Cries From A Grave

Dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the Mumbai Blasts. 

I would smear my hair
Saffron, white and green
and whistle
every time India won.
Just like you.

I would stand
long queues
to the first show
of every new movie.
Just like you.

I would run
from my math lessons
and the spanking
from my dear father.
Just like you.

I would break
every glass window
Slamming sixers
on our muddy streets.
Just like you.
*

But this day,
Kind One,
I lie thoughtful
Of my unknown days
and unremembered deeds
Of my little thrills
and nameless acts
Of the desolate journey
that beckons me

As I swoon
in perpetual trance
Choking
in my own breath
Bathing
in my own blood
Splintered petals
caressing my wounds

I stare
with sinking eyes
at the sudden stillness
This rapidly engulfing peace
dragging me into its fold
as I slip into a sleep.

I rest
under the spotless moon
beneath the sheath of warm air
in a blaring silence
shrill and still.
Still, as death.

In death do I pray,
Living One,
That I forfeited mine
So you may live yours.
*

Sing not
a mournful eulogy
until you hear the sniffles
of my mother’s
dry tear

Feel not
an ounce of pity
If you do not know
the language of my grief

Cry not
a tear on my grave
If you do not understand
the meaning of my death

For under this grave
is Me - the unborn.
Stolen of the joys
of seeing this world
Robbed of the bliss
of my mother’s kiss
Stripped of the delight
of playing street cricket
Deprived of the pleasure
of living a life.

And To You
Fortunate Reader,
I bequeath
All the Joys
Of my Unlived Life.

For my dad…

A gentle wind sweeps past me
and sings into my ears
tales of the kind time
of those joyful years
of you and me.

of tender strokes to my cheek
waking me every morning

of your breath over my wound
healing me for the moment

of the tight hugs
bringing sleep to my sullen eyes

of kisses to my forehead
blessing me away to school

of the tata through the window pane
rendering my eyes moist
unable to let go of your warmth

of your grasping my tiny hand
walking down the lanes with you

of your bent knees
that I slept over
my head resting safe over

of my innocent smile
every time I called u appa

of the day I thought
I would once be your height
to talk all that you talk
to do all that you do
to be the man that you are
just as you are.
And little did I think
that day was never meant to be

My eyes have bloated
with dried out tears
of unspoken words
still speaking aloud
Buried memories
still alive, and still guiding.
Miss you dad.

A gentle wind sweeps past me
and sings into my ears
tales of the kind time
of those joyful years
of you and me.

My dad would have turned 56 today.

Stories of the past…

Memories linger like intermittent oasis in a barren stretch of a long arid desert. Stories of the past loitering through the thoughts, not failing to turn the thinking back into those times when inexplicable emotions ruled the roost.

There is not a way to wipe them out with a simple swipe of the forehead, nor is there a way to keep walking ahead as though the past were a tiny speck of dream. The emotions keep recurring within your sane self, reminding of what once seemed like a pleasant trouble. And you carry them all along looking up to the wind chilling your face to crucify the past.

Back then, those emotions were a stockpile of fantasy smartly camouflaged into a delicate twine that carried your dreams and directed your thinking, fuelling your newfound aspirations and piggybacking all through your everyday sights and sounds. Back then, those emotions were all that you ever wanted for your future. They seemed to teach you that every fantasy of yours is actually a new reality incubating itself for the sake of your future. And life suddenly seemed to have found new purposes hitherto beyond the grasp of your tiny intellect. They seemed like the only promises to live for.

Today, they remind you that life is a narrow stream that treads relentlessly between the contours of insanity and fantasy. And this in-between is what is called the reality. Today, they remind you that people don’t know what is good for them, they only know what they want. And you were no exception to this. The reality is the only perfection in this world, and this perfection cannot be adulterated by any jumble of fantasies or hyperventilating dreams.

But for all the things said and done, they tell you that reality is not a thing to be feared, but a thing to be embraced. But even before that, it’s a thing to be understood. And understood the way it should be. And when you get to understand the excellence embedded within the moulded perfection called reality, life is simple.

Life is simple. The more complicated you believe your life is, the less you know of your true condition. You are hungry or you are full. You are healthy or you are sick. You are true or you lie. You are awake or you are asleep. You are laughing or you are crying. You are alive or you are dead. Life is simple, when you learn to embrace reality.

Mangal Mangala Ho…

You would have read about things in books. Watched in movies. Heard stories doing rounds every now and then. You hear all those twists in stories. You get surprised at the turn of events. You thought that was so sad for the star of the story to undergo such things. You thought he should have done that earlier. You thought he should have known better. And if you are the too senti kind, may be you shed a little moisture off the corner of your eye.

