You became love, tear and blood,
They ended in nothing,
Life rejected and dismissed your dreams because
it didn't see a purpose in your self.
The summer seeps into your skin
and you just stop feeling the pain,
and all aspirations for happiness,
You just want it to be an intercity train,
running on the hot tracks ,
carrying your blank mind and empty heart,
thought it not really is a step short to salvation.
Flow and float,
don't resent or struggle,
The saint had said, may be you have reached close,
You reflect, your inside barren of all seeds,
Time becomes your applecart,
carrying you on a lonely road, it's speed moderate,
Shall you reach a bifurcation?
You wonder,
where you will see things moving on a different plane?
The loo that enters your body, the oppressive heat,
also speaks nothing.
Hundreds and thousands did it,
have done it,
it's the beaten path,
If you went beyond, you are
nothing but a Queer,
refusing to give up on the truth,which is a lie
for the world,
Rot alone, go round and round in your self-made hole,
The world is happy with itself,
and you are the one
who rots alone,because you dare to think,
you stay in the crowd, yet refuse to follow the herd.
You, a prisoner in a gaol of your own making,
Still your eyes are red with your beliefs,
Because you crossed the line,
Dared to think out of the box,
Don't you know, the box is people,
it is communion, it's life,
But a Queer will remain the same,
because the answer to his or her questions are different,
are their own and weird,
They make holes in the door and try to slither out,
to see light, to see love,
So, go, and sit in your teary hole, alone and helpless.
There are days, hours and moments,
despite every thing being done,
You begin to wonder
why HE alighted you here,
definitely not to feel empty and alone,
Even the wings of poesy refuge to open their wings,
As if some evil God has cursed them to remain stuck
with the glue of poison or nectar
You remain alive to everything and everyone around you,
but nothing, no seed sprouts inside,
no song unfolds to lift you
from this earth to the zenith
You know the truth faintly
That something dead is still breathing noisily within you,
and there will be no escape from it till
you hit the pyre and turn into ashes,
The wound keeps bleeding inside
only the skin has dried up, healed
and the scar has begun to faint.
Some beloved old philosopher told that day,
nonchalantly ,
that if you have risen above your mind, heart
and have reached the abode of love,
it is yours forever,
the wicked world not withstanding.
You are a white lotus that lust cannot soil,
So, live the tears, and live each day,
Let Yamuna's dark waters flow past you,
Let the dead leaves fly here and there,they will
sing for you, a song
only you can here, listen to it keen,
Smile through the cruel day,
And live,
As if nothing has happened.
The main door was ajar. He came out of the blue and stood in front of the aquarium. His face lit up looking at the fish swimming and wriggling in water. He stood there as if it was his own house and everything in it belonged to him. Sush had noticed the boy coming. She and her hubby were sitting and chatting in the living room. She looked at the boy and wondered who he was. May be a boy from the neighbouring house, she thought.
-What's your name? Who are you? She asked.
The boy didn't answer. He just kept looking at the fish swimming in the water and kept smiling and dancing lightly.
It was obvious that he was enjoying looking at the floating colourful fish.
What an arrogant boy...!Sush thought.
Are, what's you name? she repeated her query.
"Mew" The boy made a sound.
Sush was puzzled at the boy's behaviour. By that time her husband also come out to the dining space.
She told,look at this boy, he just came from nowhere and not even telling his name.
"Boy, who are you? Where do you stay?" Her husband asked.
The boy looked at both of them and stood calmly , like that.
Then he produced the same sound-"Mew'
Are, what a wicked boy!Sush looked at her husband in wonder.
"Go home boy."
Sush's husband commanded.
It had no effect on the boy. He kept smiling, turning and twisting his body and uttered one more time, 'mew'
Both of them were exasperated by now, with this unwanted visitor who kept mewing at each of their questions.
Her husband told,"I am going to shut you up in the bath room unless you leave immediately. The boy still stood there rooted without buzzing, and with an annoyingly happy expression. He was definitely infinitely naughty.
Sush's husband caught hold of the boy by his arm and took him to the bath room and closed the door for a minute, and when he checked after the minute passed, the boy was standing quietly there. There was no sign of fear on his face, but the smile was gone. He could not understand what to do. So, he just took him by hand softly and let him out of their house.
That afternoon when standing outside their house, Sush saw a neighbour.
As her mind was occupied with the thought of the strange boy who had entered into their house uninvited, she couldn't help asking her about him.
"Oh that boy? Poor boy, he can't speak.He has speech impairment.
Sush was speechless.
She just stood their open- mouthed.
It had never occurred to her that there could be such a boy and such a situation.If only she had come to know...
She remembered the boy's shining face, an speech-impaired boy, enjoying the sight of fish floating in the pond.
She stood there feeling terribly guilty.
Why the afternoons
seem so weird, when the sun
shines brightly on the seedy slums
and the boat sits alone at
one end of the simmering river.
It's a bridge, yes,
the rattle coveys.
You remember your father,
white skinned,bald and almost beautiful,
looking at the bald pate of the afternoon man sitting
in front of you.
Is she married, or an widow,
the woman sitting next to you
you query yourself,
there are no tale-tell signs,
but a very pretty smile plays on the dark face.
Why not leave the seat for somebody
and take the beating wind on your face,
The train stops only for one minute here,
You would have to get down quick
with the baggage of a very uncomfortable
loneliness on your back,
The tenderness is starting to slip away
and indifference is almost threatening,
How long can you cling to love,
When you know that you became a victim of
someone's mad experiment
and some dazzling truths hurt too much
and they hurts more,
because you know, you had loved.
