My reverberating heart

It still overpowers me
That pulsating memory of
The strumming of your guitar
A beat so powerful 
An echo bizarre 
That swells up and rises from
Deep somewhere within 
My reverberating heart

Churning

Moment after moment

turn after turn

through windy day

and dry

through low tide 

and high

through raging winds

and a sigh

round and round

i churn

i churn

Churning

Moment after moment

turn after turn

through windy day

and dry

through low tide 

and high

through raging winds

and a sigh

round and round

i churn

i churn

Churning

Moment after moment

turn after turn

through rainy day

and dry

through tides low

and high

through raging winds

and a sigh

round and round

I churn

I churn

ek muththi raakh ki

मेरी 
आँखें बंद हैं
पलकें नम हैं
जुबां थकी है
होंठ सुर्ख हैं 
हाथ बंधे हैं
कदम रुके हैं 
सांस थमी है...


और तुम्हारे पास 
एक मुठ्ठी मेरी राख की....


* My...
eyes are shut
lashes are damp
tongue is tired
lips are dried
hands are tied
feet are rested
breath has stopped...


And you hold
A fistful of the dust that was me.

Sab Mithya Hai

सब मिथ्या - यह यादें यहीं की रह जाती हैं;
यह लोग और इनके साथ हमारे झगडे  
यहीं रह जाते हैं
यह कपरे यहीं जल जाते हैं'
यह पैसा सिर्फ यहीं खर्च होता है
यह चीज़ें यहीं धूल खाती रह जाती हैं


फिर क्यूँ इनके पीछे हम भागे चले जाते हैं 
क्यूँ हर इक पल को सुकून से नहीं सजाते हैं
क्यूँ भूल जाते हैं समय के फेर से
हम एक दिन यहाँ से चले जाते हैं
क्यूँ भूल जाते हैं सब यहीं रह जाता है
सब पीछे छूट जाता है
सब हाथ से निकल जाता है
क्यूँ याद नहीं रहता ये
क्यूँ यह व्यथा है?
सब मिथ्या है, सब मिथ्या है, सब मिथ्या है




* It's all in vain - these memories, they stay right here;
these people and our issues with them stay right here 
these clothes, burn right here; 
this money, can only be spent here; 
these possessions, gather dust right here; 


then why do we chase these? 
why don't we decorate each moment with peace? 
why do we forget that due to time's movement we leave this plane one day? 
why do we forget it all stays right here, 
it all gets left behind, 
it all slips out our fingers? 
why do we forget? 
why this agony, this pain? 
It's all in vain, it's all in vain, it's ALL in vain.

Amazing Grace

No greater, more loving grace, 
than walking on the beach, 
waves rushing at my feet, 
raindrops floating to my upturned face; 
a rainbow arching out to my left, 
the sun rising on the right, 
rays breaking through dark clouds 
and spreading glorious light.

Do I...?

A colon and a closing parentheses,

a LOLZ and a ROTFLMHO,

New masks that we've learnt to use

Different, yet easy to put on...

Emoticons, abb., status mesages

That hide the tumult within

that tide over the moment till its gone

That conceal or camouflage

love, anger, disdain

and maybe even the person I really am.

Do I really want this persona?

Do I really want this facade?

Or do I want you to know me as I am?

And do you?

...

Is this ennui I feel
or detachment?
Oh! for the ability to discern...


I smile and charm
Even as I watch myself - 
Sometimes in quiet wonder,
At others with growing disquiet - 


That itself enchants me enough.

Now

The butterfly of happiness
alights on our shoulder
For just a split second...
Why then, can we not
Savor that moment
Instead of worrying that it
Will fly away soon?
Why must we live
in anticipation of a moment
That has not yet come
Or in a moment 
That will be gone?
Wouldn't it be beautiful
if we live the moment that's Now?
What a calm soul
that enjoys the butterfly
perched on the shoulder, right Now...


~Undated, written WAY bac when...

Flown...

