Rishikesh musings - 1

2nd November '11

Met Blanche, the 'je suis Shweta'.
Whose more vegetarian than anyone, I know, and more yogically spiritual than I'll ever be. It feels strange to see so many foreigners in a desi garb, who seem to have such great insight into our country's ethos. An insight which we refuse to even acknowledge.

What is it that they find here, in benaras and dwell here for weeks, months when we will dismiss these places in a day?

What is it that we, they, all of us really go looking for when we go to a new place?


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Look at u

Look back at u.
Look shut-eye at u.
Look faith at u.
Look before at u.
Look after at u.
Look now at u.
Look not-look at u.
Look is all at u.

Sense and Sensitivity

8th October '11

Loss
Deep loss
Mourning
Bellowing mourning

Mirth died today
With it the youthful joy

Do you belief in rebirth?

--

Oh so the mourning is for a death
That happened a while ago?

So what's with today?

Why is today cast in gloom
Of a shadow which hovered a while ago?

Did u not see then?
Did u not hear then?
Where were you then?

--

These seas of silence
This silent despair
I cannot take anymore

These few words
So heavy with darker meaning
This dreamless night
So cloudy with thoughts
I cannot take anymore

These trembles, So delirious with loneliness
This me, So brimming
I cannot take anymore

drown down

27th Aug '11

It takes a deep dive
Right in
In the deep depths
It takes in a long breadth
And and tries to stay underwater
But what comes in goes out
So it floats up.

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Maybe

12th August '12

Walking slowly and carefully, I missed a lot of stones.

Maybe I should have overturned them.

Singing loudly and dancing vociferously the dance of life, I turned deaf to my inner voice.

Maybe I should have turned the volume down.

Trying to get the work done, organized and scheduled, I forgot the whole point.

Maybe I should have aligned myself to the purpose first.

These maybes,

These thoughts,

I need to shelf again today.

Maybe I shouldn’t!

in passing

11^th August ‘11

Out of sight. Out of mind.

Does this hold true? Maybe to a certain degree. But that necessarily doesn’t mean that the subject is not tucked somewhere in some very fond corner of the heart, to come up to the mind aimlessly, like a song from an oblivious, infinite playlist in shuffle mode.

I really don’t truly believe in the randomness of the shuffle mode. I think there’s a definite pattern there, somewhere. Probably again, known to the higher mind, the great strategist or the omnipresent. I can sometimes guess the complicated flowchart of the pattern, but don’t know a way of validating my doubts. Do the psychology experts know?

Life emanating of me

Images springing and dancing and jumping off a cliff

A face leaving the trail of its thought behind

Lazy working days full of restless ideas

Commute amidst many, through several modes.

a drive, a tube, an escalator, a tunnel,

a rickshaw, a meter,  a subway, a walk,

a bus, a conductor, a  stop, some stairs..

a journey, an exchange, some time,

just a wee bit of life. 

Search

11th August '11

A spinning top
Goes round and round
It's physics
It's what spinning is
It's what a top does

It spins and skirts the edges
Crossing the centre in motion
But never stopping

Spinning around the edges
Looking for the speck, the spot
Restlessly it spins, and spins
And the some more

All the time, missing the point.
Missing to dwell on the core.

I donno who lives inside me anymore?

21st July '11

Someone speaks from inside me....
The words I've spoken echo in my ears..
And I wonder who said them?

Not one, not two, but many of them pull the strings, tug at them...
And not one of them is me.
If you can hear a faint sigh, a murmur of approval, a vehement no or a silent tear roll down, that could be me.

Sink

21st July, 2011

Black vipers stuck in the throat
Try to swallow the senses

The senses are drowning
The saliva's a whirling storm

Fingers knead their way to save
They're gunned down by barrels

There's blood in the bloody storm!

Ravens and rodents rot the ship
It's a stinking pothole now,
That what was once a dream.

the last jigsaw piece

19th May '11

u know I love you..

somehow the love gets lost..

and all you hear are the words..

I want to tell you

hold me

hold me real close...

somehow you hear the opposite

and push me away

I want to tell you

it hurts

i'm scared

but all I do is lash out in anger...

at having to tell you...

and you not understanding

on your own

by your own sense of me

I'm not half the person I used to be

there's just some fragments of me remaining here and there

which somehow sometimes adhocly come together...

and I exist... as a fragmentary-multiperson, whose never complete

who begins but never finishes, or finishes but never begins...

it's like

you can see me

but I'm not there

it takes an effort to be whole again

in crowds, it's easy

to fit in, to stand out, to talk, to laugh, to sing, to dance, or just be grumpy..

but what do you do, when there's no audience?

when you're just alone, with yourself, and then sometimes with the one who's home..

do you become your own audience?

how can logic always work?

how can the right way be the same right way for all?

how can one fit the wrong piece in the right jigsaw?

what if the missing piece never existed?

A

18th March '11

a blank page

a pen

and no words

a poetry without a rhythm

a rhyme which doesn't ring

a night which turns agenda-less

a star which is lost

a friend whose far far away

a friend whose so close yet

a lover whose lost in ideal

a partner whose calculating the logic

a finger which has interrogated every angle

a tear which drops too easily

a straying lock of hair

a sleepy pair of eyes

a commitment of a lifetime

a parting of a week

a song, a sonnet

a ballad, a cuckoo

a nightmare, a dream

a hope, a dawn

11th Feb 2011

फिर एक मोड़ आया है

फिर से

अभी तो निकले थे हम सफ़र पे

शुरुआत में ही मोड़ आया है

फिर एक मोड़ आया है

Tidings

7th Feb '11

Blue rivers

Crimson wounds

Come together,

It’s a purple world!

Conniving wishes

Splashing on dreams

Expectations brimming

Hitting the ceiling

Green meadows

Sweet smelling flowers

Inviting craving

Circumstantial denial!

Yellow sunshine

Yellow lemon

Yellow allamanda

Yellow dirty eh?

Before dawn ramblings

7th January '11

coming back
is desired
coming back
isn't easy
coming back
pains.

I write to you in verse
situation of my heart
which has a lot of love to give
but, there's a but in between.

Memories they play these games
take you back, again and again.
a simple day, some hours,
some conversations, some exploration..
a friendship we embarked
but we never saw where we really arrived
before parting.

Fragmentary

6th January '11

A shadow that haunts me
sometimes just bursts into fragments of light.
If I'm not too careful, I might just be up in flames.

It lingers when I'm having a happy dream
with visions, with doubts that I could be happier still.
It's almost forbidden,
yet it finds its place exactly where it's to be not.

It's just a reflection, the real's far far away.
Still? So much power? So much attraction?
And that too in an abstract?
A smoke like thing which appears from nowhere
and then also dissolves into nothingness?

It's an incomplete thing.
It could be anything.
It's a thing ahead of itself
which just couldn't finish.
It's a shadow of an unfinished thing
which I hope to capture in poetry, in the least.

Moon's Lullabye

last year's October's writing
October 1st '10

Moons' Lullabye
a bed of stars
a world of twinkling dreams
and my lover got lost

In the midst of the wilderness
my heart longed
for a straying lock
for a deep caress

the long lost notes haunt the sitar
the last kiss lingers venomously on lips
fingers restless
for you, the one whose not there

the bed of stars
spreads across the sky
the courtyard watches silently