The Pact

On his deathly pale face
Etched in red gashes
Are the sins of a million years.

His pallor lights the moonless sky
And spirits awaken with his cry.
He shut his eyes to avoid
Their translucent light
And kneels in fright
Of them his masters.

His thoughts fly back
Of a sudden flutter
To the day when he drank the blood
And swore to be their secret keeper.
Flashes of the fateful day
Hit his consciencelessness.

As yellow light faded into black
And a paler yellow struck,
Three humans dressed in red robes
Transgressed to the realm of evil.
He was but a tool to them.
An eager boy seeking immortality
And transmortal access to bygone souls
All a wonderous adventure then.
They signed their unholy pact all of them.

Ajaat (undead), Kaal (death) and Narak (hell)
Three pronged nether world, they wanted to control.
They bled him out to the last drop which dripped into
The great connecting ocean of the dark.
His sallow skin, stretched onto the hollow bones
And his pupils sunk within to shut the light.
They merely laughed as he drank their blood
Felt it choke and burn him
And killed something within.
For the final exit, he had to swear
Allegience to them three
And lost his soul to them.

A million years pass.
The sins have changed the land
Where rishis (saints) once walked.
The pure nature rituals are now
Torture games of awakening dead
And lurking soulless men
Sucking at happiness and ingesting peace.
A million pieces it has become now.
Magic is gone and cynicism grows.
Waiting for the latency to fill
And this our land, the last one, to merge
Into the dark three neither worlds.

Today he has been summoned
To complete the act.
That he’s promised minion years back
In a blood pact.
The three spirits smile at him
And tell him to bleed again
The darkest blood there is
And submerge the good earth
In its ephemeral surge.
They promise him possession
Of souls at will.

The memories pain him-
He knows pain now.
Every black moment of hell, death and undeath
Implodes in him
As another piece of earth breaks off from the divine order.
A million years of pain.
And now he can bleed it all and fuse into the darkness
Immune to the pain.
But he cant do it one time more
This time he knows the nature of sins
As their secret keeper, has lost his own soul to it.

But he trembles
At their sight.
He will be punished for this one moment
Of hesitation.
The weakened gods will never help, he knows.
Ajaat digs his claws into his chest
As Kaal holds him back.
Narak pulls out the intestines.
The pain sears within.

The furnce suddenly cools
And a cool wind blows.
The spirts take refuge
As a bright yellow light pierces
The canopy.
He has tarried a moment too long.
The moment of the pact has passed.
Spell broken, the blood ocean dries.
And darkness is overcome.

Spirits vanquished.
He sits lonely and awaits his fate.
The Gods only smile
And applaud his moment’s courage.
The tortured rishis rise again
-Fire, water, air, and earth –
Nature asks not for atonement.
Epics speak his name, say his suffering,
Praise his faltering moment
That broke the pact.

Prison Break - Not a 'by the book' review - just some thoughts

Prison Break. What makes it such a dandy to watch and such an addiction? Well two hot heros for a start. Pretty girl to boot. Good boys forced to turn bad in the bad bad world. Is that what intersets us? Nope. I think it all boils down to, cliche'd as it may sound, charactar. The father is anti-establishment and anti-President who as as it happens is the 'bad guy (gal) in power'. The elder son gets se-up for a murder he did'nt commit. His brother, the one with brains, gets convicted just to break out with his brother. You get me? Sacrifice for brother, with a few stunt arguments thrown in. Add a little prison inmate politics and racial slurs and you have yourself a pt-boiler. When they do break out, there's action that keeps you riveted. then sacrifices aplenty that bring tears to any hard dude's eyes. The brothers and their girls - they sacrifice everything they have for the love of each other. The President, the guys above her and the dirt within the Fibbies make for a lovely political saga in themselves.
At the end of two seasons, we all love it and cant wait for more.

A Parting Gift

The words are boiling over
Flowing out like molten lava
On the great canyon
That never was.

Two years.
You know what that means?

Two years of friendship wasted
Two years of experiences tasted
Together
Probably meant nothing to you.

You disgust me
(If it matters anymore.)

I watch the canyon crumble
Under the weight of my realisation
And wonder if such crassness
Will contaminate my poetry.

Well, it has.
An unstructured swollen mass:
Effluence of wated emothions.

Poetry gone bad.
Its my parting gift to you.

Lawyer, Teacher, Shakespeare

Lawyer, Teacher, Shakespeare
Drenched in 'greatness'
Squandering pauses
Bellowing verses
Whimsical lameness
Idiosyncracies of eccentric brilliance.