Dissection notwithstanding,
you try to embrace existence,
with only a heart
and a pair of sandals that
carry you to nothingness
and a cluster of thoughts you never desired
to have, because you know
how it is, to become a saint
and shun happiness.
I lived in a small town and worked. A small town has what we call, personal bonding. People seem to care. Small things really make you happy and keep you contented. We tend to get habituated to our comfort zone, and don't want to change it. But once you try to change it, initially you are very uncomfortable because work ethics varies from place to place. What is right for a small town may not be good for a big place and a big set up. Your value system has to be thrown to the wind and you will have to adopt to the new work culture. Every moment your conscience will bite you. And people are a bit impersonal. It means that after the working hours,it's just their family or new ventures and efforts for more money. You tend to feel that you are in a wonderland where you are gradually getting destroyed and a new being is trying hard to emerge and adapt to the change.There is a constant struggle between the old and the new and you clutch at anything to strike a balance
But it doesn't mean everything in today's big world is bad and to be criticized and castigated. People are not always self-centred or evil. Rather you find that in their impersonal attitude and indifference,there is a kind of restlessness to achieve something, may it be good or bad. It's really amazing that there is no mental barrier. In such set-ups, when you step in for the first time, you are welcomed with open arms and you are just sucked into the geniality and helping attitude. Even if it happens on the surface level, without any sentiment, or emotion,and it has it's hiccups,it'd good.
One does feel lonely inside and outside, when there are no trusted people to share your innermost thoughts, your ecstasy or pain, and your physical world is devoid of many people,and your subconscious mind yearns for a soul mate, you do feel lonely. But the best part is you come from a small place with a lot of love in you. And if you are sprinkling just a little of it at every chance , every day, it works out for you.Love never fails. Ego fails, overconfidence fails, selfishness fails, but love never fails because it is its own reward, and it may take time, it can move hearts and change worlds. So, let's celebrate life, and celebrate 'GIVING LOVE'. Life is so unpredictable, we don't know how many days we have got on earth. So, let's utilize this gift. We may forget, we may falter, but let's remind ourselves again and again that we are God's children. We can make the world or our worlds a better place.
My UPS croons,
because of low power,
I have to call upon my muse at this hour of the night,
when the world is sleeping,
because once it's morning, you have to jump into other
roles and other dimensions
that you call life.You have to enter
the arena where showing your real face will mean
your being castigated as less human,
so the struggle will have to go on,
and one day you would have learnt to love people
beyond the three lines of patience.
You must have met now the scary silence
of the hot afternoons when you are alone
among a bunch of people who will seem
very alive, and you will tenderly try
to draw manna from it.
But you know,Despite the crowd,despite the surface happiness,
you are bitterly and heart-breakingly alone,
You have lost your soul to the void,
despite your refusal and fake smiles.
The afternoon was too oppressive
to loudly proclaim that summer had arrived
and you will sizzle and singe
for the next indefinite number of months
that were ahead.
The vender's selling sweet curds and cold drinks,
screaming in a monotonous, drab,
and routine voice not withstanding,
you felt like jumping into the canals that
now looked like poodles.
The buffaloes had already started out on
their pleasurable pass time,each
one, occupying its place in the drying ponds.
The trees had just started to dry up, but
the hills already looked feverish,with more of their bones
and little body, the loneliness of the afternoon
was unrecognizable
yet it gnawed at something inside you,constantly,
which you couldn't put into words.
You sat listlessly like an orphan
forsaken by the world, in the crowd of people,
and remained dead, even after
smiling at a standing passenger,
sharing a newspaper, wondering at the
beauty of a young girl sitting in front of you,
and at last, getting down,
after offering your seat to a hapless boy man
standing by and dozing,
who thanked you with obligation written
large on his face.
You got down and entered the drama outside
with vigour and agility which nobody can
mistake for anything,
Loneliness still sat on your back
like the ghost, who told stories to the King and
every time flew back to its tree thwarting the Kings logic,
It never left your side like a faithful companion
and never will.
It is not that I worship Sobha Dey, but I like the way she has lived life on her own terms, and beyond sixty, she is an immensely beautiful woman with almost half a dozen of her own children and quite a number of books. She has become what she has wanted to, and her main support has been her wonderful and very supportive husband.It is also not that she writes high quality literature, but she has her own genre and a maddening number of readers. It will be tremendous injustice to compare her with philosopher writers like Arun Joshi or the very frank and natural genius Juhmpa Lahiri.What I like about her is her level of confidence and a die hard attitude. She writes what she believes in,nevertheless , with a little spice.All the intellectuals just remind us that life has too many aspects and we just waste it indulging in petty things. There is immense love to be shared with the earth and its inhabitants we meet throughout journey. The consciousness of all the writes shows us the sides of our life we never see, and die like frogs in a well. Life is a huge experience. We do make mistakes, but the greatest mistake is not rectifying it. Writers have a very separate being inside them, they show ourselves the way we are, and the way we never learnt to grow. The present generation is losing touch with books or just reads junk to kill time and learns to make a few more mistakes. To choose the good from the bad, we will have to go deep inside ourselves, find out who we are, and then move ahead. In the process we do become terribly selfish and hurt people and bring disgrace to human goodness. To flow in the direction of the current is too easy. But that's just a life without any growth, it's just a way of escaping what could have been achieved. Changes in the world have been possible through only those people who have refused to move with the current, have refused to agree with the world, have resented and have given to the world something new. Or. it's just a life. Albeit, there is pain, loneliness, but there has been changes. The civilization must break old rules and march forward. Or it's just a life, a safe, comfortable life, but a dead life.
