How do I go home?

18th January 2015

Why does it happen still?
After all these years?
The weirdness creeps in.
And the world spins.

You don't know which road to take.
How will you go home?
What is home?
Where is home?

In Calcutta?
In Delhi?
In Hyderbad?
In Mumbai?
In all the houses I've lived in?
Where all my loved ones live?
My mom's house?
Where my brother lives?
Where my beloved grew up?
Where my love resides?

Is it where I breathe the lightest?
In his arms?
In the pause in a poem?
In a tune's smile?

In me?
A place?
A place which is eternal.
Where I've often paused and rested awhile.

In all the lives I've lived?
Is it the body in which my soul lives?
Is it in a shelf in outer space?

I'm confused.
I wanna go home.
Where is it?

Things Fall Apart

22nd January '14

This book is a masterpiece... atleast for me. Can't wait to start on the #2 of the trilogy.

Brings alive old Nigeria and its rich culture just before its colonization. And when the conflict comes about, it's not only a conflict between two religions, but between a lot of aspects, incomparable aspects - way of existence, richness in history, identity, roots, beliefs & so much more....

“There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

The patriarch Okonkwo's dilemmas, decisions and actions give a feel of  insecurity, strength, pride, failure, need for approval and recognition and sketches a portrait of a man who believes what is taught to him and puts his might into bettering his situation, not without his weak moments though.

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.”

What was really interesting and heart-warming are the snippets of old Igbo sayings, stories and songs.

“Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.”

Fragmented I live. Whole I'd die.

16th February '13

bits of soul.
bits of emotions.
bits of persons one's been.
bits of experiences.
bits of hopes.
bits of expectations.
bits of the bits of the lots of thing.
scattered.

these scattered bits come together.
these scattered bits make groups.
these scattered bits get into conflicts with each other.
these scattered bits discuss.
these scattered bits have engaging conversations.
these scattered bits co-exist.
these scattered bits can't co-exist.
these scattered bits morph into personalities.
split-personality

Excerpts from the lash

10th June '12



My heart is missing
and I cannot breathe
I'm living, not dead yet.
why me? why you? why us?
I ask myself, you and the darkness
no answers yet. no light yet.
I'm zigzagging through the world, the tasks
while I'm shattering into pieces.
I'm trying to hold myself together
but the pieces are lost.
I wonder again. Am I sure? Could this be me? Alive.
I pinch myself, I bite myself, I feel it.
I must be living.
Then how come I feel like dead?


sunshine
morning sunshine
happy sunshine
sunshine showers
sunshine yellow
rainbow sunshine
lovely sunshine
lifegiving sunshine
too much sunshine
warm sunshine
sunshine, too hot
I'm burning sunshine
ashes full of sunshine


Something is moving inside me.
Something, Someone is there
Otherwise how could I have handled it till now?
Something is alive, which is helping me function,
Write, do things, talk.
'Hello, Something Someone inside me
Please take over, completely
I can't carry on
Please.'

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!

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.

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?

Circumstance vs Me

14th July '09

I donno if it's the circumstance...or it's me...

I donno if it's the way stuff is...or it's what I make of it..

suddenly, I don't sometimes like the stuff I say, or do...

It's like I don't like what I'm becoming..

regret stuff, the moment it's done...

Maybe the justification holds true...

and maybe it is the circumstance...

and again...

I donno if it's the circumstance...or it's me...

I donno if it's the way stuff is...or it's what I make of it..

suddenly, I don't sometimes like me...

26th NOvember '08

KALADEISCOPE

 Let’s write, Let’s write

Let’s think in ink, in charcoal, in graphite..

Not aloud, yet expressed

Yes, Let the thoughts out

A world of Black and white,

I envision

A world of just Black!

Or just White!

Really! Did u say the Black in the White?

White through a prism, a glass, a lens,

Sprays a gamut of the rainbow seven

And in the absence of white….

…the absence of the VIBGYOR

The Black.

A world also of Greys my Dear

The grey area

With the grey cells

The most important matter my dear

A world of varied colours

A world of varied moods

A world of conflicts

A world of peace

A world of despair

A world of hope

A world so

Violet with the light divine

Yet, so bruised with the purpling poverty

Merry it goes in the vineyard dance

Oh! Did you smell the lilac?

A world so

Indigo with the nation’s pride

Where the soaring skies dip to sensex blues

And the cobalt sapphires glow a trifle light

Yes, one plans to swim the deep seas!

A world so

Green with fauna, flaura and flaunt

Yet, the envy piercing through the key-hole

The houses are big, filled with cash

A leaf, a leaf, a leaf

Produces chlorophyll

Anyone needs oxygen?

A world so

Yellow with lemons and sunflowers and gold

And smiling sunshine of learning children

Yet dirty, yes yellow and dirty

With jaundiced treachery

A world so

Orange with oranges n apricots n peaches n papaya…

An orange dusk and an orange dawn…

The veiled journey, relentless, everyday…

Every single day

The saffron sprinkles

A world so

Red with mirth of divine festivity

Where love reigns supreme

And Kama does ancient dances of seduction

Clueless, Scarlet waits in the Conservatory with a Dagger