From the Dreamer's Angle

Life maifests itself in so many different ways. Sometimes when I look at it, I feel there is a certain basic premise about life which is universal, but sometimes the very same life looks devoid of any premise. Sometimes it feels like life is a quest which starts off from confusion and pointlessness and gradually matures into a journey for perfection. Some people tell me life is a walk towards death and that the people we meet are all our co- walkers to death who sometimes walk along us, sometimes ahead of us and sometimes away from us.

But most of the times, it occurs to me that life is perspective.Each time I see someone misunderstand life to be a search for pleasure or quick money or fame, I stop to think and wonder what the exact purpose of human life is. To some its about making the most of opportunities,to some others it is a silent and unnoticed walk into self knowledge while to a few others its just about following the majority.

I kept wondering and pondering all these years about who among us understands what life is, in the real sense of the term and in the right way that it is meant to be understood and lived.Now, I guess I have a seemingly convincing answer - Life is understood in its real sense by those who drift away to dreams.

Those people who the others think are probably insane are the ones who actually know life. The ones who know the secret of the rains, those who stop to smell the wet mud, those who shed a silent tear at the sight of a dead stray dog,the people who while returning from work look at their fellow passengers in the bus and think about the purpose of all the struggles they endure,those who stare out of their windows and hope to see a bird fly across the sky, those who wait for love, those who like oblivion, those who experience an indescribebale happiness after having read a beautiful book, those who sit mesmerised by the tunes of a lovely song...... Those people who keep thinking about the arrangement of their lives and its relationship with the greater design of the universe know that life is the small things that  make men laugh like kids. They know the world is unfair but they also know there is no solution. They know they need money to survive but they also understand that there are a lot of things that money can't buy.Each time they read about riots in newspapers,their hearts sink into an unbearable pain of helplessness. They wish they could alter the mercilessness of life but they try to find happiness in their own parallel world within themselves.They may look idealistic and unsuccessful to the rest of the world but it is they who feel closer to nature and closer to their creator and hence, the secret of life is passed onto them in its true sense.It is in fact the light of the goodness  in these countable few that guides and preserves the world itself.

All that the world wants to hear is about success stories and nobody really bothers about why they were even born. In fact the world dosent give anyone the time to think because all we do is run for life. And the strangest part is that we run for life without knowing what life is! If only people took a minute off to sit back and think about  what life is and how beautiful  it is from the angle of the dreamers,the so- called unsuccessful,impractical losers!

Foetal Mass of a Grey Romance

The Womb of my Heart has been Gestating a seed-

The seed of a seemingly Grey Romance,

It floats in the matrix of my heart's belly,

Not knowing whether to attach to or flow out of me,

The seed seems to be yours,

The belly is but mine,

Strange it is that it got into me,

Wihtout us making love even in the dark!

At times it rattles the calm out of me,

Other times it awakens the tenderness in me,

Tickling me with its gentle rush

It sometimes brings a smile on my face.

But come the night and it chooses to rest,

It stays still as if in a motionless swoon,

While I lay disturbed, unable to sleep,

It sleeps away as if on calculated purpose

To mercilessly punish me for my follies,

That deathly silence of your living seed

Begins a chaos deep within me,

A cahos that then becomes a huge battle,

A battle between me and the you with me!

The seed has now begun to stick to the heart's belly,

Trying to root itself into the walls,

All I can do is sit back and watch,

Watch it grow and breathe within me,

Feel it kick and turn inside me,

I have but kept my inner walls open

For you to spray your favourite pesticides

And reduce your seed into a clotted mass,

When you begin to feel you dont want its birth

Through the belly of a woman like me.

I would not object the uprooting process,

If given the choice I wud but beg,

Beg you to not  rattle the heart,

For its was not my fault at all

That the sun did not shine upon my heart!

Take Me Home

Take me away,

Away from Conscience,

Away from Judgments,

Away from Conflicts,

Away from Sight,

Away from Perceptions,

Away from Touch,

Away from Me

Away to a Home.

Take me to a Park,

To sit on one of the benches

Force me to ponder ,

Force me to talk,

Force me to confess,

Listen when I talk,

Abuse when I lie,

Hold me when I Cry.

Take me to the Hills,

Let me run,

Push me off the cliffs

Hold me before I fall,

Show me the highest peak

Challenge my own height,

Point out to the foothills

Scare me with their depths.

Take me to the Waterfalls,

Take a handful of the clear water,

Question my own purity,

Look me in the eyes

And tell me they are shallow,

Toss me down the falls

And save me before I drown.

Take me to a Cemetry,

Make me count the tombs,

Confuse me with death,

Make me yearn for life,

Ask me to suicide

And stop me before I attempt.

