death, you continue the climb, day after day,
After what seems eternity, you reach the much coveted peak,
And are so dumbstruck, the joy makes you forget how to speak.

Wishing you could stay forever, you begin to descend,
Wishing, all this happiness, there was a better way to spend,
But the descent is not a result of your boredom with conquest,
They are the first steps towards your search for a new quest.

Caught by surprise, your face begins to betray the strain,
Of years of your effort suddenly going down the drain,
You sink into an abyss, and begin to revel in your own pain,
And you realise, it will be many years before you smile again.

Yet you fake some, suppress some and get on with life,
For, stagnation is one facet, you never believed about life,
There will be many other days, when success knocks again,
But it can’t bring back those, that death took away in disdain.

Bitterness sets in, they seem to have deserted you for eternity,
Unable to see your suffering till you overcome its futility,
You wish they could wait to see you outstretch your hand,
And grow from being another of those grains of sand.

Thus you entered the world, your back against the wall,
And prepared yourself to bear someone else’s fall,
Being a fighter, you can always get up and walk,
Unlike those crippled by rumour and gossip, mere talk.

A world where they sized up your life, by how much it was worth,
Where, for a good enough bargain, they would sell the earth,
You get in knee-deep, and wade through its filth,
Wary of drowning, and becoming one with the filth.

The feet are tired, but the mind relentlessly pushes them forward,
When the mind gets tired, your objective propels it onward,
Many milestones pass by, but the appreciation takes longer,
For, these are people, who feed you for last year’s hunger.

Every now and then, you bask in the limelight,
Before someone else’s success steals the spotlight,
Soon you will fade out of people’s lives, out of their sight,
But you refuse to die down, to give up without a fight.

But the allure of fame, of achievement, no longer seems to work,
And the potion of disenchantment slowly begins its work,
The warm fires of discontent begin to burn in your heart,
And that is when everything you worked for, starts falling apart.

When the laughter, the joy, belongs to somebody else’s world,
You begin to feel and become, an alien in your own world,
When the sunshine, the rainfall, falls on everybody else’s land,
You desperately begin to feel like disowning your own land.

When survival becomes the sole yardstick of the living,
And you find yourself no longer capable of giving,
You wonder to yourself if it is really worth living,
And whether another life would be more forgiving.

But what about your companions, those now walking with you,
Those who understood you, those who believed in you,
Will you walk away from their memories, away from their lives?
And live you life alone, leaving them searching for alternate lives?

Having walked this path, touching their hearts, with your life’s song,
You should atleast expect, that forever, they will walk along,
They will walk with you, till you get rid of this guilt,
Walk with you, till you get back, to the house you once built.

The house has fallen, but the cards still exist,
Intact as a test, for those who persist,
Or maybe as a chance, to build it again, better,
Instead of crying over what has gone bitter.

You roll up your sleeves to once again demonstrate,
The never-ending battle of humans against fate,
You slog through the night, to open its doors to sunrise,
And show the world, the fabled human spirit, of enterprise.

This one is dedicated to Sukanya, who in my terms is a ’survivor’ for those that can understand the term in the sense that i mean it in. When you go through the entire range of experiences that life has to offer, you tend to remember the scars than the victories, because the scars are visible whereas victory is not. It is this paradox that bogs down a number of achievers into mediocrity. It is this paradox that clips your wings when you need to fly that one last time.

Some people look further into the scars and find the victories that caused them, and the failures that enriched them. These are the ones that achieve more out of life than the mediocre ones can in a hundred lifetimes. But that makes them neither immortal nor immune to the vagaries of time and the tricks of the mind.

Sometimes they need to be reminded of the past to get on with a future that is more promising than all the past combined was. Once clear about that fact, they pick up the pieces and get to work. The house of cards was symbolic of the experiences we all have in life. They all differ in nature like the faces and figures on the cards. Not everyday does one get a joker, and not everyone gets an ace everyday. It is this understanding that despite not getting the winning card, life is a card game where luck is not the only aide, and that hard work can take you to farther places than luck can, that fuels the enterprising.

The enterprising fall more number of times and fail more number of times than the prudent and risk-averse person, but in the end, the enterprising with a fuller and richer experience of life than the conservative. This poem is about one such enterprising person asking her to use the fallen house of cards as a chance to build it again in a more beautiful manner with a lot more wonderful experiences that the previous ones, and understand, that there are people everywhere who are willing to help her rebuild, even if only by standing by and saying an encouraging word, because everybody must build their own house of life.

(got lots more to say, will get back to this when i find more time).

Daisybud

Swaying in consonance with an ebullient breeze,
She shakes off its advances, with a careworn ease,
Ruffling her petals, as she hung onto a slender stalk,
Proclaiming gustily that it isn’t only humans who stalk.

She stands up, and walks away free of the bond,
But she is no fugitive, to hide and abscond,
Walking away she is, from the grasps of human sight,
Away from those minds bereft of any genuine delight.

Walking away from those who interpret her like a question,
From those who wipe her out of every broken relation,
From those who treat her like an insane obsession,
And those who hoard her like a miserly possession.

Running away from those who suppress their affection,
From those who use her to disguise cunning defection,
From those who cannot see her, blinded by rejection,
And those who don’t want her, drowning in dejection.

They follow her, chase her, to the limits of perception,
They all need her, want her, to cover up their deception,
Without her, their greed, their envy and jealousy cannot live,
And for that reason, her life, they will not let her live.

So they strangle her life, and pluck her for the day,
Use her and discard her, to be trampled along the way,
She cannot remember a single one, who allowed her to stay,
For, she was always available, if only new, everyday.

Away she ran, before her fragrance they could steal,
And in the world, there were no more smiles to heal,
Hope is all that is left in this world of gloom,
A hope that she was not the last one to bloom.

Frightening. Thats the mildest way of putting what happened to me. I was struggling to write something on Aparna, just because I felt like it. Alas it was not be, as I struggled for 3 days sitting with an opened cap before an empty page with a title “Daisybud”. It seemed nothing would ever come out of it, and after all I might have finally written the most uncreative title in my life after all. Then it happened, today morning, I woke up early and tried to get back to sleep, and as a result found myself in a 3 hour dream involving who else but Aparna. After I woke up from three uninterrupted hours of looking at Aparna there was no looking back.

Aparna to me signifies a smile, a smile of laughter, of delight, of pure innocent joy, the kind that is long since missing from this world. So the dream was a kind of ‘wake-up’ call for me, to open my eyes and tell a story that was crying to be told.

Everyone nowadays sports a smile especially since ‘people-relationship’ got a flip through the endless number of personality grooming sessions that everyone seems to undergo. But how long was it since a person truly smiled out of the happiness of the heart rather than a hollow mechanical movement of the lips. When people smile to mask their seething discontent, their anger, their envy, their greed, their discomfiture. When they groan silently beneath those smiles, and curse and fault everything around and within them.When the smile becomes but an article, an accessory to the drama of fooling everyone around, it is then that a smile is powerless to do nothing but watch its state of deprivation into the depths that even a frown never knew.

I could have easily titled this one as ” Rape of a Smile” and got away with it, because nothing would have been more apt, but instead chose to call it after a flower because it signified the hope that I have on humanity that the situation will soon improve and that people would hopefully smile because of their unbridled inner joy, rather than social conditioning of what reaction to give to what situation. That is also the reason why the daisy featured at the beginning is just beginning to bloom, a symbol that everyone in the world still have their Aparna for another day.

Bridge Across Forever

We looked for the ending right at the beginning,
But couldn’t see beyond the place we were starting,
We searched for its beams, tried to hold its railing,
But couldn’t feel anymore than where we were standing.

Every time that we felt, were stepping onto empty space,
It sprung up beneath, matching our steps, pace to pace ,
Whether climbing with a smile, or slipping with a frown,
It was the one single thing that never let us down.

Our thoughts built it up, with every single thought,
Our words spread it across the breadth of every thought,
Only stepping forward whenever possible, side by side together,
As our love for each other held its planks together.

Times it would seem to creak, with every new fight,
But over time, the clamps and bolts only grew more tight,
As it arched upwards, trying to send us into flight,
Fly though we could not, atleast it gave us the delight.

It would heave sidewards with our growing discontent,
Seeming to fall apart, everytime we were hesitant,
But somehow it held on, maybe awaiting the time that would come,
When these petty differences we would surely overcome.

We look downwards at those who couldn’t come join us,
And across at those in this journey like us,
And wonder if they all have the same anticipation,
To reach the end, of this journey with no destination.

For, we, together, are the bridge across forever,
And we build upon ourselves to walk forever,
And time, a jealous spectator that keeps trying to disrupt,
But the love that it cannot grasp, it cannot interrupt.

As the title reads, this one is inspired from, and dedicated to, the beautiful moments that Richard Bach gave me through his novel/autobiography “Bridge Across Forever”. In many ways though I disagree with his definition of love and the treatment of that definition, what is unforgettable is the impact the book leaves on a person(left me euphoric for atleast a week). So this one is dedicated to him, though remodelled on my concept of love.

The next few ones coming up will have original titles by me, so people would have to bear with the titles unless I gather up the energy to visit a music store, and catch up on ‘good old Yanni’. I never cease to get surprised at the beautiful titles for his pieces that whoever it is who names his songs comes up with. They just keep the words flowing simply by chanting the title over and over again like an incantation. So the next one coming up is one on my evergreen muse “Aparna”(have just got confirmation that she still is Aparna [Reddy], though have long decided to dispense with that part of her name).