It's all in the past
We couldn't make it last
No matter how much we loved,
No matter how hard...
Love came into our lives,
Touched us, whispered in our ears,
danced around,
Brought a twinkle to our eyes
for many-a day
And a dream to our souls
many-a night
....and then...
Love flew away.

~Undated, from WAY back when

Baffled...

There's one part of my heart that doesn't want to let you go,
That part of me doesn't want me to give up,
Never mind your silence, the no-response.
That part of me remembers the good times, the smiles,
the laughter, the joy, the good times spent together.
That part of me cares...and knows you care too,
You're just going through whatever you're going through
And when you're through with that, 
We'll be back to sharing our joys, our sorrows, 
our tears and our moments of fun.
But there's another part of my heart that whispers,
"It's time to move on, the friend you so long for,
their part in your life is done."


I'm baffled - which part of my treacherous heart
is echoing back what the Universe is telling me,
I'm stupefied - which part of my heart do I pay heed to?
Do I hold on to you or do I alter my promise, give up on you and let you go?

WHY?

What is it that drives people to do things that they normally wouldn’t or even those that they know are not acceptable in the society that we live in – not because it’s good or bad, but because it is something not expected of us as human beings – those “exalted” living beings at the top of the food chain?

Why do men rape women? Why do they beat women up? Why do women in a fit of anger cut off their husband’s genitals?  Why do women kill their men? Why do mothers kill their children in their infancy? Why do men kill their daughters even before they’re born? Why do people stone perpetrators to death?

What is this urge that takes over human beings and causes us to behave in a most irrational, obsessive way? Why can a kleptomaniac not resist the urge to steal? Why does the need become a rising, screaming crescendo till the deed is done and only then can the kleptomaniac heave a sigh of relief? Why does a wife-beater not stop till he has drawn blood? Why does a rapist not stop till the woman is near death? Why do the pelting stones not stop till the perpetrator IS dead? 

I’m trying to wrap my head around this. All I know is that if the frontal lobe of the brain has received an injury and been damaged, that’s when we are not able to resist impulses or control urges.

Is that enough to excuse recurrent kleptomania, ignore domestic/child abuse, even justify an act as heinous as rape?

Rain

I stood there in the falling rain,
Watching the swaying trees,
Listening to thunder roll,
Drinking in the fragrance that arose
from the freshly drenched earth,
And all I could think of, was
Two lovers rushing at each other,
Distance separating them no more,
In each other's arms,
Embracing each other fiercely,
Now shaking with tears of joy,
Now doubling up in mirth...
As lightning clapped and thunder sang,
As the breeze twirled and the trees danced,
What I felt in the presence of this cosmic love,
Was peace, a soothed soul, calm.
A smile descended on me
I raised my arms, arched my body
Pirouetted and with pure unbridled joy, pranced

My Awesome Life

I listen and I let it be

I smile and stay me
I cook and let the fragrance tease
I surrender my ego and appease
I ask for forgiveness when I've been a pain
I run into the wind and let it caress my face
I jump, I prance, I dance in the rain
I tap my feet to an awesome beat
I start painting which, in a day, I complete
I shoot touching moments - a toothless smile
a gurgling baby, a pretty blossom...
These are only some things I do
To keep my life happy, fulfilled, awesome.

To grieve or not to grieve...

So, Sathya Sai Baba passed away on Sunday. And the media turned this moment of stunned world grief into a bloody circus of which celebrity is a greater devotee and who's crying how much (or not at all) and the loudest. Most of us just voyeuristically watched.

I can't get over that instead of getting antim darshan of Baba, I had to repeatedly watch Sachin crying. A) Because he's Sachin, doesn't allow you to invade his grief with your nonsense of "ab aap dekh rahey hain Sachin ki aankhon se chalaktey aansoo". Clowns, let the man cry in peace. He's just another devotee there like anyone else. B) Because he's Sachin, it doesn't allow you to rob me of Baba's antim darshan. I've got the TV on to see the last of Baba as much a I can, not Sachin and his wife and all the sundry men who wanted to pat Sachin just so they could get on bloody TV.

