Delhi Elections: On how the BJP disappoints!

In the run-up to the Delhi polls, why, despite the charisma and vision of Narendra Modi, I’m still left disappointed with the BJP?

=========================================================

1) Immigrants in our own country: This is far from being a wrong choice of word or a typo. It is more like a belief that you grow up with, but not speak it out as you know it’d be criticized (like a white American might think “nigger” but just say “a black man”). And then your patriotism (which is so obvious on your FB wall) pictures India as the map you had first drawn in school. Every inch of the (disputed) soil is ours – isn't that what we say? So is your patriotism more for the soil than for the people dwelling there? For I see more talks of the soil than of the people in these areas.

We know that your belief guides your actions, and it surfaces in one way or the other (despite your attempts to cloak it). This is precisely what we see in your vision document, which looks more like a hastily scribbled piece of shit built up in the 11^th hour, where obviously, you expressed what you have always believed – calling the north easterners immigrants.

2) The Campaign: A greater part of the campaign of BJP is targeted at the Chief Ministerial candidate of the opposition (Arvind Kejriwal). Some of the ads being put up are distasteful and very personal. And going by the size of the ads, it looks like BJP is spending tens of crores of rupees just to prove why Arvind Kejriwal is a wrong choice. I won’t ask about where the money is coming from, I won’t bother looking into the broader margins that political parties should maintain in keeping away from personal attacks against an opponent. As a voter and a citizen, I would want to know “what will you do for us if you come to power, not what he (AK) has as deficiencies”. So while you put 5 questions to AK, I’d have actually loved to see you putting up 5 problems of Delhi every-day and how you intend to solve it. But then, from the look of the vision document, it seems you have paid more attention to the cartoons on AK than on your plan for Delhi. Honestly, do you even have one?

3) Kiran Bedi: No question on her career and her accomplishments. I’ll give her a clean chit on the Newshour interview as well. She had clearly said, she won’t take any further questions before removing the microphone (and trust me, she would be jittery – how would it be like to be announced as the Chief Ministerial candidate without having any political experience, and then bombarded with a thousand difficult questions? So my full marks to Bedi on that).

This is where I struggle with her –

a) Bedi’s first speech as BJP leader (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAw0EjHaVzQ) is comparable to RaGa’s interview with Arnab. It is plain juvenile. I picked her speech at two other rallies as well (one of which had NaMo), and I started doubting if she is CM material. She might have some great accomplishments on her back, but didn't Manmohan Singh have that as well.

b) Her awareness of Delhi and the diverse problems that it has is pathetic. It clearly comes out in her discussions/ interviews. Women safety is the first thing – agreed (and every political party is talking about it), but Delhi is bleeding because of so many other issues. You have to talk about them (not just 4-5 items).

c) Her past tweets criticizing Modi for the riots. While I agree that she can have a change of heart and move from being a neutral voice to a National voice, this still does not explain her criticism of the riots. She had criticized the Gujarat model as well, which now she sees as working (I’m yet to see the achche din though). Course correction – endorse Modi for that. That sounds pretty reasonable. But the criticism of the riots stands. I don’t want to call her an opportunist, but I’m at a loss while looking for an explanation for it.

4) The Hawala case: First of all, hawala is not a case where you transfer money into an account. While I do not defend AAP in this, my logical mind (and I’m sure we all have a decent level of intelligence) tries to find the answer.  AAP is putting up the details of every single paisa that is being donated to them. If they have some illegal donations coming in, would they have put it up in their website? Logic says NO (they’d probably ask the donor to pay them in cash or other means that cannot be tracked). So where did these 2 crore donations come from? This needs to be investigated, but it’d be premature for us to judge right-away. As a precedent, we have one such investigation being done during the last Delhi elections (on foreign funding to AAP) where AAP came clean. But we Indians have a way with things – we don’t need court-kacheri, we pass the judgment over a coffee table discussion, and that is why Arnab’s talk show still runs. And while I, you and the citizens question AAP on this and ask for an investigation, where does BJP stand? Isn't it the same party with 75-80% donations (if I’m not wrong) coming in from undisclosed sources, the party that together with Congress had vetoed the Political Parties from falling under the ambit of the RTI (and hence saved themselves from the disclosure of funding). I would have loved to hear Nirmala Seetharaman saying - investigate all parties on their funding. But instead, I hear her saying – investigate AAP. Come on BJP, you need to use the same yardstick to measure yourself as well. In fact, since you are the party forming the Central Government, the need for transparency is more in your case. But what do I see – you are making sansani khulasa in news channels about some other political party’s funding. Why aren’t you taking actions on it – get an FIR lodged, involve the famed CBI? Or is it like what a friend of mine had said:

BJP – AAP is getting hawala donations;

AAP – We should let the SC check the donations to AAP, BJP and Congress;

BJP – bhai, mai toh mazaak kar raha tha!!!

