Tum mere paas hote ho goya...

I opened my eyes to annoying brightness. 

'Where are we going', she asked. 

I didn't know. Somewhere good, I hope. Why are you here?

'Why? Would you rather I was not?' 

The desert raced past the windows. I could see her reflection imposed on the scenery. A reflection of my mind. 

'It has been a while', she smiled.

I wondered about the last time we met. There was no day that came up in my thoughts. There was no word I remembered having spoken. Yet, there was her face. Popping up like warts across the skin of my memories. 

Why are you here? 

'I was bored. I needed someone to talk to. Did you miss me?'

Time casts a shadow upon memories. A glance, a second, could expand to occupy hours of your dreams. 

'I was gone a long time, wasn't I? Did you miss me?' 

The rain started as suddenly as the conversation. Tiny little drops of memories that teetered on the edge of time. And then, without a thought, fell. To rise up again, some other time. 

The darkness of the room was so different from the light I had dreamed through. I could still hear her smiling. 

'Did you miss me?' 

You're still here, aren't you? 


Tum mere paas hote ho goya 
Jab koi dusra nahi hota 

You are by my side 
When no one else is

REM Sleep

The quietness of dawn is creeping upon me. There is no sound, but I can feel it. In the coldness that covers the floor. The creaks and snores of bodies in the other room. The sound of the dripping tap, one that was to be fixed last week, causes a mild irritation. I still have to get used to it. As the words form on this blank page, coded by words themselves, I wonder if I am awake or asleep.

Life seems to be on autopilot. I find myself in an open cubicle during daytime. Typing out documents, filled with copy that is interesting and uninteresting alternatively. I talk, mumble, and sometimes reply to others. All the time, my mind wandering to a place I don't recognise. I see that place occasionally, in my dreams. Quiet, dark and cold like this moment.

Fear is the immediate emotion. Next comes wonder. Slowly, the mind wakes up to the fact that the only danger is itself. No being can kill the mind, except the lack of escape from such a dark place. A place so dark that the mind loses its ability to imagine light. You slowly give in to the darkness and the mind...goes blank.

Peace comes at a heavy cost. You sleep. Your body - paralysed. But your eyes move. Rapid eye movement, they call it. Your brain is functioning. It discovers new worlds. Light, Soft, sweet, warm light. It floats through it. The prisms of brightness radiating through the mind.

Strange words to type in the night. I can feel the cold creep back to me. I can hear the snores back again, through the darkness. I look up and find it impossible to make out the features of the room. It is pitch black again.

Am I awake, or am I asleep? 

The Attack of the Cells

Strangely, it takes time to settle in. You hear your  speak the words, but they flow over you. The dab of the needle is dulled by the anaesthetic, till the moment it wears off. Then you feel the prick, the cold steel prodding its way through your veins.

The first thing that hits you is fear. What now? How do you handle this? Where do you go? Something in your life changes forever. You did not expect this. You cannot handle this. You look at your mom, who is suffering from it. She smiles weakly, and you smile back. What do you tell her? What can you tell her? The numbness seeps in. The brave facade you put up in front of already mourning relatives and friends is not because you are brave, but because you are numb. You are still registering the shock of the news. 

Then come the doctor visits. Each trip to the hospital is a visit to purgatory. There are others. There are worse. If you thought you were in a spot, you see others. They fill the footpaths, crowd the waiting room, sleep on benches and wait for hours to get the doctor to see them. The hospital might be the purgatory that Dante visited. More specifically, the first circle of hell; limbo. 

Mom was fine till the first chemo. She would have been fine even after it. It was us. We were not prepared. We never quite grasped the intensity of the shock. We were still paddling in high water, when the chemo hit us. Mom could not handle it. And we watched her fall, like collateral damage between two rioting factions. It was painful, on so many levels. 

Yet, she fought. With a braveness I did not know existed within her. Somehow, the disease has taught me more about my parents than 27 years of life. I learned that my mother more than anything else. I learnt that there are love stories beyond the ones that movies or novels can create. I learnt that I can break down any moment, anywhere. I learnt that you can never have too much help. 

And this is just the first battle with the dreaded disease - cancer. The war is still on. 

