Saturday 10 March, 2007

Moments...A Title Monologue

(So a buddy of mine observed that I needed to write something with more ‘Passion’:) in it.
So here’s a fully blown up piece,
Straight from the gut, from the heart, from the very seat,
As they say,
Direkkt Dil-se)



Tried to keep it all aside,
Tried to make it through,
Tried to feign your non-existence,
But still I suffer, what do I do?

Block it, null it, void it,
Blank it, dump it, trash it, all I tried,
And then I come to find…come to find....
How much I really miss you!

You’ll never try…never understand,
But if you do, if it all becomes so clear,
And when I disappear,
Don’t be surprised, don’t be shocked,
Just fear…fear the worst…

You’ve locked up yourself in my head,
Remembering all those things that you’ve said,
Brings me down to my knees,
And I taste what I would never try,
Indulge in things which would make me cry.

The more I try to stuff, the more it hurts,
The more I try to hide, the more it crops up,
The more I try to shout, a whisper is all that comes,
The faster it comes out, the faster I need to break this cycle.

Life’s not as bad as it seems…or maybe it is!
Leaves me with no other option,
Maybe tomorrow will be not be so bad,
But for that, YOU are what I need…

These moments seem so important,
Until this tragedy puts them in perspective,
Or maybe they are important because
Inevitably there will be no more of them.
These moments are over…or are they?

Favors?

Why did I have to pick up the broken pieces?
Why did I have to set things together again?
Didn’t I see, it was a mere illusion?
Couldn’t I see it all coming back to me,
Like it has to, time and again…

I must’ve thought, it was all about,
Real sharing, Real silences,
Real promises, Real understandings,
A Real you and a Real me.
But the signs are here to say, it was so Unreal…yeah so UNREAL!...

You make it sound as though a lot of favors were done,
Favors…an unfitting tribute to all that went into what I believed in…
Favors…the price of which we’ll never be able to pay…
Favors…the weight burdens me,
Favors…cripple, confine and cage me…
Favors…loathe, convert and disgust me…
Favors…forbidden, grisly and so unfavorable!

Thursday 8 March, 2007

Bamboo shoot

As a kid, these were some of my favourite lines,

"Be like a bamboo,
Strong on the outside, soft & open in the inside.
It's roots are firmly planted in the ground & freely intertwined with others for mutual strength and support.
The stalk blows strongly in the wind, bending rather than resisting.
That which bends is far more difficult to break".

--- A Thai Buddhist monk


But today my views on these lines seem to be confused.
These lines sound a little too ideological today to me.
If we are to follow our passions then some rules have to be broken…just try being soft & open in the inside and you'll soon find yourself scooped of everything inside you.

This takes me to ‘munnabhai MMBS’, I really don’t get the reason why it created so many ripples…especially at a popular awards…true it showed gandhigiri in full flow, and in a country where anything remotely connected to the word Gandhi is revered (to the extent of our present Congress chief honcho, who is as little a gandhi as you and me), the movie had to come off as a superhit!

But tell me how many people actually follow these truisms these days? They are good things to read and take momentary inspirations from, but to follow them always is beyond the sanity of the human mind! Just watching the reviews on TV, I saw a guy coming out of the movie hall shouting ‘gandhigiri rocks!’...not many people would have noticed it him wearing a 'skull n bones' t-shirt (new age gandhigiri?? ;-))….if it’s just a fad to say that “gandhigiri is still alive and kicking”, so be it!
Try giving a ‘jadoo-ki-jappi’ and you’ll see that almost 90% of the times you’ll be labeled a mad-man, (that’s if you are able to survive a few slaps :)).

Times are such that one of the key factors in determining your economic progress is by measuring how good your nuclear capabilities are. Could India just hold back and say that gandhigiri will help us out if any country attacks us? Or that no country will throw us around just because we are the land of The ‘Great’ Gandhi? That India should always follow the principles of non-violence and use it as a shield? That you should show your right cheek when slapped on your left cheek? (chances are that your teeth might be missing the very next second!) When push comes to shove, then everyone’s ready to barge in, quite literally!

I may be sounding like an extremist but believe you & me, I’m not political when it comes to supporting moderates or extremists as I feel both sides have valid points to their struggle or cause. But isn’t it ironic that the main protagonist in the movie was charged with having a hand in the killings of innocent people in the Mumbai bomb blasts? But as hypocritical as we are, we tend to overlook this. If non-violence is our diet, then why is it that we have made the man who is the father of India's missile program our President? hypocrisy again?? Why have children been taught to idolize him if we are staunch believers in non-violence? (and thank god for that, for he truly is a great man!)