PS: I’m a North Easterner, and a Muslim by birth (does not mean that I follow it). Considering the type of reactions that I normally see in the social media when somebody criticizes the BJP, one has the options of abusing me as a Chinese, chinki (although I don’t look like one), Bangladeshi, and also as a Paki who needs to be sent to Pakistan. 

A few ounces of my thoughts, a heap of yours

The hours just pass by as my thoughts sleep beside yours.
I let them be, but occasionally I try to mix a bit of both –
A few ounces of me and heaps of you.
And whenever a tear veils your vision,
I sprinkle a bit of this blend to garnish your dark skies,
A star here and a few there in a random disposition.
And as you catch a proverbial thought in the light of a star
Whilst your cheeks are still wet, I watch you
Dreaming in the world born from our thoughts.
That sight of you smiling the tear goodbye lives with me
To become another thought.

Tendulkar and a Billion Hopes

To Tendulkar. And to his art that gives a Nation the reason to believe in miracles.
=========================================================
The crafts of the greatest of the greats have found brilliance in the light of the tragedies and madness that they lived with. Sachin Tendulkar is no exception.

For what would Vincent Van Gogh be without his string of tragedies and a lost ear? His paintings, will not have been the masterpieces had it not been drawn with the colors of his tragedy. History has it that Van Gogh had a very disturbing personal life. He and Gauguin forged a deep friendship during the two years they lived and painted as neighbors in Arles, in the south of France. The two had built the town's reputation as an artistic colony. That dream ended in an angry exchange between the painters on the evening of Dec. 23, 1888. As that story goes, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear with a straight razor after he and Gauguin parted. Bleeding heavily, van Gogh then wrapped it in cloth, walked to a nearby bordello and presented the severed ear to a prostitute, who fainted when he handed it to her.

Then there was Beethoven. When he was ten, Beethoven had gained fame for his work throught Europe. That is when tragedy struck: he began to lose his hearing. At first, he was only slightly deaf. Later however, the whole realm of sound was completely lost. Most people would have given up. What good is a musician with no sense of hearing? But Beethoven did not let that stop him. Although he closed himself off people, his connections with music were truly unbreakable. He was in a sense of close denial, taking walks in the woods to get away from people and to get closer to nature. Now was a point when Beethoven composed for his own love, rather than for a career. He heard music with his inner ear now. Instead of halting Beethoven’s thoughts of musical creation, it allowed him to discover new dimensions of music, to see music as a necessity of life, not as an ornament. One of the most amazing pieces of his works, his nine symphonies, is like a timeline of his life and a timeline of music.

Closer home, even though Mirza Ghalib spread love, beauty and happiness all around, his own life was filled with moments of despair and tragedy. His most beautiful works were written when he was at his lowest ebb - at the loss of a loved adopted child. He suffered from a drinking problem; financial difficulties as well as pains of old age – some of the ingredients that led to his great couplets.

The list would go on and on, but it would all bring us to one single fact. These people without compare stood on the unscalable pedestal only because of their tragedies. Tendulkar’s tragedy lies in his passion to win a game and standing tall amidst the ruins when all the warriors have failed. Like the story of Troy, where Hector stands tall against the might of Archilles, it was Tendulkar who stood against the might of the opponents. And in the resulting defeat, we have seen the fallen rise above the victorious.

Going a few years back to the test match in Chennai where on the verge of defeat, India found a partnership going in the fourth innings in Nayan Mongia and Tendulkar. India, by then had almost lost the match against Pakistan, and people were slowly moving out of the stadium. In the hours that followed, we saw a game that seemed scripted by God with Tendulkar in the lead. India, riding on his century, was just 18 runs from victory when he got out. The rest, you might recollect, was a tension filled 20 minutes when India finally surrendered. Wasim Akram said, there was Pakistan and there was Tendulkar standing before their victory. And although, Pakistan won, it was actually Tendulkar, who, history would remember as the hero of the day.

Tendulkar cried that night, and did not come to the presentation ceremony to take his Man of the Match award. His agony in this loss was to come out in a masterful display of batting in the time to come.

2008 – 15th Dec: Just three weeks after the deadly attacks on Mumbai which rocked India and put the England tour of India in doubt, Tendulkar scored an unbeaten century to give the hosts a historic victory over England. Tendulkar, in his 19th year in Test cricket, played perhaps his greatest innings as India completed the fourth-highest run chase of all time. And he did that by ensuring that he remained at the crease till the very end. That was perhaps a lesson that he had learned from the Chennai test match, to see India through.

