Showing posts with label Contemplation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contemplation. Show all posts
A letter to nobody
Dear Nobody,
My mind is filled with so many questions that I thought I
better spit them out. You might not be able to come up with answers to them, or
maybe to some you could. In either case there is no harm in trying. So, here I begin…
Why do Delhi girls wear their dupattas like terrorists,
covering their head and face? Is it because they are trying to scare people off
or because they are trying to get mixed in the crowd like dust? Is it because
it lends them some invisible anonymity or because they don’t like how they
look?
Why is it that sex is associated with nights? Why only when
you spend the night out it also means you must have done that? Is it not possible
to make out during the day time? Then why is there such a big hullabaloo about
being out at night?
Why is it that people get shocked when a girl is out at
night? Why is it that the ‘night’ is owned by men? Why is it that good girls (I
find these words offensive, but I am making an exception right now) can’t walk
alone on the road at night? Why restrict our lives to the days and retire at
night?
Why do people keep pets? Why don’t they keep other people? Hungry
people, poor people, old people, orphans….there are so many breeds to choose
from.
Why is it that the very birds which we write poetry about
irritate us no end when they start living in our air conditioner?
Why aren’t there windows anymore? I shall not even mention
the ventilators.
Life is full of sound and fury and has no meaning. Every one
has heard that. Then how come everyone is chasing something or other always? Well
this is not making sense anymore. I shall stop here and now. Thanks for
listening my dear Nobody.
Dimensions
I remained in yesterday
You moved on
to a strange today
-x-
The curtains lived on the edges of the day
Silent and somber watching
As deadlines rushed in & went away
-x-
The cat dragged in something
Stinking, broken and bleeding
It was but yesterday’s dream
-x-
The splashes from a butterfly fell on my days
Golden were the ways
When I flew where I wanted to
-x-
There was struggle between the identities
Me was different everywhere
Twitter, fb, orkut, buzz all agreed at my strangeness
-x-
Hunger pangs attacking the tummy
Tummy punished
for all the secret obscenities
it contained
-x-
Pain is the most
random thing in the world.
It’s everywhere.
-x-
What was stress called
when people hadn’t coined that term?
-x-
The grammar of love is confusing
Even practice may not
make you perfect
-x-
One by one they leave me
no rhyme no reason
betraying hair on my head
-x-
Burden of holding up millions of
thoughts & counter thoughts
so long bow down my neck now
-x-
A writer needs to write
A doctor needs to practice
A lover only needs to dream
Moderately Insane
Was I a poet then that I believed you
Or am I mad now to doubt
-x-
Whole day the money plant sat talking
To the window panes
The sun smiled on
And when night came
The exhausted stars too did their bit
Until the money plant dozed off
-x-
You brought me a little heart
Crooked n crumpled
And I a fool
Kept it under my pillow
Not knowing it will
Steal all my peace
-x-
The dirt from your eyes
Spills on my plans
And kills your bloody chances
-x-
Rub me rub me the wrong way
How I dare you
Do so…
-x-
The tar is set to conquer memories
The sweeter the worse
To remember
Save! Call in the fireman
Record! I want to play them again
Time replied it’s ok to keep some
And to let go off some
But what if the good is gone
And the bad remains?
-x-
Scavenger, scavenger
Don’t distribute my pieces
Don’t tell my stories
-x-
Restart the brain
Re-pen the thoughts
They have slept for long
-x-
Keep your eyes open
Don’t wink don’t breathe
The mosquitoes might attack
Nothing
I am here,
And yet I am not.
I have covered my frozen consciousness with a white sheath,
And let go off time’s strange grasp.
I have donned the garbs of a traveler,
And gone beyond.
I have seen the yonder skies.
I have seen the rain denied.
I have felt all that I never dreamt about.
I have drowned in despair.
I have emerged mellower, perhaps stronger.
I have enjoyed much blazing sun.
I have smiled at the icy winds.
I have risen above strange words called…
Desire, ambition, love and friendship.
I don’t feel the need to be,
Nor do I feel the need to not be.
I bask in my emptiness,
And all that I once found drab and boring
I rejoice in their glory.
All that is superficial and shallow,
In flip side is not so.
All that I mean to say,
Tomorrow may not be the same.
So I have gone away…
To nothingness.
Nothingness I embrace you!
And yet I am not.
I have covered my frozen consciousness with a white sheath,
And let go off time’s strange grasp.
I have donned the garbs of a traveler,
And gone beyond.
I have seen the yonder skies.
I have seen the rain denied.
I have felt all that I never dreamt about.
I have drowned in despair.
I have emerged mellower, perhaps stronger.
I have enjoyed much blazing sun.
I have smiled at the icy winds.
I have risen above strange words called…
Desire, ambition, love and friendship.
I don’t feel the need to be,
Nor do I feel the need to not be.
I bask in my emptiness,
And all that I once found drab and boring
I rejoice in their glory.
All that is superficial and shallow,
In flip side is not so.
All that I mean to say,
Tomorrow may not be the same.