 

A Walk To Remember

Remember the walk, that we walked to remember,
When we decided to walk away during life’s December,
The pounding rain had slowed down to a drizzle,
As if to keep quiet during our ensuing tussle.

It never came, for, didn’t we amicably split,
Maintaining our dignity, our civility we called it,
And thus buried in our minds the remains of bitterness,
After we had burnt to shreds, every last bit of happiness.

Happiness, that elusive word that brought us together,
But to find it, many a storm we had to weather,
Not finding it together, we decided to search for it alone,
And so we went our own ways, leaving happiness alone.

Having gone down many roads, seeing the world,
And having learnt that compromise never grows old,
We came back to the beginnings, this park, the walk,
Only, this time, there were a thousand things to talk.

We ambled along, as if we had all the time,
As we explained to each other, the passage of time,
How much we were sorry wasn’t even betrayed by a tear,
That much we both understood, just by being here.

Bygones were already bygones before the walk began,
Now every footstep was a new journey, a new lifespan,
There was no more looking around, and no looking back,
Maybe afraid to find the past, if we ever turned back.

In the simplest of ways, it all began with a walk,
It all ended in one, and all it took to begin again, was walk,
We promised ourselves that we would remember this walk,
Never mind, Not only this, we have many more miles to walk.

Happened to come across this title when i was taking part in a “Never-Ending Movie Quiz”, and though i haven’t seen the movie, have simply fallen in love with the title. My obsession for fancy(catchy?) titles being what it i, i couldn’t sleep unless i had written a poem on it.

This is a slightly “gazebo” kind of situation that i see myself in, and wish maybe that someday things would simply get sorted out by walking and talking. Although wishes never did fall form trees, wish this one does happen, given the slow death that walking is slowly experiencing, must be painful, to know you are dying and watch your last moments on its last legs.

Midnight Sun

Gathering the last bit of energy, I reached the bus-stop,
Whatever else did, the fatigue never did stop,
Broken in the body, slowly breaking in the mind,
I wonder why I put up with this daily grind.

The cars, the trucks, they whiz past, oblivious of me,
Being troubled not, to see me sulking at me,
Trying to work up a straight face at those around,
A really difficult thing, silly though it may sound.

There she was, walking, no, ambling across the street,
Almost blending in, but never really fully discreet,
Wouldn’t have noticed her, had it not been for the feet,
They weren’t kicking the earth, rather gliding over the street.

A smile on her lips, and a song on her mind,
A twinkle in her eye, the joy I never could find,
And her contagious laughter as she passed by,
Enforcing itself on the faces of every passerby.

I never knew a day to end, in such a happy manner,
That a day could even end in chuckles and lively banter,
I reached home and scrambled onto my bed,
But the laughter refused to go, leave my head.

I still stop at the bus-stop everyday, searching for her,
Trying to spot her, to try and befriend her and ask her,
The source of her happiness, the secret of her smile,
Like most things in life, I guess, its going to be a long while.

Wish I could wake up again, to a day that ends with a smile ,
Even if only once more, it would make my life worthwhile,
Walking down the street, without bothering to count the paces,
Because every single one brings back the smile on a lot of faces.

I usually pride myself on being very happy, jovial, and always being ready with a smile. However on one particular day, I happened to run out of my last smile, late in the night as I was waiting in the bus-stop waiting impatiently to get home and make the cursed day end.

As if in answer to my grumble of a prayer, a girl crossed the street, and past me and then across to the other side of the road again, as if parading before me. She was sporting the widest smile I had seen for many many days, almost like the ones Aparna used to sport. Talking on the phone to somebody, who could hear her laughter above the traffic din that I couldn’t.

But that wasn’t the most important part of it, what was material to me, was what the smile did to me. It caught me off-guard, my frowning grousing face a mile short of a smile. Though only a week back, am yet to find a frown search hard though I did. Seems to have melted into the air, just like her.

Chained

To stretch your arms, yet feel them cuffed,
To free up your ears, yet feel them stuffed,
To see something, and yet feel so blind,
To walk ahead, and be left far behind.

It was such a beautiful dream, a fantasy,
It seemed too true to dismiss as mere fancy,
There was so much to your life, so much that you had to hope,
It so engulfed you to wonder, if one lifetime was enough to cope.

Chasing little butterflies across the field,
You wandered onto new roads far afield,
There was so much to walk, and nothing to see,
Which made you doubt, what it meant to be free.

As time passed, the dream broke up into fragments,
And life mixed them up, and jumbled the contents,
And you know not, if it is destiny or dream,
Or really far away reality can seem.

Legs weighed down by anchors of responsibility,
Hands stand cuffed by illusions of social inability,
And the mouth seeks not the adventure,
Of areas the mind no longer wants to venture.

The eyes though free, are pained to tears,
Having witnessed the dream shattering over the years,
Sad indeed is the story of these fetters that bind,
And poor dreams, worser still that you can’t mind.

You chose to put these onto yourself of own accord,
Maybe circumstances forced you to tighten the cord,
But better wake up before the knots get too tight,
And the already frustrated dream gets out of sight.

This one is dedicated to Nagalakshmi, partly because I couldn’t find a person who was more apt for it, and mainly because it reflected the metamorphosis from a person I knew to an extent to a person I may no longer know, or maybe believe I can no longer recognise.

Though this one is dedicated, it doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with me. In fact I see this dedication more as a precursor to the kind of person I am slowly becoming, and can trace through it the metamorphosis I myself am undergoing. We all grow up with some dreams, some aspirations, mostly just fancies, but some deep desires that we wish we could fulfill in this lifetime. Then along the way, somehow we shift track and find ourselves on a totally new journey, watching the old track part in a different direction in front of our own eyes.

This poem was a abstract representation of the dreams that I thought she had, and the reality that now envelops, the same way it is the representation of the way I am slowly becoming, and of the fate that is becoming apparent of my dreams.

Us

Hand in hand we walked, across the breadth of land,
Across the oceans, and into the playground of God’s Hand,
Where the stars and planets, mere dots, went past in a blur,
And our thoughts seemed to happen before they could occur.

Wanderers we were, travellers in time, travelling with time,
Letting our footsteps and shadows catch up, taking their time,
We used to wonder if someday we could even play with time,
Perhaps take time back to a time before its time.

And watch with glee as our memories grow larger than our lives,
Yet each of them being only mere fragments of our lives,
There were such a number, that each one seemed new,
It was like painting our canvases, our lives, old and anew.

Our lives were the journeys, and we were the destination,
A lifetime was the distance, and eternity the inspiration,
Our tears quenched our thirst, our laughter filled our bellies,
And our memories showed the direction to our weary mind’s queries.

We walked, we ran, we flew, we stumbled, we fell,
And bruised our knees, more times than could to each other tell,
Yet we kept moving, as if enchanted by and in our own spell,
Sprinting, lest time escape our clutches and sound its knell.

Though every memory lasted only a moment, every moment was a memory,
Yes moments are momentary, for us though they were monumentary,
Those we never wanted to end, and those that themselves never ended,
Like the sky and the ocean, only to the eyes they appeared blended.

The story was us, the characters were us,
We listened to us, and spoke to us,
Matching step with step, we reached the end of us,
And completed this dream, this life, together, as us.

Back to my forte, abstract extrapolation. Made myself a promise to dedicate an hour every Sunday to write atleast one poem for the week. Spend the week scribbling a line or two once in two days, and complete the entire piece on my ‘Sunday hour’. This one was completed as the first output of such a resolve.

Had the line “take time back to a time before its time” hanging in my mind from the last 5 days, and decided to do something, since it kept bouncing around refused to leave mind(that’s the way it always is with thoughts that strike me in the rain, like a lot of others, this one also happened when I was walking last Monday, drenching alone in the rain). And besides around 10 days back had written a title ‘Us’ on my scribbling book to be a future poem containing what I knew not, just keep writing down titles that seem nice to my mind, and write up stuff to fill it. Actually its more like stuff keeps flowing on a lot of things, and so do titles, its more of a mix-and-match of the two.

This one is another on my utopian world where people who are together, are together because they are meant to be, want to be, and choose to be. They stay together because they know no reason to separate and see no reason to. They are separated only by circumstances at a physical level, which is none of their concerns, because they only ’survive’ in the physical world whereas they ‘live’ in their own meta-physical world where they aren’t relative to things, all things including time are relative to them. A world where their thoughts turn into realities simply because no other reality exists except their own thoughts, and since they don’t have differing thoughts, there is only one possibility of, their thought.

Living Dead

They walk the streets of every town, every city,
A living tribute to the greatest human ability,
To get hurt, and be unable to forgive or forget,
To bide their time, counting the days, at every sunset.

A miserable existence, if you can call it one,
To forcibly live a lifetime, pining for someone,
Knowing it as a dream that will never come true,
Somehow hoping, in their case, the truth wasn’t so true.

To yearn for someone, who can no longer be theirs,
And try to dissolve their sorrow in a flood of tears,
To agonise for someone, who will no longer feel theirs,
And try to digest their failure, through the passage of years.

It is beyond their considerate heart, to step out and ask,
But they can no longer put up with their own mask,
So they try their best, to smile those memories away,
And try to concentrate on these routine chores of everyday.

A few are successful, though most are not,
That doesn’t mean, it ever leaves their thought,
It keeps nagging their mind into meek submission,
Turning their lives into one big despondent mission.

When every second they live is yet another battle,
In a war, that only lasts upto or beyond a lifetime,
And the next one is upon them, before their eyelids can battle,
They simply choose to ignore a living, in the confines of space and time.

