अभिमान मेरे पिया का

"शायद मेरी मोहब्बत के सागर से कई गुनाह कीमती है,

तुम्हारा एक घूँट अभिमान |"

टंगी हुई है तस्वीर तुम्हारी,
मेरे कमरे की सामने वाली दीवार पर |
चाँद-से रोशन सूरत पे तुम्हारी एक,
मंद मगर नटखट-सी मुस्कुराहट है |
छुपाते भी छुपती नहीं है,
तुम्हारी चमकीली आँखों में भरी मस्ती |
मगर उनकी नमी में चुटकी-भर का भोलापन ज़रूर है |
देख, ऐसा लगता है मानो अगले ही पल,
तुमने छोड़ी होगी, एक ठहाकेदार हंसी |


देखती हूँ तुम्हें उस तस्वीर में तो मालूम पड़ता है कि,
शुरुआत चाहत की अनजान होती है, न कोई अंत होता है |
बेहद हो गई है मेरी यह मोहब्बत तुम्हारे लिए |
कहीं मुझे बावला न कर दे!


पर, बीते हुए मौसम में ही,
हवा की तरह आया था तुम्हारे अभिमान का झोंका |
हल्का तो था नहीं, जो
हिला दी है उसने यह तस्वीर तुम्हारी |
दीवार पर टंगी तसवीरें तिरछी अच्छी नहीं लगती |


कल रात की बारिश अपनी भीगी उंगलियों से,
लिख गई है एक संदेशा, मेरी कांच की खिड़की पर |
"नहीं चुका सकते कीमत तुम्हारी मोहब्बत का |
बहुत सताती है हमें यह, उधारी हमारी |"
संग अपने लायी थी तूफ़ान भी, वह भीगी बारिश,
जो दो पल में गूँज, कानों में मेरे, चला गया,
फैसला तुम्हारा-
"पास से तो हम दूर भला"


मालूम है मुझे, यह आवाज़ तुम्हारी नहीं,
अभिमान की है तुम्हारे |
कूट-कूट के समा गया है रग-रग में जो तुम्हारे...
...जो ला रहा है प्यार के बीच हमारे, सीलन-सी |
सीलन तो पक्की दीवारों को भी गला देती है |


काश ऐसा हो जाए की बूंदों की परियां,
चला दे कोई ऐसा जादू ,
जिस-से धूल के साथ-साथ मिट जाएँ,
मेरे हांथों से तुम्हारे नाम की लकीरें |
शायद वह कभी थी ही नहीं |


मिट जाएँगी जब ये लकीरें हाथों से,
तो दिल भी न होगा मतवाला, नाम पर तुम्हारे |
हो सकता है, पड़ जाए कीमती मेरा प्यार तुम्हें,
पर तुम्हारे अभिमान की कीमत तो अनमोल है!


तुम्हारे प्यार की सुलगती आग पे यूँ,
इस तरह पानी फ़ेरने में, दर्द तो बहुत होगा,
तो ये ही बतला के समझा लेंगे अपने आप को,
की तुमसे हमने सिर्फ मोहब्बत की थी, कोई सौदा तो नहीं था |


क्या हुआ, बेहद हो भी गयी तो ?

Be The Change.

"Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land.

And the little moments, humble though they may be,
make the mighty ages of eternity."

It started as a quiet walk on a beach in Goa on a crisp September evening. Not quite far from me, my eyes caught sight of a little boy perhaps not more than seven years in age. Dressed in a pair of rugged dirt-washed pair of khaki nikkar and gulabi kameez and exhibiting enthusiastic yet dainty movements, he seemed absolutely involved in what he was doing. He was picking up something and throwing it into the sea, again and again. As I approached him and stood right beside him, he did not take notice of it. I realized that he was picking up shellfish as they had been washed up to the beach and was throwing them back into the waters one at a time.

I was rather puzzled.

I asked the juvenile little fellow, ‘ए! तुम्हारा नाम क्या है?’ ('Hey! What's your name?')

‘बंटी’ ('Bunty'), he replied without even stopping to look at me.

‘और तुम क्या कर रहे हो?’ ('And what are you doing?')

‘मै इन मछलियों को समुद्र में वापिस फेक रहा हूँ' ('I am throwing these fish back into the ocean'), he said as he bent down to pick another shellfish.

‘क्या ये खेल खेल रहे हो तुम?’('Is this a game you are playing?')

‘अभी समुद्र की लहरें ऊँची नहीं है और ये मछलियां समुद्र के पानी के साथ किनारे आ गयी हैं | अगर में इन्हें वापिस नहीं फेकुंगा तो ये मर जायेंगी | ('Right now, its low tide and these fish have been washed up by the sea. If I don't throw them back, they will die.')

While I was quite touched with Bunty’s childish enthusiasm, I replied in my own worldly wise way-

‘मगर किनारे में तो कितनी ही मछलियां होंगी | तुम सब मछलियों को कैसे जमा कर पाओगे? इसके अलावा, कितने सारे समुद्र तट होंगे | तुम तो हर तट पर जाके ये नहीं कर सकते | तुम तो हर एक मछली को नहीं बचा पाओगे, बंटी | ऐसा करने का क्या फायेदा? फिर क्या फर्क पड़ेगा?' ('But there are thousands of these fish on the beach, you can't possibly help them all. And besides, there are hundreds of beaches like this, you can't go to all of them to do this good work. What's is the use of doing this then? Can't you see, you can't possibly make a difference?')

On hearing me, Bunty smiled, bent down and picked another fish. He threw it back into the sea and replied, 'इसे तो फर्क पड़ा' | ('Well, it made a difference to that one')

Bunty inspired me from within.