Yesterday’s loss was yet another drama which had a climax that lasted the entire second innings. And the architect of that climax was Tendulkar alone. He kept an entire billion glued to their seats with hope and awe. Everyone, from children who go to sleep at 8.30 PM, to housewives who have a habit of watching the 9 PM soaps, to the chaat-wala at Juhu chowpatty, to the guy trying to catch a night flight were keeping a tab on the score. And it was not even a world cup match. Such is the admiration and belief that a country holds in that diminutive man. And yet, when India lost, the emotions on the face of this man were that of a child who has lost his favorite marbles. The equations in the end were simple. Australia won. India lost. But the match was glorified by the innings of Tendulkar. The tragedy of his glory amidst the ruins of a shattered billion hopes would be etched in history. And from this tragedy will be born a billion more hopes, and an innings of a greater victory where India wins. Let’s hope it comes in the final of the 2011 World Cup.

To Tendulkar. And to his art that gives a Nation the reason to believe in miracles.

My Diary Entries: Thoughts on Distance and Gravity of Emotions

To the soot in my hearth, and the simplicity of its being
======================================================

Have you ever paused to think of the life that you have lived? Not an introspection but of the myriad moments and actions that went on to define the moment you are standing at. Of the countless misses in your life. Of the small things which you did or did not do that lead to the misses. Of what was always yours but still you lost it. Of the irony that you seem to repeat the same again. Wisdom is so insignificant and so is experience. It just hinges upon the emotional strength of a person to let wisdom or experience hold root. And we all know how mercurial emotions are. Put it in a cup, and you have a cup of tea to warm you. Put it on the floor and they’ll try to cling together in a few droplets like the scared slaves of the Pharaohs. Try to put a rein on it, and it’ll always slip off. Caress it gently, and it’ll dance for you.

My emotions have always been like this – a few grams of mercury that played as it wished. Made me to wonder, if I was its slave. One day the tempo chord will strike and I’ll be the funniest guy around. Everything would seem funny and sans sarcasm. On another day the melancholy chord will strike and I’ll sit in my balcony and let it rain inside me. It is during these lonely balcony sessions do I discover all the losses in my life.

Of it all, I ponder most on the love that has always been with me like the North Star. The seasons have changed, the clouds have come and gone, the tiny sapling to the east of my balcony has grown in to a small tree, and yet her presence has remained the same. Still, she is as insignificant as the soot frittering away from the charcoal in the hearth. So why am I giving significance to the soot and cleaning the hearth everyday? What pulls me to her? I call it the gravity of emotions that threads an invisible chord between the emotions of two persons. It sounds stupid but perhaps a Galileo or a Newton would discover it in the years to come. Whatever the new gravity theory is, I still wait for the day when we’d obey its law and fall into each other. Until then, I’d keep looking at the void from my balcony, in an attempt to sculpt her somewhere in the cloud’s kingdom.

My Diary Entries:Seeding love again 16th Aug 2009

Thought I’d write something about you last night. And let the writings sleep beside me. Many thoughts passed me when I sat thinking about you. What would I dress you in? What would I make you to speak? Should you sing to me? I let my pen decide, but it failed me. I ended up sleeping with some blank notes beside my pillow. Perhaps that was the best that could have described your presence in my life – omnipresent and yet without a load to weigh me down.

In the morning, I had to prepare a grocery checklist. I took the still-sleeping blank notes from my bedside, and jotted down my list – potatoes, toothpaste, onions, lentils, dishwasher, soybeans…

The other night, I had looked out from my balcony into the nascent lights of the nearby slum. There was a sense of orderliness in the unorganized setup of incandescence that glowed in the dark. Each blob of light seemed to borrow a glow from the other blobs that it itself radiated out.

That was a sight of what love is.

Far in distance, I saw a forlorn light. At that moment when I looked at it, I knew exactly how it felt, maybe because I could relate to it.

I asked myself: deeply scarred and stained in love, can a man lose his ability to find love again within himself? After something slays the very seed of love in him, making him incapable of seeing love in others… I did not find an answer to that, but just some directions that pointed at my vain trials to let this seed grow into my life.

When I bought my groceries today, I checked the note with the ticks and the crosses. I still have to buy the dishwasher and also the lentils. I looked at the note for a long time; if I could erase the writings, it’d just be you in the blank note who gave me company last night.

Folding the note carefully, I kept it in underneath my pillow. That should warm me, I thought
-----------------------------------------------------------------
You’d forgive me, perhaps, for the feelings that disown me when I chase them, and sleep in my shadow when I tire down in their pursuit.

You

You befriended Nonchalance when
You met me,
Through the song in a conversation
That had run into my cadence’s amalgam.

I wonder, I seethe, and I smile
At your refusal to see me through
My knit of words.
And that, through which you see me,
I refuse to accept.

Yet when the music dies in
The pitch of the night, and the
Cold desert wind sets in, I see
Your words warming me.
I open my knitted world
And let you in.

The Call Within

Ephemeral are the moments of extreme joy. With the experience slowly becoming one of memory’s many folds, the story just remains as a faint smile between our closed lips with an invisible thread to our heart. That thread lets the echo of the moment reverberate through age.