To have a life, an existence, that is deprived of soul,
And not have the love of your life beside to console,
Dangling all their lives, by an unbreakable thread,
Wretched indeed, is the life of the living dead.

Ever fallen in love, only to see the person you love getting married to someone else. Ever thought of a life spent ruminating over the loss because the mind refuses to forget and the heart refuses to heal. If you have, then this one is for you, and the thousands of others who dot the landscape of every city and town, in fact they dot the landscape of every human habitation there is.

They drown themselves in the hope that tomorrow will be different, in what way or manner they know not. Because they don’t desire, they just love. So they cannot take solace in the hope that something would happen to bring their loved ones running back into their arms, because that would taint their love, a love that is won on the suffering of another isn’t love at all, it’s just another bloody war, minus the blood. Besides, such a thing would surely cause their beloved to shed a tear or two, making them wonder if it really was love to make their beloved cry simply because they wanted to stop crying.

So they spend their lives in that state of suspended belief, where they can neither get over their love, nor can they love another. And though they go on to marry, work and other activities that continue to make them seem human, their heart isn’t in any of it, and so they live their lives like zombies, forever in a state of trance, alert to everything yet half-minded, eager for everything yet undecided. They can’t let go of life because that would mean separation from their loved one forever. Yet they can never get together with their loved one in this lifetime. Wondering if such a life was also an existence? Don’t bother. The person writing this is also living such an existence in every alternate second, though what transpires in the other alternate second is a SECRET.

Another of the few autobiographical ones, though this one is only partly autobiographical. Most of it is gleaned from the lives of people I happen to know personally(pssst, a person on whom a major chunk of this is based is living such an existence because Miss Aparna got married, don’t tell her this though, else it would defeat the very purpose of that guy’s life, he wouldn’t want her worrying about who was worrying for not getting her, leading a happy life as she already is, posted this one on the condition of complete anonymity. For those who are addicted to reading between the lines, “that someone isn’t me”, I already have a person to dangle a lifetime for).

Quicksand

Though perfectly working, I cannot see a thing,
For, your smile blocks every other sight,
It has settled forever on my eyes,
And doesn’t even step aside for the sunlight.

It is long since I’ve hear a different thing,
Every moment, it is the tinkle of your laughter,
It deafens my ears to everything else,
Only to be replaced with its own playful banter.

A different smell, the air could never bring,
Ever since I first smelt, the magic of your fragrance,
It was so heavy, it choked my every breath,
And became in no time my very subsistence.

A different taste might surely do a thing,
To replace the taste, the sweetness of you,
So hot and yet so sweet, all at a time,
If only, every single time, you didn’t seem so new.

Every single second that you remain on mind,
To never forget you, as if to remind,
I wish I could, but how can I,
If you choose to leave every single memory behind.

I walk on you, and bump into you,
And arise unto you, and fall asleep into you,
I swim away, only to get closer to you,
Maybe it’s because I’m mad about you.

I may seem mad to think so much about you,
But frankly, it makes me mad to forget you,
I never felt so happy about the drowning or mourning,
For such moments, I would sink into you, every new morning.

Feels exhilarating to takes such a leisurely break from some serious poems and have fun in the simple things that make up a moment. Quite how often we get too intricately involved in the figments of our own grandiose imagination that we fail to properly appreciate, or worse still totally fail to recognise the beauty that lies in the simplicity with which most things are expressed. We are so lost in the interpretation of non-existent meanings of flamboyant words that we fail to see the depth of emotions that simple words can convey, this poem for me was such an awakening.

It was the wake up call, to find back those roots for which I took to poetry before going astray with the ambition of writing something ponderous to capture the imagination of an audience. It was the call to get back on a path of self-expression, the very reason I had begun with writing in the first place, before getting sidetracked on a path of bespoilt innocence that was arbitrarily sacrificed on an altar of temporal gratification of artistic pursuits that constantly keep trying to mar my original purpose.

Anyway, just can’t stop rambling. What I wanted to say was that though it was very minimalistic compared to my other poems, it was on of my most satisfying ones, because it took me back to the path that I had intended to follow.

Thanks a lot Aparna. Even through a poem you have managed to set me on track. Guess am more happier letting this continue, than alerting you to these ‘Random Verses’ and having your honesty spoil a dream.

Talking To Walls

I wake up and see one every morning,
Because there is one on every wall adorning,
They stare at me, those eyes of yours, always asking,
Why I still make my peace with you every morning.

They follow me to the door, smiling goodbye,
Staying still, while everything else rushes by,
A click of the lock, and I step into the world,
Into such a strangeness I feel myself hurled.

Where people keep talking, but somehow not to me,
And words don’t quite mean, what they are meant to be,
They laugh, and they joke, at such trivial things,
Reminding me of the joy that every small deed brings.

Silently, I bear with them and their uncalled for happiness,
Bear it until I can get through this unfinished business,
And so keep glancing at the clock, wishing it to get running,
As I bide my time, awaiting yet another homecoming.

I rush home, unlocking the door, to none in particular,
Silently wishing, that at work I was a little more popular,
So I could bring some of them home, and introduce you,
But alas, such thoughts are quite often very few.

I look at a wall, and blurt out the dejection,
And you reply, face saddened at the rejection,
I cry my heart out, and recover in a while,
And laugh upon seeing you returning my smile.

I guess I must be lunatic, talking such things to a wall,
And sitting up nights, listening for your footfall in the hall,
Things were much different, before you clambered up that wall,
Leaving me alone, to deal, with your death, and my own downfall.

This one is dedicated to the human stamina for unlimited brooding over long-spilt milk(or should I say long-spilt tears that refuse to drop down, and instead hang on for dear life, long past the their time, solely because of the unquenchable thirst a person has for sorrow, one that grows on imbibing it and fuels the thirst for more of itself).

Frankly, there is no parasite as parasitic as sorrow, because after devouring on every single little shred of happiness and delight that it can set its eyes own, sorrow never hesitates to even devour itself, if only to further its own cause and spread its addiction into every willing thought of a person suffering from an unexpected separation.

Enough said about things that are broody, having had my fill of melancholy, can’t take any more of it myself, so am switching to something more pleasant and refreshing(surprises me how this topic never fails to refresh every time I put my pen down, it is as if it is an inexhaustible reservoir of joy) called Aparna.

First Light

You close your eyes to a brand new morning,
For there is nothing new this one will bring,
In solitary confinement, receiving the wages of sin,
A constant buzzing in your ears is the only din.

Back against a wall, you know there is nothing called hope,
For, waking unto and sleeping into reality, is how you cope,
Suddenly, like a stray deer, out from the wilderness,
A ray of light, wanders, into the years of your darkness.

Far from its cousins, it bounced around and rebounded,
And before the crevice was forever sealed, alas, it had faded,
That light would never return, but you never did mind,
You were too engrossed in what it had left behind.

Close your eyes, and you were blinded by it,
Open your eyes, and you were surrounded by it,
You walked on light, walked into light,
There wasn’t another moment that you knew night.

It wasn’t just blinding, it was spellbinding,
Of those still innocent days, constantly reminding,
When they came to take you away, to a future more bright,
There were no more walls, no more roof, only light.

Funny, the things it had done to you,
Just a ray of light, one gone astray,
Cutting through rock, it had reached your soul,
It rebuilt your life, and made it belatedly whole.

They took away your body, no longer able to torment,
But didn’t notice, the light, still in your eyes,
You had already lived, a hundred lives in that moment,
And could live that one moment, for a hundred more lives.

My hundredth poem to be posted on this blog, and also the first one on my new domain.

This one is dedicated to Ryan Bliss and his wonderful art, one of which had the title of this poem, must say it was a really magnificent one, with the sunlight filtering across and down through the mighty oaks. Now that the celebrations and dedications are over, down to business. Prepare for a long ramble.

Everybody in life has those few desires that they are unable to fulfill because of the fear of a society that they feel clamps down on such issues. They harbour these desires unless the desires can no longer wait and set sail for more receptive shores. That is the last these people see of not only the desire, but also of the hope that usually accompanies that desire. Then one fine day, what IF they suddenly get a chance to indulge in their wildest, ones that have long set sail?

Exactly what happened to me. Once I GREW up I could no longer frolic around in my favourite elemental force ‘RAIN’, without risking an admonishment from someone or the other. Then one fine day, after 8 years, I got a chance. It was raining cats and dogs on a day when there was no one at home but me. I simply walked out, rather walked into the rain. And to this day I carry the memory and joy of that moment that I no longer will ever feel the need for rain. Every time I think of it, it simply rains on my mind, drenching my very soul, and every single pore, without anybody even noticing.

This poem was an attempt to present that situation about a person on ‘death row’, who is in a cell and hasn’t seen LIGHT for decades. The only thing he yearns for is to see just one ray of light, just have one look at the sun. The yearning soon turns to an unfulfilled dream, until a day when out of sheer luck one single ray manages to sneak into his cell. That one single ray so intoxicates him, that it becomes his very breath, his very life. He no longer lives, he has already become one with that light, all that remains is a body that awaits its redemption.

My most haunting one from among all my poems, it took me 4 days to just work up the courage to write this one, because the concept was so close to my heart, that everytime I tried to put my pen to write, it sent a shiver down my back. Somehow found the strength to finish it and get it done with, was more like exorcising some hidden ghost, because it is one of the handful of poems out of the 100 here, that are autobiographical.

Since this seems to have got me into a brooding mood, for the next 2 or 3 poems I will be delving into very dark(are they really dark?, won’t debate on that with myself) areas of love and life after DEATH, if there ever is one for the two.

