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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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”

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).

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 .

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.

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.

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.

Just By Changing

To look up at the stars and begin to dream,
About why things aren’t always the way they seem,
Why life holds back surprises till the last moment,
When it becomes too late to apologize or repent.

When the days pass by, busy in sustenance,
And ridicule is what you face for penance,
When objects of form have no underlying substance,
And they try to fool you, at the next possible instance.

When to your worries and troubles, nobody will listen,
And your downfall, everybody is trying to hasten,
When all your endeavors end up in nothing,
And you dread the suffering tomorrow will bring.

It is time to wake up to the world of realities,
Of the foregone chances and missed opportunities,
And every night you realize, there will be another morning,
When your life can be improved, just by changing.

Walk In The Rain

As I step out of my shell, life a shamble of failure,
I look around, what the future holds, not sure,
A distant rumble makes me in my steps stop,
As I am hit from above with the first raindrop.

Within a short time, the drizzle turns into a rain,
And I feel myself reborn and whole once again,
I stand there getting drenched, these drops can’t stain,
In this jubilation, from dancing with joy, I cannot refrain.

I am ambling in the twilight of that morn,
On which my pride and honor was fatefully shorn,
Struggling, stumbling I crossed the border of disdain,
As the rain washes away my tears, and years of pain.

As I walk in the rain, on this monsoon evening,
I am suddenly aware of an innate awakening,
I realize that a man is just clay in the moulding,
His effort can make him a vagabond or king.

The Flame Within

It is sometimes focused and loud like a hammer,
And yet suddenly, is soft like a whispered stammer,
A voice so unique, its meaning only to me discernible,
A message so realistic, its impact indismissable.

It fires me into a limelight that nothing can shroud,
Yet it remains hidden, like receding sunlight behind a cloud,
Beyond my undreamt expectations it propels,
Yet to act within my limitations it compels.

Whenever I find myself untowardly bickering,
I look inside to find it visibly flickering,
Whether it controls or only guides what I know,
Is not revealed by its steady, uninterrupted glow.

It knows no tomorrow, and lives not in yesterday,
It is only concerned with making me give the best of the day,
In life whatever situation I find myself in,
I will never forget to ask the flame within.

Reason For Rainbows

Droplets of dew on tender petals every morning,
Beams of sunlight between awaiting leaves peeping,
A solitary bloom in a forlorn, unabided desert,
The breath of fulfillment after a tiring effort.

A sudden cool drizzle on a hot, humid day,
A blaze of light that blows away the misty grey,
The sorrows of the day, swept away by the canary’s song,
The exuberance of counting waves for interminably long.

The long dark night passes away into temporal oblivion,
The light of the sun just penetrating the cloud’s dominion,
And the stage is set for the greatest of all show,
As the sky is arched with the colours of the rainbow.

As we watch the resplendence of the seven colours,
A thought flashing across my mind clearly hollers,
That the reason for rainbows, like every new child born,
Is that God still has hope in mankind for another morn.

Once In A Blue Sun

The rising shadow of tomorrow, looks down on the shadow of today,
As for today, I know not the difference I made in any way,
Much more than the short yesterday, I decide to accomplish,
But between achievement & aspiration, am unable to distinguish.

I have been trying all of today, just like yesterday,
Before finally deciding, that failure is here to stay,
Every new venture, only got me more sadder,
As I failed to grasp, the winding success ladder.

My innate sense decided it was the last time I fell,
The sudden shame of failure pushed me from hell,
The first taste of success has an incredible story to tell,
Of how things got started and going so well.

But once in a blue sun, comes dear opportunity,
Ignoring it is the bull’s eye way to failure,
As unable as one is to predict the outcome of activity,
For, in life, however safe, you are never sure.

Life

Colourful flowers are seen in bloom, hither and thither,
However, at the end of the day, most of them droop and wither,
A person who is fit and healthy at the break of dawn,
May no longer be alive, to see the sun next morn.

The miracle of life leaves no unturned stones,
For, without it, the body is but a bag of bones,
The value of life is known, not by the man who commits suicide,
But the hardest rock, in which inexpressible feelings reside.

Death, riches or fame are no measure for life,
For, no amount of money, no advance in science, or the surgeon’s knife,
Can bring back to life, a body by cold death crumpled,
Or pour a new life into a Frankenstein assembled.

The only measure of each one’s life is our breath,
For, the final destination of all things living is death,
The earth was obscure and a speck in a galaxy of strife,
Until the moment it was blessed with the gift of life.

If I Could Tell You

If I could tell you, when time deems right someday,
That, be not deceived by the glint of the early morning ray,
Sometimes matters are so complicated, that it’s too early to say,
Whether or not you are moving along the right way.

Just as the waves of the ocean ceaselessly try to reach,
And swallow up further miles along the beach,
It is very rare similarly, to find someone to teach,
That all life is a code of ethics, that’s difficult to breach.

If I could tell you, that all power is a mire,
That temptingly sucks you into consequences dire,
And no amount of money you earn or hire,
Can buy you an ounce of the happiness you desire.

Dewdrops are an illusion of overnight rain,
And your honour is more worth anything you gain,
For all else are images that will recur again,
Like the endless cycle of pleasure between pain.

Falling Leaves

When you wake up on a cloudy morning,
And feel the coolness set your skin burning,
When fortune plays a rhythmless tune,
And beyond dune is yet another dune.