‘Why should I not litter the road when everyone else is? Why should I take the trouble of finding the bin when no one did?’

‘Why should I not cross the red light, when the scooter wallah next to me just slipped his wheeler to the other side of the crossing? He saved his time without any trouble. Why can’t I’?

‘I am done chewing my paan. I will spit it right here.’

‘I have just a two minute job from the grocer across the road. I will park my car just here only.’

I am the mercenary which resides in you too. I am the imprudence in you. These are our very own everyday acts. But then, we believe that our social sense is all trimmed and tailored up when we exclaim that the roads are too dirty, cramped and knotted up with vehicles and so on..

As human beings, criticizing and complaining comes naturally to us. However, we almost never make an effort to improve on the very things we complain about. Rectifying these wrongs around us doesn’t come so naturally after all.

‘What good can my contribution make? There are ten thousands of them who are doing nothing about it except for deriving pleasure out of deteriorating things’, we often think. That our little contributions towards a larger good will be fruitless. That whatever good in atomic amounts is generated will vague out in the long run. But Bunty has proved to the contrary. It is the sum of these little benefactions only which bring about a larger change.

Let’s accept it, we have no control over others actions. We can’t expect everyone to be socially and morally upright. But we also know that a crime perpetuated by a 100 fellowmen doesn’t legalize it. Likewise, a display of impropriety by a good number of people doesn’t make it any acceptable. So the least we can do is be immaculate and guilt-free ourselves and realize that nothing will justify a lack of decorum on our part.

Little efforts are what are needed. As little as keeping a check on ourselves and nothing more. This is the least we can do- throw trash in the bin, cross when the lights turn green, park only in the parking lot, not spit just anywhere, switch off lights when we leave the room, turn off the taps completely when used, (throw any amount of shellfish back in the waters to save them) and so on..

‘Each one teach one’, ‘Each one plant one’- We’ve all heard this since childhood on occasions like ‘World Literacy Day’ or ‘World’s Tree Plantation Day’ etc. If these are implemented sincerely, by each one of us at a microscopic level, imagine the large scale results it can produce at a macro level.

Our little deeds of kindness, love and care can make the earth an Eden like the heavens above. We all want this world to be a better place to live in, so why not little efforts ourselves to make it so? If little Bunty alone can save a few shellfish from dying, we, altogether sure can save our earth from deterioration.

You might wonder who Bunty is. He is more than what I described him here. He is the good that resides in you and me. He is an initiative for a social change. He inspired me. He added meaning to Mahatma Gandhi’s-

‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’

Your Cryptic Uniqueness.

“In the quest to interpret the underlying truth in you...”

The Lion King’s jigsaw puzzle,

which your 5 year old daughter plays in the lawns,

 during the long and sunny Sunday afternoons...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, where each unclasped piece rightly fits in.

Giving clues, but never giving in!

You are the single drop of rain,

which falls last on the purple petal of casuarinas.

when the grass is green and the sky is grey...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, from where you have come.

Giving water, but never giving in!

You are a single ray of light,

which enters my room through the open windows

and falls first on my eyes and kisses me...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, when you left that far-off sun.

Giving warmth and light, but never giving in!

You are a single stream of river,

rippling softly at some places, gushing wildly at another...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, when you will change your trackless course.

Giving out a liquid melody, but never giving in!

The whiskey I pour down my goblet, every Friday night

which scare away my stubborn blues, tasting sweeter with every sip...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, the way to give me the kick.

Giving me that necessary high, but never giving in!

The golden fruit,

which is borne too high, inaccessible to the world,

the one hanging freely in the air by the wooden brunette branch...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, when you’ll ripen and fall.

Giving the saccharine sweetness, but never giving in!

You are the bright red rose,

planted in abundance both in the garden of love and hate,

for its fragrance and thorns...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, the nectar inside you.

Giving honey, but never giving in!

You are the smoke,

emerging out of when I blow my cigar, each time I puff...

that’s what you are!

Only knowing yourself, how lofty you will rise.

Giving me the high, the kick, never giving in!

You are unique, that’s what you are!

I wish, I was too...

तुम्हारी ये खामोशी...

(For Niharika and Siddharth, 
who make me love 'love'!
May yours be spirited, always.) 
 
...मुझसे बातें क्यों नहीं करती ?

Like a sunflower which can’t stop eying

the delightful sun brightening this afternoon,

I intend to gaze at you ceaselessly.

Sitting beneath this velvet sky,

I want to see you breathe. I want to watch your trembling lips.

I will wait...

wait until the sun goes down the lilac horizon

and I am no longer the yellow sunflower.

When the contorted, half eaten, pearl-white moon

ascends the stairway to the vault of heaven,

I want to see it shine on you.

May be, it will choose to descend in your eyes.

Then, like games of hide and seek on a long Sunday afternoon,

I will unconsciously search for the moon in your deep set brown eyes,

as I will drown completely behind your sienna-brown eyes!

I do not know what to make of

the oblivion on your face and the majestic disdain in your eyes!

You appear to be so curious about something that seems so far away.

I wonder what it is that has caught your eye!

Tell me, is it something you wish to touch or long to own?

Why is it that like a forgotten pair of old shoe hidden in a wooden closet,

you are so quiet?                           

I do not know what to make of this unmitigated muteness either!

It seems, words have lost their way in hidden mazes

as love and silence lingers in this thin air, looking for answers from you.

Your uncommunicative face is playing ‘peek-a-boo’ with me

where you’re adamant to not show up

from behind the thickness of the blinds you are wearing on your face!