Whew! One of the longest commentaries that I happened to write in many years. And in so many ways it still seems so highly insufficient, my mind is dictating, but fingers just refuse to go on anymore, this was supposed to be a blog for my poems, and this one commentary looks bigger than three of them combined, so that’s it for now(unless I hear from SOMEONE of course).

Fairytale

When all it took to shield the sun was a thumb,
And there was no one, who, to your whims wouldn’t succumb,
When your smile was all it took, those angry faces to mend,
To such a life, you never knew there could be an end.

Those smirking behind those smiles, you never could comprehend,
Their anxiety at your growth, they never could apprehend,
As if rendered helpless, the Gods above, did never descend,
When the dreaded time came, your innocence, to defend.

Left by itself, it has the inevitable reality to fend,
And the knowledge, about new feelings you could offend,
Alas! If growth were not such a sordid compromise,
Every single child would love to be called wise.

For wisdom is a mere awakening to reality,
One where actions are but reactions to necessity,
Where thoughts are constricted by walls of possibility,
And the mind is confined into shackles of social nobility.

Where are those days, when sunshine meant playtime,
And the slightest pangs of hunger signalled lunchtime,
When money was a problem, never on your corner,
And never gave a thought to love or a life partner.

When the only tasks of the day, were fun and frolic,
And the thing you least cared about, was logic,
When there were caring fairies and guardian angels around,
And a big good God above, who made the world go round.

It is sad, maybe, that children cannot pinch themselves awake,
For they are the only ones, who can live, awake in a dream,
And to grow up, are willing, that very childhood to stake,
Only to realise, they are awake, but no longer in a dream.

Finally back after about a month criss-crossing South India, and the first thing I happen to come across, is a post by Aparna on fairytales and how she seemed to get more practical about them after once firmly living them. It struck me about how little children always want to grow up and when they do, they find ‘the grass on the other side was always greener’, and quite a lot of them who find idle time all through adulthood, sit back and get thinking of what we wouldn’t sacrifice to spend a day, an hour or even a few minutes as those children we knew ourselves to be. The irony being, that a few years ago, we just couldn’t wait to grow up and do all those ‘important things’ that grownups did. This one is dedicated to you-know-who(for those who came in late that meant Aparna) who managed to get me into another bout of ‘manic depressive longing’ for those ‘good old days’.

Killjoy

When the sun went down on another day,
And denizens of this planet went their way,
You wished for a moment you could idly stay,
And try listening to what the stars say.

They talked of your struggles, in the midst of the fray,
Yet, suddenly, way out of context they did stray,
About to vent your anger on those dots on grey,
You spotted the distraction to which they fell prey.

There in the distance it glittered, unlike any gold,
You ventured near them to confirm, ever so bold,
And found them to be row upon row of sparkling white,
Between parted lips whose laughter filled that night.

She stared at you, turned around and nimbly ran,
And that was the moment this story really began,
You called after her, ran after her, to no avail,
For she was like a boat that had already set sail.

Dejected, you turned back after a while,
And tried to recollect what remained of her smile,
Surprisingly your mind couldn’t steer clear,
Of that face, one that knew no tear.

You closed your eyes and pictured her walking back to you,
Looking at you like you were somebody she knew,
You began to think, if there was anything you could ask of her,
Things she could dispense with, and never again bother.

Even before you could ask, she handed it to you,
Her possession, one that forever seems new,
Giving it away, she still had a million more to give,
Having already helped a thousand others to relive.

It hit you so hard, that it threw you off your feet,
And it was some time before her eyes you could meet,
Yet, you felt not even the slightest hint of the blow,
Such is the way that her happiness does flow.

She filled your life with a joy you never before knew,
And at the end of it, everything around seemed new,
It flooded your heart, to way beyond its size,
It widened your lips, and twinkled through your eyes.

Blinking in surprise, she was gone in that while,
As you look at her slowly retreating profile,
You wonder if all she gave you was a smile,
One that you carried to that journey’s last mile.

At the end of the road, there was still a lot of it to spare,
You wished you could stand and watch others without it fare,
For a heart, that neither fear nor death could destroy,
She was able to fill, thrill and kill with her joy.

Yet another one on Aparna, although this one is way out abstract and dramatic. I was attracted by the prospect of turning the term ‘killjoy’ into an oxymoron, and of course here was a willing subject, somebody who could ‘kill’ with their joy, and maybe bring back to life, with their joy. So I set about trying to spin that into a tale of a guy(a close friend) who happened to get that smile from her on a journey called life. This seems to be getting weirder by the moment, so I will just conclude by saying “she did it”, like a magnet she managed to pull me back within a month. So I have to I guess start a whole section for her from this poem onwards.

Eyes Wide Open

There are moments of then, and moments of now,
And those that we have managed to forget somehow,
Those that happen before our eyes, and those that flash,
Until the boundaries between them begin to crash.

Those moments that you search with your open eyes,
They hide themselves behind, and yet they surprise,
They walk away, afar, the more you try to reprise,
And just disappear the moment your eyelids rise.

Just close your eyes, and look around within,
Don’t you see them on every wall therein?
Watching you, mocking you, to catch up those times,
To confront time, and turn back its chimes.

Blinded to the world, right behind those eyes,
Awaits a joy that you don’t yet surmise,
To catch my hand and walk all the way,
Till the time this dream will let you stay.

Walking back in time, to see all those places,
And recollecting the changes in our faces,
From the times you never knew what was smiling,
To those days when you couldn’t stop laughing.

You walked out of this, with your eyes wide open,
When you couldn’t resist their urge to re-open,
Till you close them, you will never again find,
Those little things that escape your inquiring mind.

Mystic Tenant

One fine morning, a stranger walked into my heart,
Demanding I give it on rent, atleast in part,
And the entire place, the stranger did occupy,
Before I could even begin, my refusal to justify.

Just moved in, there began a torrent of complaints,
On indelible stains, and the fading, peeling paints,
I was riled about the insect-infested doors,
And the cracking, creaking, saggy floors.

The walls were weak, shaking with suspicion,
The roof was leaky, dripping with envy,
The floor was soft, sinking with worry,
The room, about to collapse, brimming with disruption.

I got to work trying to make it habitable,
Thankfully, my efforts and their results were appreciable,
And I saw the stranger smile, with my each deed,
In trying to get rid of the hatred and greed.

I had just finished assuaging my guilt,
And getting proud of this heart I rebuilt,
The road inwards was clean, the outgrowth optimistic,
And then the stranger left forever, ever the mystic.

Another of my abstract ones on love. For those who didn’t understand this non-sense that pretends to be verses, it just means this: This ones is about the love that enters most people’s lives when they are at their depressive best, and goes about cleaning everything about and around us, and when life just begins to seem bright and worth living again, it departs, in search of another soul to save. So this one is dedicated to that love that made a lot of us feel human again, and re-ignited the spark to live again in this world.

Little Miss Sunshine

All is calm and serene behind those eyes that beckon,
And this is the best time to break the news, you reckon,
So you gather up your last bit of courage,
Alas, you know not, of the impending rage.

Just picture her, with her hands on her hips,
Looking at you, with those slowly pouting lips,
And her chubby jigging cheeks begin to turn red,
Scaring even her own wispy hair, now hiding behind her head.

She breathes fire, through that now red, nose,
Her pale face, is just redder than a rose,
And colours begin to fill, like art, onto her eyes,
See all those shades of red, that appeared in a trice.

Despite that warning voice and its harried tone,
You are so charmed, you leave it all alone,
You realise that emotions make some people beautiful,
And that anger, especially, makes her more colourful.

But like parting clouds, the feeling leaves her flushed face,
And gradually you seem to be taken aback, by her amazing grace,
For, you have now witnessed and shared, the joy that was mine,
Of seeing the smile return upon Little Miss Sunshine.

Although this poem is dedicated to the memories of Drew Barrymore(in the picture above), it was modelled on someone, who, in my opinion(however far-fetched it may sound) looks exactly or rather must have looked exactly like Drew in the picture above(although she vehemently denies this, hope readers give me the benefit of doubt on this one). She has a very fragile fuse(for her temper) right at the tip of her nose, and somehow it always seems to crack at the slightest of prodding. So I thought of having fun on her ‘fragile fuse’.(Readers must please excuse the fact that I can neither put up her picture here or mention her name because she has explicitly banned me from doing so, although if she herself was to reply to this post, and allow me, then things would be quite different) Nevertheless, it is a very good mental exercise, to think how a girl looking like the one in the picture above would look when angry.

Leaving You

Wish I could be the smile, that leaves your lips,
And swim in the puddles of celestial joy, with which it drips,
Leaving you forever, to cheer up that someone, and everyone,
And yet be born again, as you search to bring up the next one.

Wish I could be the tear, that drops down your eyes,
I  would leave you and run away, if only to make you feel nice,
Of course, on the way, I would always kiss your cheek,
For in your sorrow, that’s the only happiness I can seek.

Wish I could be the voice, that leaves your throat,
Enchanting all around me, every time I float,
Loads of sugar, sometimes barbs of salt, on me you coat,
And yet every time they hear me, it’s about you they gloat.

Wish I could be the breath, that every second leaves you,
One that you forsake, only to accept again, fresh and new,
I shall waft about, taking to those around, your fragrance,
Till you call me back, reprimanding my vagrance.

Wish I could be anything that ever leaves you,
For, to have loved, lost and found again,
Brings such a joy, that it makes me forget the pain,
Which comes from every moment of my leaving you.

