SUMMER CALL

In a summer afternoon
When a song of the old days playing somewhere
Fell on the ear,
The world, words and the people changed,
The senses melted into a void
Heart drawn into a strange nothingness
As if the last birth came alive
through obscure voices murmuring around.

Amidst the long silence of
Closed windows
And sleeping souls,
While the sun outside
Spread its scratching passion,
They called it seemed
From a place far away
where death can only take us.

ON ATTAINING STILLNES

Some author had almost nonchalantly mentioned in the beginning of one of his stories that life is a strange humdrum affair, and appearances can be very deceptive. Human mind is capable of perception, yet that perception can be very deceptive because the mind is such a peculiar thing, it fabricates and weaves it's own illusions and disillusions.Most of the time the mind is completely incompetent in understanding other human minds and is deceived like anything by situations and appearances and more often by its own expectations. We are mostly slaves to our own expectations.

To have expectations is not wrong at all, but to simply expect is more than foolishness.Nothing is ever given to human beings on a platter. Yet,often we sit and either or lament about things. We rue that things are not happening according to our desire. Our utopia never happens yet we keep dreaming about it and get disappointed and frustrated. It is a sign of lack of evolution and growth. I am not talking about the consciousness that never expands. In this vast existence that we call universe lives are planned to be different. Every consciousness has to either very underdeveloped, developing or developed state. The existence is designed to be imperfect so that souls born into it are sent with opportunities to strive for perfection: perfection in many aspects and through many stages. Hence each soul undergoes a different set of experiences. The real gems of human kind are those, who take a hint from the existence and work on it, and turn a small small gift into a great event of their life, and make things and people happen. These people bring change in the world.

There are people whose lives are designed to be spent in pursuit of livelihood, bread and butter. The next level is for beings who, sheltered and comfortable harbour ordinary personal ambitions like the material prosperity of self and children.Those, who are able to free themselves from these shackles of petty ambitions through constant thinking, meditation and studying are able to visualize a higher perspective of life. If they are able to steady and still their wavering mind and set it free from the gross and the transient, are able to attain the stability that is required for consistent and committed effort to realize anything that is good, noble and higher. Their mind is established firmly in the consciousness, is unmoving and centred.Nothing disturbs its stillness.

THE ENIGMA OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

I once read a beautiful story of one of my most beloved Oriya fiction writers,Puspanjali Nayak, in which the hero who is a senior administrative officer, is confessing his failure as a person and a human being. He has acquired wealth, status, prestige,all the comforts of life, yet, he is terribly unhappy and passes his nights tossing in bed. His high society wife's marble white body doesn't evoke any desire in him, his children are so engrossed in their world that they have moved away from him.At the pinnacle of success,he is tormented each moment. At times, he remembers the simple village girl whom he once loved, a girl who only knew how to love with all her heart, but had no eligibility to be the wife of an administrative officer. She had tried to kill herself after he cruelly broke their engagement after being selected in the I.A.S. exam and chose to marry the aristocratic,English educated daughter of a senior administrative officer.

The story is beautifully written and the pain and agony of a so-called worldly wise man is so vividly brought out that it raises a question on the validity of the modern man's self-centred life without any love or dedication to a higher purpose in life. Man today has become an emotionless, mechanical, pervert who only moves in certain spheres of existence in the mad frenzy of achievement.What man doesn't understand is that any endeavour, any pursuit without love, commitment and a pure purpose can bring material success, but it can never lead to happiness. Wealth and fame can never buy contentment and satisfaction. They only give a superficial sense of achievement, undermine the higher purposes of life and ultimately lead to a life of emptiness and discontentment. On the other hand, things done with love and sincerity with right understanding of situations and people leads to general well being of individuals and the society and leads to bliss. Resultantly,the human soul remains calm, unpolluted and pure and thus dwells in bliss.

PAIN, REVISITED

-1-

It was hard to come by,
There was not a sign of it, nor the sound of it, for ages,
But it came such an odd way, one day,
through the hardy terrain it came
burdened with disbelief and disgust,
but it came,
climbing on the soft, magical wings of a crooning,
And nudged the heart,
then entered it, pierceing through,
The walls closed around itand it remained enclosed there,
It still is.
To release it and to give it wings to fly back
and to fly away somewhere,
will require a lance-blow, a tear, very strong and deep blow,
a death.