I want to know how much are you enjoying this?

If at all...

Yes, now I think I hear something...

I presume it’s the sound of your unfathomed silence.

Your silence speaks of a language, unheard of.

No, it’s unlike a humm, an echo, a jingle, a crash,

a thud or even a reverberation.

It’s something as sweet as the twitter of a pied crested cuckoo

which in the middle of the ecru-brown monsoons

calls out for its lover from the thickets of birch trees!

But the discourse of your silence is totally un-connotative.

It’s inducing a sudden gush in my heart, a lump in the throat and

an unspoken emptiness in the heart.

Nevertheless, this bewilderment inside me is triggering

so much inquisitiveness in me to learn about you.

I want to peel you like an onion,

uncover each shell of austerity that you are wearing and discover you.

Allow me to read you like a book.

I want to immerse myself in every word of it.

I can see that deep inside yourself, you contain a thousand chronicles

long enough to run into a countless number of pages.

Yes, I will like it extensive and elaborate.

The sight of your wholesome and platonic look

against the dense midnight-green shrubbery which environs us this moment

is conjuring so many a symphonies in my mind.

Let me sing out to you these songs my mind is humming for you.

It will melt you from within, breaking your sealed lips in to a gentle smile.

Just may be.

May be, you will want me to sing till the day turns to night.

Yes, that will be good because when the birds are asleep, I will sing out louder!

I am the parched and thirsty chalice of liquor

you are my sea of intoxicating whiskey.

I am yearning to pour you down in me endlessly

and become a dipsomaniac in your name!  

Only the sight of you makes me tipsy.

Oh! What must happen when you will irrigate the gluttony in me?

Quenching my insatiable desire

of drinking you down like an unrestrained alcoholic!

Like any two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle meant to be interlocked together

me and you befit each other so faultlessly!

Don’t you see, this world is like a picture on the puzzle-box waiting to be made,

the many million people- the unclasped broken pieces 

and God is the master puzzle assembler.

Look, he has placed me next to you.

Come close to me, interlock your fingers in mine

and make me feel completed.

I want to make you my religion and be bound to you.

Become my way of life and I will be forever truthful.

Lock me tight in your heart like a genie in a bottle, never release me.

I can stay in there for centuries of lonely nights.

Just rub your heart and make a wish, if ever you want to

and I promise I will fulfill it for you.

Amalgamate in me like mercury,

seep in me like ink-blue on a blot paper

and make me yours.

Can I touch your lips with mine? I promise I will be soft.

My heart is eager to love, so young, so pure, so juvenile, and so prone to life!

I feel like a bud in the mirthful gardens of sprightly spring

which has just broken its dormancy to bloom.

I want to merge in you seamlessly, so continuously...

like two colors in an artist’s palette flowing into one another.

Don’t let my love hang motionless in the eerie silence of tonight.

Don’t let it wandering, only looking for answers.

Alright! Don’t say a word if you don’t want to.

I can’t keep insisting!

But don’t be heartless to not listen to the language of my heartbeat.

At least look at me, just once will do, however brief.

In a singular glance casted by you,

I can live a thousand lives; I can dream a million dreams

I can fight a thousand wars; I can view a hundred rainbows!

Cast just a glance on me, please.

I know you’ll never be able to look away.

जश्न-ऐ-आज़ादी

“When we two parted in silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted,to sever for years”

                                                      -Lord Byron.

Exactly 64 years from this day, on August 14^th, 1947 I felt numb and frozen, not delighted and ecstatic as I should have been. My Uncle, despite his government job believed with more conviction every passing day that nationalist movement would usher into Bharat’s freedom. It did, but along came the partition.

At the stroke of midnight hour on August 15, 1947, two self governing countries legally came into existence. Early next morning, they were announcing on the radio that the ceremony for the transfer of power were already held a day earlier at Karachi so that the last British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten could attend both the ceremonies- in Karachi and in Delhi. That is why August 14 was when Pakistan attained Independence, a day before its new neighbor-Bharat. Sir Cyril John Radcliffe, chair of the Boundary Commission, announced the Radcliffe line that partitioned Bharat. That line had the horrifying effect of turning me into an East Pakistani!

I was flabbergasted at the fact that Bharat was no more a Unitarian and a homogeneous nation, that too on the pretext of a communal clash. We had thoroughly identified ourselves with secularists. Though, I was never involved in politics, but even I knew that partition would be a messy business. Talks of partition had already started doing the rounds for some time now. I lost my Uncle in the dreadful series of riots which broke out during the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day of August 1946. He was lathi-charged to death by a Muslim. Not only him, but a hundred thousands of people were killed and many more were injured. As public order broke down all along Bharat, it seemed that the pressure increased to seek political partition of territories as a way to avoid a full-scale civil war which was looming by the time Mountbatten became the Viceroy. He had the only option to ‘cut and run’.

I don’t want to remember the dark decade and the years that followed when partition proved to be nothing but a long, protracted and unfinished business. I remember how even on 14^th August, many Hindus and Muslims did not know where they belonged. They did not know if they were Indians or Pakistanis. This was because the Radcliffe’s Award was only published on August 17, after we were granted independence. So for those who rejoiced in the transfer of power ceremonies where Lord Mountbatten, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru were the indisputable heroes, were only celebrating ‘notional boundaries’. 

Therefore, initially no large population movements were contemplated. There was complete breakdown of law and order. Many died in riots, massacre or just from the hardships from flight to safety with much bloodshed on all throughout.