Relatively Love

Speaking of these moments of happiness that we today share,
Soon it will be time when we have none of them to spare,
I began thinking of a way to stop the clock’s chime,
And someone told me a way, to slow down, even stop time.

All I had to do, was to begin travelling at the speed of light,
And so I set about, on this task of no ordinary might,
But the shackles of possibility had me in a bind,
So I went about, the only other way, through the mind.

Picking up pace, I was nearing the speed of light,
And beginning to reach all my fantasies in flight,
The time really began to slow, but so did your speech,
Which left me thinking, was this where I wanted to reach?

At the speed of light, your words completely stopped,
The time that we treasured, sadly, it also stopped,
Anxious to end this deadlock, I surpassed the speed of light,
And found myself flying backwards through day and night.

I reached the beginning of our love, and tried to change things,
But only found the difference, that love from a different time brings,
I was shocked to find, that you no longer had our memories,
As I stared at all our lives, and their superficial emotional stories.

Every single time that I tried to win, by controlling time,
It taught me, that my efforts lacked both reason and rhyme,
It laughed at my attempts to freeze youth, freeze our image,
Upon seeing yet another one failing, it occupied its centrestage.

Having been shown it all, on my very existence it caused a doubt,
Always sending its reminders, age, to challenge me to a bout,
I realised that this thing we call love, is only relative love,
It is how much of the moment we live, that makes it last for now.

This one was my attempt to romanticise and thereby demystify Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ and present its consequences on special moments in life. Well for those who don’t have any idea of the Theory, it will sound even more complicated, but sorry, can’t help you out on that front, as any further explanation will make this sound like a ‘physics for dummies’ blog. So irrespective of whether you understand the actual theory or not, just go ahead and just have fun reading it.

The Other Side – Part 1 of 3

I was looking for it, in every person that I anywhere met,
But glances of disinterest, of lust and desire, was all I could get,
And one day, you walked into my life, into my heart,
Funny, how in the simplest of ways, these things start.

I had always met people, who wanted to talk, to impress,
People who turned up in polished shoes and a creased dress,
There was them, and there was you, one who would hear,
One who could feel my tears and also guess my fear.

You would look at me, and I would look down and blush,
Not because it was embarrassing, or my cheeks were flush,
But because, if I looked straight back into your eyes,
From pure surprise, you wouldn’t know what to do with your eyes.

But your eyes don’t just look at me, they look into me,
They pierce and try to ferret out every secret from me ,
To run away from them, your trespassers that stalk,
I let you hold my hand, as we take this evening’s walk.

There’s something about the way you say my name,
Is it my obsession, or do you call everybody the same?
Either way, what matters is, I called out, and you came,
And from now on, nothing for us, shall ever be the same.

This one is a series called “The Other Side” wherein I have tried to explore the feelings from the other side of the veil, one that is rarely written about, and even if written, hardly heard well enough, specially when there are such a huge number of ‘female bashers’ like me out here. So this was an attempt to tell the story from the girl’s point of view, like I promised somebody about a month ago, and am thus looking forward to any kind of feedback, especially from femme fatales, because I had to rely a lot on breaking a lot of common stereotypes to achieve even the least bit of movement.

The Other Side – Part 2 of 3

In this autumn of life, we fall like leaves,
Fall from each other and back into one another,
Our fortunes changing, as each new gust leaves,
Towards the sky, or the earth, we never could bother.

We talk as we fall, of this bond and its reason,
And wonder if love is after all, only a season,
One that will never see an end upon our hearts,
Ever-changing, at times beautiful, unbearable in parts.

You will never know my joy, at this love we got,
As we move into a world, that time forgot,
A world that didn’t care about our language,
And where you didn’t ever ask me my age.

A joy at finally getting out of this wilderness,
As we walk into the sunshine of happiness,
A happiness whose boundaries we have to set,
As it hovers above us, knowing no sunset.

The Other Side – Part 3 of 3

There comes a time, when everybody must part,
This separation, is not something that we did start,
Over time, our thoughts, our feelings have grown apart,
When we smile at each other, it’s no longer from the heart.

The time that we shared, shall always remain a memory,
One that’s bitter, like in almost every other love story,
When we say the nastiest things about each other,
And with the very hatred, could each other smother.

You will leave this behind, and find someone to share the pain,
However, try as much, you will never find this love again,
Remember, you found me, loved me and lost me, by your own hand,
Just by standing quietly and watching our relation go out of hand.

This mirror that you have broken, can you stick it again,
Even if you could, would it show us and our love whole again,
All it would show, are the fragments of a broken smile,
And a doubt, whether it is us, or love, that is so fragile.

Earth

I come up against the unmovable, unshakeable, the mountain,
I wonder if it’s worth your effort, to bear its strain,
And whether it was always a part of you, or a recent outgrowth,
One that has for ages, known no diminution, and alas, no growth.

I try to reach out, and you stonewall yourself into a rock,
One even the fire cannot melt, or wind cannot unblock,
And yet, my tears that flow, like water over your jagged edges,
Turn them into pebbles, cascading themselves over your ridges.

Though speak, you cannot, you nevertheless nourish,
Those blossoms, whose fragrance I everyday cherish,
To reach me, your thoughts disintegrate into the dust,
To be carried by the wind, the only messenger you trust.

Through my moods, their expressions and feet, everyday I kick,
And yet you bear it, not a single groan, though it makes you sick,
Although firm, sometimes my feet into your heart do sink,
And yet you carry me, always holding me, from going over the brink.

Fire

I stand as I watch, its progress, an unstoppable blaze,
And I wonder, if there is something that you cannot set ablaze,
And burn in your frenzy, as if beyond containment,
Devouring everything and yourself into extinguishment.

At times, those eyes of yours, they potently simmer,
And just when they almost burn me, they slowly glimmer,
And I believe, I will be scalded, if I so much as even touch,
For, more than the distance, it’s the heat, that divides us so much.

And I think, is there any way, to bridge this gulf?
A way, that your fiery self can never ever engulf,
And it seems to me, that every time you cringe,
Your arms will envelope me, and begin to singe.

You rise up, steady and straight, just like a flame,
One that purifies, one that obliterates every shred of blame,
And you pursue, throw me off guard, with your inflammable charm,
Which never ceases to make doubt, if love is really so warm.

Air

Blowing across the land, an unstoppable gust,
You kiss this earth, and take away its dust,
It falls back, and you continue, like the wildest gale,
You keep returning, to caress me and regale.

Like the midnight breeze, you arrive every night,
Cajoling my heart, and everything else in sight,
You lift me onto your wings, up into flight,
And carry me aloft, till morning’s first light.

Every time you brush past me and my cheek,
I wonder, if there is something more you seek,
Seeing you amidst swaying flowers, people think you meek,
And yet against your seething best, there’s nothing not weak.

You waft in, through my every breath, and leave,
And bind me forever, by this life, that you thus weave,
One day, forever you will leave, when my time is due,
A day when I will lose, love, and most of all, YOU.

Water

Floating like a boat, on the waters of your heart,
I feel like a captain, one without his dependable chart,
I have no choice, as I am swept along with your flow,
I only wish, these moments could atleast go more slow.

Tippling and swaying, I don’t feel the need to float,
For, isn’t yours the love, that always keeps me afloat,
Every time I try to set foot, my feet you always wash,
For in you, is not my every thought, already awash.

You flow in, through me and out, a relentless tide,
Lashing out with a gentle ferocity, never out of stride,
Although all over me, you never cease to drench,
Surprisingly, you never spill over, onto the bench.

You are the flood, in which I will keep swirling,
As long as in this love, I see you smiling,
For love is like water, one that never breaks,
One, on whose pounding, the very earth shakes.

Sorry for the delay of nearly a month. Was a little short of inspiration, although there never was a shortage of concepts. Was really difficult to find some inspiration after such a beautiful one on Aparna. But poets must move on, and muses change. Not for long though, am sure she is strong enough to pull me back in a few months, till then I have some interesting ones coming up.

The current series is one on the elements, and the metaphorical representation of love through the various facets of the elements that we know as the building blocks of life on earth. Next on the menu(probably in a few days), is a set of three poems about a hypothetical story narrated from the other person’s eyes(for those who must have got tired of my girl-bashing, here’s the answer, coming up), it was something I promised somebody more than a month back, so I hope, the posts in a few days will satisfy that person.

Addictive Joy

It’s been years, since I saw that smile again,
Though only an image, I still cannot restrain,
From wondering, how little has actually changed,
About the feelings, that your smile engaged.

Though in the mind, the vision is always there,
The eyes aren’t satisfied, with an image back somewhere,
They are starving to see it, with their own eyes,
And that still tells me, how slowly our time flies.

To them, you are the raindrop, that broke away,
From the cloud, to quench them, falling this way,
Within them, forever they wish, you would stay,
The mind, it’s jealous, it always makes them stray.

I have never seen it, ever leaving your face,
And never want to, even if only a passing phase,
And each time, the twinkle it leaves in your eye,
That’s just enough, to bid all agonies goodbye.

Seeing it, my overcome tears, always run back,
And a reluctant sorrow, turns its stubborn back,
My mind has only, to hear that laughter’s tinkle,
And it irons out, my every frown’s wrinkle.

Were times I wished, I could touch your laughter,
Feel it and hold it, for now and ever after,
Hold it before my thirsty eyes, and just stare,
Till the moment I have, not a breath to spare.

Felt content, watching those pearls, drop from your lips,
And when I tried, to hold them by my fingertips,
They just dissolved, melting themselves into me,
Flowing in like a joy, the happiest I could ever be.

