obLIViON

ob LIV i ON--- a state of being

its a state of being i often drift into.

and it is quite comfortable here.

that disconnect with urself... and the world that lives within u...seems so distant... its like a surreal part of u...

oblivion is not dreams,

obilvion is not nirvana,

oblivion is not meditation

oblivion is nothing ...

oblivion, oblivion, oblivion...

*****

a good sign...

Sky-gazing has been a childhood fascination. Thankfully, it still remains...

The earlier nite cast a rainy forecast for the next day, leaving only clouds in the sky... it carefully embraced the stars and blinded them from me...

But, last nite, before I left home, I went up to my haven of stars.
And what i saw was what I was feeling:

The sky was clear with all its twinkling stars- bright n shiny, the way I love it, the way they bring a happy smile to my face, the way I lose my way... gazing...
But there were clouds wandering and they would just not clear fast!! I was getting late to catch my bus... and there i saw something happen- the clouds started to clear slowly n steadily ( behind them the stars giving me a sneak-peak ;) )

( My dreams are in front of my eyes, but the clouds of confusion are hovering, but they will move, slowly and steadily, just like the way the sky told me the nite when i was leaving home.)

Stars in the sky...

My childhood fascination for it remains... and grows.

Shallow Sea...

Look back at the Bombay floods and you will see the numerous issues raked by the merciless waters invading every home it could..
But this is what it revealed to me:

The apathy of those in power to deliver to the public: well. this is an issue in debate for decades. We forever blame them conscience-less beings. We pay taxes. They gobble it all up fat asses.
Slums, poverty, pathetic infrastructure remain....

And funny how, we: CITIZENS ( amuses me we call ourselves that!! that we are only by the virtue of inhabiting this country) suffer in silence and dont rage in protest of sinners. We dont express our strife in any form, which is what gives those in power all the leeway to rape us of a DECENT publiv life.

We need a VOICE to scream that you better do your job, like we do ours!
We need a conscientous community of politicians and citizens...
We need to UNDERSTAND what we are doing to our country and to ourselves

I sometimes wonder what we all can stand up for as a nation today? Half a centure ago, our forefathers valued and respected what we today take for granted - FREEDOM.
Can we stand for issues that grapple the bleak future of a country with diverse and versatile culture like ours?
We cant look beyond ourselves, today. We are drowning in a shallow sea of the SELF.

Just different they were...

Albert Einstein...

He saw from his thoughts and thought through his eyes...


Gandhi

He walked miles....
And walked the nation with him
A walk to freedom ....

(to continue as n when my mind wanders.... )

Complicated

We speak the words we dont want to hear...
Thoughts linger on.... banging hard... silenlty...

So close yet so far... so far and yet so close....

The darkness of the nigth casts a twinkling star in my sight...
It brightens the sky and brings hope to my life...
Its presence makes all the difference.
The distance plays its games.
Sometimes its fun, sometimes its tough
Sometimes its a mystery never to be unravelled
I move closer to the star, very close...
So close, that i can see it without seeing it..
Feel it without touching it...
Listen to it without speaking to it.....

So close yet so far... so far and yet so close....

hide n' seek

Hide n' seek... a game i loved playing endlessly with my friends when i was a kid.
Now when i look back the game is so deep. It says so much.

Reality lies behind the masks people wear,
Reality lies beneath all that people say,
It lies in the silence of a friend and all the questions in the mind.

Reality is something you cant see until you've seen enough.
It's never on the face. And when it is....... it is hard to embrace it.

no end....

freedom, love and responsibility

Appa says, freedom and love are complimentary,
I say, freedom comes with responsibilty.

After all, freedom IS love.
The very nature of love is like what freedom feels..

I guess words fail us, as it right now.
I may be limiting the full experience of what these words represent.

hoRISEN

One of the principal pleasures in life is to ‘imagine’. Einstein says a mind once stretched cannot come back to its original state. When one sees larger horizons, touches and feels them, trivial matters cease to bother his being. The horizons beckon him and leave him aching.
The horizons of landscapes and roads, peoples and cultures, of perceptions and divinities gesture me to come to them.

This slow journey to my horizons moves on with highs and lows, joys and sorrows, hopes and crashes, smiles and tears and myriad emotions overwhelming me each day.

While I learn to live and live to learn, each day has come to be a metamorphosis.

bolt hole....

i cant recall the many times my tears have put me to sleep.

sweet tears lull me to sleep, once more, i pray.

in the hour of pain and the time i lose the game.

i cry to my pillow, my safe haven.

sweet tears lull my shame.

my breath i can hear it console me.

and my heart, it beats a tragic song.

PAIN........lull me to sleep..............FOREVER.

conversations in poetry

I love the poetic conversations Sabeti and me have during classes…. On pieces of papers of course. Unfortunately, I can’t replicate the touch and sight of the paper. But
I sure can store here, what’s on the paper…

Here it goes… on the long Saturday class on Corporate Branding, jargons juggle in our heads and we escape to our thoughts…perceptions… of all that depicts who we are and who we are not and who we want to be…

Simi: The sun rises with a promise of a journey,
The sunrays split across the horizon
So did the paths on the promised journey.
Hovering clouds drifted the lone traveler
Till he looked around him the sliver christens

The sun set with a promise of another journey
Here, there were no rays, there was no light
The stars shone with the promise of a dream
A dream so vibrant… a dream so vast…

Sabzi: In the night
All the colors are one
Walking past the past
Hoping against hope
My eyes were no longer closed
When the sun ate the stars.