Walking encyclopedia,
Spouting cases, citations, trivia;
Silly tantrums galore
Never once mellow.
We can but stare and laugh
To be told off, (yes he can be tough).
The class's his stage
But many a dramatis personae emerge
(To mime and mimic his glare, his rage)
When he leaves after the allotted hour.

Pure entertainment,
But he seems to forget.
This is a classroom
Not a courtroom
Enaction.

There's lawyer and there's teacher
But never did both blend
To give Shakespeare
As did he.

Magician

A million things
Do I conjure
With wandless wit
And hatless trick.
Magician of words
I cast my spell
Into poetry and prose.
Alas! the magic is stilted
With writer's bane
Mystic tastes and myraid expenses
Obscure the magic.

Writer's Soliloquy

There's so much to say
I struggle with it;
It's gotta be right
It's gotta be me.
But when its done
I'm liberated.
That too dies shortly;
And then what?
Just the pain of being
An unread writer lingers.

Crowds

Crowds crowd you,
At every end they maul you,
With baring teeth and greet you.
One breath of lonesome air
Is all I ask of you.

The Nagging Ache

The nagging ache
Recurs-
Chores attended to,
Gossip all around,
I do as they do.
Oh for Godssake
Its back.

Trappings of the day
Some gotten,
Others on the way…
Yet something’s forgotten
And its nagging me
Again.

It eludes me
The musical note
As discordant beats
Teach us by rote.
Ok now I’ve stopped to think:
What’s my thing?

The ache persists.
It taunts.
Clears the mists
That haunts
The happy peoples
With no nagging aches.

A Speck in Time

A singl speck
In the universe of time...
I exist in that minute
To tell my story,
To live my life,
To leave my mark.

A million poets before me,
Have come and gone.
They left:
Some in dejection,
Some with glory.
They too were but a speck
And me, another speck
Beyond which, we part ways...
Me and my words.

Why would anyone care
To remember?
Why would a revolving globe
Pause for a mere speck?

Some Reflections on Life

Some Reflections on Life

Children, love, beauty
Jargon for happiness...

I see your impish innocence
And can't trouble to pause
Your questions are tactless.
I have placs to go.

And ye mustard flowers and red gulmohors
Nature's beauty at its best
But we need to deal with many a beast
Of a mightier law.

Love, frailest passion
Ensconed in myth and delusion
Jilters abound,
Pain - the ultimate regulation.

What are we, cash counting hounds?
(Hard language is not to condemn or berate-
-That's not my job-
But state.)

We slave our asses
Benumbed by the glitter of acceptance
Yet we remain minions
Of destiny where neither jargon shall hold.

....thoughts penned in deep frustration

My senses heightened,
Body smoothened,
I stand poised and ready;
I feel the crackle of energy;
-Maybe just a bone snapping-
Nothing really matters
But the progress.

Is there progress?
Progressing owards what?
I suddenly can't remember
What it was.
The once enchanting pull,
Now a faint murmur,
Dies in my ears.

Defeated before the battle,
Lost without a cause,
I could die the worst meaningless death,
Or I could crawl out
And live the worst meaningless life.

Nerd's Day Out

“Sir, we have return waves from one of the syncs.” Dr. Knott did not even bother looking up. New recruits were always hyperventilating about small signal disturbances. He was currently very busy mapping the Silicate stalactite element detected 800 metres within the core of Planet Ranger. The new recruit could wait for all he cared. He couldn’t even remember the kid’s name. Brink was not in the least hurt by Dr. Knott’s indifference. In fact, he did not even notice it. The crackle of the return waves was far too thrilling. He tried to tune the Grynkophanks – a device invented about a decade ago to sense extra planetorial life forms. Of course it beeped and twanged all day mostly sensing far off galactic movements and other irrelevant signals. That was precisely why new recruits were dumped in the Grankophanx room – (a) no one else wanted to work there and (b) to train them to channel out external noise and concentrate on the job at hand ( their wives could really testify for the success rate). But these signals seemed to be coming from some whwere within the Milky Way itself. It was a gut feeling. But of course, it was written in stone that a scientist should never rely on gut feelings. Dilemma solved.
So Brink tried to get back to the Silicate stalactite density he was researching on for Dr. Knott. But the humming sound kept growing louder till it attained the quality of a voice but he could not decipher what it was saying. He immediately began punching keys and doing mental arithmetic to figure out the decibel index and location index ratio so as to identify the location. None of the permutations seemed to be working. Since Dr. Knott was so uninterested, he decided that this baby was going to be his. He could smell the Nobel prize already.
*******************

