Confessing To My Diary

While human exploration has reached to a point where we are considering settlement on the Moon and space tourism as an industry, we are yet to throw light and peep into our own self. Hardly do we realize what we want out of life. To be rich, to be happy, to be famous, to be content—these are all oversimplifications. Many a times we realize of one desire of ours only when we reach a point in our life when we cannot accomplish it, we mull over it thinking of the time when we were so close to fulfilling it and cursing ourselves for not taking that step. And many a times this realization comes when we are doing something petty—washing the dishes, looking at photographs, writing a poem, mowing the lawn, using the toaster…

For my friend’s birthday, I had decided to make a small movie containing some photographs of hers. The problem was to choose a few photographs from the sea of my digital camera’s output. I began looking at each of them, one after the other, sometimes going back to the previous ones. It was not the smiles and the poses that caught me. I saw a pattern in the photographs, a chronology of growth and a bookmark to the day and incidents when the photograph was taken. It was infact a time machine, dropping me into the past without a ticket.

I dwelled on it for time I knew not, surmising the thread to today with all its tethers. We have all changed, so much that I felt like painting the old pictures in the Polaroid black and white colors. Isn’t it amazing, the ability of a picture developed in the dark room to visibly grow old like the mortals in the picture? Some proportional relationship no Newton could ever prove.

It was in this web of knots that I finally surrendered my fort on that day. In the photo story I found my own story. Of the love I refused to surrender to, of the songs I refused to sing, of the dreams my sub-consciousness did not permit to dream… And while I have loved her all this time, I’ve realized it only today.

I felt a strange relief; of the kind you feel when you find an answer to the questions bothering you for long. With it also came flooding the answers to all my innate actions. I looked at the photographs from my new set of eyes, wrought in the colors of love. She was indeed beautiful, an undiscovered mire challenging you to explore its depths of quicksand. So slowly I had sunk into it that I did not even offer any resistance and the transition seemed as normal as the flow of water from the river into the sea.

When I had finished the photographs, it was well past the time of the night when you feel very sleepy. Maybe around 3 AM it was. But I did not bother to check. And then I constructed the photo-story—with the words I wanted to speak and the moments where I wanted to live. The architect in me wanted this construction to go on forever, encompassing everything I had admired in life, into the nothingness of being. Every brick that I picked up from my photograph-store fit in perfectly in concord with my dream. Eventually, I ran out of the bricks, but even than the house that I had built was complete in all sense.

Later, I mulled over where I stood. I was amazed at the way I was looking at things now, with the softness of the dewdrops comforting my view.

As I write this piece, I am standing in a fork on the road where I do not know whether to confess my love, or to just let it linger on in me.

I’ve read somewhere:
Many dreams may remain without a trailing line of pursuit. They plunge into the darkness while we never lose the ones with the trailers.

The Wait

Someone has said, if you are on the road, you should walk; if you are at a crossroad, you should decide. This age defying road must have started as the dead brown grasses of the fields, stomped heavily by the ones keen to go some place but not finding a road, a shorter way. Those early stompers had played the other way: deciding on the road.

And they have left us the road, which is hardly a semblance of the one they had walked.

Once, at a crossroad, I could not decide where to head. I waited there looking at the people—coming and going, busy with things that hardly mattered, ignoring the words floating in the air. They walked on, pausing at times maybe to decide, to where they found attention. And just when I had figured out the crowd’s pattern of movement, I was yet again brought to another situation—whether to move in the glittering road of attention or the road I desire, narrow and small. I decided to wait.

I am still waiting, and I do not know why or for whom?

She

In her enigma rests the pleasant
Teasing, like the wind playing
With her let-loose hair.
Always an attention but never
A bother.

Her hands do not seek, only an
Allusion in her kohl eyes
Entices you, like a driftwood
In the flooding stretch of the
Yellow river.

Oar not in this stretch, and the current
Would teach to you the language
Of her allusion.
A never treaded expanse you’ll be in
Where her hands would both
Seek and guide.


Her Language

Don’t hunt the lion but its pride,
Understand not that is
In the light.

Monsoon- The First Rains of the Season

After months of the Summer Sun's face, we welcome the rains. To the park we run, in the roads we play with a dance song in our hearts while our eyes look into the distance and at the skies. The drops hitting our face come from the heaven and in this moment of closeness we long to live.

After months of rain and clouds, the Sun smiles at the sunflowers. Eternal seems the light that screens through the last of the defeated clouds, and brings before us the blue sky. Dont we long for that as well?

The rains after the sun, the sun after the rains... Like the wild tango of sorrows and the happiness... And yet, the impermanence of happiness is our greatest concern.

Silent Company

Where have you been my friend?
In the stories of the yore I search for you, like
The memories of a lost fragrance
You cling to me, deserting my soul when I try to recall
And smearing it when I least look for you.


Why do you visit me when I am asleep
And disappear into memory when I seek you?
You come to me like the dust in the wind,
Touching me and running away
While I try to make my way in your storm.

Incomplete--- The Potter's Clay Shaping My Love

I embraced her in my dreams, and she felt like the soft cotton, always too afraid of being caught in the gush of the angry wind. She clung to me for support and as I held her I realized of the warmth she was spreading within me. But this warmth held her from spanning her wings to the call of the wind again..

She died in this embrace and every time I braced myself, I found her in the undiscovered space between me and my brace.

I saw a cotton seed burst open, releasing forth the desire of flight. I tried to catch its glee, its slow descent and then its resurrection in the sudden surge of upward current--- sometimes in a song, sometimes in a lazy siesta, and sometimes in the wild dance of Shiva. I have a desire in my being too--- of her wings, of her dreams left without a chase. Those dreams are still waiting, to play the incomplete game of hide and seek. But as I extend my hand to chase it, I realize that it’s not my game to play--- it’s hers. I wait there with my open arms, not knowing whether I’m trying to play the game that is not mine, or whether I’m trying to disown her, to see her play, while the dreams, her dreams wait for her to return.

*** ***

The Palm Tree’s Diary

The wind that blows from the seas finds a resistance in the palm leaves. I complained of her harshness and her refusal to acknowledge my reception.

Late at night, in the stillness of the moonlight, I found her caressing my hair with her breezy wings. A few words I mumbled in my sleepy trance while she made me make friendship with dreams.

*** ***

The song that escaped my lips but never traveled the distance had a hope. I knocked on her door, always knowing that I’ll have to walk back the distance.

*** ***

I realize of the love, but does it always have to be sweet?