Help me sort myself,

And confuse me when I find peace,

Weaken my convictions

And give me new ones to believe.

Laugh at my ignorance,

Smile at my innocence,

Take me to Tranquility,

Lead me to truth,

Deafen my ears, 

Strengthen my voice,

Tell me I am Right,

Tell me I am Free,

Take me to You,

And tell me I am Home!

Paradise Lost

Beyond success, beyond convincing the people around, beyond accumulating a fat sum in the bank account, beyond adventure, beyond lust, beyond rage,beyond pressure, beyond betrayal,beyond ego; there lies a placid,unsettlingly calm Serenity. It is the state of wanting nothing but an understanding of the momentary nature of existence- the state called living life in its Real sense! 

All of us are often under the mistaken impression that life is always about earning something or making something out of it. Life of course is an opportunity thrown at each one to make the most of it, but what amounts to making the most is where we have the confused notions.From the perspective of God who is believed to be placed well above us and who can see us all the time, human beings might be looking like such Zombies! We claim to know almost everything about life. We, who dont even stop for a minute to feel the rains falling on the palms, we, who dont feel the seas have secrets deeper that their depths, we, who do not understand that love is not always about being happy, claim to have conqured all aspects of life. We instill the same sense of pride in our young ones and make them ignorant too. The result is that the world has come to the peak of its ruthlesness. We have people who aspire to become millionares, people who are willing to give up their morals and more to get where they want to, people who have no problem with killing someone who stands against them,people who will happily sell off even the soil under their feet to make it big! 

You might be wondering what the connection between all these things is. Well,this post is a result of all the raised voices I hear around me complaining about the lost goodness of the world and my answer and logic is that the small and insignificant things like rain and seas and peace I mentioned above are actually the big things in life. The more we fail to become soft within, the more we refuse to respect the simple decencies of human life, the deeper the trouble and the greater the recklesness. Sitting and looking at the trees around or romanticising nature is not the exclusive job of the writers and other creative people. All of us should learn to wonder at the mysteries of nature and understand the fact that life is too small to waste time being malicious.Maybe the dissapearence of spirituality and the lack of spiritual education at schools is adding fuel to the degeneration of the already destroyed state of our minds. It is understood that for a middle class man who struggles to make his ends meet,it is impractical to sit and think of the philosophy of living life. But again we can all place our hearts at the right place and choose not to be unnecessarily deceptive.All of us complain about the world and its lost sensitivity but none of us realise that it is we who have changed. No government or leader can fix it. No ideology can bring back the lost goodness. The change has to happen within each soul. Its a transformation that needs to take place and noone else can do it for us. We say that the world was a paradise before and that now things are going out of hand. Well, it is we who live in this world and we who have to regain the lost paradise.Living with the heart in the right place is a single and effective panacea to almost all the issues we face, but sadly, nobody wants to do that because whats the fun in being good hearted afterall? All you can get is a lot of enemies, tons of loneliness and a tag titled "boring" stuck onto the forehead!

Being straightforward does lead one to the serenity I mentioned above. It shows one that beyond everything, there is a silence and it is in that silence that life lies! It is a lonely shore as most souls dont reach there, but even in the lonliness of being straightforward, there is a sense of pride. A sense of accomplishment and purity- the experience of having found the divinity within the soul. This might sound absurd to the majority because to reach this shore one has to be beyond mediocrity and beyond the noises of the material world.

*This is not to suggest that ambition and zest are all a fallacy. This is to humbly remind that even ambition should be driven, driven by genuine passion and clarity of the conscience. 