“Archer point reporting,” Begus Grunt snapped. When would the infernal chief deign to respond? The contact could die any moment. Luca Penny, his secretary, smiled invitingly at him. “This is not the time for Godssakes!” He was hysteric now. Her smile remained intact. He could break her goddamn jaw. No one took him seriously. First, they put him in charge of some silly blue-green planet that no one but Mudrock even bothered studying. And now when he had managed to make a break even in the most useless job, it wasn’t even acknowledged. No work ethic left in Planet Crete. What else could be expected if Zipcus was in charge, he thought bitterly.
“Archer Point still exists?” A lazy voice chuckled back. “ Damn you Zipcus,” Begus fumed under his breath. Luca loved to see Zipcus all frustrated. It turned her on. “I have been single handedly manning the woebegone station and watching all these years for some sign of intelligence and finally made contact. Do you want me to break it so you can go back to leisure?” “Sarcasm has always been his forte,” Luca grinned to herself. “ Yes, good idea,” and Zipcus hung up. Begus jaw dropped in disbelief. It was at this point that Luca decided that Zipcus was’nt that hot afterall. “Ok Archer Point. Joke Over. If the contact is still there, you might as well still carry it on. Get your fat ass down here so we can hold an extraordinary meeting and put the issue to vote.” Begus couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Catching sight of Luca, he decided to lose it completely. “ Now you listen to me Zipcus. Call Mudrock and get all the information about earth that will be essential in deciding he threat / friend value ratio.” “ Agreed. (chuckle)” and the line went dead. What else could the bugger do, thought Begus angrily. He did’nt know the first thing about running a planet let alone handle potential threats.
Begus was suddenly distracted by the jangling of bells. Luca jumped to the earth control. “ Boss, the earth dude is making contact too.”
Oops. Time for a quick beaurocracy free decision.
***************************

Brink was ecstatic. One of his many guesses had struck gold. Double edged contact. He was going to converse with an alien. Of course it was Dr. Knott’s fault that he hadn’t taken him seriously.
“Human?” Begus bellowed.
“ Correct.” Nervous but firm.
“ Can you visit? We can exchange data and benefit from each other.” Standard textbook after-contact conversation.
“ Sure. We’ll send an envoy. His name is Brink.” Quick thinking from an ambitious scientist.
“ Pick up radiation will be there in a moment. Get the guy near the signal.”
For the first time, Brink had second thoughts. What if he died in transit, or worse in a new planet without even the assurance of a posthumous Nobel prize? But the time for that was long gone. He felt a thousand invisible rays burn into his cells. He was losing consciousness. He kept trying to figure out what sort of rays would transport him between planets. Consciouness erased.
Brain cells awaken a little. Ah! Purple hall. Long table. Could be earth. But no, I’m in a new planet. A whole sentence! I must be totally intact. The multiplicant of uncertainties is a constant and falls to definable levels only at Big Hollow conditions. Remember basic physics. Beautiful.
“Shut up.” Mudrock screamed.
“ Come now Mudrock, don’t alienate him. He’s an envoy.” Zypcus chimed.
“ Oh yes… diplomatic immunity and all you know,” blubbered Brink.
“Sorry?” Zypcus and Begus chorus.
“ Some legal bullshit. Irrelavant.” Mudrock, the Earth expert dismissed. It was Mudrock’s defining moment. A life’s worth of research would now come to light. He would kick some ass. He had prepared a list of basic questions to begin with based on which they would map the guy’s brain.
He cleared his throat. “ Brink? How many meals do you people have per day?”
Brink was zonked. He had never been speechless in any of his viva exams in college. But meals? When was the last time he had eaten a meal? “ I have nutrition bars you know, to save time.” Mudrock snorted in disgust.
“ Are you married?”
“ I suppose so.”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
Brink thought for three minutes. Begus wanted to slap the guy. Did he think that was important intelligence that could’nt be given away?
“I can’t remember,” Brink stammered.
Mudrock decided to give it another shot. “ What do you enjoy most?”
Bink brightened. “ The principles of secondary transition of crest-trough convolution have by far been the most interesting. The first principle…”
Zypcus banged the hammer on his table. It was what he always did when proceedings in General Body meetings got unmanageable. Now he had a lunatic in his meeting room.
Mudrock sighed. Brain mapping it is then.
***********************************
“Analysis?” Zypcus asked, suddenly alert. He had decided that Earthlings were some sort of lunatic race with no streak of positive in them. according to Zypcus a man who did not appreciate women, and enjoyed work was someone you just could not trust. There, Begus agreed. Luca had been his only salvation during the years of inaction at the solitary earth station. Mudrock walked into the room seething. “What do those humans think? They’ve sent us a goddamn robot. Do they think we’re not even worth a human envoy? We’ll show em’. Declare war or something.”
“ Calm down Mudrock,” Zypcus thundered. “ But the guy looked human to me. I mean no wires, machines. Are they so advanced as to make humanoids?” Begus could not but agree with Zypcus, for once in his life. Mudrock threw his head back and laughed. Nice and loud. Before the other two could order his execution, he restrained himself and whispered calmly, “ Oh not a real robot. Just a human version of one. They call them ‘nerds’. These guys are born human but due to a little gene deformity and behavioural disfigurement, they maldevelop into social losers and functional winners. So they are put into laboratories where they are more than happy to live.”
“ In fact a robot is modeled on a nerd.”
Zypcus and Begus were speechless.
Finally Zypcus collected himself. “ Begus, stay put. Inform us if any non-nerd makes contact.” “ Mudrock, do everything you can to ensure this nerd gene is prevented from ever appearing in Planet Crete.” He looked at Luca who had been sitting silently and taking down minutes. “ Luca, take Bring with you and teach him to remember your name.”