I do not remember the last time I was at the peak of such an encounter. Of late, I’ve been living on a plateau of emotions, with a balanced house built on a picturesque landscape. But that thread to my heart pulls me towards north, makes me to dream of a higher, narrower plateau, and still up above towards a peak of virgin emotions. To touch matter that does not exist, to swim in a surge of an upward cascade and keep floating like a driftwood waiting to be discovered by my own discovery…

Setting forth towards this call, I step out of the doors towards the gate when a whip of cold wind beats my face. I turn back and think of the balanced house’s warm hearth and comfortable cushions, the table full of food, and the drapes that dictates terms to the light.
……..
….
..
.
A few yards on, the ajar gate remains motionless to my stationary figure.

Goodbye Home

All of us leaf through an old album in very much the same way. We search for ourselves in a group, and then look at the others around us in the photograph, think and at times comment on how gross we looked. Some of the friends in the photograph have grown with us while others have been replaced in our latest albums.

I have a 30-seconds-delivery Polaroid pinned at my workstation. Taken in 2006 at Juhu Beach when the Monsoon was at its peak, it has fossilized six guys’ giggles at the black box. Suresh’s standing like a broken umbrella with the will but no cover to guard against the drizzle. Deepti styling in an old fashioned orange blouse – old it was even two years ago. Jaspreet in her corporate attire and an elegant handy bag – the hardest working member of the clan, she had to rush to meet us all after the day’s work with no time to change into her jeans and tees. Ankita, with the tight jeans up her calves and yet soaked in the saline juice – well she could do anything to look good, even if that means putting on a pair of size 5 shoes for her size 6 feet. And Anjali…

Sure, two years has changed her a lot. Or is it my perspective that has changed? I look at her handwriting on the pink envelope that says “Happy Birthday and Goodbye” and then look at her autograph on the polaroid. Hardly any difference. But the Anjali in the Polaroid has no semblance to the one who has just bid adieu to Mumbai. It is like the boulevard leading to your home, wearing a different color every season. You do not need to recognize it if you walk up and down its chest everyday- the changing color becomes too insignificant. But a traveler of the seasons will search for signposts and marks on the barks of trees for his aid. I wonder if I have been the traveler who has left for many seasons without setting any signposts. So far and so long that the road back home seems alien and festooned by ferns and fallen leaves that have turned from chrome to brown to pitch…

Home?

I wonder what home is. Is it a harbor of our emotions or the roofs that restrict our dreams from evaporating into the skies? Is it where our mind is at peace or where our body rests in peace? Is it something which is unvarying, like the picture of your mother in your heart or the image of your God? Leading a modern day nomadic life, the roofs I’ve slept under have changed every time I’ve started looking at them like everyday. This change took the love away from me for any place where I have dwelled and I started looking at things other than the plaster and the concrete structures for my home. I looked for it in the vast stretch of sunny slopes and faraway valleys when I had set my foot on the peak of Kalavintin, so distant they were and yet so obvious were their features. I looked for it to flare up in the depth of my most dismaying nightmare, the memories of which never last the night. I looked for it in the solace of the sight of the Milky Way from a primitive cluster of houses that had yet to grow into a village. I asked the evenness of the tea-gardens on the uneven slopes of Ethelwood Tea Gardens if it had an answer. I looked for it in a handful of sand from the Thar Desert that slipped between my fingers when I tried to possess it and clung to my hand when I did not want to. In a space of bright colors that had no true shades of black or white, imbibing into my life-canvas a surreal flow of emotions that were neither sad nor happy. I stood my ears for its presence in an intriguing song of the distance that grew into me from a frail sound to a farewell song, to a somewhat familiar tune, to the song I was humming the other day.

I journeyed across unknown dimensions and its never converging directions. I had my emotions condensed and also let them precipitate in a random cycle of foolishness and sensibility. And in the end, I found myself waking up to a mosquito bite with a half open book bridging my chest to the bed. My neck pained and so did my spine; I’ve been sitting and sleeping in this awkward position for… oh, I didn’t even have my dinner. The clock looked hazy, but both its hands had crossed 12, it must’ve been around 3. I reached out for the switch from my now comfortable sleep-able position and in what did not seem like a change to me, I was engulfed in the darkness.

I see tea gardens in the sands of Thar. It is daylight. I look up and see no Sun, instead it’s the heavens—the Milky Way lighting the world. A cumulus cloudscape plays in the superseding space, letting out shafts of light that creates wonderful patters of shadows in the valley. In the distance someone is picking up tea leaves and putting it in a basket hung on her back. I keep looking, my eyes improving the focus on her every moment. She is wearing a color of no emotions. The clouds are rushing away from her towards me. In its carry, it brings me a frail sound, her song, which refuses to stay for me to be able to recognize it. Then it grows on me, flooding through my mind-gates into recognition. I hum the song and feel surprised at how familiar it sounds. I look at the clouds that have just passed me; it seems to hold a nightmare inside its cottony outlier. Far away, towards its direction, I can distinctly make the last valley and the last green dune, so obvious are their features. I keep humming…

I woke up when both the hands of the clock were nearing 12. As I was preparing my brunch, I switched on the radio. Alanis Morissette blared about her presence…

It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought... it figures

I switched off the radio and stood the kettle on the stove, a hum on my lips. I kept humming for sometime, and then froze all of a sudden.