Its Love All The Way

She woke up before the sun. Shabby, disoriented, lazy. She looked around to find a curled up husband sleeping next to her. The room was in an unorganizable confusion of strewn around clothes and papers. Amidst all the mess and through her sleepy eyes, she looked at him beside her. To her, he was the cutest thing on earth and she bend down to kiss him softly on his cheeks. An unconscious smile she expected to see but he just fidgeted and turned around to continue his comfortable sleep. She smiled, trying not to feel too bad and trying to justify his reaction with reasons of his fatigued state of mind and body, she got up to start her day. The clock ticked away and after an hour of cleaning and organising things, she got started with the cooking. After all the slogging she finally moved towards the bathroom to attend to her needs and give herself a pamper with water. By the time shes ready for office, He had dressed himself up and taken his breakfast which she laid on the table. They were getting late for office and he frowned at her speed. She apologised and walked out with him, with an empty stomach, ear rings in her hand (which she wears on the way) and her files in the other hand. At the bus stop he ran away to catch his bus, without telling her, without looking back. She smiled again, thinking how much of a silly romantic she was and waited for her bus to come. While she waited, she felt the glances of many male eyes sliding through the folded chiffon of her deep green saree. She pulled the cloth to herself rapidly and tried to not get conscious of it. The morning sun rays begin to get hotter and yet her bus hadn’t arrived. She waited there, thinking of where he might have reached. She felt apprehensive thinking of a sweaty him, dehydrated by the sun rays and humidity. Again, her mind sensed the looks on her body from the many men standing next to her. Her deep eyes reddened inside the outline of her black khol. She felt a sudden rise of revolt and a sense of insecurity at the same time. She longed to run to him and stay safe inside his hug. She wanted to talk to him but put aside the idea reserving it for the late evening when she can finally get back to their home and him. At the government hospital where she works as a Gynaecologist, she sat in her consultation room, her nose clogged with the smell of the phenyl with which the sweeper just washed the toilets. One by one, her patients came in. Pregnant ladies, young girls with menstrual irregularities, victims of rape, incest, women with heads bowed down by the weight of shame, wives who are worried over their inability to bear a child.....a long array of troubled women with various problems. She examined each one, talked to them, sometimes cried with them, shared their excitements, relieved their apprehensions. She felt like a midwife sometimes, sometimes like a saviour, sometimes a murderer. All through the day, she had a feeling of anxiety about him. Even while she was engrossed in her examinations she wondered how his day was going, she wondered whether he might even have thought of her once, she hoped he ate his lunch on time and didn’t get exhausted by the sun. She wanted the day to end so that she could get back to her zone of comfort. At the hospital she found herself feeling helpless about the miseries of womanhood. She was deeply pained. She felt vulnerable herself and wanted to run back to him, she wanted to cry. In the evening she got home late to find he wasn’t home yet. She felt too lazy to change and lay on the bed in her deep green saree. When he returned, she ran to hug him and he shrugged her off after a brief embrace. She wanted to tell him about how bad she felt while listening to some of the experiences her patients told her but decided against it as he seemed tired himself. In bed that night, she found herself unable to sleep and a deeply asleep him next to her. All she could do was get up and stand for a while staring outside the balcony. All day she waited to get back home, to cuddle up next to him, to feel secure. The world outside seemed to disown her. She felt like she didn’t have a place to belong to. While all this happened, he slept soundly. The moment he woke up that day morning, he looked at the neatly arranged room and the clean house. He felt slightly guilty for having made her do it all alone and went to look for her. Finding her taking her bath, he too went off to get himself dressed and ready. On the dining table he was delighted to find his favourites and wanted to thank her for it. Since she didn’t show up and he had an urgent meeting to attend, he had his breakfast and when she came, presuming her to have had her meal, he hurried her and they walked out. At the bus stop, seeing his bus come along he ran to catch it fearing he might get late for office if he let it go. All along the way he wondered why she did not call him back for a goodbye kiss and smiled at himself for being such a silly romantic. He faced a tiring day at office and while he lunched he wondered if she had taken her’s. He laughed to himself imagining her funny face while she ate green apples with him during their weekend walks near the marine drive. He wanted to hold her in a hug and pushed the thought reserving it for the evening. The hypocrisies of the corporate life bored him and he wanted to talk to her. He wanted to be his genuine self and hug onto her and listen to her babyish giggles. Too tired after a draining day’s work and the travel back home, he entered his place to find a sleeping her. He felt his love brimming for her and let her sleep peacefully. When she suddenly got up and hugged him, he felt himself the luckiest man on earth. Feeling guilty about not having talked to her and sensing that she was upset about something, he felt uncomfortable. He let go of her trying to avoid a direct conversation which might uncover his guilt. In bed that night he found her silent and lost in thoughts. He wanted to ask her what it was but did not ask fearing what he would say if she said she felt he no longer loved her or that she did not love him. He would be broke without her and hence he silently closed his eyes and fell off to sleep. Below the same roof, two people who loved each other deeply spent that night in solitude. One gazing pointlessly at the world outside the balcony, and the other, sleeping on his bed. It’s often a hard life in which making a living comes first and everything else becomes less prioritised for the people of their class. But when two people like them live together, and deeply love each other, the burden can be eased with expressions of love. The hard life they live can be antidoted with moments of shared solitude and soft conversations. We look for happiness in all places but often fail to enjoy it even if its at a tangible distance, just a conversation away. Life has its own course and in order to survive, we have to move with the practicalities of the world. Letting the race for survival push out love from our priority list is suicidal. Love has to be expressed, the heart needs to be reassured and the skin needs to be touched. To forget to fall in love each day with everything around is to not live at all. Life might bring with it all the testing moments. It might put each one to dead ends. But whatever be it, human life is based on companionship. It truly is Love all the way. In the end, all that matters is a home to belong to and love to sustain you!