One Afternoon...

Sunshine spills through the window
Retreating with a gentle afterglow
Lightens up my room:
Finds these stray thoughts,
Makes them sparkle;
Threads 'em together,
Makes 'em mingle;

Random moments attain meaning:
The world an imperfect paradise,
We rave and rant and we calm down;
A circus with many a clown,
We see the irony and manage sad smiles.
As our ambitions grow,
We determine to walk extra miles;
Some rare moments that move
We feel the knot in one throat;

So many feelings,
Define the person that we are;
In that one sunlit moment,
I see the person I am.

STARK NAKED

With every word you said
And every lie you untold
The covers lifted, face shifted
I stood there waiting, sifted
Through all the dramatic shit:
Sentiment, emotion, belief, all tumble out...
I stare at you wanting to shout;
I was just a little girl too
We bask, we talk, we sue
Damned lawyers thats what we do.
And then you say this bit, lose the ado
And stand stark naked before me
-Stripped of all pretence, clothing-
Did I say I hate pretence?
Maybe its just a necessary defence.
Ugh- I smell the self loathing
Well up and bolt...
(No time for this shit.)

Its no offence to you,
You tried to be honest.
Just hope you dint see my disgust
Before I realised
That Im just the same beneath,
Clothed in a fragile sheath.

Blighted, smited, spited,
The world so pretty a day ago
Is a ghastly hell hole of creatures
Humans, we call them.
Dark poetry, we call such ranting.
How unfair...
poetry is only as dark as the world it comes from.
Shaded glasses have seated themselves on my nose,
Disgust wells up in me-
Some part of it, is hurt too-
that I will never accept
- Fruit of believing in human nature
: Its 'goodness' so to say.
You know its days like these
That make you see the folly of being happy
And forbids you to ever trust
In the existance of any good.

Sweet Musings of a Cynic

The magic of the Even,
A charming hue of warmth
Neither bright nor dark
The shades danced in and out
A time to charm, a time to feel.

As I make the enchanted journey throuugh the woods,
The path seems to extend
Beyond the Beyond-
Lyrical ballads of whispering avenues
Airily pass me by,
The delectable smells of earth and nature
In me, exhilerate.
All primal instincts sharpend,
I feel the pain and the love,
The passion and beauty of nature,
In its embrace can I lie forever.

I feel the liberation, the joy,
A part of the brilliant Whole.

A twang of smoky air
Teases my nostrils-
Tis the warm cooking fire outside the huts
Not the icy city smoke
That I, modernist in thought, conceeded to before.

The sky darkens,
Birds fly past, harken
The retreating dusk.
A dull light lingers, fades slowly,
Dances back in,
Ends the dilemma.
Another day decided-
Nightfall befalls fledling mankind.

The sweet feelings it evoked,
A bright evenstar witnessed it all,
Twinkles laughingly
At my musings,
Its the cynic's day off.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
I read the first part to the series recently and found it an extremely entertaining read. The hero is this child genius and a great criminal and he goes after the magical people to get more money. Seems like a very rudimentary verons of rowling's Harry Potter right? But what I really liked about this book is the humour lacing the whole narrative. Stereotypes and witty retorts along with a racy narrative make it worth reading. Most people find fantacy fiction kiddish. But I really think it brings out the inner fantacies of basic human nature. By the way, Samit Basu's 'Simoqin Prohesies' and 'The Manticore's Secret' presents a desi version of the same fantacy fiction genre. Its worth a read if you enjoy this sort of thing.

A Bird Today

The beaten metaphor of a bird
Must I use again, ever so apt.
I feel the flutter; the flush on my face
As the wind embraces, slaps me playfully,
Across the face.
Awakens a thousand lovely feelings-
Good poetry, open doors, coffee mugs
The little details of life
That make you fly a million miles.