Who hummed that to me? I thought.

A smile gripped me as I remembered Anjali singing out to the waves of the Arabian Sea. The waves were wild, and she was soaked up to her thighs. Her hair was ruffled and she had a funny jacket on her. She called out to me, and I ran to her, to the waves. That was home.

Leaning on the kitchen cabinet I stood for sometime with this last line thought until the kettle whistle brought me back.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And I still hold your hand in mine
In mine when I'm asleep - James Blunt (in Goodbye my Lover)

Me Human

Imagine me ye imagination,

Living in the hollowness of a diamond’s
Amidst the mirage’s dread of losing its reality.
Holding a fear that spurs the animal surge.

The womb that bears what it seeks not,
And the seeker that bears not.

The converging skyline is but the heart’s vista,
And so even the eye that sees not weeps.

Have me in your hallowed studio,
Where tamed lights manufacture beauty.
And the grass keeps growing from green to brown.

I’m but a muted song while you, my imagination
Keep dancing; I tap my feet with you in my muted stance –
maybe your imagination will label it a tango.

Inside my Fuckin Mind

(Written with far less slangs than I normally use…
I know, I’ll be sober tomorrow; but that does not mean I have not lived the madness today…
By all means, judge me through this piece. I’m no better a person. But yes, I cannot be worse...)

Knock! Knock! Who is this? Is this the bare-all archives of a man or just the carefully constructed lines of a writer who has it more under the carpet than what he is showing? I feel that this whole blog, despite being my reflection, my mood and a hors d'oeuvre for my only identifiable love so far, is actually a boot polish wax slapped over the dirt of a pair of shoes. That dirt, although now hidden by the wax, still exists.

So let this piece be the raw me: a quick 10 minutes writeup of all the thoughts that is in me at this moment, with a damn to the word construction or the vulgarity of content (or even my image)

1. I have one regret in life. Of the love that was mine and yet I had walked ahead of it. How many times have we done this and how many times are we going to do it again: ignoring the best in our wait for the best and then settling for some with whom we cannot be our best.

2. I strongly feel that love is one shot at the pot with your only arrow. You hit it, and you’ll see the true face of love in the broken clay. What you do with the clay shows what your love is. If you miss the target you live with a regret or a small bookmark to the day when you missed the shot.

3. Yes! I do think of sex. At times when it is extreme, I label it as a basic need of our lives, my life, and ofcourse I remain the starved one. But this shaggy chauvinist is not into me. The other day a beautiful girl, much younger than me passed by my side. I stared at her once (ofcourse without her discovering it). My friend who was observing me closely said, Saale, chhotti hai (She’s much younger). I just smiled and said, Jawani toh solah aur tees ke beech mein hi aati hai (the age of youth do not grow more than 16-30 years)

4. Love to me is like the strong aroma of the roadside bakery. A beggar, I’d sniff its non-taxed portion that cannot be prevented from public consumption by the baker. But neither have I been able to buy a piece of loaf nor has the baker been kind to my hunger.

5. I am ridden by inferiority complex when it comes to my looks or my single dimensional existence. It does not matter a fuck, everyone says, but no one has noticed any single of the fucking blemishes I have lived through. Or the fucking rejections! Or the even bigger fucking no reactions.

6. I am disillusioned. I cannot see farther than the shit on the tip of my shoes. And I’m too afraid to seek out. My dreams have wings that have never taken flight.

7. I feel Che Guevara should have lived longer. And LK Advani, much shorter. In between both, I would want somebody to legalize male prostitution for me to be able to earn something if my pen gives way.

8. The other day as I was struck in the traffic, a small kid, with greasy hair and an unrecognizable face reached out to me. He was accompanied by a street dog, almost in the same make up. I handed over the only piece of Good Day biscuit which I had with me. The kid broke the biscuit into two and gave the smaller piece to his dog.

9. The sign on the Café Coffee Day reads a lot can happen over coffee. Although, I frequent that place, but I do not understand if they want to make things happen by creating a leaf or a heart on the froth of the coffee or by serving pathetic masala tea (I think they believe the Darjeeling/ Assam tea bags to do wonders). In any case, nothing significant has happened to me since I started going to CCD except that I’ve learnt to sip in the fast cold-catching steaming cup of brew and have wasted money, enough to buy the kid in the traffic signal a good year.

10. In life I have lost people I have loved. Some left me. Some kept me as an outdated diary entry, once written and never to be read again. And some stayed with me without setting up their homes in my heart

11. At times, I feel like committing suicide for my lack of courage to step out and find what I want. But there too my courage fails me.