What is our fascination with celebrities that they shed a tear and it becomes a media tsunami? Whether it's Sachin crying in front of Baba's body or it's Bipasha-John's break-up, whether I care or not, the media reports. In as sensational a voice as they can manage, they report. Never mind the thousands of rapes, murders, dacoities that are clamoring to be heard. Never mind the corrupt practices that rob this country of its possibility to be a Super Power. Never mind the natural disasters that are happening the world over. No, we MUST watch a celebrity grieve.

Never mind that they don't want us to watch it. The question that demands an answer: To grieve or not to grieve.

Are We for Real?

'Man gets just 2 yrs for abusing daughter'

whispered a sub-headline apologetically on page 7 of today's leading daily (News). And then it went on to rant about archaic laws and such like.

I'm reading the article and all I am present to is rising bile and a sickly empty feeling in the pit of my stomach - a father does this to his child so he can (in my understanding and how the situation occurs for me) get back at his wife for moving out?!? Bloody hell, whatever the reasons might be, rape, even if digital, of your own begotten child? Unfathomable! There's a limit to perversion, isn't there?

Now before you raise your eyebrow in disbelief and ask me, 'have you never heard of incest?" I have. My childhood friend's younger cousin was forced into sexual intercourse with her real brother from a time she didn't understand that this was not normal. For 10 long years she took it before education made her realize it wasn't. This, while they all lived in a joint family!

And the law takes invasion of a woman's privacy so lightly, it's unbelievable. A man rapes a 3 month old, 83 year old, 21 year old, fuck, any-year old woman and he gets 7 years? How about the capital punishment? WAKE UP people, change the damn law.

The sad truth about incest - you won't find statistics. I did a google search (statistics: incest in India) and it yielded about 3,460,000 results in 0.18 seconds...and the latest statistics were as old as 2009 - that too indirectly in this article. I remember reading the book Bitter Chocolate when I was still in my teens and being so shaken by it that I couldn't sleep for weeks - I would feel guilty about taking my loving and protected childhood for granted and cry so much in pain for those who had been or were still being subjected to incest!

And then came another shocker. Please read this unbelievable page.

I'm still stunned. What are your thoughts?

You and I...The Difference!

There's a stillness in my heart.

And yet freely I breathe.

You see me as my skin

Little do you know,

There's so much more within

All the polish that you feign

All the education, upbringing,

Everything, EVERYTHING in vain!

And while you toss and turn,

Trying to get peaceful sleep,

Nothing you say or how you behave

Can take away my laughter, my joy,

My zest for life, my self-belief.

Things I learnt this morning...

I go to a goshala close to my house for getting milk every morning, and there's something or the other that grabs my attention everyday.

So this morning wasn't any different.

As I turned from our lane to get on to an arterial road to get to the goshala, there stood smack-bang in the centre of the road a Honda Accord and 2 men yakking with the doors open! When I honked, trying to squeeze my car in from the side, one of the men steps nearly in front of my car, peeks inside, gives me a lewd smile and steps back. I'd reached about 20 metres ahead by this time, and stopped soon as I realized what he was up to. Soon as I stopped and rolled down my window, the man in the driver's seat said something, the other two jumped into the car, speed-reversed the car and went the other way.

Then, as I reached Jantar Mantar to stand by Anna Hazare, dressed in my jeans and a tee, I got another lewd comment from a man on the road. This time I really lost it and let forth a volley of choice abuses that left the man stunned - I could see it on his face.

What I learned: In our country, doesn't matter if you're an educated man, a semi-literate one or an illiterate bum; doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is - if you see a woman, no matter how she's dressed, you will at some point or the other in your life (and for some FAR more frequent that that) disrespect a woman. And why? Because that's what you learned from the men you saw around you growing up.

What I'm telling you: First - DON'T underestimate women, especially in this day and age. You misbehave and we'll sock one or two to you.

More importantly, If YOU don't stop now, that's precisely what you'll be passing on the the generations of boys following you - and then your footsteps - in the world.