Fighting Emptiness

Emptiness can be a difficult construct to get used to. It requires patience. An ability to sort out necessary thoughts from unnecessary ones is mandatory. Also, the ability to ignore the few unnecessary thoughts that peter into the consciousness can be helpful. I realise this is not everyone's cup of tea. The mind can be a dangerous, but unavoidable companion in those quiet moments. It is the birthplace of all illusions that will drive you crazy. Little niggles will expand into unbearable pain. The searing cut knifing through your thoughts, imploring you to find some placebo to dull your senses. Find something to delay time, or perhaps, fast forward it to the future. It will force you to find a way to pass time in the most boring manner. There will be anger. There will be a sense of frustration. A helplessness that will threaten to destroy everything you seek to protect. You have to keep it under a leash. It is difficult. Ever try to keep a tornado under a leash? It is impossible.

You have to fight. You have to rein your mind back. Again and again. From thoughts running wild, and create a cohesive idea. The idea is often dull, flickering behind curtains of foggy words and images. It threatens to vanish before you can capture it in your mind's eye. You stay on it. You draw back the cobwebs of delusions. You crowd out the noise. You need to fill the emptiness with silence. Easier said than done. Vagueness will cloud your senses. Fight against it. Focus. And soon, it will emerge. An idea, pure, clear and beautiful. You shape it, create it and put it on a pedestal for all to see.

Suddenly, in a moment, as unexpectedly as it arrived, it shall vanish. You are suddenly used to the emptiness. 

Dreams: A World Untraveled Unseen

The silence of rippling curtains at an open window
Laughter on hidden faces, dreams upon closed eyelids
Dreams flitting in and out
Of quiet noisy minds that drift to and fro
from the vacant blankness of pitter patter nights
Dreams nestled within warm rugs of cotton,softly rustling in the colder dark
Dreams poor, rich, colored, worded, manufactured within crowded psyches
Now asleep, now awake;
Twinkling dreams, loud dreams, quiet and cold and warm and round
Shaped by the unconscious subconscious
Dreams kind and unkind, played in the theater of the mind
Carpeted by fabrics unfelt by touch, glided upon, sight unseen
A world hidden within a dream
Confined spaces, shrinking still,then expanding to hold universes within
The travel of ages defined in a dream.
Faces forgotten, or forgetting, voices unknown, now failing,
Flitting in and out intangentially, without chronology
Through timeless sleep
The terrors now hidden brought to life,
Breathing, moving, knife through the windless domains of a sleeping life;
Time lost in space, memories without a trace,
Vanish at the sight of morning's first rays;
And suddenly a universe is lost, never to find,
Exiled to the deepest recesses of my mind;
I find them, I lose them.
They find me, they shape me.
Dreams. 

The Last Walk of Death

 He walked through the corridor. Pristine white, and synthetically clean like a hospital. His eyes had grown bored of the white gleam after centuries and centuries of prowling. Immortality could be exhausting. The exhaustion was not that of a tiresome day of work, but one that tides, mountains and rivers of the world shared with him. He did not remember when he started, but he had gone through every street, every highway, every house that the light went into. Quietly and with an eventful finality, he approached those at the end of the light, and took them to their final destination.

He felt the air around the light. There was nothing. There never was anything. As long as he had remembered, it was quiet and clean. At the other end, as he would leave, he’d hear fading sounds of wailing, sniffles, the loud sounds of ambulances or sometimes, occasionally, a laughter. He’d keep walking with his hand on the shoulder of his passenger. Driving them towards their destination. In silence. Without a glance in their direction. This was his routine.

He could see the fading circle of the light at the end of the road. There was a silhouette emerging from the distant white shadow. Lean, weak and trembling, it continued to move in his direction.

One, he thought to himself, only one. Well, so much for the excitement.

He continued his walk. His passenger looked as though he had escaped through a war. Or not escaped, as it would be. The clothes were tattered, but they counted for little.

As he reached the frail body, the passenger looked up. With tired and frightened eyes, he said,”I am the last one. There is no one else left”.

For a moment, the angel of death paused. Then he smiled as he placed his hands on the passenger and took him to the destination. Rest in peace, he thought.

Waking Into Dreams

She stared past the grilled window,
Past endless horizons
Where the sun never sets
On dust covered tin roofs;
One strand of rebellious hair
dances in front of her eyes,
Interrupting her thoughts
Breaking dreams against reality
She pushes it behind her ears
looks at me and sighs
Before  closing her eyes
To wake again in dreams.