I and my family never wanted partition. Neither did the 11.4 million Hindus who suddenly found themselves in East Pakistan. A partition would inevitably mean living as a minority in a Muslim majority country, or migrating later on.

On April 23^rd, 1947, the ‘Amrit Bazaar Patrika’ featured results of a poll where it had asked if Bengali Hindus wanted a ‘separate homeland’. An overwhelming 93.8% Bengalis voted in favor and 0.6% voted against the division of the province. But I was very suspicious about this poll, like many other public discourses which came to conclusions, completely neglecting the voice of Hindus living in East Bengal.

Unfortunately, our voices never reached the higher echelons of the political circles where decisions were being made. By March, we knew that the transfer of powers was inevitable. On June 20, the Bengal Legislative Assembly voted in favor of the western half joining the Indian Union. Hindus in Khulna could still hope to become part of the Union, but we knew that Chittagong, where we belonged to had no chance. We were too far off. Actually, even Khulna with its Hindu majority did not make it to India- one of the many examples that point to the rush job that Radcliffe did.

At that time, rail, road and water communication was completely disrupted between the eastern and western side of Punjab. My father was a jute cultivator. But every single jute mill was left behind in West Bengal, leaving him without a market to sell his produce. Even export of jute had become an anti national act for Pakistanis. My father had no option but to give away the raw jute to smugglers. 

As I narrate this today, 64 years have gone past and I’ve become an old man. Formally, we started calling ourselves ‘Bangladeshis’’ after the Liberation War of 1971. Today, I have air to breath, cereals to live out of and nothing substantial to complain about. But there is one question that always haunts me, “What was the point of it at all? Was communal disharmony worthy of creating a historical divide?”

Deep inside me, I still believe that we aren’t separated from one another, just different names accredited to our status and existence-India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Shakespeare had said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a Rose. By any other name would smell as sweet?” Irrespective of our nationality, we’ve all been instrumental in achieving independence from the British Raj. We all are worthy of a celebration.

I am content to carry Bharat in my heart. I wish to you and myself a Happy Independence Day.

A Lot About Love.

 

“Love is active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union. In the act of fusion I know you, I know myself, I know everybody - and I "know" nothing.”

-Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)

Yes, I have felt emotionally stormy. Not once, not twice but a countless number of times. Quite often, I am so overwhelmed that I can feel the sentiments conquering my lung capacity, I can’t breathe. So as I am typing this, I feel emotionally frenzied and chaotic, like it has converted into a whirlwind and going through me.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem, which he has to solve. I think, to love and be loved is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.  So accept it or not, everyone who exists is biologically programmed to fall in love sometime or the other. To love is an art-an art in which everyone alive is adept to. When in love you don’t go by the book like in science, rather you follow your guts! Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. It is an act of faith and whoever is of little faith is also of a little love.

But just like a bowl of jelly beans, romantic love is strange and awfully mysterious. No one has been able to unravel as to why just one person alone in all the world mean so much so as to cause the heart to miss a beat just by a glance, a word or a touch? Why just one, and not another has the power to make us dream and cast a magic spell on us of supreme delight? Why!  

But still, all of us fall in love so conveniently. There is no looking, no contemplating, no questioning, no probing and no check listing before falling in love. Like a human papilloma virus, it finds its way inside us and before it starts showing external symptoms, it settles without warning like a benign epithelial tumor. Perhaps, its perplexity can well be compared to our dreams. We all dream but we don’t always understand our dreams. Yet, we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleeping minds- strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake. It is exactly the same with love I think. Love gives you a third eye to see beyond reason. It gives you the courage to let go off uncertainties. 

But sometimes..

Love is a real virus, not benign but malignant in nature. You feel it like an abnormal growth inside you, as a pernicious form of cancer. That’s when you know that you’ve to get rid of it; that you’ve to fall out of love. That’s when love makes you blind. Rather than making you seeing beyond reason, it makes you unreasonable!

But starting again by falling out of love isn’t any easier. This is what everyone wants, right? A new beginning. A clean slate. A world of possibility. Like that’s going to be effortless and totally painless. Ask the guy pushing a boulder up the hill. Nothing is really easy about starting again! Nothing at all..and starting again by erasing love not returned? It’s really difficult! 

 So the conquest of falling out of love seems so much more phenomenal and miraculous a feat than falling in it because the latter happens so seamlessly and without notice. In this act of doing so, it feels like we are transcending love itself and it only gets tougher with time. As we ascend the ladder of falling out of love, viciousness seems to wear a thicker mask.

This is precisely why I thought I wanted to be alone and never fall in love. It wasn’t because I thought I would be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone because what if you learn that you need love? And then you don't have it. What if you like it? And lean on it? What if you shape your life around it? And then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is- death ends. But this? It could go on forever . . .

In a case like such, ‘love’ seems like a four letter syllable for, “Here is my heart and soul. Please grind them into hamburger, and enjoy." It's desired and feared- difficult to live with and impossible to live without. So out of the things in life which you simply can’t escape, intimacy is certainly one of them. For the other things? You just don’t want to know. 

Talking about falling in love, I realize that there are no defenses to protect yourself from it. I wish there was something like immunity from falling in love. Diseases.Toxins. Infections. Germs. Our bodies encounter dangers all the time, just beneath the hidden surface. Whether we realize it or not, our body is constantly protecting itself. Every time we blink our eye, we wash away thousands of unwanted microbes. Breathe in too much unwanted pollen, and we sneeze. The body detects the invader. It releases its white blood cells, and it attacks. But what happens when we fall in love with a wrong person? Where is the sneezing? Where is the defense? It’s only when it spreads like malignant tumor that we realize; something needs to be worked up on! It’s when we lean on it so much that our life starts revolving around it. Its then! I wish there was a rulebook about falling in love with a wrong person- some kind of a guide to tell you, when you’ve crossed the line. 