-2-

I hate that 'karmic' madness,
and that feverish mind that keeps jumping from branch to brach
like a monkey in pain,
I hate the long silences
that seem to dismantle things,
I hate the surface dreams,the forgetfulness,
that surges over the sand and keeps earasing the good,
and the memorable,
The rude words that break the heart time to time I despise,
yet Underneath all, runsa a stream, cryustal clear,
the slime never rises to the surface or muddies the stream,
It flows, queitly,
Through seasonal tears and pain, and flows,
Because love never quits.

THE DEGENERATING YOUNG MINDS

A young married woman goes to her parents' house for the delivery of her first child. When she comes back with the brand new baby in her arms, her husband refuses to take her in. She comes back to her father's house with the baby, tries one more time, but the husband doesn't buzz. Their marriage had been the culmination of a love story. Now the husband lives with another woman and the divorce case is still in the court.The baby has grown without knowind who has never known what a father is. The man who abandoned the wife with a newborn child legitimately fathered by him, never wanted to see his son nor wanted to know about his well being. And he didn't think twice before shunning the woman whom he had loved for many years and had married.

A young MBA girl joins a job. As she is new to the place, she decides to stay with a distantly related brother who works there. Her family also feels secure that the girl is with a brother.within some months something very shocking happens with the internal world of the small town, morally conditioned girl. The brother declares to her one day that he loves her. This is a jolt to the unassuming,moralistic girl, but the boy keeps singing his song of love. One day he coaxes her into a fake marriage citing that as they are cousins, their families would never agree to the alliance, so they would marry privately and remain committed to one another for life. They start living like husband and wife. A few years elapse and one day the girl catches the boy having an affair with another girl. She confronts him and reminds him of his vow to remain committed. The boy promises not to do so again but clandestinely continues with the affair. The girl takes courage, confronts the other girl and the matter is put to rest. But when the girl asks the boy to marry her legally, the boy tries to sneak away from the scene altogether. The matter end tragically with the girl committing suicide after many months of mentally agony and torture. The boy works in a lucrative position in another city and in all likelihood,in a few days, he will find another girl for himself.

These are two stray examples of how the young minds of our country are completely out of sync with the moral and ethical principles of Indian culture that have been the proud heritage and the backbone of our society. They have moved into an alien world of their own with its own perverse rules minus any moral scruples. In this world, egotism and self-centered existence is regarded as normal. Pleasure is the main purpose of life and human emotion, affection and caring are strange words. The blind imitation of all that is detestable in the Western society has been accepted as the sign of progressiveness.The magnitude of such moral and cultural crisis is increasing day by day and the view of these distorted world is quite distressing. In the land of the likes of Swami Vivekananda and Dr Kalam, such degeneration is a matter of great shame and disappointment. Human goodness makes the world what it is, and degeneration of values will make it a land of demons. Only the face will be a human's, the conscious will retrograde into that of devils.Is there any hope for our young minds?I am not including those who still carry the torch of moral uprightness and are never afraid to stand up for something good and extraordinary.

N.B.-The incidents cited in the above blog are purely imaginary and any resemblance to any person or any real-life incident is purely a co-incidence.

EVERYONE HAS A RIGHT...

It's a mood,Yeah,
So,light a two hundred watt bulb
within,
and allow the heart to jump into the middle
of a jubilation,
One has a right to be happy
and to make hearts happy.

It can be the aroma of fresh food,
An excursion into some hidden wonderland
or a familiar spot full of people,
Can be bear cans, and shouting obscenities
in unimaginable ecstasy of a few moments.

Everybody has a right to happiness,
and to spread happiness.

A silent prayer
can be sent
in the calmness of understanding,
The earth has been and will be,
with all its new years,
There are skies where the new sun would bring
only a monotony of wants and ignorance,
where defeated souls would be lurking unhappy
in search of hope.

They don't know that they have
a right to happiness.
May be nobody told them.

Everybody has a right to sunshine,
Trying to give a little,
Just a little,will scatter mirth.

When spread,
happiness
shines better,
on faces,
in lives.

Everybody has a right to happiness.
Everybody has a way to happiness,
One's happiness can not imitate another's,
Yet it's beautiful,
in all the eyes,
all the lips,
Whatever way it may come.

...........................................
A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OF US