So I have gone away…
To nothingness.
Nothingness I embrace you!
Life sans ambition
How important is it to have an ambition? Why kids are asked again and again what their ambition is?
I never believed in ambitions. My fierce lack of ambitions surprised people, sometimes even me. The only ambition I ever had was to become an engineer like my father, simply because my sister also said the same thing. As I grew up I was less and less convinced of it myself and finally by the time I opted for arts I was convinced I was not cut out for it at all.
I entered advertising like a lot of other people, people who didn’t know what to do with there lives. I don’t see myself becoming a Prasoon Joshi or an Amitav Ghosh. I am not sure I want to either. The truth is I am too lazy to do anything, too bored and sometimes… I confess, the thought scares me…But mostly I am least bothered about it.
Then one day someone asked me, “What do you expect from yourself? Don’t you have any expectations from yourself?” I didn’t think twice before answering “
Later when I thought about it I realized there was much truth in it. My expectations more or less and even my moods depended on what others would or would not do.
Perhaps it was during those moments of self-realization I remembered the lines from one of my most favourite movie- ‘The Revolutionary Road…
“I want to feel things…. How’s that for an ambition?”
This is how I want to live my life…I want to see things, experience things. And yes I don’t really need an ambition, ‘an ambition in the strict sense of the word’. Now that I have made this crucial discovery I find myself at complete peace. I don’t think I will need to dependant on anyone ever.
I feel liberated. I feel excited for the life ahead… I think I have finally discovered myself…
I never believed in ambitions. My fierce lack of ambitions surprised people, sometimes even me. The only ambition I ever had was to become an engineer like my father, simply because my sister also said the same thing. As I grew up I was less and less convinced of it myself and finally by the time I opted for arts I was convinced I was not cut out for it at all.
I entered advertising like a lot of other people, people who didn’t know what to do with there lives. I don’t see myself becoming a Prasoon Joshi or an Amitav Ghosh. I am not sure I want to either. The truth is I am too lazy to do anything, too bored and sometimes… I confess, the thought scares me…But mostly I am least bothered about it.
Then one day someone asked me, “What do you expect from yourself? Don’t you have any expectations from yourself?” I didn’t think twice before answering “
Later when I thought about it I realized there was much truth in it. My expectations more or less and even my moods depended on what others would or would not do.
Perhaps it was during those moments of self-realization I remembered the lines from one of my most favourite movie- ‘The Revolutionary Road…
“I want to feel things…. How’s that for an ambition?”
This is how I want to live my life…I want to see things, experience things. And yes I don’t really need an ambition, ‘an ambition in the strict sense of the word’. Now that I have made this crucial discovery I find myself at complete peace. I don’t think I will need to dependant on anyone ever.
I feel liberated. I feel excited for the life ahead… I think I have finally discovered myself…
Untitled
How do you name that little selfish realisation?
Which drops on your cold terrified heart
In the fraction of a second
Sweeping relief
Breathing life into you
Telling you that
It's not you, not your home
That calamity has chosen to visit
What??
Change is inevitable. Nothing remains.
I do not blame you. I blame everybody. I blame this damned cycle called life. The innate curiousity of man. This sick habit of trying new things out. Of the old dying a silent death. Do not know whether to love or hate it.
You do not understand. Why should you? Even I don't. This coating of projected image defeats the real me. This plastic smile in posy photos, this bull shitting on social websites. Why see beyond this? You don't see beyond this. And when this projected image will meet my real self, it will have naught to say. Except to shed poor black tears at fake life's false misery. Of letting things happen. Of letting things happen the way they happened.
What remains is false pride. Meaningless principles which mean nothing to anyone.
So?
What to do?
Sub merge sensibility and practiality with philosophy. Force them and beat them into emotions. Do I do something stiff and rational? Or pull my hair to bits crying over dead emotions. Or like a block of ice let the emotions pass by. Or look at the philosophy behind all this. Look at life.
What do I do with life?
I do not blame you. I blame everybody. I blame this damned cycle called life. The innate curiousity of man. This sick habit of trying new things out. Of the old dying a silent death. Do not know whether to love or hate it.
You do not understand. Why should you? Even I don't. This coating of projected image defeats the real me. This plastic smile in posy photos, this bull shitting on social websites. Why see beyond this? You don't see beyond this. And when this projected image will meet my real self, it will have naught to say. Except to shed poor black tears at fake life's false misery. Of letting things happen. Of letting things happen the way they happened.
What remains is false pride. Meaningless principles which mean nothing to anyone.
So?
What to do?
Sub merge sensibility and practiality with philosophy. Force them and beat them into emotions. Do I do something stiff and rational? Or pull my hair to bits crying over dead emotions. Or like a block of ice let the emotions pass by. Or look at the philosophy behind all this. Look at life.
What do I do with life?
Void
I knew this would happen. I was scared of this strange feeling.
Of waking up one morning, of beating sleepless dawns and knowing this feeling of having lost everything. Of being very alone.