I gather my thoughts, sip the coffee,
Roll it up my tongue, taste the beauty
Of being alive to all these mundane things-
A slice of good conversation, pieces of time
Spent together, a peg of delighted laughter-
The sheer hysteria of breathing every moment
Makes me soar like the metaphorical bird.

Afloat on the clouds, high on life,
I wonder if the hackneyed metapher will hold any longer.
It will not as we must but accomodate the more weary
Clishe of change.
But Im content to know
That Im living the bird metaphor
Today.

Update

The Day That Was...TDTW
Never an early riser, waking up late is nothing unusual. Classes being generally boring, not falling asleep is something beyond the banal but I might as well make a mention. i stayed up all day in class today and was attentive for the most part.
Update on reading habits : Swore to myself never to pick up a Barbara cartlant again..total shit.
Movies: Yet to finish The incredibled. However havent given it up as a lost case yet like all the animiation movoes ive tried watching in the past.
Songs: Still reeling under Mr. Enrique Iglesias, is charm and magical voice. Insomniac it is right now.
Weather: Ah yes. it rained again. But unlike yesterday, it spared me the trouble of getting wet. however I had to walk in ankle deep water to have dinner. But i'm not cribbing. The cup of coffee I had after that made up for it all. Coffee in such weather is a blissful experience.
Other aspects: Well yes, this where we digress from the banalities of life. So it is beyond the scope of my present write up.

Journal entry of an avid sports hater

Well sports are a waste of time and an unnecessary burden on the whole community. look at my college for instance. If there's a football match then everyone is expected to go and support their class or they are told that they dont have class spirit and stuff like that. Of course there is respite when it rains and games are called off although Im not particularly fond of the rain either. sports and rain. Which could I hate more? While one gets you all wet and shivering, the other gets you sweaty and tired. And the world is so full of rain and sport lovers.
Frankly speaking, I avoid both rain and sports if I can help it which I most often can. You know, the will of steel logic would probarbly apply here. Anyway the reason I'm writing today is that i made an exception to both these unwritten rules. The reason is not something out of the blue as one would expect. It was a simple conspiracy of circumstances.
After my evening cup of coffee, I was walking back to the library to get some work done and marvelling at the fact that the rare day on which I sit down to work always has to be one with good weather. I was passing by the field and ineveitably saw both teems gearing up to be what was much touted as a power packed game. In fact many of my class mates and seniors were already seated on the steps and discussing who should win and why. This was the final match of the intra collegiate series and I suddenly remembered that our class had reached the finals. 'Hmm...It'll be nice if we win,'I said aloud. My friend who had accompanied me for coffee coaxed me to go watch it. Since she was so insistent and also since my interest was a little kindled i began to waver.
'Maybe I could go watch this match for a change.'
'Ah! I see this is the demise of the great sports hater. Ofcourse not everyone is born with a strong will there days.'
'No of course i have a strong will. Its just that this match might actually be interesting. and who's going to satay till the finish anyway?"
You know how you grapple with yourself many a time when that infamous phantom called fickle mindedness possesses you. It is not very pleasent to say the least.
To cut a long story short, I was sitting on one of the front seats and waiting for the match to begin alongside everyone else like a common sports lover. Well, there are always exceptions, i decided. And then it happened. All of a sudden. Out of the blue. Rain. Mere droplets, though they were, I began to panic. I had two options open before me. Either brave the rain drops and run back to safeto and comfort. Or stay here till the rain stops and be forced to watch the whole game whether i liked it or not. A smart reader will be wondering by now how the game would go on if it was raining. Well, let me tell you Sir, that smart as you may be these are hard core sports lovers we are discussing. they dont let something as silly as rain to deter them. Also, it is here that one has to draw the line between the much nicer game of cricket and football. while in cricket, the gentleman's game, they will abandon matches when it rains or when the light is not good, in football, the ruffian's game, they hardly care for these aspects and the game almost never gets abandoned. I have often surmised that since the whole point of football is beating each other up while incidentally kicking a ball or two, rain and bad light can only be used to perpetuate more violence on the field without a foul being called. So it happened that I was stuck in the present quandary.
The match progressed and each time the crowd cheered, I asked someone around the reason for the burst of shouting and volley of applause. i joined in whenever it was to appreciate my class. I also found one player particularly good. It was amazing. The way he would run after kicking the ball and then reach the other end of the field where the ball had bounce off too almost as soon as the ball did. Another kid even kicked with his head. Ok I was told that was usually done in the game. As the game progressed and both teems had scored two goals each, the cheering and booing got thunderous. I joined in of course. I was as upset as the rest of my class mates when the other class supporters booed us. I was as tensed as everyone as to the outcome of the match. It also perhaps helped that I knew the kids outside of the game and hence found it interesting to watch them play. But I think the whole feeling of being part of the crowd histeria and and being in the midst of that palpable tension and excitement was thrilling. It can turn any one into a sports lover and a sports hater into a 'well its quite nice really' type kid. And also there was the rain I was hiding from. The spectators seats were sheltered from the rain. I'm not saying that i would have left midway if it wasnt raining, or anything but just merely laying bare all the facts as a good writer most necessarily should.
( To be continued...)