Try as much, I can’t and don’t, want to let go,
And therefore keep being swept away, by its flow,
For those who feel, life has more sorrow than joy,
They have not yet tasted your smile, and its addictive joy.

After more than two years, yesterday, I saw a photo of Aparna Reddy(Reddy no longer?) on her Orkut profile, and checked out her blog. The first wave of nostalgia hit me, the moment I saw that photo, that smile it could still captivate, not that I doubted it for a moment, but the very idea being proved to my eyes still spellbound me enough to write about it, and those days when I used to submit the exam paper in 1 hour to sit and stare at her for 2 hours, and write “Searching For You” while at it.Still can’t guess what game God was trying to play on me, by making such a smile, and showing it to me for two years and then keeping it etched on my memory, trying to have fun, seeing me wrestling with it.

Immediately I felt I had to write my feeling, I had to record this nostalgia. I couldn’t sleep for the whole night yesterday, fighting with myself to finish the poem first and then sleep, but ultimately my laziness won. Not for long, today morning, the moment I woke up, the feeling started tormenting me again, and so I decide not to push my luck anymore and got down to this. Wish I could spend all my days just looking at her smiling, would make me prefer Earth over Heaven any day.

Where Love Has Gone

Although its lips did move, I couldn’t hear it speak,
Was busy with thoughts, and their noises were at peak,
Else I would have seen it open the door, and walk out,
The room was empty, of that there was no doubt.

I ran out onto the street, to the fountain square,
Where will I head, I see its footprints everywhere,
Walking in all directions, and walking back again,
They were all over the place, like a monsoon rain.

I walked back into the room, now empty and so closed,
I wondered, was this where I had kept love confined,
Where I expected it to stay, until I gave it away,
And it lay there, knowing it wouldn’t see such a day.

Not even a window, where it could see or be seen,
With my mind as guardian, nobody more mean,
My science, my logic, a door it could never break,
I still wonder, how such a fortress, I could ever make.

And yet today, seeing this room empty, I begin to ponder,
Was it ever there, could I really have captured this wonder,
Did I hide it from all else and itself, behind this open door,
Or did it burst open, because there was too much to store.

Whatever the reason, there is no longer love in my heart,
A place I thought it would stay, till I told it to part,
But who was I to build a dam, to contain this flood,
One that blossomed forth from every new bud.

I try to forget it and move on, but I cannot restrain,
To think, of where love has gone, alone again,
But I know it will be back, oozing from my every pore,
If only I promise, to never again close that door.

Special Thanks to Harold Robbins for the title. The moment I first saw it I fell in love with the title, I mean, the very thought, how could love go anywhere? Although have never got round to the book itself, decided that I would explore that title as a thought one day, and dear Robbins, here it is, for all that you gave me.

Shadows

People discussing them may seem out of place,
They themselves are never found out of place,
They walk with you, and run with you, all the way,
Yet they seem to vanish by the end of day.

Alive or dead, we shall always cast these aberrations,
For, of our own selves, are they not true reflections,
They change with our feelings, change like our mood,
Longer when in glee, and shorter when we brood.

When the light goes out of our dark lives,
It is not in darkness, that the shadow thrives,
It leaves you not, it just envelopes itself around you,
And walks with you, for longer than you knew.

It absorbs nothing, and it dissolves into nothing,
For it is not material, this slippery shadowy thing,
It moves against the light, like an actor in a play,
Yet that is the simplest, of the games it does play.

It is the image of the fears and troubles you carry along,
The ones that will make this journey seem more long,
And yet, it contains also the hopes of getting more strong,
To choose between the paths, right and wrong.

Dedicated to Dear brother Satyajit, who had some reservations about shadows.

You

When the first ray of sunlight, caresses my face, I think of You,
Warming up the earth, before I can even set foot on the dew,
You burn up my eyes, and yet warm my heart,
A light that awakens, a light that emboldens.

When the first drop of rain falls on my shoe, I remember You,
Washing out the dust, painting the ground anew,
You clean out my emotions, yet nourish them again,
A rainfall that cleanses, a rainfall that rejuvenates.

When the first flower blooms in my garden, I smell You,
You bloomed in every street, in every hue that I knew,
And yet smelled the same, and felt the same,
The fragrance of life, the fragrance of love.

When the first tear flows down my cheek, I cherish You,
You surprise me, coming out just when overdue,
Yet all the while inside, never wanting to bother,
Droplets of sorrow, ones I cannot anymore gather.

When the first smile breaks across my face, I resemble You,
Though You never change, every time it seems new,
You smile through my days, and more through my nights,
A chuckle of delight, the laughter of pure joy.

When the fanfare of success arrives, I want You,
To keep me from claiming, more than my due,
As you did stay, in those moments of my failure,
From the extremities of feeling, a permanent cure.

When I walk under the moonlight, I know You,
One who makes me believe this night is true,
You never walked away, from the darkness of my life,
The beacon of my night, cajoling me into flight.

It makes me wonder, if all these things were You,
Or were they just subtle hints at what really is You,
All these things of yours, they have set me free,
But in reality, it is only YOU, that I yearn to see.

Me And Myself

I fell into a slumber, the likes of it I never knew,
But was somehow sure I was more awake than I knew,
I was hearing myself definitely snoring aloud,
Yet I was alone in the house, with nobody around.

I was trying to get up, but was stuck in the sleep,
I never knew I could, so far into it creep,
Yet there I was, alive and awake, looking at myself,
Confused, who was me, and who was myself.

I felt the pain tearing through my heart, through my breath,
And I began to think, was this the end, was this death,
That creature that everybody feared, but none had seen,
That comes unheralded, and covers you with its sheen.

In a few moments though, I knew not, because I turned aside,
In my sleep, unmindful of myself, sitting there by the bedside,
Myself began to talk, of my thoughts, their deeds and the results,
The times of agony, anguish, and those incessant insults.

He tried to pry me awake with the fear of its consequence,
I knew not, for I couldn’t feel him, or hear his cadence,
As it lilted on about my days here and redemption,
About how there wasn’t any more hope of salvation.

Until I mended my ways, and walked with him, step by step,
Yet, he wouldn’t let me get up, to begin at the first step,
And thus I didn’t know if he existed at all, was he there?
I looked around, and couldn’t see him anywhere.

He walked away, the moment I got awake,
Yet the trail to him, he never did break,
And I felt compelled to him everywhere,
Though not a word more, he would again share.

He led me by my hand, though he could never hold it,
And took me to the ends of places I could never visit,
Upon his light feet, he carried me into the light,
One that blinded and never needed human sight.

And under it, I saw upon myself, all those marks I had inherited,
Marks of the pain, the sorrows that I had long since inflicted,
Marks that stained the spotless white, of the dress I never wore,
And yet, I was sure, it wasn’t me, that I had seen snore.

It wasn’t me, that had done those deeds and could still smile,
It was an aberration, one whose misdeeds could only stockpile,
And yet, there it was, a life form, alive in its heartbeat,
So much alike, so much of me, it just threw me off my feet.

I knew not when I returned, only that it was over for now,
And I kept asking myself only one thing, “how, how”?
Every single word, I saw me confess, and yet hadn’t spoken,
And yet there it was, all crystal clear and unbroken.

The voice of me, or the voice of myself, I knew not,
It neither commanded, and it surely demanded not,
It lulled me off the heavenly cliff, though slippery and steep,
And back into this world, and its myth called sleep.

A lyrical version of my experience on the morning of 17th March, 2007, when I felt torn apart from myself and watched as I talked to myself. The time came to a standstill as I conversed, and discussed my whole lifetime and its experiences, and watched every scene being shredded apart to reveal the stains behind them. Stains that would never go away, but ones that could have been prevented. I watched as I saw myself turning around, twisting and tossing in my sleep, and was yet talking to myself. An experience that I hope I get to see more often.

Yesterday’s Gift

Yesterday’s Gift, is the posterity, that it gives,
The permanence for a while, that memory can grant,
Before the sentinels of change produce their warrant,
And put an end to this unwarranted rant.

Yesterday’s Gift, is the mirror, that it gives,
To look into, and see, your yesterday’s face,
And all those moments, how did you face,
When you never knew, they were, but a passing phase.

Yesterday’s Gift, is the experience, that it gives,
Of knowing the consequences of the moves you made,
Ones that hastened those goodbyes that you bade,
Though all the while, your intellect, from doing so forbade.

Most of all, Yesterday’s Gift, is the power it gives,
To change the way each person today lives,
To ponder over the actions that always repeat,
And to begin the dance again, albeit, to a new beat.

Moving Ahead

When the chips are down, and you only have a frown,
When the person is gone, and the memories stillborn,
When the sunshine has melted, but the heat hasn’t relented,
When all doors are ajar, yet the destination is afar.

It is then you know, that your life is stuck,
And you have exhausted the last drop of luck,
With the first wave of loathing you are struck,
And you realize, this time, there’s no passing the buck.

You cannot for now forget, and maybe forever forgive,
But you know there’s something that’s got to give,
Tired of life and its memories, you can no longer live,
Yet death doesn’t come, allowing you to leave.

Your experience may have held you in good stead,
But to turn a new leaf, they prevent you instead,
Just remember, when all things come to a head,
The only progress you can make, is by moving ahead.

Looking Around

When all your life seems resigned to doom,
And you never want to get out of your room,
Just look outside, and see those flowers bloom,
And rest assured, you may never know gloom.