In my 8^th grade, we had to read Romeo and Juliet for English. Needless to say, I slightly had a different take about Juliet. I thought she was a complete idiot! For starters she falls for the one guy she knows she can’t have and then blames fate for her own bad decision. My teacher explained to me that when fate comes into play choice sometimes goes out the window, and that I would be lucky if I ever experienced that type of true love. At the ripe old age of 13, I was very clear that love, like life, is about making choices and fate has nothing to do with it. Everyone thinks it’s so romantic, Romeo and Juliet, true love, how sad! But I think if Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink the bottle of poison, and go to sleep in a mausoleum, she deserved whatever she got. If Romeo and Juliet could have known all this coming beforehand, maybe it all would have been okay. The dagger and the poison could’ve been both put down, making it into a happy ending!

Sometimes I think, being a toddler again would’ve been great when the biggest worry in life was nothing beyond, if you'd get a Barbie for your birthday or if you'd get to eat cookies for breakfast. You believed in fairy tales so much! That fantasy of what your life would be- the white dress, prince charming who would carry you away to a castle on a hill and all of that! You’d lie in your bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, prince charming –they were so close you could taste them. But being an adult? Totally overrated! I mean seriously, don't be fooled by all the hot shoes and the great sex and the no parents anywhere telling you what to do. The moment you open your eyes to adulthood, the fairy tale disappears. The castle, well, it may not be a castle; the ugly frog may be just it and no handsome prince and that it is not so important to be happy ever after, it is only important to be happy right now. Adulthood makes you fall in love and more often than not, with the wrong person! And know the scariest part? When you quite screw it up and let it slip right through your fingers.

Let’s face it that the organ which is instrumental in making us fall in love (and fall out of it too) is itself the human body's most mysterious organ: the heart! It learns. It changes. It adapts. It tells us what we see, what we hear. It lets us feel love. I think it holds our soul. And no matter how much research we do, no one can really say exactly, how all the arteries and veins inside our heart works. And, when it's hurt, it’s broken, it falls apart, when the human heart is traumatized, well, that's when it gets even more mysterious!

I guess, we blow our minds out at our respective workplaces and in our own lives, we can’t think through. We don’t really make a sound choice at all. When it comes to ourselves, we’ve got nothing left! And is it worth it? Being responsible? Because if you take your vitamins at the right time, pay your taxes, follow the laws, reach your work desk on time and never cut the line, the universe still gives you people to love and let them slip out of your fingers like water or sand and then what have you got? Vitamins, laws? And certainly nothing more!

Falling out of love is like recovering from trauma. After a trauma, your body is at its most vulnerable. Response time is critical. So you're suddenly surrounded by people: doctors, nurses, specialists, technician, may be performing a surgery on you, if need be. Surgery isn’t a one man’s game but a team sport. Everyone is pushing for the finish line and putting you back together again. Emotions are tucked away neatly and you are shifted to a clean, sterile room where the procedure is simple and not more than 3 steps- cut, suture and stitch. The first 24 hours are critical- every breath you take, every fluid you make is meticulously reported and analyzed, celebrated or mourned. Likewise, in the initial stages of falling out of love how much of your eyes meet the one you do, how much you smile at him (or smirk), how much you talk (or groan) is measured. 

But once the surgery is over, the real healing begins. It is when the first day after surgery turns to two and weeks turn to months.  It's called recovery. The imminent danger of falling in love again has somewhat passed, the machines are disconnected and the doctors and nurses are gone. However, recovery, even while falling out of love is not a team sport. It's a solitary distance run. It's long. It's exhausting. And it's lonely as hell.

But sometimes, there is nothing like falling out of love just as there is nothing like a cent percent healing. The length of your recovery is determined by the extent of your injuries and it's not always successful. Sometimes you are faced with a cut that just won’t heal- a cut that rips its stitches wide open. No matter how hard we work at it, some of these wounds might never fully heal. Yes, the pain gets you when you least expect it, hit you way below the belt and doesn’t let you up. But you just have to ride it out and hope that it goes away on its own. All you can do is fight your way through it because the truth is that you can’t outrun it!

That is what irreparable heartbreaks do too! You might have to adjust to a whole new way of living. Things may have changed too radically to ever go back to what they were. You might not even recognize yourself. It's like you haven't recovered anything at all. You're a whole new person with a whole new life. Finding a way back to where you were before you fell in love can be difficult. There is no compass, no map. This is what happens when you are in love, never meant to fall out of it! Perhaps, it’s no trap for you. It’s how your life is meant to be. You can just close your eyes and pray to God that everything will work out fine.

YES! I feel emotionally stormy because I once fell in love and I’m falling out of it now. Alas! My heart once haemorrhaged. I’m only praying that my wounds dress completely.

Don’t ask me why I need to fall out of love because I’m clueless myself. For obvious reasons, I don’t find this world a great place to live in. If you can think of a reason; any reason at all why the universe is so screwed up and random and mean; now would be an amazingly good time to tell me because I really need some answers.

I do!

I Will Forget You This Summer.

“This love has mocked me.

I feel ashamed and lonely like a little child whose friends mock him for being an Orphan.

I don’t want to be victimized.”

I despise the dampened monsoons

and the aroma of ripened mangoes associated with them.

It is because these falling raindrops remind me

of the time I strolled with you on these drenched boulevards,

underneath the reverberations of a stormy cloudburst.