Un-Manifested

How do I define something that touches me as gently as a light drizzle misguided by an angry wind? Defying gravity, the tiny droplets surrender to the wind and sets sail on its bosom. Some get thrashed to the ground; some take the upward flight, while some others float in the air like some wet dreams. The certainty that gravity gives to a raindrop's descent ceases to be with these tiny droplets in motion. Somewhere in the wind, I stand with my hands in my pockets. A spell of drizzle is followed by some moments of drought, before the wind forces the drizzle towards me again. The droplets settle on my skin but I do not feel the wetness; somewhere it drowns into the arid within me. I nevertheless wipe my face and caress my hair against the wind’s desire and direction. And a wonder strikes me: does the dewy-drizzle long to be called as the rain or the dew? In its middle-of-the-road existence, how does it set its footprints in our memory? As the dew, or as the rain?

It tells me of the love that never manifests itself. But it does subsist, like the warmth in the folds of our arms, frittering away when we extend our hands and growing into us as we brace ourselves. And all this while, we whine in search for a comfy home and a table of food for the heart, never realizing that we are diluting our greatest treasure in our extended arms.

I wipe my hands and see a new flurry of drizzle settling down in its place. It hangs on to a thin bracelet that a friend had given me in the autumn of 2007. I can see the small insignificant droplets merging into a drop on the bracelet. There is one drop and then there are some more, all on the bracelet. I shake it and see some raindrops descending to the call of gravity. Holding my bracelet, I head towards defining the un-manifested love.

Distorted Thoughts: Episode III

The heart yearns for the long lost days and nights of leisure that my lover so recklessly took away from me

*** *** *** *** *** ***

I've stopped counting the stars… They say, I've grown wise! I believe, I've forgotten how to love

*** *** *** *** *** ***

In my alcove, a stranger tucks in every night… In the morning I wear his gifted odor as I step into the sunshine… The gift never lasts the day… At dusk, I have a new visitor

*** *** *** *** *** ***

I've often been accused for loving too deeply and then trying to fathom the love

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Seek not in the distance, I reside within your desire. When you fly in pursuit of your dream, you'd see me sleeping in your shadow's company. And when your tired hazel eyes droop off, you'd see me guarding your dreams

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Oh my beloved, wear not my words. It cannot be more true than you and me

*** *** *** *** *** ***

And while my tears, which I home in the most delicate saucer of my eye’s mosque, refuse to stay with me, I pray to Thee not to book me as the sinner who had been too profligate in his spends and grant me a few saucers more of this pain reliever of His, lest I might die of starvation.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

I love intuitions. It lets me have my own piece of truth.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

She weighs not my armor, she rains not her love. And when she passes through my defenses, she appraises not my love. What lends to my heart, scrounges from her diffidence. So let her be. For my heart brims with love that sees no summer and no winter

*** *** *** *** *** ***

For you my friend, I had sung a song that the cold wind. It remains as some incomplete words, lost somewhere in the cold mornings of a winter.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Raped thoughts do not guide, nor does it follow. It just lingers on like a cloud that would neither rain down, nor be pushed away by the wind

*** *** *** *** *** ***

What is truth? It is but a sedative for our conscience

Morsels of Faint Recollection: The Eraser

Of late, I have not been writing well. I’ve had times when I saw thoughts oozing up from everywhere around me like the fast evaporation of ether. I’d try to gather as many of these in my pockets and lap. Today, I deem the crow and the nightingale as the same. Even on the occasions when I have sat down to write forcefully, I’ve found the eraser to be doing most of the work. I sit staring at the ceiling of my room or maybe the distant hills from the berth of my train hoping to see the ether rise again. Instead, I see a proverbial boy from faraway. He looks like me in my childhood; his hair is also made my way; his socks are pulled up and his eyes don’t have anything to speak… just like I had. I squint at this wonder boy and I see him wane into the ether that I so desired.

“Morsels of Faint Recollection” is one series that I devote to that boy of yore.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A story that you love to narrate over and over again is of your childhood. With half shut eyes, unguided between the past and today, you can still make your way to where you are now. Nevertheless with all the missing connections in the story, aided by the lapse of memory, it still is one complete story.

My Camlin pencil box always had the sharpest of the HB pencils, a big eraser, two compasses, a protector and a small ruler. We were still four long years away from using the fountain pens. Occasionally, I’d use a ball pen to write the grocery list, the items of which would be dictated by Ma from the kitchen. Rinku would snatch the pen every time she discovered me using one. Everyone told me that using the pen will spoil my handwriting. I never understood why then ball pens were there.

During one classroom session I discovered, to my utter dismay that the eraser was missing. I remember the teacher giving us some dictation and I was already lagging behind. And then the spelling mistake. Without thinking much I put my finger on my tongue and then rubbed the saliva on the menacing word. In no time the word was dead, but its place was taken by a grey splotch. I looked up at the teacher; her words were like the trailing sound of a train you have just missed. I looked across my shoulders; all the heads were down, busy taking the dictation. Just like the old rule, I left a few blank lines and started taking the remaining dictation.

