Zephyr

Rains delayed, the number measures -

Gone hay wire

Political color or its glory… aint so holi(y)

Powers desire

‘Beats’ of passions fall misplaced

Man on fire!

At Hundred, Cut-Offs today, above all now…

Hell’s no higher!

The elders stop, steal a glance

Turn the page to their converted chance

Our future shimmers in the ‘hell’ of famed!

In dust and dirt, lies, our ‘NOW’ ashamed!

Principles manufactured in best-sellers online-

Cash on delivery pay

Mirages of carnal craze, not just a pirate disc, but -

On streets display

Farmer eyes a dry ink pot, no sadness writes, but -

His ‘face books’ say!

‘India shinning’ words worth of our ‘opium’ anthem –

In movie halls play!

I live today with tomorrow’s bane

Running against this one-way lane

Heart beats hammer a ‘rhythm divine’

No zephyr blowing… today… through yonder mountain-line

I suppose

Reflections collage on the silvered glass,
of the past perfect and the present 'tense' -
of the eclipsed zones, those shadow-lines
Like the locus of, a life's experience

Images rush... only to vanish!
With the sound of silence in the air -
Emotions shimmer like a wicker light,
Those vibgyor colors of my archives rare.

Questions echo, in the vacuums 'round
An equal music of a blue wind-chime
Story-board rolls, no action replays!
In a precious life-time, would hope sublime?

I move on, I stop... milestones create
Bitter-sweet flavor my symphony goes -
Under seasons of sun, a life is just?
A mystery, a puzzle... is all I suppose.

Isn’t it ironic

Have I lived a life in my thoughts? Have I created a web of complex imagery, intricate dreams and sweet nothings that have lasted me a life-time? Have I lived in meta-stable state of time where past present future has managed to oscillate pendulously? I cant say that I was conscious of the future, neither can I claim possession of the present, and now as in turn-the-page, the past does not seem familiar… my life, huh, seems like lost in translation.

I have done my duties, abided by the grammar of life in general and family in particular. Education, employment, tangibles and intangibles that I own, that make me what I am! It has been a success story as ‘people’ might summarize. But is it so much about a pass-grade; a letter grade stamped on a mark sheet when its time to graduate. But here and now… what would I graduate into? Life long it was about a hide and seek, and now it all seems so futile. One thing led to another, a supply chain of hypocritical affairs that left no time to stand and stare. Percentages to percentiles, ranks to seats, graduation to masters and all along the numerology of a CTC that make you a ‘complete man’! How funny it was, in a dapper suit polished boots, they calculated my true worth! How plastic smiles and blatant lies measured more than a will to learn and a heart to try! How friends were lost and acquaintances made over a mug of beer and buffet dinner. How love’s labor lost in the silence of honor.

I stare into the nothingness of the inky sky. I try to hunt for the tipping point of my life. I try to rummage through the archives and identify the moment of truth! Alas! Seems like I did nothing wrong albeit… my dreams tell me of a different life story.

I have everything, so it is not a ‘grapes are sour’ melodrama inside. But the shades of my palette seem so very unknown now that the canvas has already been painted. Did I set out to use such colors?

The most important possession a man might have when he hangs his boots… is an equal music. A feeling of resonance with his self, his reflection, his canvas…

I never could say it. I never could stop and stare, neither did I fight for it. Fight for all those which were equal music to me. Instead I triumphed in the unknown errors of my life. My locus went on to follow a pattern, some pattern, got me in to the portals of a social milieu but somewhere I lost my sound of music.

I can’t take it back anymore. The sediments of chardonnay, the smell of turmeric, the rhinoceros (the play)…

The black automobile is parked in the driveway. ‘Take us back to the rivers of belief…’ the Enigma song fills in the airs around. There was a piece of paper with words in black, signed with a promise forever… I try hard to remember its content, I try hard to find it, go back in the past for that one reality I wish I had never lost…

If only wishes were true…

wonderment

Wonderment
In my crazy dreams, wishes relevant

To be a bus-conductor, in -
Rush hour traffic, innocent excitement
Travels, to hills ‘n waters of the bay, though -
In concrete jungle my story orient

School, then college, a job that paid
Grammar of life, just ten commandment
From fairy tales to poetry learn
Allegory, irony, words do paint

26 letters read write speak, and –
Those five senses so very efficient
With tides of time, values are lost
Emotions survive… mere accident

A father and mother, no talks about
Nuclear love in high rise apartment
Move on, (s)he says, logic (s)he gives
Defined as just another incident?