Oh! These clouds are so naive and innocent

that they do not themselves know for whom they cry!

Yes, my eyes are dampened like the monsoons too.

I see them holding back some salty tears

at the wicked thought that I am in love with you!

I will allow myself to cry out this venom of love  

until my heart is hollow and bereft of you.

I will let my untainted bosom become obscure and opaque

until it mirrors your insignificant name no more.

I will do this before the vernal and vivacious springtime comes..

I will forget you this summer.

I abhor the sight of that brackish and salty lake

over which we saw the rising sun.

Like the golden tawny fleck of your hazel eyes,

the cold waters of the lake once sparkled so bright.

We threw stones in it and counted the ripples flow.

I remember both of us never obtained a tally!

So blatant at heart, we set our visions till the farthest sight

and gazed unto nothingness till no more we saw the rising light.

Our bosoms were so warm and our spirits so wild!

We did not act any older than a kindergarten child!

Yes, it was that teeth chattering wintery morning!

But now the sun mounts no more on the phosphorescent horizon

and the malachite hued cascading waters are still!

Now, I should grow old to realize, you don’t feel the same for me!

Like the dried throat of a parched and thirsty sailor,

I will throat-choke my unanswered love for you before I visit that lake again.

I will forget you this summer.

Like useless dampened vapors suspended in thin air,

incidental, inconsequential thoughts of you,

impregnate my mind.

Unlike those definite cartoon figures sketched out

in the ‘join the dots’ exercise I did in kindergarten, 

these thoughts of you, when traced back, don’t even connect

that out of them, something sensible I can detect!

They are so like you: so moronic, so witless!

That’s why I want to forget you:

to create space for worthy thoughts.

I will forget you this summer.

I thought, this physical distance between us,

which has been vindictive to keep you out of my sight,

will be heartless enough to keep you out of my mind too!

But every night when the shining stars light my room,

I find myself sitting by the grilled rampart of the roof,

talking to the velvet moon, trying to reach out to you

in hopes that you’re on the other side,

talking to me too!

But have you ever heard me calling?

So now I’m realizing, that I’ve been no less a fool

who thinks that it is a dialogue

going on betwixt me and you!

Who sits energized when the sun goes down

Alas! But sits alone, talking to the moon!

The moon deserve so much more,

than these nonsensical monologue addresses from me

which are actually meant for you.

So before it wanes thrice over the mulberry horizon

and shows up in its fullest, the very first monsoon midnight,

I would have forgotten these ridiculous banters!

I will forget you this summer.

As I sit amidst the silver of the night,

this caramel night sky above me, asks me some questions.

I wish I could answer even one!

I’m scared, it has figured out my love for you,

and also the fact that it will always remain unreciprocated!

I close my ears to be deaf to these surreal questions

and to your name that these winds

Shout out loud to me!

Like all the nights since you’ve gone so far,

tonight seems rejected too,

as it drags on without you.

My lonely cigarette burns!

Yes, I’m burning with it the hopeless actuality

that quite like a fool, I’m in love with you!

Your childlike smile keeps flashing by,

in this nebulously dark and thin air

but the smoke hangs on!

Now, my chalice of golden whiskey clicks once,

as the drink meets the ice.

My hand, shaky in your love, lifts it

and gulps in down thrice!

Now half the whiskey is gone and

half the cigarette is burnt!

But the sound of your unfeigned laughter and

that sparkle in your ultramarine eyes

when you teased me

are yet so clean in my mind!

Before the whiskey is gulped down absolutely

and the cigarette quits to burn!

You need to take leave off my head

before the pain of separation erupts acutely!

I need to forget you too soon.

I will forget you this summer.

As the winds move south and the feathered fowls migrate,

I know, it is time for me to move on too. 

This misery of separation from you, I can no more take.

The blush of my love will flush not a red but blue!

Ever since you’ve gone, I know I have to carry on

because living in a dream which has you and me

is not the way my life should be.

Not a tear for you, I want to shed

so forgive me please, even if I do.

Through all the weather maps, I have been,

just in order to bring you to me.

I will breathe my last, if I undergo this sea of storms!

I can’t fight any longer now.

The sooner I forget you, the better it is.

So, I will forget you this summer.

Even when the summer has gone

and my love has been faded by the monsoon mist..

When my senses blossom to the color of spring

and my weightless heart waltzes to the chorale of chirping birds!

It will ache me yet when I will remember that

somewhere I loved you,

somewhere you left!

Somewhere this love was darned, 

somewhere my heart wept...

....and then

I will forget it all over again

and continue dancing in the monsoon rain!

तन्हा

"तन्हा मन में उमड़े खयालों को, 

सच होने का दिलासा तो चाहिए|

हर पल मरती ये तन्हा साँसों को, 

जीने का सबब तो चाहिए|"

Why do you not understand

that your absence asphyxiates me?

I will lie here waiting for you

unless I am throttled and  stifled to death,

robbed of the fresh air your presence will bring along.

Disjointed and disconnected thoughts of you

hit me like spasmodic jolts of an accident!

But they refuse to liberate my seraphic and gullible mind

off their unruly waywardness!  

These bewildered thoughts have never made sense

but they have dis-quietened my senses

to only fuel my thirst for you! 

The exasperated waters of your thoughts have tempted

the tranquil blue ocean within me.

Will you never come to content these liquid thoughts of yours

which characteristically occupy my mind?

Wherever I go, however may be.

Come and drink down these waters

down the profundity of your dazzling auburn eyes

and watch me go anesthetized

on my first glance at you!

You have led me to commit a certain sweet crime...

So today, I stand culpable in the court of love.