Simi: The blue waters reflected and rippled memories
Life is not a fading a memory
It is a memoir.
I looked into those waters that once rippled laughter
Now it reflected the past and an intriguing search…
As I looked deeper into the waters…
I found no reflections… there were no ripples.
I found no one, but myself
The waters were a vacuum of realm

Sabzi: They tell me stories I don’t fathom
I only feel
All that’s unreal
I stop to dance
To the whistle of a tune
Long outlived
In my solitaire
Friends are scarce… (NO END)

Wedding anniversaries

Yesterday was my uncle and aunt’s 23rd wedding anniversary! Its very heartening to see two people in wedlock, for so many years… happily and that, with all the virtues- love, loyalty, passion, romance…. And so on.

That also reminds me of my journey from Bangalore to Hubli to make it for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary… for just one-day…need I say it was worth 48 hrs of bus travel??!! !!

Well and then there are these divorces cases… freak… they scare me off a yard!! All I can empathize with is the kids… they face childhood trauma… but there is also another way of looking at it… like most other things… may be they are entitled to becoming braver, stronger and sooner than the rest… life has its way of teaching us all the same lessons, sooner or later… and a lot of times the onus lies on us to pick these up cause I haven’t at times and it is all related to being sensitive.

I may not be making much sense from wedding anniversaries to divorce!

diwali then.... diwali now...

festivals are different for different ages... what am saying is, when i was a kid my thrill and excitement during festivals like diwali, ugadi etc.,, knew no bounds. fests were times of togetherness, family get togethers, fun, frolic and food!

times have changed... and round the corner, there's a lot more seriousness, primness and what not!

everything decays and disintegrates...... doesnt it?
then we talk of an ever growing, nurturing soul...

the bipolarity of reality...... keeps me thinking....... pondering.......

drops of mercy

i need tiny, sublime drops of mercy. we all do at times. it rejuvenates our being.

we so depend on an external object to be the recipient of our beneficence.

a disturbing fricton with providence. and my very being.

i need tiny, genuine drops of mercy. at times we want to flee away frm someone who fails to understand us. we want to break free.

but something pulls u back and u decide to fall prey to the viciuos chain.....of FORGIVENeSS.

yes, i need tiny drops of mercy to liberate my soul.

gud times

A few days back…
S: “ You know what??? I encountered a mad woman in the train today”
C: “ You know what??? A mad man hugged me!!!”
S: “what??? LOL!!!”

Today…
S: “ You know what???” a eunuch touched me today!”
C: “ You know what a eunuch smooched J coz he refused to give he/ she/ it (??) money” besides a eunuch also punched me once…”

That’s C, my dear friend for u. we strike great conversation…all I have to do is spark a conversation and share an incident and she wud have an almost unbelievable tail to entail the conversation in which D, S and me are nothing less than amused to listen to her encounters… be it the one where she wore a red top and got into a pool when they went for a holiday and the colour bleeded and folks giving her suspicious looks….( LOL) or her falling off the bike and the SELF-LAUGH which ensued or the great tale of the mad man who hugged her in the wee hours of the morning. While she was still asleep at the bus stand, the insane man decides C needs a hug and embraces her out of her sleep!!!! She wud never ever be asleep in the bus stand!

We have struck a good wavelength and every day the journey back home is something I look forward to… coz I have S to open up to… C to strike great chords and of course D who is an inseparable part.

Hmm the joys of CAMARADERIE........ !

Truly.... the best things in life are MUSIC>>>>>>> PHILOSOPHY>>>>>> FRIENDS!

Born- still

So hurt I could bleed
So misunderstood I could perish
Im stranded to feel lonely

Smiles, laughter flush out.......................... they same to be a fading memory........................
Painted picture sans reality
Portrait sans finesse
Punctured tier and deflated dreams.
Dreams that never formed. Dreams to be dreamed were born still.
There is no hope and equation exists only in math.

Cavernous Cry

Distant, untrodded virgin lands teasingly call the wanderlust bug to its unfathomable treasures.
The sensory touch of forest leaves…
the sight of green hues contouring blue skies tempt the aspiring nomad…
the instance where only time and space exist, wafts the drifter to the journey which lives its destination every moment.

It stirs, in my soul, an aching desperation to refrain from the mundaneness of this solitary confinement.

Love

LOVE is to -

give without expecting,
tolerate without getting impatient,
accept without complaining,
speak without talking,
feel without touching,
losing a bit, yet winning.

love is an endurance.

Mecca of glaring extremes

Initially, I took an utter dislike for this city- principally because of the absolute disparities between those who lived in penthouses and bungalows and those who lived in rat holes, footpaths, railway platforms; between those who dined and partied at sumptuous restaurants and the impoverished lot who barely had anything to eat; between those who swelled with pride underneath the Marks & Spencer and the little girl on the road who was not ashamed of having a piece of cloth to cover her emaciated corpus.
It pulled me to a vacuum of the human indifference we live in. This is the way these marginalized lot have been living (?) for years??
It’s appalling to see how people pull out all the stops to make a living. It’s a virtual exhibit of the human scale of efforts. Take a ride in the local- you would know what I mean- vendors, coming of all age, right from a toddler (I say, mark my word -toddler!) to the almost dying, shriveled mass of men and women. The lonely people. It reminds of the song

to be contd