This newfound spit technology soon became an art that I perfected so well. One could find a decrease in intensity of the grey blob as he flipped through my notebook pages. But before I could patent my art, I moved to High School where I was required to write with a fountain pen. And the grey blob grew fainter in my memory with time until yesterday when I again discovered it in my four-year-old’s spiral notebook.

To An Ignorant Beauty

A moss amidst the bawdy rocks
Thou hast eyes of unseen morning lights
Of a love ye sees not in the mercury wall.
Friend of thy ignorance, Youth sings to thy charm
And stands as its forever sheen.

Some books on my Bed

I have somehow stopped reading after my last two books, “The Motorcycle Diaries” and “Letters to Sam”. Last night as I slipped into my pajamas, I discovered around five books on my bed. They were snubbed by my attitude towards them; I had read only a few pages of each. It was like listening to a close friend’s poignant narrative and then leaving him right when he was beginning to open up. I felt for them, but I still switched off the lights after setting the alarm to 6AM.

In the morning, I discovered an order note in the cabinet. I had placed an order for two more books. I remember how excited I was to have them, but I cannot see even a spec of the excitement in my bathroom mirror today.

What am I doing all these days? Work – yes… And what else? I don’t remember anything momentous. I’ve heard someone saying that the best thoughts and ideas come to you when you are seated in your shit-pot. Let me try it as well, I thought! And lo, what comes to me? The smell of my shit’s obscure aroma mixing with the air freshener…

I loved “The Motorcycle Diaries”, but it left me with a reality check meter. In each book that I read, I find some wisdom that I can make use in my life. In Che’s narration of his discovery of Latin America, I discovered my lack of knowledge of my own roots.

In Daniel Gottlaib’s (Letters to Sam) handicap, I discovered how one can still seek out and see the world from his constrained wheelchair.

Dan and Che are two faces of the same person to me. They had set out to discover themselves rather than waiting to let things dawn before them. They saw life from the wheel: Dan from his wheelchair and Che from his bike. And they understood—that life is not a full circle when it comes to discovery; it may not show all its different flavors to you on its own—you have to seek it like you seek your friends in a game of hide and seek. Still, you may not discover it all, but atleast you’ll have the smile on you face of the one who has been closer to life and known it.

I now know the reason behind the pile of books on my bed. I fear that I’ll discover one more Dan, an another Che Guevara, beckoning me to take the path of discovery. I’ve been resisting this current for long, but I don’t know if I’d be able to hold on to the certainty that I live in today.

Sex and the City

Watched Sex and the City. I had this instinct that it’s going to be a sissy movie; with lots of crying and emotional stuff relating to women that can never get into the logic-fuel driven mind of a man (I have never watched the HBO series of Sex and the City). And lo, what did I bump into: humor and emotions laced in an intricate way that cannot be catalogued into different pigeon holes of MAN and WOMAN.

In it I discovered the quintessence of humor in life, and how it is the single most revitalizing factor that helps us to wade through any situation. In life, we do not relate this element with every emotion of ours…
In happiness—yes.
In a pensive mood—somewhat.
In sorrow—are you crazy!

A person who tries to make light of the situation is seen with a raised brow; it seems people relate sorrow and emotions so much with a sad contemplating face that the existence of a smile or maybe a moment of respite is beyond their concept. I still remember the time when I had drawn the ire after cracking a joke while visiting a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. While my friend laughed aloud, I could see the discomfort around. Why, come on, you people are feeding him the cancer, I felt like shouting out aloud.

My friend survived the disease, and people have forgotten my act. Otherwise I guess, the joke would have become a case study and I’d have had to live the rest of my life for being insensitive.

What is it that I want?

“But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

Bono sang for me all night, bringing me to one question that I’ve been struggling to get an answer for.

What is it that I want?

I do not find any reason in the space of time that I butcher away from the morning when I step out to go to office to the evening when I heave myself back home. Every morning I see the raising Sun, and every evening I forget of its existence in my life. As I’m climbing the corporate ladder, I tend to ask this question less and less. I seem to be more content to let life “unfold itself”. But every now and then, the question comes to me like some viral fever. During this viral attack, I move from the content being to a restless drifter who questions everything that is and that can be. This drifter sees nothing as an impossibility and wants to find an answer to the age-old question that has been lying dormant. I call this the “awakening”. Unfortunately, I’m still able to resist the call of this awakening and move on. Somehow I am reluctant to find the answers, maybe because it asks me to leave my secure world and step in to the uncertainty. With each passing day, I’m getting glued to this secure world of mine, and in the process moving away, gradually, from that single answer.

I do not know why this fever is not strong enough; sometimes I pray that it lasts a bit longer so that there is no U turn for me to my mundane world. I would then have only one way – the way towards my answer.