My heart is already chained with the shackles of your sinful love!

I’m imprisoned already, don’t you see?

A million convicts of love must’ve lived and perished,

but if love as an offense was codified

I promise I would’ve created an everlasting precedent!

I yearn to breathe the same air as you do

and feel the periwinkle  breeze which has just gushed

across your undone  black hair.

I wish to witness the darkness of the night

becoming lighter with the rising rays of the wicked sun

with my head eased on your denim lap.

One day, I want to you believe that since love, like truth hurts,

it is as untainted as truth itself.

I look out for you, like clouds roaming endlessly

in search of disdainful mountains!

I am drowned in your love,

like the sun gone down the crimson horizon

amidst the lofty mountain ranges!

Sometimes, I want to be an intoxicant

and pour myself down an endless wineglass for you to drink

and go tipsy in my sensation!

I dream of you standing underneath my window and serenading me.

Then, like a Romeo you scale the side of my house

and we share a mischievous moonlit moment on the ledge.

Oh! But that can be hazardous and extremely dangerous.

I think you should just knock on my front door instead

and come marching in like a man.

But I am so silly that I’m longing for your presence!

When you’ll come around, I know,

you’ll be nothing more exciting than an old pair of leather shoe

and choose to not pronounce a word to me.

In response to all the things I’ll say or do

you’ll just give a lanky nod or pass a smile at me.

Your asymmetrical, lopsided and demented smile

which has made me fall flat for you.

I say, kill me with your words, but for unknown reasons

you choose silence instead!

This inadvertent awkward silence you create

makes me spin a warped web of thoughts

of an absurd chain reaction which start so easily.

It is perhaps from the last word you utter or

from the heart shaped pattern of your coffee froth.

You fill my mind with abstract associations.

They seem like exiguous, inconsequential images

which I’ve never been able to understand!

It is in these stupid silences, that

my heart beats like a bass against my nervous breast!

In the times when you are so close to me,

I can feel it throb and hear it thump so loud.

Sometimes, you speak and break the quietude 

and then, your sugar soaked voice can be heard

like the melody of full lips against a microphone!

Can’t you see that I’m tired?

Tired of the lonely mornings, the hopeless yearnings!

The futile attempts at conjuring some fatal elusive respite

of seeing the lights fade away in trepidations and palpitations

Its evening now and everything repeats..

in reverse order!

I think it’s time to realize,

that there is a pain that doesn’t hurt!

I long for the day,

when somewhere amid those frosty winter boulevards

and the sweltry living rooms...

Between the coldness of my bosom and the warmth of your body,

would lie a confession, slightly slanting perhaps.

I know, mystic revelations can seldom be made conveniently and dextrously!

In the radical muteness of the ebony night,

between you and me, just may be, and the twinkling stars

you’ll unveil the awaited truth

which will tell me the mystery behind your closing eyes

whenever you smile..

There will be a yawning asymmetry

between what you want to say and the real words that you allow.

Don’t you worry because then, I’ll calmly step in

between your shaky courage and the real words

and sing confessions of love out to you.

I will blush a warm color of crimson

as the rich city will sleep with empty streets.

Where there was tears and blood once

that moonless night, there will be music.

There will be nothing which will come between you and me.

Not anymore!

Looking Back, Moving Ahead.

"I look back to smile because it happened!"
I have loved to sit on the rocks by the lakeside and enjoy the waters. On an average day when the sun is yellow, the birds chirp out and the breeze is sweet, the waters have been tranquil and speechless. They’ve almost never roared like the lethal sea waves in violent turbulence. The flow has been staid and steadfast,vigilant of their rhythm.
Like time.

As far as I can remember, I have always tossed pebbles in the waters in the delight of watching the ripples form.  The ripples have taught me the doctrine of travelling back in time. From their origin to termination, they travel ceaselessly and steadily. I sometimes wonder what is it that the newly formed ripple owes to the old one which just vanished?

Existence.

Subsistence.

It’s in the womb of an old ripple is the new one borne. The mother ripple dies to give birth to a new ripple and the lineage continues unless a certain obstruction comes and entire bloodline is perished. However, the rule continues: the dead is forgotten, the dead is non-cognizable and the dead is not be asked for! Since young, it was watching the new ripples form which delighted me. The vanishing ripple was significant till it reproduced another of its kind.

Like past-time.

Time is essentially an observed phenomenon of inter-connected entities, known as seconds. Like the ripples in a lake it too is a system of sequential relation of events. A second died is a second born. This is to say that if there isn’t a past, there can be no present, or future. That today’s existence is a borrowed yesterday. Time, like the ripples of the lake have taught me that there can be no moving ahead without looking back!

I’ve rejoiced to reverse the arrow of time to travel back and recapitulate the little some-things which came and went in a flash! I love to travel back to the strangest of thoughts for the oddest of reasons, sometimes just out of the reminiscence of nostalgia. Past is a diverse actuality and that’s what makes looking back so charming. Memories of smiles, tears, laughter, cries, joys etc, they all come in a singular basket of choice. For once, you can overcome your present state of mind by choosing to look back on moments which erupted a feeling you wish to sense. You rule sovereignty over your feelings and govern them and it’s not destiny’s suit you follow! Looking back with satisfaction is like living twice.

I’ve loved the limitations looking back put you in! You can’t go back in time to turn things round. A fragile heart-broken, a best friend gone, a race not won, an examination failed, a treasured watch cracked, a perfect dress torn or a favourite earring stolen! All you can do is stop, stare back and admire yourself for acing those instances so wizardly! It gives you the serenity to accept things the way they’ve been but it also gives you the courage to change things you can in the present. Looking back makes you believe that if you could do it once, you can surely out do it again! That if you finished 2^nd in a race, you can win it this time. So what if your heart broke once? That it’s twice as strong this time round!