When you’ve burnt your entire life’s crop,
An you believe have reached a dead stop,
Just stretch out your hand, feel the raindrop,
And rest assured, you may never remember the flop.

When you are drowning in your mind’s wine,
And the foliage begins to surround like a vine,
Just walk outside, into the warm sunshine,
And rest assured, you’ll never fall short of hope’s twine.

In everyday life, these problems do abound,
And when you blink, they hesitate not to surround,
But when you feel their merciless grip has you bound,
There’s always an answer nearby, just look around.

Igniting Spark

When the days seem to get worser by the day,
And my resistance to failure begins to sway,
When the journey ends not, in this lifetime,
And I begin to start running out of time.

When I reach down to the bottom of my pocket,
And find nothing worthwhile that I did pocket,
When all the love has begun to wear,
And there’s not a single smile I can wear.

When friends of mine, are friends no longer,
And the list of enemies, gets to grow longer,
When they let go of me, relation by relation,
And I begin to wonder, is blood really a relation?

But then, this day is not really over,
Not until I am done, thinking it over and over,
It is the that I look, towards the igniting spark,
The One Inside, that resplendent dispeller of the dark.

A Broken Life

To wake up at dawn, and find you have nothing,
To walk into the lawn, and find a delayed spring,
When your footsteps sink, too deep into the ground,
And through the rest of life, there’s that recurring sound.

To look at me, giving out your best smile,
And yet, since you last felt satisfied, it’s been a long while,
I have seen you many a time, trying desperately to talk,
But I’ve always backed away, for, aren’t we cheese and chalk.

You have tried to talk me out of this, just forget it,
Your blow didn’t miss and has already deeply hit,
You may take the pain away, but not the scar,
It will stay on, as a reminder, of how relations mar.

Pardon me if I have sounded too curt,
But I want you to know how much I hurt,
Alas, it’s a sorrow, that you can never compare,
For, you have broken my life, beyond repair.

Can You Wait

With sunrise begins another brand new day,
For how long today, can you remain on the highway,
When your feet begin to ache, and your mind buckles away,
How much longer you can wait, only you can say.

When the rainfall ends, and the desert begins,
No matter how strong, your determination thins,
When darkness rules, and the night never ends,
And the farther you go, there are still more bends.

When all you want, are a few moments of my time,
And yet are turned away, like in a totalitarian regime,
When you stand by my side, all through daylight,
Hoping atleast once, I will take you into my sight.

When the charms of persistence, force you to surrender,
And yet, you cannot run away from my splendour,
When you know this tide will forever, not abate,
And yet, just like I did, can you still wait.

Face To Face

Describing to others what it cannot observe,
The mouth has thus no purpose to serve,
And the mind is unfortunately or not, dumb,
And so to the limitations of words, doesn’t succumb.

If only the eyes that see could just speak,
But alas, they are content to watch and seek,
They bother not, with the intricacies of speech,
For, within their sight, is a far greater reach.

When the waves within stop to think,
And the eyelids suddenly forget to blink,
And the shadows around begin to shrink,
Before you can again start to wink.

Writing your name on the sand as parchment,
Only to be washed away by waves of excitement,
Welling up within, ready for an outburst,
If only my eyes could ever quench their thirst.

Afraid to cry and wash your reflection away,
Yet hesitant to blink and forget the way,
Looking into your eyes, I can see myself there,
But deeper within, am I there somewhere?

Ask yourself this, when you make your decision,
And just think, what if, you were in my position,
To lose out on the chance to forever embrace,
Because someone decided not, to talk face to face.

First Love

I walk up to the college, where we first met,
And see if I can find, what I can no longer forget,
All that remains, is the building and the playground,
With no trace of you having been around.

I walk up to the bench, where we first sat,
When you first laughed and gave me a pat,
But the bench no longer has our impression,
Time has given it more people in succession.

I walk up to the tree, where I first wrote your name,
On the day that you took on all my worthless blame,
But it has got new leaves, and grown some bark,
And besides, there are lots like it, in the park.

I walk up to the store, where we first shared ice-cream,
But it is long since those tables have left that dream,
Because more people still come in to share,
Those last crumbs of feelings they have, to spare.

Everything that we treasured has since moved on,
Yet there was one place I found, that refused to go on,
Deep in my heart, there’s a room that’s still waiting,
One that’s immune to the tribulations of awaiting.

Illusions

We talked through the ravines of the night,
Into the lap of dawn’s first light,
We talked of our lives, yours and mine,
And how each had lost its own shine.

About the smile that had never faded,
Despite the mires that we have long waded,
And how it managed to keep us together,
Through hard times, and all the rough weather.

About the stares we gave each other,
Oblivious to time, oh, just don’t bother,
When the looks traveled further within,
Until the distance became too thin.

About the love that wrapped us in a cocoon,
Making us impervious to either noon or moon,
And the stars couldn’t have come, a moment too soon,
To see us splashing around, in the mind’s lagoon.

Although that love is no longer there,
Search within, and you may find it somewhere,
Until then, don’t stop this talking in midstream,
Else I will have to wake up from this dream.

Yesterday

It was only yesterday, that I had seen,
Through those eyes, what a pair we had been,
The stroll that we took, down the park,
Holding your hand, maybe forever, into the dark.

I never knew a person could want anymore,
Once they had their fill of you, and your life,
I just looked into those eyes that constantly reassure,
That all this before me, is for real and sure.

Those times we spent, along the shore,
Gazing at the waves, that would never catch up,
When the nights were lit up, just by your smile,
Calling all those ships, even beyond a mile.

Those days when I waited outside your door,
To see you, before this conniving world did,
And take you by my hand, down the street,
Ah, was there a place, we never did meet.

But that was yesterday, yet there’s more in store,
Your hair no longer brushes by your cheeks,
You neither smile, nor look into me anymore,
But I still keep walking everyday, to the shore.

Just Once More

I walk up the mountains, where it’s really cold,
Anyway, you are beyond feelings, I am told,
What will the little boy do, once he has sold,
When he no longer has that innocence, that gold.

To walk beside you, I thought myself bold,
To talk to you, and your hand to just hold,
To take you to the fountain, am I too old,
That on seeing me, those eyelids begin to fold.

I gave to you, the laughter and joy I owned,
One that I wouldn’t for life, have pawned,
You took it with your smile and locked it away,
Where, forever in darkness, it is doomed to stay.

I stretched my hand to help you across,
Yet it remained behind, to remind me of the loss,
I have nothing left to give you, objects don’t count,
Yet you remain the peak that I can never surmount.

Still, I decide to try, just once more,
Ignoring those feelings inside my core,
I shall walk for you, to the ends of nowhere,
But, will you be there, when I get there?

Keeping You Alive

It’s long since you left me to be alone,
Leaving to fly away, as if airborne,
Yet I land safely with your memories,
Their simplicity, and their untold worries.

May the sun never set on your delight,
Though for the world, it may already be night,
With the covers of darkness I shall fight,
To keep that smile on your face forever bright.

I shall fight with sleep, temporal and eternal,
To keep your eyes away from their sojournal,
To keep them twinkling, alive and awake,
So another day of joy, they can partake.

I won’t let death take your heart away,
Even if it means putting mine in the way,
For, I cannot let a life like yours stray,
Into the foggy mists of an eternal grey.

People said it was useless, you were already dead,
They know not, because they know you, only in the head,
And when they know you, like my heart,
They will understand why we cannot part.

Castaway

From those pictures of us, you may cut me away,
I care not, because I am more than a mere photo.
From those letters of ours, you may tear me away,
I care not, because I am more than mere words.

From those mementos of ours, you may break me away,
I care not, because I am more than mere clay,
From the reflection in your eyes, you may wash me away,
I care not, because I am more than a tear.

From the times of laughter, you may frown me away,
I care not, because I am more than mere joy,
From the shackles of our bond, you may break away,
I care not, because I am more than an emotion.

From the depth of your heart, you may cast me away,
I care not, because I aren’t going anywhere,
How far away you threw, you have no clue,
For, I am you, around and within you.

Teardrops

It begins at birth, and the pangs never end,
With shrieks and sobs, the air they rend,
Though more often, they live in silence,
They signal a plea for attention and deference.

They well up in times of joy and happiness,
And flow out at the onset of sadness,
They cling on for further existence,
Yet show no signs of your inner resilience.

As they run along, they skim the surface,
And look for the undulations on your face,
That allow them to live a moment longer,
Until your emotions can get much stronger.

People say teardrops are just salted water,
That its just plain expulsion of matter,
But teardrops aren’t just a pack of secretions,
They hide behind them, bundles of emotions.

Times when you are sad, and dejected,
Times when you are angry at being rejected,
Times when words can no longer express,
The feelings inside and their distress.

They are droplets of your pent-up agony,
They are droplets of your life’s disharmony,
They are the heralders of your pleasure,
And also reminders of a lost treasure.

They are your dreams rolling down,
Upon receiving the world’s frown,
They are your joy spreading around,
Upon reaching the pinnacle of solid ground.

They are the syllables of the heart,
One that is mute, and torn apart,
And needs a voice that can be seen,
And a representation of what you’ve been.

They fall off, and dry up even more soon,
Yet they leave behind their signature boon,
A memory that shall always call them back,
For forgetfulness is something teardrops lack.

Cup Of Love

It is gilded not in gems and diamonds, but in its own mirth,
It is begins to fill not in youth, but long before birth,
It is filled every second by an unknown hand,
One that permeates every grain of silken sand.

It fills itself to the brim, and even more,
Yet no one has ever seen it overflow,
The more it is filled, you need it all the more,
Yet it falls back on itself, until you can go slow.