My Beloved

My beloved knitted me words of the choosiest colors,
With a ply of wool that let the air marinate into us in a warmth
That neither boiled like the pleasant morning sun growing into the day
Nor cooled down like some coffee left in the window sill over pensive thoughts.

My beloved left me a blank note beside our smiling photograph
With the weight of the photo-frame’s shadow holding the message
From the call of flight of the sleep-disturbing wind of a Sunday morning.
I read the words which her three-page letters would otherwise never talk about.

My beloved left her painting palette and a begging-to-get-wet canvas
And stepped into the picture she wanted to portray.
The colors have dried up,
But even in the deep smell of cobalt blue I find her attentive hand’s fresh prints.

My beloved, why do I see you through your creations,
And never through the compass that you had gifted me once?
You keep an intrigue element in this game of yours
That you have no intention to teach me and yet ask me to play.
I just keep on playing for you to win me
And for me to understand your unstated rules of the game.

Lovemaking

How I love the act of lovemaking. Watching the sea caress the sands into an evenness and leaving in its belly some shells wrapped in the covers of foam that had once breathed in its divine lymph. If I classify it as a smooth union, there are the times when I see them in a violent act. Whatever it is, the sea always leaves gifts for the sands and takes with it anything the sand has to give. I look into the Arabian Sea in the darkness of a moonless night and see nothing. The sound of the waves hitting the shore and the muffled song of the wind is all that my senses can detect. In the distance the horizon ceases to exist and for once the sea and the skies are one. I wonder if the stars feel close to the sea during one such spectacle. I have been told by a painter that there are three basic colors: red, yellow and blue and all the others are just derivatives of it. From the east to the west, from the morning to the night, from the skies to the sole of my shoes, I see colors that are neither red, nor green or yellow. In their lovemaking of different intensities, these colors have lost their identities.

I make love to my beloved on the sands of a stranded beach, wearing colors that are none of red, green or yellow, at a time in the night when our horizon of infinity concurs with the horizon in the distance. I am belittled by the thought that we are still not a part of the homogeneity of the existence around us. What convergence do we lack that forestalls our entry through the gates? I lie on the sands on my back and look at a star. My beloved sprinkles some sands on my chest and I kiss her lipstick laden strawberry lips. I am still not the sand, and I cannot see any stars in her hair. We make love, and yet it is not lovemaking. We are still two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears, a pair of nose, eight distinct limbs trying to cocoon into a single heartbeat.

That stride towards a “WE” needs the dissolution of two “I”s. The irony is not our reluctance to let go of that “I” but the verity that we are yet to discover it fully. But doesn’t the sea get to know itself better because of the shore? Doesn’t the sky whisper to its stars to look at it’s reflection in the mirror of the sea?

While we enjoy these sights and sounds of the togetherness of the universe around us, we are caught up as a solitary spec of white in a tissue paper blotted with an ink. The water touches our feet; she smiles at the receding wave and draws a pattern with her toe in the sand. The waves come again to take the pattern in its foamy ride. She draws an arc on my chest with her finger, much like the pattern in the sand. The cold sensation of her wet finger slowly sinks into my skin and with it the feeling of her presence.

The Spider in my Bathroom

As I sat in the bathroom giving company to the bucket beside me, I looked at a spider trying to spin a web in the corner where the walls touched the ceiling. A sad smile gave way to an involuntary shrug as I visualized how short-lived its haven would be. With a swab of the broom it’ll be taken to the dust. I stared at the tiles of the bathroom wall through the raining shower; they were in turquoise with a tad of blue. I smelled the wet skin of my arm, and kept my nose as a refugee in my arm’s territory. “You smell so nice” she had said once. I wonder what that nice meant. The bucket was amazingly noisy, singing its tune with the shower drops that fell onto it. Don’t give me no company, I shoved it aside. It still sang for me, although in a muffled tone. She had hugged me tight, but I could feel a thin plate of air between us. And there she was waving her hand just once from the departing lounge. I have been under the shower for a long time now. But I had not the strength to get out of it. For once, it’s been constant; for once it’s predictable; for once it’s in my control. I did not wait to see her one last time. I’ve had enough in my clay pot, and I knew of the impending drought. She could smile through it, even I did the same. But, does she know that somewhere I get torn in this uncertainty that reins our lives? Perhaps she is torn as well. The spider swung to its right and it was followed by a thin thread. Hopeless, I thought. HOPELESS, I yelled. The spider went on, weaving into the future. And I sunk my teeth deep into my arms.

Late in the night, I went to the bathroom to see my friend of misery. He was now resting in his fully knit web. Perhaps I should sleep awhile, I thought and went into my bedroom where beams of the streetlight passing through the window flooded my bed.

I slept well that night.

In the morning, I did not see the spider or any remnants of its adobe. The maid’s mop did it all.

But she’ll have to come back to do it again!


To bring oneself to love uncertainty, one has to learn to accept even the most shocking of the probabilities, if it ever comes true. So, in a way it is all about acceptance.