And then, not very long later, you get to realize that the star of the story was YOU. And the whole story has been happening around you. Someone else has been scripting the actions that you were performing rather unsuspectingly. You were a pawn in the game.

When you are confronted with something you would never ever expect to have encountered you do either of three things. One, succumb to everything that happened with you and just allow the world to do whatever the heck it wants. Two, just get out of sight from this world and escape into the confines of your own shell. Three, kick out your muscles, stand up, stare straight into its face without even a tiny wink and exorcise the demon out of you.

I chose the third. May God bless me.

One year. The search continues.

This blog completes one year today.

One year in the reckoning. A passionate quasi-emotional journey, still seeking an insight into the essential wholeness, completeness and the perfection of reality. A journey still searching to fulfill. Vacuums filled. But new ones searching to be filled. Longing wishes and craving emotions hoping and searching for that elusive hug of life. Dreams and their feelings searching for a wake-up kiss.

Lessons learnt to love and to know that love comes with pain, and to continue to love. And to keep loving. Different thoughts playing musical chairs trying to gain a hold on the heart, teaching the hard way to sit back and wait if you don’t get what you want, because better things are waiting and the best things take time. The ease with which simple inadequacies of our living inundate us, only to realize to do things we would otherwise not have done, simply because they have to be eventually done anyway.

We complain about complexity, about shades of gray but we often take refuge in these things. Complexity offers refuge from choice and thus action. In many situations, most of us would prefer to do nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do. How often we keep searching for that Perfect Life we always dream about. Perfect – with a Capital P. Sometimes in life, superlatives don’t matter. Just good is good enough. A no frills, no fancies, plain and simple – good. Good is beautiful! Good is great! Good is perfect!

The mind continues to wander. Memories act as intermittent oasis in its long walk through the desert of life searching for its own identity. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Guided by the pleasant stopovers of nostalgic memories, the mind wanders, searching through the dry stretches of the present, in a quiet joyous expectation of good.

Prabat! The Dawn, is not far. But there is distance to be traveled. There is work to be done. There is sweat to be lost. There will be a stumble here and there. But it stumbles only because its on the move. The mind continues to wander. Still in search of… Shubh Prabaatam!

And that accounts for one year. Now, I just have the rest of my life to go.

Lean on Love

Remember the first time your eyes fell upon that person, with a tiny tingle in your nerves and that smile which never shows up on your face even though you are all smiles and giggles inside. Or that little bit of animated talking to yourself, trying to visualize that person with naughty bits of assumptions and sneaky ideas to stamp your impressions. Welcome to the first prick of Love!

Thoughts are often deceptive. Trying to decipher our own thinking becomes an experiment in itself. But there are certain thoughts and feelings that stem from a deeply rooted emotion. Something beyond the comprehension of a human vocabulary. Something that is subjective and strange, but lucid and serene. Something not visible to eyes, but is there all over you. Something which suddenly adds a new meaning to the whiff of wind blowing over your face. Something which made you today, what you were not yesterday. Something which you knew never existed, until you came face-to-face with it.

And with some new feels, you begin to have some new needs. A need to lie helplessly in someone’s arms, a need to relish the grace glowing out of someone’s face, a need to smile and a need to see a smile on someone’s face, a need to shed a tear of affection, a need for reinstatement of an ever-present someone near you, and a bittersweet need to hear someone say “I miss you”, a need to keep speaking those words which would never be actually spoken.

Well, it’s an elementary truth, that our life and our happiness and that of those connected with us, do depend on our understanding the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than a game of cricket. The world is a complex spaghetti of invisible connections. Certain feelings do not lend themselves to conversational descriptions. Amorphous and inexplicable in their own subtle ways and rooted so deeply that they remain as recurrent oases all through the trails of your voyage through life. They are not a periodic feel that engulfs you in a certain age and fades away with the grinding routines of life, but they become one of those feels that you carry through all of your life. A self-preserved emotional shelter that offers you refuge in your future times of need.

A day for this emotion. A day to celebrate those feelings that lie beyond reasoning. A day to enjoy an excitement. A day to bow to a heavenly bliss. A day to introspect what those invisible connections lead us to. A day to redefine what we are. A day to define what we would be. Happy Valentine’s day!

And as they say, Love takes you by the tip of your hair and shakes the hell out of you. And eventually, makes you a new person altogether.

i still feel like a newborn

Soft, sticky, warm, calm. Alone but loneliness unknown. Active yet unseen. An identity descended as relationships started brewing.

A first pang of pain, wet with what I would later learn as a tear, a blinding brightness, a shaken repose as I dragged out of my perpetual comfort into an expanse hitherto unimagined – my first ever transition from a comfort to distress. A bout of tears and soon they had ceased, and with eyes closed to the newfound brightness, I was encased into a safe cuddle with a coo and a smile – from distress back to comfort. Life had announced its presence.