Of nothing to give, nothing to take. What world is it? Nothing to look forward to. This ocean which doesn't engulf you, nor does it pass by silently.
Life which smiles at you from the shore, comes forward to meet you and rushes far away from you.
Which continues to tease you as if you are a baby who is being tempted with a rattle.
Ah! But life is such a personal thing.
Yet so common.
I was scared to find myself on the other side of one such morning. But sadly its time, and I have waken up.
Of waking up one morning, of beating sleepless dawns and knowing this feeling of having lost everything. Of being very alone.
Of nothing to give, nothing to take. What world is it? Nothing to look forward to. This ocean which doesn't engulf you, nor does it pass by silently.
Life which smiles at you from the shore, comes forward to meet you and rushes far away from you.
Which continues to tease you as if you are a baby who is being tempted with a rattle.
Ah! But life is such a personal thing.
Yet so common.
I was scared to find myself on the other side of one such morning. But sadly its time, and I have waken up.
If you ask me how is a writer's life? I will tell you it is difficult. You have to be loner to be a writer, at least in some way or the other. I cannot write unless I am lonely MENTALLY. The inner life is alone. Somewhere or the other, it is inevitable for the writer to have faced some tragedy. A happy man is no writer. As much as solitude is important, it is equally important for the writer to fall back into society for periodic spells. To experience real life, to be inspired. To come back to the normal world.
The Inner Life
The place where you dare to be yourself - in all your oddities and eccentricities. Where you swim ashore away from the incepient madness of this world. Where you dare call your boss 'a blood sucker' and your closest friend 'the biggest flirt'. Where you dare to face your shortcomings. Where you can forgive your failings. Where you can atleast try to live like you want to.
Living the inner life, the life Lawrence talks about and loves so. The life I live, oblivious of the world that moves around.
Living the inner life, the life Lawrence talks about and loves so. The life I live, oblivious of the world that moves around.
Can an agnostic be superstitious? What has atheism got to do with superstition? How much does collective memory affect a person? How important is a person’s upbringing in molding one’s beliefs? Or is it one’s individual choice. What
I do not know. All I can tell you is my strange behaviour.
It was a normal day. I was returning home in the office cab. It drops me midway to my home everyday, at Chirag Dilli red light, by far the most crowded point in South Delhi. From Chirag Delhi I catch a bus home.
Coincidentally I am alone in the cab. Listening to music and dreaming. The cab turns into a lane parallel to the main road. A cat crosses the road in front of the cab.
The cabbie drives on without a blink. I try to look at the incident casually but its sticks to my mind. I tell myself I don’t believe in such things. After all that’s how I have been always. I reach Chirag Delhi; the cab gets badly stuck in traffic. I get off in the jam itself and started juggling between the cars. Bang! I hit a car. Ya, I hit a car, the car didn’t hit me. Stupid the car was static it couldn’t move in the traffic. I hurt my leg a bit, not enough to stop and look at it. I can see my bus in the middle of the jam packed road. I know it won’t stop at the bus stop. In a matter of minutes the red light will turn green yet I remain rooted to my spot. I have already hurt my leg and I have a premonition something worse can happen. The voices of my parents telling me about the cat keep coming to my mind. I am paranoid. I simply cannot walk to the bus in the jam packed road.
Me who laughs and has no patience with people who can’t cross roads.
The light turns green. The bus leaves. Another one comes and leaves. I take an auto home.
All education, rationality, scientific progress goes boink! Why did I do it I still can’t answer myself? I don’t believe in superstitions. Then why? And what has it got to do with atheism?
I do not know. All I can tell you is my strange behaviour.
It was a normal day. I was returning home in the office cab. It drops me midway to my home everyday, at Chirag Dilli red light, by far the most crowded point in South Delhi. From Chirag Delhi I catch a bus home.
Coincidentally I am alone in the cab. Listening to music and dreaming. The cab turns into a lane parallel to the main road. A cat crosses the road in front of the cab.
The cabbie drives on without a blink. I try to look at the incident casually but its sticks to my mind. I tell myself I don’t believe in such things. After all that’s how I have been always. I reach Chirag Delhi; the cab gets badly stuck in traffic. I get off in the jam itself and started juggling between the cars. Bang! I hit a car. Ya, I hit a car, the car didn’t hit me. Stupid the car was static it couldn’t move in the traffic. I hurt my leg a bit, not enough to stop and look at it. I can see my bus in the middle of the jam packed road. I know it won’t stop at the bus stop. In a matter of minutes the red light will turn green yet I remain rooted to my spot. I have already hurt my leg and I have a premonition something worse can happen. The voices of my parents telling me about the cat keep coming to my mind. I am paranoid. I simply cannot walk to the bus in the jam packed road.
Me who laughs and has no patience with people who can’t cross roads.
The light turns green. The bus leaves. Another one comes and leaves. I take an auto home.
All education, rationality, scientific progress goes boink! Why did I do it I still can’t answer myself? I don’t believe in superstitions. Then why? And what has it got to do with atheism?
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