No reason to believe, no reason to hold
Right questions unanswered, holds the judgment
Where Past is squared, Present continues, to-
Fill-in-the-blanks, like spaces to rent

Wonderment!
Unknown errors of life's intent

Wonderment. The word came up in a humorous context last evening. And humor was in the perimeter of discussion, like sometimes there is pleasure in pain, in a very sarcastic, beautifully ironic way! The context would remain ‘memorable’ for all reasons, left-right and centre but how truly ‘wonderment’ is the mantra of life made me have a silly grin since day-break! Not really a scribble that I thought about a lot, but ya, while just typing this in, I understood how I have been selfish in ways and how I have labored with my ‘great expectations’ without looking at people who never claim their fame, but leaves quite some indelible impressions. Maybe its time to close a counter in my ‘Reliance Fresh’ (a huge pun intended! Hope you get the thought behind!!) and bus…

55

read Vinnie's 55's and wanted to write one! Din know how to be economical with words 'n thoughts... or maybe there wasnt room enough for a economy class air-fare types story... these words mean any to you.. maybe there's some story, maybe there's none, or maybe just a possibility that there was... when one turns the page :)

quite insane, but such is life... and i fire-fight :)

She
He
Acquaintance
Conversation
Speak
Listen
Smile
Laugh
Exclaim
Confirm
Contest
Create
Silence
Time
Seasons
Story
Vintage
Emotion
Confusion
Confession
Affirmation
Bliss
Magic
Open
Honest
Moment
Cross-road
Diverge
Travelogues?
Epilogues.
Past
Precious
Questions
Silence
Reason
Reflections
Refractions
Bounced
Opaque
Pain
Rain
Music
Harmony
Poetry
Wordsworth
Story
Ending
Success
Failure
Meaningless
Strange
Precious
Continuous
Treasure
Strength?

the early-birds

It’s been awhile
For the words to snow-ball
Them thoughts to hurl-
Against fabric of the mind
To spin a- rhetoric confined!

All of us think about the future. From the second grade drawing classes to New India Insurance – rahe kal per control, education is about foresight. The grammar of life is largely written for the future perfect; present continuous and past perfect continuous form the ‘unknown errors’ of our lives. But as luck would be I wasn’t good at English grammar when they were taking classes back in school. I had the Wren and Martin, the John Mason textbooks… lessons in a language that teach you to speak, write and even think correctly! See! In talking about the future, somehow I turned the page… back!
What is so impressive about the future that woos us all? Why is it that we need to know where the story would take us, where it would end, even? Cant it end in the ‘odds’?
Life is short, why think so much… life is short, be very cautious! Somehow in every school of thought, there is the great dying urge to create the unnecessary! To talk about the time that hasn’t yet been identified yet. I feel overburdened. My cranial matter, shrinking in the summers of 2009 and you want me to crack some su-do-ku and assure myself of a job for the winters! In class ten, you solve pulley and pyramid problems for the IIT’s and in final year commit suicide cause you don’t know again how future tense would treat you after failing in some weird subject. A subject that aint matter to any living being! But just because there is future…to be made… you munch on.
Even getting a job is not good enough! There also the tests-of-tomorrow take away the present clockwork! No time for coffee and the ‘lot’ that happens over it!
Sometime I don’t know why they have interviews to judge people. The assumption is that the best indicator of the future performance is the past performance! The assumption is that the person would be consistent in that ‘performance’! Mind you – the word is consistent! Isn’t it funny that fulcrum of the future rests in the past? Yet all we care for is the future, using the past – UNKNOWINGLY, as the damned passport to wonderlands!
We exhibit amazing predictability! Doctor engineer, marketing finance, Mumbai Bangalore… or as Obama might say Buffalo Bangalore, we all soldier on! Future is the divine sauce served to lubricate (fertilize? Thy brain!) our rat race carts!
What is the purpose of life? Security? Happiness? Pleasure? Fame, glory, high-speed drives, sweet lullaby? What is the eye of this storm?
Some do not live for a purpose, their actions don’t have a prefix, their behaviors don’t have patterns, and maybe they are fooled by randomness. That would be an entire subject of ‘chaos theory’ but my point here is, these people make a lot of assumptions!
Question the assumptions you have made in life and the purpose would emerge. Food, water, the roof over-above, the comforts, relations, emotions… everything is quantifiable and is being the momentum behind life. In the comfort zone, we just fail to admit and admire the point-of-balance, for our lives…
Sometimes the purpose lies in the future, sometimes maybe future is the purpose! In the every shifting scales of time, we are, hence, always trying to be the early-bird! And when everyone wakes up to be the early-bird, maybe the worm still has a chance to live!
There are many aspects of life that I haven’t been able to define and measure… but I can’t see into the future, there is so much to look around right here, right now. I can be true to just this perimeter of my life.
Future is eventual. Future is gonna hit the theatres soon, I mean, hell! Theatrics of life. Some would gross more, some would be wash outs and some would remain the dark knights (amen to KKR ‘n SRK!), but I can only promise what I have. I can only stand by my present and assure as much.
So every time I look at the clock, blurring the tenses of with every periodic move, I look back to preserve the past. I look back to remember the events, the people and emotions I carry, I call my own. For the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ it might appear baggage, but its just because they are too poor and thin to hold on. Too fast too even realize that, eventually, time ‘flies’… away! And it’s no race at all.