And time moved relentlessly like only she could, unfazed to any joy, unsympathetic to any sorrow, never slowing nor speeding.

From the days everyone called me cute, to first kisses to my cheeks, first spank for spilling my milk, admirations to the first word uttered, the first step on foot, first shift from nappies to shorts, first bout of fever, first visit to the doctor, first tear for wanting something, first tear for losing something, first tears on my first day at school…

The unnoticed joys of the first word I wrote, first page I turned, first lesson I learnt, first exam I wrote, first anxious wait for result, first hit on my knuckles, first promotion to the next class, first shift to a different city, first emotion of having a friend, first emotion of being a friend, first injury, first sight of a birth and death, first signs of growing up, first shopping for razor blades, first loss of my loved one, first feel of being lost, first feel of loneliness, first sleepless night, first promises of future, first travel alone, first possession of a gadget, first day into a college, first degree next to my name, first interview for work, first day at work, first earning, first trip abroad…

Some firsts never got off, others became weary, but none would stop newer ones from coming. With every fading first entered a new one. And every first brought with it an air of new freshness – the extraordinary feel of another ‘first-time ever’. A new learning. An entry into a new unknown. A new passage to explore the mysterious. New joys. New sorrows. New fears. New outlooks. New beliefs.

At times, it tends to feel I’ve seen it all. But I laugh at my ignorance as fast as I felt that. It’s the same life that started at birth. But seems a new one with every passing year. The more I expect the newness to diminish, the faster I confront more of them, and perhaps that’s how fast I grow.

Life is still new. Still a new born. Waiting for new firsts to happen. Waiting to see the unseen. to seek the sought after, to hope the unhoped, to search the newness of new joys, and new sorrows.

Life is still new. And it would probably always be.

home sweet home sweet home sweet…

It was a long longing wait. A wait, for reasons more than many.

When every morning meant a wait for the evening and every evening meant a promise – a promise to be, and with the fading twilight, began the wait for another morning.

As minutes ticked past giving way to the hours, the brightness of the sun only reflected the warmth of a moon glowing on the other side of earth.

The start of the day’s work, painted the drowsy tiredness of a late evening return from work.

The afternoon breeze warmed by the blazing sun, felt the chill of a midnight breeze cooled by the gloss of moon.

The vociferous luncheon audience, echoed the stillness of a sleepy silence of a wee hour morning.

The evening fatigue, radiated the weariness of a half-waken morning sleep.

The passive dinner and the half-remnant hunger, felt the satiation of a warm breakfast.

The night sleep, menacingly digested the complicated day.

After some toil, the losing glow of a valuable splendor has found its way back. When mornings became mornings again, and evenings became evenings.

Mohan Bhargava is back to where he belongs.

Yeh jo des hai mera, swades hai mera,
mujhe yeh pukara…
yeh woh bandhan hai jo kabhi toot nahin saktha…

waiting…

I look around
and I pause to see
a tear escape
beneath my bloated eye

My heart skips a beat
as thoughts flutter past
Squeaking stories
of days together

of days bathing in sun
and wiping its sweetened smear
of whispered words
and the smiles they evoked
of sensuous strokes
and their pleasant viles
of serene silence
and its inexplicable harmony

of eternal dreams
and its sleepless bliss
of tender tears
and the soothing hug
of melancholic voices
and its divine warmth
of adoring stares
and its timeless peace

My heart skips another beat
as a speck of hope flutters past
promising a new fable
of together and forever…

I look around
wiping tears of denial
Praying for the promise
and waiting for your arrival…

when emotions play

Expectation. Promise. Longing. Optimism.
Anticipation. Fear. Despair. Hope.

A tiny time-bomb of emotions ticking past every second. Thoughts ripping between extremes of glee and panic. Feelings dangling down on a loose rope, held only by a perpetual knot of hope.

Rationality too seems to be having its limits. Strength of a rational intellect can only go so far, and at some point emotional encumbrance takes its toll.

Days when you begin to crave for the feel of that affectionate stroke on your forehead
When you begin to feel the absence of that heavenly warmth embracing you
When your heart becomes the epicenter of your trembling body
Shuddering thoughts and shivering reactions
When the bliss of a recent past and its harder eventuality deviously encircling your head
When it seems like nine planets playing musical chairs trying to gain a hold on your thinking
When there is a vibrant crowd around you, and you badly need some solitude
Solitude might seem your only friend, but that is the last thing you need now.

At times, face and kinesics are hardly an index of internal turmoil.

Some emotions can’t just be expressed.