It replenishes itself without any scarcity,
And never manages to ever get empty,
It swirls around itself in merriment,
That it showers on those in detriment.

It glides down your throat, and heads for the heart,
Yet, when you search, and it is found, in every part,
It fills your brain, your mind, yet doesn’t intoxicate,
It oozes its persona, that nobody can ever replicate.

It sweeps you off your feet, and takes you into street,
And makes you utter words, you will never repeat,
It nudges you forward with every new heartbeat,
And picks you up, from your every defeat.

It belongs not to you, nor to the maker,
Yet it quenches the thirst of every partaker,
For the cup of love grows upon its own self,
Every time you share a portion of yourself.

Inspired by the thoughts of Kahlil Gibran on Love, read it about 7 years back, but still remember the feeling it brought about, although I don’t remember a single line.

Catharsis

Depressed beyond words, I decide to clean up my life,
I look into myself, and look at all that needs cleaning,
The sorrows, the breakups, the anger, the hatreds, my whole life,
Stands in need of a good whitewash and some forgetting.

The anger, the hatred, that redden the walls around me,
Need just some painting to blend in and begin anew,
But what of those breakups that will just not let me be,
The sticky grime of sorrows, will it ever let me subdue.

Those are but splashes, that with effort can be cleaned,
And will appear as if they have forever gleamed,
But, what of the love, splashed all across the floor,
So much so, it even overflows beneath the door.

It neither flows nor stagnates, yet leaves a stain,
One that has been relegated, for eternity to remain,
It meanders not, and endears itself to everything in touch,
It fills itself, in every corner, yet no amount is too much.

It needs a strong will to forget it, and move over,
And time I had heard, was the greatest stain remover,
That it could flush the sorrows out of the deepest recess,
And even cleanse the emotions that one cannot access.

Yet I found it ineffective against love, that merely faded,
Which gave it even more appeal, one that was jaded,
It poured itself through the cracks in the shaky ground,
And ingrained itself within, where no senses abound.

Time found itself incapable, though not for the first time,
Because stubborn love, had flooded it into a grave sublime,
My exercise was in vain, for I just couldn’t cleanse myself,
From the remains of God’s greatest stain, HIMSELF.

Into Your Life

When its time, to describe your entire life in a day,
And you know, you can’t recall every moment on the way,
Times of joy may never in your memory, for long stay,
Of the times when you cried, you will definitely say.

When you have 24 hours, to describe all your years,
To explain your tears, and their underlying fears,
Do I atleast share a minute in your narration,
Or did I just seem a fantasy of your creation.

Let me be the river that flows into your existence,
Flowing down your throat like the elixir of subsistence,
Washing away the worries that cling to your feet,
Enriching the thirsty ground, wherever we meet.

Let me be the sun that brightens your day,
That warms your soul, all along the way,
There won’t be a place you will miss my ray,
Like your shadow, I shall return as long as you stay.

Let me be the wind that blows into your face,
In your every breath, let me leave my trace,
Soaring with your heart, in an earthly grace,
Without my presence, may you never find a place.

Let me simmer into your life, like the fire,
That burns within you, and your every desire,
Along the path, let me be your candle’s flame,
Through water and wind, burning all the same.

Just let me walk in through your heart’s door,
And you’ll never have the need for anything more,
I may not be God, to stop all your tears,
Atleast I’m human, to cry with you for years.

Let me in as the dew, or the ever-settling dust,
Let me in as anything, that for life is a must,
In the midst of all this chaos, confusion and strife,
Have faith, and just let me, into your life.

This one is dedicated to my definition of love, which many have defined as ‘impractical, unrealistic, and even downright loony’, but that doesn’t change it from being LOVE.

Finding You

On a fine summer morning, upon opening my brow,
Find the landscape around me, filled with unseasonal snow,
Amidst the vast expanse of white, a budding blossom of pink,
So startlingly contrastive, that it sets my mind to think.

The snow laden path to you, seems a figment of imagination,
As my crunching footfall sets the pace to the destination,
With the cold morning wind blowing me your assurance,
My hunger for your glimpse quickly gobbles the distance.

Across the horizon, is steadily rising, the morning sun,
A daily reminder of the countless miles I have won,
As the rising mercury spreads its warmth on creation,
My Venus, your memories help maintain my composition.

I seem paralysed watching the time go by,
As mile upon mile nimbly seems to fly,
Continuously in stationary motion, I am not sure why,
As my stamina for you, continues to grow high.

The noon seems to approach way too soon,
Surprisingly, my body doesn’t begin to swoon,
Trudging on for you, like a glass pane bright,
Absorbing the heat, reflecting your faceless light.

At the edge of land, the sand’s all around,
My foot sinks in with each step on ground,
Ahead lies the water, one that knows no bound,
Like the depths of my heart, surely not yet found.

Venturing in, I see the waves reach a standstill,
As if forgetting to blink, awaiting your will,
Deeper inside, the path is rougher than a hill,
Expecting a Messiah, to someday dry it up and till.

The sky opens up, pouring soothingly slow,
There’s water all around, above and below,
Yet I push on, having no other place to go,
Drenched throughout, halfway through the show.

As a speck in the horizon, at last I spot land,
And strange shivers run through, from head to hand,
The whole experience totally bleaching me bland,
Waiting to finally grab a fistful, of sand, dear sand.

Upon firm ground the picture doesn’t change,
Try all I can, my limited thoughts to arrange,
The entire journey somehow seems strange,
With you laughing on, always out of range.

Finally at an end, it all seems only a beginning,
As I try to shake off an unexplainable feeling,
Of having to start it all over once again,
Putting my journey and its travails in vain.

Your presence, then dispels all doubts away,
As I recoup all the energy spent on way,
Hoping you’ll forever, beside me stay,
If only just for a moment, hour or day.

The emotions still left, are pushing through,
Trying to cover, all that I have been through,
Justice enough I deem it, on merely seeing you,
Yet, distance enough I know not, to talk to you.

I find not the strength, to stand by your side,
Having spent it all, traveling the world wide,
Looking to the heart, where you’ll always abide,
Hoping you don’t notice me lagging in stride,
To laugh or cry by myself, unable to decide,
Upon finally finding you, all the while inside.

This one is dedicated to someone who made 1 portion of the ‘purpose of my life’ complete.

Special thanks to Nisha Ahuja for pointing out that this poem was missing and thus helping me post it, because this one occupies a special corner of my heart.

Distant Dreams

I open my eyes, and see your gaze upon me,
Beyond those eyes, there’s a lot I can see,
Moments of joy, and those of solitary pain,
Seconds of ecstasy, that were long since lain.

They seek to tell me something, those eyes,
But your lips don’t ever let them get so wise,
They part, as if to utter something from within,
But close unto silence, even before they begin.

I too have those feelings, of wanting to share,
But have always waited for you, so we could pair,
That time may never come, like a distant dream,
Knowing how reluctant we both now seem.

What a fine example of hesitation we both make,
We never speak the feeling, or leave it to break,
And yet everyday, you stare at me, and I back,
To acknowledge to each other, the words we lack.

When it’s time to drift apart, each to our way,
There will still be so much that’s left to say,
But like our dreams, you’ll keep it to yourself,
And mine shall be left, all to myself.

Thanks to Divya for the idea, like I told her, this is my take from the other person’s shoes

Original post can be found at the link below

I Tell You In My Dreams

Pray For Me Brother

You have always been busy, with your everyday life,
To earn and provide, for your children and wife,
To go up the ladder, whence you can provide even more,
But how much do you need, how much can you store.

When your plate and belly are full, what more can you eat,
When clothed for today and tomorrow, what more will you wear,
When sheltered from the elements, the rain and the heat,
How much more space do you think is really fair.

Throw that extra food down the drain, you paid for it,
Atleast the next time, think of how much I needed it,
Build yourself that palace of your dreams, that apartment,
Atleast some day, think of me on the adjoining pavement.

Buy yourself those coats of mink and many a fancy trinket,
Atleast remember, I could always do with even a torn blanket,
Break all your belongings in fits of anger and depression,
Atleast remember, I never even had such a possession.

Never mind if you just cannot spare or even share,
Mine is a sorrow somebody always has to bear,
Just happened to be me for today,
There were always others, and always will be, everyday.

I ask not for your savings, I ask not for your pension,
All I ask for is awareness, and a little bit of attention,
All that I wish is that you know, that there’s someone like me,
And then its your choice, to decide how to let things be.

Your effort can make a difference, even if only to one,
Yet all I ask is a prayer, for you, me and everyone,
That this message reaches someone who would really care,
Someone with a heart, an extra pair and a desire to share.

Thanks to A.R.Rahman for the inspiration and Blaaze for the Title

Hope people listen to the song “Pray For Me Brother”. Its Really awesome.

Into The Jungle

The sun beats down on the broken traveler,
As he scurries around for scarce a shelter,
But where can he hide, out in the open,
Like the meaning hiding behind a coaxing pen.

Step by step, he goes, repeatedly tripping,
Twines of hope, and joy, tightly gripping,
Yet a few paces forward, inexplicably slipping,
Beads of perspiration have long been dripping.

Broken in the body, breaking in the mind,
With no one present, to push him from behind,
Lurking in the undergrowth are creatures of despair,
Fear of failure, they make for a deadly pair.

Persevering, he forces himself to trudge further,
Poor man, he knows not, the horizon is always farther,
All those miles gone by are just a headstart,
Into the jungle, called a “Woman’s Heart”.