Thursday, May 24, 2007

THE WAITING......

In and out, in and out……….
I breathe and wonder if it will be my last
A wait longer than millions of years
A million more to go…
Sitting by the window …
A deathly stillness in the air
Nothing moves outside
The countryside absolutely barren off everything
Save the white mantle it wears
Trees like frosted over ….curious grotesque shapes
Standing like mute tired sentinels
Bear testimony to my wait……….
Sometimes I wonder if they understand my pain
Their absolute stillness going unnoticed by the teeming millions
But on nights like this…when all the worlds abed
Except me ………..
A restless soul………………that never found what I searched
I understand their mute anguish as they understand mine



A sudden wind blows a few stray snowflakes across the window…..
My breath frosts the window as I sigh deeply
Stillness and turbulence all rolled into one
A lesson learnt……..
I’ve learnt that the wait never ends
That there is no end to my pain …….
That there never was anyone……..
Not even one single measly soul
Who could understand?
On whose shoulder I could rest my head
Who would shield me from the stormy blast……..
As I would protect him from the cares of the world……..
It’s not the pain of not having a mate…….
Its much more……….its the pain of not having…your reflection
It’s the pain of knowing that you are all alone…


And as I sit by this cold winter morn……
The night whittled away in the wait
Yet again do I sigh and begin the day
My contemplative self covered from all prying eyes
Ready to indulge in the day’s mundane work…
The screen is shut……the blinds drawn
My face a clear mask of unconcern………
I guess this is my fate.
My lot……….to never be understood.

MY FINAL TEST.............ONE OF MY OLD POEMS........THOSE WERE THE DAYS.......

No beginning, no end
It’s been there since the hills took form
Since the oceans swollen with water surged forth
My love for you feels eternal
Embedded somewhere deep in my consciousness
Its presence irrefutable
Sharp as the tears that sting my cheek
Crisp as the early morning air that brushes my face
Pale as the moon at night
Long as the waiting I’ve been through the ages
A waiting I can’t quantify
Ageless, strong, pure and undeniable

I wait my beloved
For you to come home,
to see the same love in my eyes
The same joy in my voice
The same warmth of the heart
The same secure circle of arms
The same embrace
Constant As ever
Vigilant like the trees standing for centuries

It’s so strange I age not and ages have past
I feel thy absence and yet feel thy presence
Ever constant with me
A presence that supports me through the years
A presence matched in purity and depth
By my acknowledging love
A tribute to you

A beacon to bring you back
Like the morning star guiding the sailor across unknown waters
My love will guide you back to me
And till then I watch with fondness
The circumventing path you take
Straining at the bonds that even you know that can’t be broken
The bonds that destined you and me to meet again and again
even the Gods tried to sever but failed
Not mere mortal love
But a culmination of the highest of it all
A realization of eternal submission to thy will



My faith will never reduce
It’s the fuel of my soul
The hope that dares me to believe that you will return
You have but moved away for a short time
And the return is imminent
And when you shall be back
The circle will be complete
And we shall me merged into one
The strongest, the mightiest, the humblest
The one…
No entity, no form, no presence …
The highest level
The pinnacle of our love
Our nemesis.
And yet our blessing.


I wait still
Come home …

SWEET OBLIVION

The air doth hold a stillness that bespeaks of a certain waiting
The waiting of an eternity
Of the decisions I have to make and never did make
The ultimate break…..my forte and none can do but me


The floor I treat on…my anklets making a familiar jangling noise
Chiming to the movements of my feet
That incessantly beat a way to insanity
The soul doth wonder when there will be respite
When it shall rest eternally
When it shall be eternally happy in blissful oblivion

Yes it is oblivion that I seek
That makes me sit up the dark of the night and wonder at my existence
It is oblivion…..a break from all the tortured feelings
Lifetimes and memories I hold within my small body…
A lifetime and many more all compressed
And someday it shall all come out and I shall be taken by surprise
Unprepared for the deluge, swept away by the force of the tide

The strength evades me
Courage deserted, and mind and body made infirm by the bondages of this life
And yet I strive for that oblivion
While the gods laugh at the wretched vanity of my being
Am I too arrogant?
To presume that I am capable of what very few have done

Is the strength of my purpose as solid as the rock on which my home stands?
Or am like the sand that gets washed away as the tide turns in?
The answers no one knoweth
And still are entrenched in the very same depths of my soul…
The soul that yearns for freedom and hath held the key to it.


And as I think these grave thoughts……..
Pacing back and forth……my anklets jangling
I wonder if I will ever see that oblivion…
Is death the only one to relieve me or is there another way
And look and look and look is all I do
Still finding no answer………

DONNE … makes me go sentimental…

Was reading my favorite old book of poems by John Donne, and every time I read it I feel strangulated and suffocated. It brings back memories long dead and gone, chases my soul into dark corners where it writhes with the frustrations of unfulfilment.
And yet I get dragged to the book, over and over again like a moth to the flame. Like a sickness I cant quite control , an indulgence I know that will tear strips off my soul, show me naked bare and with nowhere to hide.

I look out of the window, my face bare and all emotions flitting across it. Do I deserve to be tortured so? Why do I keep this book? Is it a relic? Or is it mute testimony to what I am destined to go through.
When I spied it in a fair…..all I thought when I leafed through its pages was-“so much pain and love…I wish someone could love like this for true…I wish I was the fortunate one to receive such love, pure boundless, and unconditional.”
And sighed and never let go of it.


Was reading it today and thought I would share with you some …


When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away,
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay
It cannot be
That thou lov’st me, as thou say’st
If in thine my life thou waste,
Thou art the best of me….


Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our cost die
And we in us find the eagle and the dove
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one are it
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysteries by this love



We can die by it, if not live by love
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
Us canonized for love



(One of his dark poems of hate)


The Message

Send home to me my long stray’d eyes to me,
Which O! too long have dwelt on thee;
Yet since there they have learn’d such ill;
Such forc’d fashions,
That they be
Made by thee
Fit for no good sight, keep them still.
Send home my harmless heart again,
Which no unworthy thought could stain
But if it be taught by thine
To make jestings
Of protestings;
And cross both
Word and oath,
Keep it, for ‘tis none of mine.
Yet send me back my heart and eyes,
That I may know, and see thy lies,
And may laugh and joy, when thou
Art in anguish and dost languish
For someone
That will none,
Or prove as false as thou art now.




Eloquent isn’t it? But what feels so special is I connect with his words in an unfathomable way. As though I’ve been through all those emotions, emotions that forced his sensitivity to pen them down…
Its strange how through centuries one sees goodness and love survive. There is an answering call in each one of us…….maybe later in life for most, but for me it came early………..and its presence I call “the waiting”. I know I am not being very coherent and don’t make much sense but for those of you who question the unquestionable…..
There is a certain charm about his poetic style. He delves deeply into the metaphysical, but to me he is just a magician who weaves all thoughts into a fabric that feels so soft and so secure, I’d call his poetry the answer to an idealist’s prayer.
Deep, honest, unconditional, pure…
Hope I have whetted your appetite for his words….and hope many of you find solace in them, like me…over and over again in the years to come.

DARK MOMENTS OF DESPAIR

Feel like writing a poem today
But the words fail me
Is it just the words that fail me?
Or the whole failure dawning on me

Can there be a disillusion beyond disillusionment?
Can there be a depth of misery beyond the deepest misery?
Can there be a joy beyond a joy?
Can there be contentment to wipe out every painful memory?

I can never describe the feeling
A feeling it is
A joy, a contentment and yet a misery beyond all…
Painful and yet a pain I yearn to go through again and yet again

Such is the feeling of love
Indescribable exultation
A high one doesn’t easily come down from
Till the lows dumb you rock bottom…
That the realization doesn’t even register
And one is left floundering, helpless, and hapless
Powerless to do anything except bid time.


Time the most precious commodity
Many would wish it turned back
Many would wish it would speed up
Many would pray for blissful oblivion
Many would pray for its healing properties

Anonymity and unconcern we pray for
A state of isolation and immunity
Even in the midst of the world


Today I feel like not talking to anyone
Because no one can help me
Help isn’t what I want
A place to hide is what I crave
Somewhere I could go and grab a slice of peace
A little tranquility I could absorb into my veins

Am I am escapist?
Nay or I wouldn’t ever have gotten into the mess I am in now
Slow is my speed of understanding
Didn’t see what stared me in the face
Just plodded on with supreme confidence
And prayed that I wasn’t wrong
But lo behold…
The god’s had something else in mind…
No Ave Maria helped…
I know the slide back was imminent…
And so its begun
Snowballing my life with a speed that defies all


And all I can do is watch helplessly
Face serene and composed in resignation
While the mind and heart screams in pain of violation
So deep that no one can even begin to fathom
Disillusion has set in…

I hope for my sake
I haven’t forgotten how to love and how to forgive
I don’t want to be an empty shell
That would for me be the ultimate death knell
What would I do…?
For whom would I do it…?


Not a single soul I could look at and say……
Thou shall my mainstay be
An emptiness pervades the soul
Makes me feel lazy with a lassitude
That beckons the beginning of the end
An end of all feeling
A hardening that shall never crack when fortified.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

TEARS

Isnt it strange............that they flow when you are happy and even when you are sad.........when you are helpless..........or when you are mortified by some great embarassment.....soem even cry when they are deeply angry.........and i thought it was distress which caused them to flow mostly...........
I am not a person prone to tears.......but nor do i find shame in them....when willy nilly they escape and roll down your face........for em they are not a weakness as many would say.........but just a symbol of sensitivity..........

I sometimes wonder if everyone has the same share of tears to shed.......or is someones lot more than the others?

there is a certain beauty in shedding tears when sitting alone.......and just letting the feelings taking over.......buffeting you with a force even a typhoon could equal.....something unexplicable that can make a strong man tremble too..........

the other day i was sitting on the beach at night and taking stock of my life.........just good natured rumination and absorbing the waves.....trying to feel one with God ...........and in that all i could do was watch mute as ters rolled down.......i wasnt crying and yet crying......crying for the beauty of the night.....crying for what i had lost......crying for what i had gained......and most of all crying because "the waiting" hadnt ended for me........

didnt feel better as people say.......just empty and numb........as though there was nothing left inside me...........strange feeling...........but its something im used to.......have felt it numerous times.........yet everytime it comes upon me its like a new feeling...........

Someone said ..........."we have the stars, why cry for the moon...........let us be content...lest we land up with a handful od stardust"

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

strange things happen to very normal people........

ive always wondered how people who've never met in their lives can get so close........yes i am talking about my stay in AWWA Mumbai............never met the guys n gals before but i can say they have seen me through some really shitty times...........seen me at my lowest and seen me at my worst...........and more than that stood by me........its true when they say that the test of friendship is in adversity.......when you really need people around you to help .......your so called well meaning friends may magically disappear.........i guess thats the testing ground for any relationship..........
in Shabina,Kunal Rohit and Anumita i found great friends............they took me as i am which is more than what i can say for even my closest........was going through a bad patch in life................they did all they could to cheer me up........and get me out of that state.......nice bunch.......i take back at least some good memories with me..........we will keep in touch and plan to meet up sometime to goto goa together.........