Realization is what looking back offers. There can be no learning from life without looking back at it. One looks back to see himself in a sea of situations through which he swam across. You recapitulate the times when you were drowning unless a wave came past and pushed you forward. You learn that you could’ve held on to an ignored straw than gasping for breath! One learns that a friend who is gone was never one. That the one who shattered your heart to reduce you to tears wasn’t worth it. That you should be scrupulous about your belongings before another is cracked or burglarized! 

 ‘Looking back’ has meant ‘moving ahead’ for me. For moving ahead without learning and realization from the past will mean drowning in the ocean without knowing the way to stroke through it. Looking back in life has told me how far I’ve come. What satisfaction would it be to climb a hill top if it’s not for looking back at the depth? Little gifts which life once offered, when looked back at, seem no less than gift hampers!

Most importantly, looking back makes me stronger to face tomorrow, for I know the past and I live in the present.

Everyone Deserves a Little Sunshine.

“He chose the beginning of the road, chose the place it leads to.

He then determined the end”

When Bryan Adams sang:

“It’s a new day; it’s a new start,

It’s alive with the beating of young hearts

It’s a new day, it’s a new plan

I’ve been waiting for you

Here I am!”

He was surely talking of beginnings: the first step towards the journey of a 1000 leagues. I am fond of beginnings myself. Good ones, bad ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, desirable ones, undesirable ones, expected ones, unexpected ones- all sorts actually. I love how they offer you limitless choices to sculpt them. For once, you can be the potter with the clay of beginning in your hand, ready to be moulded at your appraisal.

Beginnings come with unparalleled dynamism and vivacity.  They bring along with them-buoyancy of choice, opposing the thrust of limitations. They leave you with all the time, with all the space and with innumerable alternatives. One just doesn’t have to accept what’s offered to him but he can pause and ponder over what’s missed out. The forgotten and the uncalled can be brought in the beginnings to make them more beautiful and desirable. One can pick up what’s precious to one’s journey and leave the rest. Beginnings let you cleave your own course and they almost never make you feel desultory or frivolous. They give you a choice to avoid miscarriages, mislay, misfires and neglects.

To every calamity, a new beginning is the answer. They provide oneself the power of amendment and reformation. So what if something went wrong in one’s previous journeys in life?  A new beginning comes with a tool of remedy-to repair the loss.  There is nothing more hopeful and anticipative than starting anew. Beginnings tell you that it’s alright to fall and lose everything as long as you try again. That it’s much easier the second time round.

What a beautiful time to talk of beginnings as the New Year remarks a new beginning!  It’s a beginning to etch and polish the best of ourselves.  A beginning to be a little better, a little more fit and a little more loving. Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, beginnings like butterflies lead us to the sunny side of life. Everyone deserves a little sunshine.

But I like endings just as much! What else are they but a new beginning?

The End.

असीमित नीलामी

"लगा दी गई है कीमत, भगवान की अनमोल बेटियों पर

और हँस के बुलाते है उसे- वैश्या" |

दोपहर के ढ़ाई बजे, उस तीखी धूप में,
पहने लाल साड़ी और कानो में प्यारी सी झुमकी,
आज गई थी वह उस बाज़ार में एक बार फिर
जहाँ बेचा था उसने अपने हाथों से ही
किसी और को क्या? अपने आप को!

फिर एक और बार मिली थी उस बाज़ार में उसे
कुछ ऐसी ही सखियाँ उसकी,
जो खुद न बन पाई थी किसी की माँ या बहन!
उसके ही जैसे जो, जूझ रही थी नीलामी की आग में ऐसे,
बिन लौ की आग भड़कती हो जैसे |

कोयले सी काली थी वह रात जिसमे,
थमा दिया था उसने अपने जिस्म को
उनके रात-से काले हाथों में ऐसे,
मानो टूटी-सी मिट्टी की गुड़िया हो जैसे |  
मन भर खिलवाड़ किया था उसका
और फिर, बिन शर्म ही पूछ लिया था उससे
"कितना ही कीमत है तेरा?'

न औरत होने की शर्म थी,
न जिस्म लुटाने की लज्जा |
उसका भी सर न झुका था माँगते हुए
वह दाम जिसपे रखा था उसने
अपने भीगा-सा तन को भाड़े पे |
"तो क्या अगर लगाई है अपने जिस्म की नीलामी?
भीक तो नहीं माँगी तेरे पैसों की!"
सोचा था उसने |

आज छनक रही थी उसके पैरो में चांदी की पायल |
कानो में थे लाल झुमके, गले में मोती की हार |
थी कजरारी आँखों में चमक,
मन था मस्ताना, थी चाल में ढाल |
आखिर छोड़ दिया था उसने वह पुराना पेशा |
आज माँ थी वह दो बच्चो की,
अंग्रेजी पाठशाला जाते थे जो |
आज थी उसके कंधो में गृहस्थ ज़िम्मेदारियाँ |

मिला था उसी बाज़ार में ही उसको,
उसके दो बच्चो का बाप |
मगर मिट्टी की नहीं, उसने देखा था उसको ऐसे
मानो हो वह सोने की गुड़िया |
आया तो था जिस्म खरीदने ही मगर
अनजाने में कर गया एक दिल का सौदा |
बांध गया जो शादी के अटूट बंधन में ऐसे,
किया रिश्ता हो परियों की रानी से जैसे |