No Man Like You

"He".

He was my rain cloud.The one cloud that added a tinge of grey to my crimson skies.The one touch of dark realities that gave me true vision through my dreamy eyes.He was the red of Revolution and the white of Peace. The flow of my Poetry and the hollow of my Solitude.He was my idea of Perfection. The culmination of multitudes,the default configuration I looked for in every other man!
I still sense his smell, the smell of old wine. His wooden drawer still holds his large dialed watch. The thick rimmed spectacles, the small pocket diaries. His files full of jottings. His favourite fountain pen.
Each night as I sit by my lonely bed to write down my heart's heaviness, I relive those many nights when he was by my side. Those night long conversations which gave me direction. His gentle looks on me that made me have faith in myself.He dwells in every inch of me. My flesh and thoughts are all his seeds.He was the first man I learned to trust, to love and to fall back on. He completed me always.I saw numerous men come and go in my life. I lived a failed matrimony which rotted down beneath stale epressions of love.I survived nights of love making devoid of any love. I discovered every facet of masculinity,travelled through each of its meandering valley,yet no one like Him I met.I saw admiring eyes which had respect for me,my words,my poetry, but none like his, which had the warmth of the first sun rays through the winter snow.I felt touches of burning passion all over me, but none like his soothing ruffles on my hair.I heard lips that praised my emerald eyes,but none like his that kissed the emptiness flowing out of them.
Now when I fall into the bottomless pits of lonliness, I miss him. I miss those gentle looks, those reassuring pats on my shoulders, his being there while I lay insecure in bed, his presence in my everyday affairs.
He was,is and will always be my only male Love. The one and only man I can think of and feel a sense of loss. Looking back at life, I do not miss anyone else as much as I miss him. Thinking of the other male occurences, I dont want any of them back in my life.I dont regret having let go of any of them, but Him. And at this point I feel that the only man who will always be a motivating and consoling presence for a woman all through is Him- Him,the Father.
The only man-woman relationship in which the man is not jealous of the woman's creativity,the only relationship in which he is not intimidated by her intelligence or independance, the only relationship in which he does not become a typical male and chain her in his own egos. It is the only equation wherein the man wishes the woman rises above him, he lets her go and be herself, he finds a justification in her every vice.All this he does and stands far away, watching her go on,not expecting anything in return.
At the dusk on my life, when I have traversed through all phases of intriguing uncertainities,I have come to realise this- No one like you Daddy! No man like you ever!

Him and Her

He is the Winter Breeze and She is a Window Flower,
She blooms by her Window,
He passes by Gently,
She Cranes her neck to see him through the tinted window pane,
And He breathes heavily to Crack the glass and Kiss her scented cheeks,
Those brief meetings separated by the tinted window pane,
Are all they have and All they need,
For He, is the Winter Breeze and She, a Window Flower!


He is the Black Night’s Moon and She is a White Water Lilly,
He reflects his Love into her containing waters,
She takes them in, Drop by Drop,
He longs to fall down from the skies and dissolve into her,
And She tries to grow higher up and touch his scars,
Those short night hours separated by the distance of the skies and the earth
Are all they have and All they need,
For He, is the Black Night’s Moon and She, a White Water Lilly!

He is the Blue Sea Wave and She is a Mass of Coral,
He lashes his Love onto her coarse exteriors,
She drenches herself in his salty white foam,
He sails hard to pull her from her fixture, To free her inner self,
And She wriggles to detach her from the sandy bed, To Float in him,
Those everyday struggles of freeing and finding each other
Are all they have and All they need,
For He, is the Blue Sea Wave and She, a Mass of Coral!

He is a Midnight’s Dream and She is a Sleeping Damsel,
He sings to her in her dreamy hours,
She listens on as if it was Real,
He tries desperately to not let her wake up and break their dreamy spell,
And She keeps her eyes tightly shut to retain him within her dreamy eyelids,
Those moments of illusion thrown to them while she sleeps,
Are All they have and All they need,
For He, is a Midnight’s Dream and She, a Sleeping Damsel!

He is the Falling Rain and She is an Indoor Plant,
He showers down outside her door, Upon her roof,
She bends over to slither through the door, To feel a drop,
He tries vigorously to spray through her door, To sprinkle his Love on her,
And She wishes the roof cracks to let him in, To let them Kiss,
Those minutes of rain separated by her roofs and doors
Are All they have and All they need,
For He, is the Falling Rain and She, an Indoor Plant!


Him and Her,
So many Forms,
So many ways,
Each one so different,
Yet So Similar!
The soul within every Him
And the self within every Her,
Hope to meet each other without being held
By curious fears and gripping doubts,
To fall in Love without deliberations,
And to die on each other as if it was war!