THE TRUTH

The cool wind blew across playfully. The sun had risen on another brilliant day and the darkness was withdrawing sullenly to reveal another glorious morning. MT loved to start the day with such fine weather. Rosie did not seem to notice the beauty and was staring into space lost in thought.

‘How are you doing today, Rosie?’ MT was concerned about her. It so often happens in extended families, the eldest member of the family takes an inordinate liking to the youngest one. Such was the case with MT and Rosie too. Mornings were the time when both of them talked the most. Rosie would often tell MT about her youthful angst and MT had not only lend a patient ear but also sound words of advice. But Rosie could not articulate her problem. She tried but gave up. It was her problem. Maybe she was growing up. Maybe she should talk less to MT about her fears. But MT was not one to give up easily. He decided tell Rosie the truth.

‘I was lost. It was dark all around. I was being thrown from place to place. I had nowhere to go. Life was threatening to cease and life was palpably close. My mind was in a haze. The fog was clearing only to be replaced by blindingly bright light. It was a struggle. I pulled through. I was certain that life was now near… very near. I reached out like a caged animal for freedom. I inhaled with difficulty but finally I could smell freshness. It was the freshness of earth. There was love on this planet. Yes, now I could be sure that I would be helped. The tender caress of love and the tears of concern nourished me. That was when I knew that the world was safe. I reached out to this love and I tried my best to hold on.

There was feeble light and paling darkness, both juxtaposed together, around me. I learnt to concentrate on the patches of light. I dreamed about brightness while groping in the darkness. Ah, I found a hand. It was held out to me. I grasped it gratefully. With confidence I then climbed on like a mountaineer. I felt very comfortable. Sleeping in the midst of so much love and happiness. This must be a good world indeed. And then slowly, I lifted my head and peeked. Miranda was right. It was a brave new world indeed. Although the brightness stung and the harsh breeze hurt, I enjoyed my first glimpse of the world. My world. My family. There were others then. Others that I learnt to recognize, love and respect. Under their protective canopy, I played and frolicked. I learnt to dance with the wind and sing with the birds. I would mischievously conspire with the bees and the butterflies to dance around the elders. They would sternly ask me not to interfere, sometimes mildly patting me on the head. Words and actins were not important, not significant. It was more the surroundings and my well-wishers that I got attached to. It was all a lovely age to learn the hard lessons without realizing it. But some things just cannot be learnt. The world has to teach us these things. Today, I’m an old man, and yet I fear for the same thing you fear.’

Rosie stared up at MT. How had he articulated the torment that she was feeling so accurately? Suddenly Rosie suspected that MT knew her thoughts better than she herself did. Why was she so scared? Was there something wrong? The sad smile on MT’s face confirmed it. It made MT look suddenly very old and bent. As if he had read Rosie’s thought, MT shook himself, and stretched upwards towards the sky and inhaled the morning breeze with relish.

‘Ah Rosie, we live in a brilliant world. But we live in bad times. It is worse than a war. We can all be killed by a stroke with out a war cry. But we cannot reason with our enemies because they are ignorant fools. It is our duty to enjoy the miracle of life till it is and go silently, if snatched from us.’

They had reached MT by then.

‘What a lovely mango tree!’

‘And there is a rose sapling too.’

‘Come on, let’s get to work. This place has to be cleared by evening. Construction work is scheduled to begin tomorrow. Another building would replace another patch of greenery. Just another day.

Heres a thought

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AN ARTIST’S BEST PAINTING

The coffee tasted good. Roy liked his coffee that way – strong and sugary. Somehow the new age outlets never seemed to make it as well as the good old ‘Darshinis’ which one could find almost everywhere in Karnataka. On a typical day, the type of people who would come to a Darshini was very predictable. Elderly office-goers and students of a more economical variety would come after a hard day’s work and order nothing but the usual cuppa. They would discuss anything from politics to college antics to troublesome wives amongst themselves and down their anxiety and refresh themselves.