Farishton se safaai maante hain

Farishton se safaai maangte hai

Log sach ki gawaahi maangte hain

Apne khoon se arzaan kiye hain kalam ke karz

Ab log mujhse siyaahi maangte hain

Hum unse bhi wafaa ki aadat rakhte hain

Jo humse bewafaai maangte hain

Mohabbat kab hampe meherbaan tha

Ab to dard e dil bhi judaai maangte hain

Ranjh se yun shiddat si ho gayi hai

Ke ab dua me bhi duhaai maangte hain

Ek zindagi ke sivaa sab kucch to karz tha

Aur woh bhi yaa ilaahi maangte hain

Woh bhi ho jaata hum pe meherbaan

Ek hum hi rukhsat e maseehaii maangte hain

Dum ghut-ta tha zaahidon me

So hum mazhab se rihaaii maangte hain

Jaane log kyu maut se ghabraate hain

Hum to zindagi se rihaai maangte hain.. 

Writing a Poem

The words drop onto the book,
Embers from burnt out cigarettes,
Coal marks on white pages,
And smoke out thoughts from the mind.
Tired fans whir above
Circling out the heat in slow, creaking whispers
The thoughts keep petering out
And I blow and blow again
They spark a little,
Burn a little,
Each burn hurts a little
I fill my pen and let it drip onto the page
Another letter, another word
and slowly the poem takes shape.

My Rant Against 'Whatever'

You, apathetic ancient pronoun

Undefined, Unrefined,

Emerging from the confused vagaries of the mind,

Product of the diminished vocabularies

Produced by the creators of bowdeleries,

The dimwit’s fashion statement,

The negation of every argument,

Born of the bowels of grammatical extract,

Haven of assumed, unissued facts

I have fought and fought and fought you

With every breath,

And yet you live on,

Spiting me to death;

Abomination of language,

The key word of the teenage,

Anyhow, somehow surviving cockroach

Of the literary bile,

The word I shall forever revile,

My vicious rant shall last forever

Till you are used…

‘Whatever’…

The Poet...The Dreamer

questions (Photo credit: lovelornpoets)

The poet stood in the middle of the street
And hummed in slow tunes
His voice rising and falling
Through the dins of the  afternoon,
Even as his words trickled on
Like scattered gold dust
It created a mosaic in the underground
Where a sky rose anew
Where a sweet wind blew
It created new dreams and a new dawn
Built on the whispers of an old song
'Hear me, stay awhile', he cried
Even as passers by shrugged him off
His words were smoke
Snaking their way up to the sky
Filtering through the souls of dead people
And people that were about to die
Then he sat down and started singing
With every sound and word ringing
In his ear, drowning other sounds
Till the whole world was silent
Not the drone of cars
Not the sound of whores
Not the violent screams
Not even dead and dying dreams
It was just him
And his words
Filtered through a dreaming soul. 

Incomplete poem

Image by Vainsang via Flickr

 Memories are strange things.
They take you to places you know,
and show you different things.
Sometimes when i lie awake at night,
wondering about the course of my life,
i see my birth flash in front of me,
i see the way i died.
I remember people and faces,
some complete, some in traces
Memories which sometimes heal
At times they leave you numb
At times, they are too deep to feel
Like old long lost friends
 Meeting suddenly around the bend
With an awkward smile
Awkward unfinished conversations
That lasted a while.

The Teamaker

Cup of tea? (Photo credit: trekkyandy)

I see him everyday. He sits there brewing his tea all day, while customers flit in and out of his little store. Its a walk from my home. Right next to the railway station where crowds mill in and out of their own occupational frenzy. This little man, keeps serving hot, spicy ginger tea. Day in and Day out. His smile is infectious. He gives me a little wave when he sees me walk past his shanty. That is invite enough for a cup of tea. 

'Kaam se jaldi aa gaye?' he questions handing me my first cup 

I just nod. For someone employed in an occupation of words, speaking can become a task after a day at work. When days and hours lead to nothing, and life, somehow, feels empty. All I am looking forward to is wordless silence. 

I just hold my cutting in my hand, and the burning embers of another stick in another and stare wordlessly into space. Sometimes i wonder if he wonders about me. If he thinks i am weird and talks about me to other customers. I have known barbers share information about dandruff. Maybe, he does. But he wouldn't show. 

I watch as he pours out cup after cup from that tarnished steel kettle of his. Held by its handle, it has the mark of a thousand burns on the burner. He smiles at me as i hand over the cup. 

There are others that walk in to sit on the tired benches. Flip through the newspaper, or listen to some gossip. He smiles and joins in conversations effortlessly. Everyone talking about their problems. Things they have, things they do not. And witnessing all this, is a lowly tea maker. He does not complain. He does not whine. Just makes tea and goes on. 