When you can no longer bear any more,
And there’s still a lot more in store,
When your inherent ability is brought to fore,
And from the lashing, your mind and senses are sore.

When familiarity seems a total stranger,
And lurking in the corners is danger,
When things begin to happen none too soon,
And there’s no sign of the oncoming monsoon.

Across the sea, when no shore is visible,
And the crack of dawn, seems not credible,
When the last bit of despair and of fear,
Is replaced by a flood of tear after tear.

With the shadows around growing longer,
And the weakness within getting stronger,
When the certainties in life begin to ponder,
And neighbours appear to shift away yonder.

When the vapours begin to gradually freeze,
And yet, there’s no sign of the comforting breeze,
When at horizon, the earth meets the sky,
And ‘within your reach’ is still too high.

When the stars begin, to one by one fall,
And everyday demands seem to get too tall,
When the mountains begin their forward surge,
And to do nothing you require a greater urge.

When the densest fog seems too clear,
And your enemies want to get really dear,
When the distances seem very much near,
And yet, your own heartbeat, you cannot hear.

When everybody in your life goes nowhere,
And being here is no longer the same as being there,
When nothing, is the maximum that you will share,
And indifference is about all that you care.

When everything is visible even in the dark,
And yet, not a single arrow finds its mark,
When the shadows throw themselves on the light,
And even the meek don’t give up without a fight.

When at the climax of a successful show,
You forget the direction in which to row,
And the shame of failure, doesn’t even let you bow,
For, the seeds of desperation, it has sought to sow.

That there is a tomorrow, suffice it to know,
Keep your cool and let the bad times flow,
Falling leaves in autumn aren’t the ending,
But a sacrifice for the offshoots of a new beginning.

Effort

What impresses most of us is a soaring kite,
Displaying to the wind its unsolicited might,
A kite is a piece of paper the slightest wind can ruffle,
Yet it survives, because of its incessant struggle.

The sight of a butterfly reminds us of beauty,
Whose wings are an example of perfect symmetry,
From the cocoon, it has to itself wriggle,
Else it will remain forever a cripple.

A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a step,
Remember, Rome was not built in a day,
Do not delay, or deny yourself the beginning step,
For, while the sun shines, you need to make hay.

The greatness of achievement, lies not in success,
But in trying persistently, without a recess,
You have to first erect a fountain, to see it spout,
Because life itself begins with an effort.

Dewdrops

Glistening dewdrops herald the vibrant new morn,
And on its incessant tour, the sun is again born,
Fascinated, I reach for a leaf with a delicate hand,
And as if by instinct, the dewdrops slide down to a thirsty land.

Life itself is transparent like the dewdrops on a viewing glass,
People look around and smile at the lush green grass,
By the time they turn back, they see only the brown barren land,
And life to them seems no longer so resplendent and grand.

As cautiously as I climb up life’s stairs,
I am increasingly met with confusing stares,
I walk up to the door, laughing amidst a group,
But step in alone, with only my destiny to grope.

I look around to find a face I can read,
And surprisingly there is no one I need,
With every step, a changing world opens anew,
Like the ever-fresh glistening drops of morning dew.

Butterfly Dance

You look up and see a butterfly fluttering,
As from flower to flower it goes nectar-seeking,
Similarly, each one of us has a distinct role,
Fulfilling which we must set our sights on a higher goal.

Just like the different patterns on different butterflies,
The light in one’s eyes may be the beauty in another’s eyes,
Sometimes, moments of life and moments of death come as a surprise,
The reason for this mystery of life, we are none the wise.

On reaching the base, aim for the mountain peak,
On reaching the peak, the sky you must seek,
Conquering the sky, reach out for the stars,
Never mind if you fall, time will heal the scars.

Remember that your life is just a butterfly dance,
Which pleases the watcher at every instance,
Never let go, even if you have to crawl the distance,
For you will never again get such a chance.

Be Yourself

The eagle flying high above feels the burning heat,
That caused the scars on a man walking bare feet,
However the sun doesn’t hide its brilliance behind a cloud,
Just because people in a desert, move around in a shroud.

What makes the moon the crux of the night, is its ambience,
It’s soothing rays remain, whether in crescent or in variance,
A late night man, about a moonless night complaining,
Doesn’t stop the moon’s cycle of waxing and waning.

A symbol of ceaseless sturdiness are the mountains,
The very foundations of solidarity is what it contains,
It never bends to anything or anyone until it is eroded,
For the lowly passing cloud, it doesn’t bend its head.

Never do something, just because it is done by others,
If God had wanted it so, He would have made you like others,
But YOU are unique, you have your own self,
Remember, at all times in life, to be proud to be yourself.

A New Beginning

A tired old moon sets, as a new dawn begins,
I stand shattered, looking down on my wins and losses,
Not realizing that its long since you weren’t there for me,
But I have always felt, that in my heart you will always be.

In a few more years, the memories may wear off,
And those days of happiness may soon tear off,
Opening the gates for the gradually rising wave of misery,
Showing me that effort is the way out of this drudgery.

As you progress, the sand under your feet may erode,
But only to make way for a new untravelled road,
So put a foot forward, and achieve what you are able,
Or just spend your life incoherently counting a pebble.

During the journey, it is inevitable to fall on your knees,
But don’t let your vision fall, below the tops of trees,
For I shall walk step by step with you till the ending,
If only you take heart, and make a new beginning.