Roy would often be part of this. As soon as a person entered, he could tell whether his day was good or bad, approximately what class he came from and what sort of work he did. No one could beat Roy at this. That was probably why his sketches and paintings were so famous. The piece of canvas would contain not just a person but also everything that went with him. His paintings depicted life from the eyes of the subject.

But today, things were just not going right. He had been sitting there at his usual corner table since nearly an hour and he was plain bored. Not a single face had interested him. He was getting old and he had not painted his perfect piece yet. Time was running out and Bangalore suddenly seemed to lack good faces. Gone were the days when every single face had a story to tell. All Roy had to do was observe, pick and start playing with the colours. In the recent past, he did not seem to find much variation in one person’s aura from the other’s. Every face seemed to mingle with the multitude. Suddenly he was struck by a thought that made him cringe. Had he, Roy, lost the ability to See? He remembered how he used to tell his mate Vicky condescendingly that every face had a story to tell, it was up to the artist to bring it out with the clarity of colour and the rationale of the brush. He looked sadly around at the many people cribbing in the usual manner about bad roads and poor infrastructure.

Lonely is the man who has lost his friend and lonelier still is the man who has lost his calling. Roy dragged himself towards Madhavan Park where the spirited youth play and fight and fight and play more purposefully than anyone else, hoping to feel better. Somewhere to his left, a car screeched to a halt and the door flew open. There were loud good-byes screamed out randomly and as suddenly as it had stopped, the doors banged shut and the car shot off like a rocket trying to land on Mars. A young girl of around twenty had got off the car. He looked at her blankly and suddenly it hit him. He could not read a story into her face either. The plain eyes seemed tired and the nose was quite pointy. She smiled slightly at Roy when she noticed the stare. But there was no other reaction. Neither that of self-consciousness nor that of invitation. It was just an absent minded smile. She was just about to walk off when Roy spoke up.

“Do you erm.. live her?”

“Just a block away,” she answered promptly.

Roy licked his dry lips. “I know this would sound strange but actually, I’m an artist. I paint people and their lives. If you could please sit patiently for an hour…” He was irritated with himself for behaving like an amateur. And why had he asked her when there was nothing he could see in her face? Had his talent just dried up?

“Look I’m no model but yeah… if you insist.” “I’ll be paid right?” she added as an afterthought.

He was sitting precariously on a small chair with one leg resting on the couch and the other hidden underneath. Paints, palettes and canvas were strewn all over. Yamini, as the girl had later introduced herself, was fast asleep on a nearby sofa. He had never drawn a sleeping subject before. But now he felt it was better she did not see him struggle to bring meaning to her existence. If there is anything artists hate, it is lack of inspiration and Roy was trying his best to get inspired. She was a plain girl in every sense of the term. Yet there was a self-confidant streak in her. She had explained away the accent with a “oh god, you must be wondering… I work at a call center.” In his mind he had immediately made the connection to the recent murder of a call center employee by the cab driver. But as soon as he brought up the subject of safety, she had reacted indifferently, “you’re here for a painting, right?”

He began as he had begun every single painting of his. A swish here, a swish there and Yamini’s ‘plain’ face was imprinted in light watery colours. He could not resist adding a number of other faces from memory who seemed to have no specific purpose in life. The roads of Bangalore with speeding taxi-cabs were set as the backdrop. Slowly, as his painting progressed, things were becoming clearer and clearer. Bangalore was literally crawling with call centre employees. Roy, who had never given much thought to the phenomenon till now, pondered over what had become of his beloved city. Once known for simple folk with great minds, now young minds were not even being allowed to develop. With a sudden fury, he began to add deathly looking youth devoid of energy. The sap of life streamed out of them and collected in little shimmering pools. Yes, Bangalore’s most posh and attractive buildings. But then his canvas, for the first time, seemed too small for the world it had to depict. There was so much more to this.

A tap was dripping water with musical regularity. A dog was moaning in the distance. Street kids were playing with cheerful little shouts and a lot of laughter. Roy registered none of this. He was transported to another world. A world where the colonizers shipped Indians in large numbers to places where cheap labour was required. A world where the work was done by the Indians and shipped to ‘developed’ countries. Had the world really changed? Roy suddenly felt like a child newly informed about some natural phenomenon that he had failed to notice till then. With all the zeal of an inspired artist, he sat about adjusting a new canvas onto his easel. The cultures diverged, met at the west, rose and the flames consumed the east, all in an angry array of colours. The cycle had to repeat and the new centers of colonization – the call centers shimmered with the pride of dominance while the lifeless youth of a nation beamed with the uninformed pride of reflected glory.