within without

Sarcasm is like a magic cloak that hides, rather tints quite a few emotions, quite a few realities in strange ways! With 99 shades for a two wheeler and some thousand Royal emulsions on the wall, manifestations are no longer simple, rarely honest as well! And so is required the humor-in-uniform to appear brave! Appear, mind you!

This also has the huge overtone of uncertainty. What is ‘in store’ (pun intended) and what can be acquired are not quite objective! And at what cost? Time? What are the options, exhaustive? The perimeter of global kingdom, via the virtual domain, reaches out to an igloo from a hammock! And in this ‘search’ for buffer, we generate tremendous amount of data as well! Social networking sites to e-commerce; e-buy to (e)education, where is the touch and feel? I mean, is there a need even? Broad band promotions beam an impatient youth living on the edge, proud and (em)powered, just ‘cause he has a Charles Babbage invention (that would be a computer!) and some gigs of connectivity! Little drop(s) of joy! The world is a pretty place, and am a happy child!

I see a zillion pearls in the laughter around! From the whites of a toothpaste-brush, to the engagement platinum, gold affairs, to even the politicians shameless yet bold (and beautiful!) in their promises dispensing vocal tonic (read verbal diarrhea!) – happiness, more or less! The class, caste wars, the religious barbarism and nukes power play are all DISPLAYED, presented with so much perfection, that I wonder if they can all be laughed away anyway! Or rather left for the fertilized brain of the crème de la crème. Those who do not let the dirt and muck stick to their gabardine yet claim to feel the rhythm divine! Those who talk about the ‘without’ with so much ‘within’ that as a third person you feel left out man! Identity crisis – who am I? Mother! Why don’t I see the guiding light, or the shadow-lines?

What is there ‘within’ is what we cannot do ‘without’. Rather, we even need not to. That would be making ourselves an outlier to our own existence, like an out of form creature who can always double up as a politician (I guess the only profession that needs a ‘life support system’, if you really get what I mean!!)! Support! One for all and all for one… clarion calls where collectives are spelt, have all been laughed away. Group dynamics is tinted towards a particular shade, quite difficult to find from the rainbow though! Avril sang ‘Complicated’, rather she had quite a few questions in her song, sigh! Why don’t they sing some with the answers as well? I mean, why leave the solutions for the dumb ass brains who do not know how to sing, make movies, win elections, be a slum-dog millionaire et al! How the hell would that ‘another brick in the wall’ know the secret to salvation? What would they do with so much data? What would they do with so many options? How would they know the inside from the outside?

Everything thus reduces to a mathematical head-tail unbiased (sarcasm intended!) toss where there is CHANCE of spring and there is chance of Lady Katrina ‘take my breathe
(life!!) away’… aha, in just one flash! What am I to do? Write fancy poetry to post on the blog? Try to run and hide from the ‘within’ or suffer for the lack of ‘without’?

When I travel in the local bus, hang from the local trains and walk down the streets of the city in Calcutta, in Bombay, all I see is mathematics at work. An infinite loop of conditions that entangle across like crazy swim-lanes, making us wonder what greater intelligence would be! IS rather!

In the great asymmetry of our lives, we arrange ourselves in set patterns, education, love, lust and all those labor lost, even the agony aunts who infuse strength and compassion, we try to find a place in silos! And till we get to tint our holier than thou soul in some color, we are all smiles… one big happy family! A speck of dust in the infinite universe, the vacuum ‘within’ and existence (acceptance) ‘without’!