He returns my change and says 'Meri bacchi kal class me first aayi'. I nod and say 'Badhiya hai. Congratulation bolna use.' He nods embarassingly. 'Bahut acchi padhti hai. Kucch banegi'. He says. 

There. Steaming with the Assamese green, boiled with the milk is hope. Dreams steamed in a cup of hope with the fumes of the future rising forever. And I can see his reason for standing in front of the burning fire. I can see the comfort for the callouses in his fingers and the burns he has suffered through. 

And i see what he has that i don't. Hope. That never ending fountain of strength. 

Creator

I walk down streets empty of voices

Where thoughts fear being trampled upon

The day slips quietly past noisy traffic

Into shady side lanes where inspiration dies

And I walk past them all

Past them towards the sun

Burning red, orange bright

Burning like my own soul’s light

Shining over a dipping horizon

Warning about the coming morn

I shall walk into that dawn tomorrow

Light up the darkness with my words

When souls shall die and voices with them

These shall light up the world

Each word a sentence

Each sentence a soul

Each soul transforming

Out of nothing

Into the whole

Into that silent dawn shall I wake

Where nothing remains and everything paused

I shall be and shall create

The word that starts it all

I am the fire

I am the fear

I am the word

I am GOD.

Wasted

Image by Laurent Lavì Lazzeresky via Flickr

Its my third shot of rum. The burn has just hit the spot. I do not usually drink after work. I do not usually drink alone in the evening. I am not Bogart. Then why am i here? At the strike of 8? I don't know. I felt like it. The waiter brings me another plate of groundnuts. I am getting late. But I can’t help it. I am in no hurry to get home. Sometimes you just want time to slow down and let you pause at the doorstep. Everything within this small, tiny room is smoky, dull, lazed and in limbo from the rest of the world.

The fan creaks to slow pauses. The street mellows down. The bus carries me and a dozen sleepwalking passengers to their destinations. I dream of streets empty of people, and me running through the wind. But I digress. I am just lost. I have friends that are getting married. I have friends who know what they want in life. And then there’s me. Lost, alone and absolutely confused. The inebriated condition makes no difference to my ability to judge life. Au contraire, it helps by clearing my mind. But what do I know? I am a confused, half educated drunk.

My stick lands with a fizz in the gutter water. I can still smell the last wisps of the smoke passing. I have a job. I have enough money in the bank. I have a family that loves me, friends who won’t kick my ass. But there is still something I lack. Something that I can’t find. It feels like a vaccum within me and I can’t fix it.

I wake up and go to work everyday. I try to smile and laugh through the day and get back home. Sometimes through the traffic I sleep. Sometimes I sleepwalk all the way back from work. The day passes through me like a daze. No, I don’t hate my job. I just don’t love it enough.

I am calling out to something somewhere that won’t return. I am hoping someone listens. I have no idea of where I am headed and how. I just know I am on the move. It is like being trapped in a mass of people headed in a direction towards something you can’t see. I am just moving. I want to stop, but I can’t. So I light another one and sing along with the radio

Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahi

Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin zindagi to nahi.

My Muse

She did not see me. I wish she did. But it made no difference. Things would still have gone on in the same way.  I would not wish it any other way. I turned again to glance at her face through the wafting cigarette smoke. Calm, smiling and playful like a child. There was something about her in that bustling street that stood out. Her hands kept returning to that pooch dawdling by her side. I couldn’t help but smile at that innocence.

The tapri was busy with people coming and going. Everyone warming their wet noses with the steam from the ginger tea. Others like me savoring the silent smoke that wafted beside. I had just returned from a wet ride through the streets. My head was aching and my nose running. Then I spotted this stream of sunlight in the middle of the street.

She was kneeling down on the street playing with her dog. At least, I thought it was her dog. The pooch was just as happy as she was. They were a pretty sight in the corner of a street with rotten garbage smelling close by. Her face was not exceptionally beautiful. Nor was I in one of my poetic moods. In fact, I had lost that a long time ago. It is hard to come by good poetry without a muse. Then I heard this laughter. Pilfering through the horns and screeching hawkers, negotiating traffic and skipping puddles formed on sticky residue on sidewalks. It touched my ears, and I saw her.