Yamini, just awakened from the glorious slumber that a night shift had deprived her of, gaped at the painting in dismay. Her hall was a mess of spilt colour, water brushes and palettes. But she recovered quickly enough to enquire if it was abstract art.

“Abstract? It’s the new world order and yet not new after all.” Roy’s excitement was palpable. “Don’t you see, it is a pattern that has to be gleaned from the cyclic movement of world affairs. We must save ourselves before we get intellectually enslaved by the big brothers.” What scared Roy most was the fact that he seemed to be excited by the idea. An artist loves his creation like a father and this was Roy’s best creation. Yes, he had finally made it.

A distraught Yamini had called security to get him out of her home. Roy just could not understand it. He had tried explaining it to the security guard but to no avail. But he had to tell everyone. The man in a black jacket trying to cross the highway, the young woman at the fancy store, the bespectacled lady at the bakery, all of them had either ignored him or told him that he did not know what he was talking about. Vicky too had just smiled compassionately at him and said “it’ll sell macha, people buy this kind of thing.”

The coffee was tasteless. Or rather Roy was too numbed to relish the coffee at the Darshini with the innocence of a mere coffee addict on the look out for faces whose stories he could steal and camouflage as paintings. He was now burdened with the great truth of the times and additionally with the pain of not being accepted. He looked at the usual crowd streaming in and wondered why he was not in a bar trying to drown in his misery. Misery? Why should he feel miserable? His fault lay in the fact that he had seen beyond his times. Thought beyond his times. Expressed beyond his times. Artists, unfortunately were forever condemned to be confined bodily to their times. Roy would cope. There was after all, coffee and the money that the ‘best’ painting would bring.

Attention writers and poets

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The Strength of Poetry

Pain in its cruelest form,
Breaks you from the inside
Tears you, kills you.
I realise I lost the cause when i loved.
Or is it worth the pain?
Is a heart so startved that it courts pain?
Or am I but a poor beguiled girl?

No i shall not begrudge myself
Of the credit of true love.
but I got lost,
lost sight of myself.
So all the tears were afterall
Truly necessary to clear the haze.
To tell me that no one's worth it.
To impress me with pain
So Id know to love myself
And not give space for a smiter.

A smiter he might not be,
But when was poetry just
To anyone but the poet.
Ah! dear poetry-
The strength
In my frailest hours.

Destiny

Destiny is never just that,
or just this.
it never was meant to be like this
But it never was meant to be anything.
It is what I made it
And I dont regret anything
For mistakes are never wrong.

But before I say I made a mistake,
I should hold myself firmly
Set my sights on what I want
And walk the mile.
I never wanted to get hurt,
But Id realised much before
That 'tis cowards who hide behind fear
Of hurting themselves.
I afterall, am not one.
I dared to love...
So if I'm hurt now I'm capable
Of moving on.
Its still me and my destiny
That I'm writing.

Nucleus

I heard the sound before
They fell to the floor and broke.
The shattered pieces that were me,
Crumbled to smithereens.
A hundred million pieces Of me
Look up at the world-The deciet, the betrayal, the untruths,
Mirror the darkness,The people, that once I loved.

The pain has broken me
And pains the broken shards.
The pain that comes out of belief
Which is at the nucleus of the many particles
Still holding them closeAnd accepting not defeat.

I close my eyes and look within, the belief strengthens
And I gather myself-
The suffering mortal,Immortal to the world.
Yet.

Ink Stains

Browning paper browns some,
Ink gathers, spreads, dances
And settles there for eternity.
The brilliance of those days
The darkness of those other days.
Blobs of ink spread
Reminiscent of imes
When you refused to understand.
Darker stains ententrench themselves
Impossible to erase...
Ah! if only you'd been more sensitive.

I try to blot the ink
Out of my life.
But they've already stained the paper
Coloured it dark, light and hurtful
To blacken the browning paper;
Worse, they show through the new pages,
Inerasable and unsuppressible.

I'll come to terms with them,
(Stains, Pieces of china, outgrown shoes,
They're all there.)
Some day, when many more pages
Have turned.

Calendar Lives

Dates, days, minutes,
Minions of time.
A compass to the future
Compassing the destiny of millions
Of little men. The sitting ducks
Of big booming toys.
Big kids must play the
Lopsided game. And every throw
Of dice will alter the Calendar
Lives of the little men
In sorry lands.

The numbers change on
The calendar and
Time ends in another land.
Still they cant begin at
t=0. The superpower kids
dont play fair. Time is
twisted from the zeroth
Moment, for they command
The minions of time. They blow
Away civilization developed in eons
For they have the toys.

A rock shatters somewhere
as a country flounders in dispair. Just
Another page in their calendar lives.