While writing this I just felt as though I’m collectively letting off a lot of steam which is inside the ‘all of us’. Questions which we ignore because it’s not right questioning the basis of our ‘illustrious past’…I agree, it is important as the past always is, but it’s still the past, maybe it’s time we change for the future…atleast embrace the present.

One point I want to make clear here is that there is a very large gap between morality and age-old ideology.
And this is where my confusion is born! I still feel strongly about one of the lines, ‘our roots should be firmly planted’.

So with the passage of time I’ve begun liking lesser and lesser of my favourite lines? Will this one line remain my favourite or will it too change its perspective someday?
Have I changed? Or have times manipulated my thinking? Or will the bamboo evolve just as my thoughts have…or devolve…maybe the monk can answer this!

Wednesday 7 March, 2007

Escape

The tunnel to liberation has begun caving in,
The deserted road disappears under the sands of horizon,
Like all of a sudden its all over,
Doting the bare, widespread landscape,
The rustling of the leaves in the absence of the trees,
It all begins to seem so unreal...

Where do I go? What do I do?
The pain - dark, deep and piercing,
The future - murky, hazy and smoky,
The thoughts - wild and obtrusive,
Allow me to make a small, little plea,
If nothing, atleast leave behind that soothing, tranquilizing effect on me…

Having tried so hard to seek the unseeked,
Having tried to learn how to unlearn,
Help me escape..escape...escape....

Guilt Trip

In the dew of the morning and in the sun of the evening,
Sweet thoughts light me up, good feelings excite me,

…And then I look into the mirror, gaze deep into it,
Where I went, what I did, is beyond the reflection of time.

No shadow, no bones, no kill, no ease,
Hatred widespread, please restore peace!

Concussion of guiltiness, thickening, polluting, harvesting fear,
No mortal can live in the likeliness of this Armageddon ever.

The resolve is strengthening, far more,
Let there be peace…peace evermore….

Tuesday 6 March, 2007

A star needs its light....tonight

One-by-one the stars dive down tonight,
Hoping tomorrow brings back their only source of light,
Their Angel with a halo soo bright,
Sadly the halo was all soo... hollow tonight.

Questions??

Coming back from an MBA interview, stressed out mentally (naturally my body followed physically too)...with all kinds of questions thrown at me...the why and hows, where and whens, I sat down to think what it was all about.. (worthless post-analysis? Crying over spilt milk?)

I feel as though the interviewers are still trying to(eternally) find the answers to the questions of their lives and by targeting those questions at me, they were searching for their answers in mine…so bro, if I had just spoken their mind, then I would have got through the interview!

Why is everyone so full of questions? A question posed to a question, quite contradictory huh? (Read on... my prose is quite replete with conflicts :))

Anyway, while some souls scurry around to find the answers, the clever ones sit back for the scurrers to find the answers, so that they can like vultures swoop down and plagiarize the thoughts of the scurrers as their own.

From a toddler incapable of speaking, pointing to objects (trying to ask, ‘what is that?’) to a dying man pointing upwards (trying to ask, ‘why me?’), everyone seems to be in this never-ending queue for asking. Do we need answers for everything? Sometimes, isn’t it a pleasant tingling feeling to just hold back and resist the itch of asking a question, sort of allowing the sensation to pass through..and again...

After reading this, if you have any questions, then.... please don’t ask them to me :).

Go-Goa-Going-Goa-Gone...


Thursday 22 February, 2007

A Poor Poet's Tragedy!

Oh Poor man, when u have no dime,
Nor 've any nickel,
Then to sell your poems & to make them shine,
Why are u so fickle?!

Sometimes I wonder...

Sometimes I Wonder,
Should we feel more afraid of the approaching night or the impending dawn?

Sometimes I Wonder,
If its just a moment and shall pass soon, then why did it occur at all?

Sometimes I Wonder,
Why are we so facilitationg towards others?...is it bcoz we have always been taught to adjust?

Sometimes I Wonder,
If there is life after death then why is everyone so afraid of death??

Sometimes I Wonder,
Why are we so blissfully ignorant?....is it bcoz of smug satisfaction or plain overconfidence?

But mostly i wonder,
Why i keep wondering over these pointless wonders..:)