No this is not love, I am too logical for that. This was not a crush. I never fall for that. This was something else. Something that called to me within. I stared and stared till my tea went cold and the ashes fell from my fingers. Then I saw her turn. I froze, half hoping she did not see me, half wishing she did. But she stood up straight and looked past me. Or so I thought. Her cane made a splotch on the puddle in front and the dog walked away as she held out her hand to a friend.

For nature to rob such a vision of sight. Oh does nature treasure its beauties with wrath. I wondered if she knew her own face. If she ever sought to see. But there was she, my muse walking, seeing with her fingers what I would never see. Evry skin traced, every raindrop filtered through those fingertips and emotions translated through handshakes. And there I was inane to every change in nature, cocooned in my own version of reality. While my muse sent me a message through her laughter. 

Bas yahi soch kar tujhse mohabbat karta hu main Faraz
Mera to koi nahi par tera to koi ho....

Pakda pakdi

Image by Julien Lagarde via Flickr

The night waited stilly on me. It was an old habit of an old friend. I watched the mail trains speed past breathlessly across the tracks. The digital indicator ticked slowly second by painful second. I sucked on the last embers of my smoke stick and waited. My mind had not yet awoken, my heart was not yet asleep.

It was an old habit which had lost touch with me. These late night walks were my source of mental exercise. My thoughts just can’t refuse at the sight of an empty street. They start running at breakneck speed, but in a more clear and organized way. Like runners In a parade. I sat there watching trains run across parallel tracks snaking into the dark neverland. The station was dotted by a couple of beggars, who had dragged their tatters over their head to fight the night cold. The only other noise which punctured the chilling air was the squeals of a couple of kids running around the platform.  These little tykes ran around the cement seats making noises enough to make the sleeping constable grumble. I smiled. There is something liberating about childhood.

One of the kids walked up to me and stood near my seat. I looked up from the smoke and smiled at him. He looked like he had a question to ask, but just smiled. He would have been 6-7 years old. His ragged half pant was green, but had begun to turn into an imperceptible colour. The hair was black fading to brown. He was missing two teeth in the front, and the stains of his last vada pav were still visible on them. He smiled again. ‘Kya chahiye be?’ ‘Ap yaha kya kar rae ho?’ he asked.  ‘aise hi…Tu kya kar raha hai?’ ‘hum log khel rahe hain’ By now the remaining kids had gathered round.  They were playing pakda pakdi. I remembered the last time I had played the game. I was 10 and the smallest kid in the building. I never managed to catch anyone, so I gave up on playing.

I trundled out of the station by 1. The kids were running around on full steam. They didn’t look like they sepnt a day on 3 vada paavs and a cutting. They were smiling, laughing, cursing. I looked at them living their childhood. Free. Free from studies and tuitions. Free from school. Free from thoughts about a career. Free from parents looking to mould them into future investments. Free from fear. But then I looked at them again. Perhaps, this is the only freedom they have. As children. Soon they too will grow up. And the chains will rattle again. life will again chase them, hunt them when thy hide and vanish when they look for it.... Pakda pakdi

Leaving Memories..

Image via Wikipedia

I’ll remember you

When someone talks too loud,

When one person speaks enough for a crowd,

When people enter the room like a storm,

When insanity becomes the norm,

When I hear the hauntingly annoying tune of a song,

When meaningless conversations run for too long,

When I hear another one of those weird sneezes,

That make me sit up and go ‘Jesus’!

I’ll remember you;

I’ll remember you

For all the silly stupid, nonsensical things that you do,

Because you truly were off your jack,

You were the crackhead who was not on crack,

But that is what made you so cool,

Although you behave like a fool,

I’ll remember you;

And this is exactly why,

Although I may fail

I promise to try,

And remember you.

I see life

Image by may the circle remain unbroken via Flickr

I see life
Thirsting, panting, crying
I see life
Waiting, wanting, buying;
I see life
Breathing, cursing, ranting
I see life
Seething, raging, recanting
I see life
preaching, teaching, writing
I see life
hurting, stealing, fighting
And all through this myriad world
I see life
Living and Dying.

words

White paper with Blue ink
Black in some places, I think.
scribbled words in a straight line
A thought that is solely mine.

formless thoughts without a shape
Written neatly on a foolscap
Away from margins, within the line
The words shape up just fine.

Seamless thoughts unknowingly altered
Grammar and English diction faltered
Sentences ended eternally with a dot.
Was this what i had thought?

words,
They have an identity of their own,
You only read what is shown.
You'll never be able to read my mind,
Unless,you see the world these words hide behind.