Who killed The Rhyme?

He was new to the city and in search of a job. He was tall and lanky and had a week's growth of stubble on his chin. His sunken eyes spoke volumes about his hardships and his ready smile,  if melancholy, suggested pain as a constant companion.The workings of his creative heart, which made him appear restless and aloof gave him an added aura of mystique.People who saw him could see him possessed with ideas beyond his day and principles beyond his age - they radiated off his old but clean kurtas and gave him that presence - solid but stick-like, proud but impoverished.
He was, in the way of his looks, perfect for the job of an upcoming poet.
The problem was, No one was quite ready for his poems.

They spoke of a pain deeply embedded in all of us; the pain of failing to get what we yearn; the pain of falling short of our own expectations; the pain of a god who has forsaken us or a love which has been lost; The pain of separation and the pain of an eternity of forced company; His poems stripped his listeners of any pretence and laid bare their souls for them to look and grimace at; and sometimes cry upon.
Circumstance and conspiracy, those two bullies which serve Time were wielded like weapons by his words, moulded by the cutting edge of his rhyming wit. His poems took your breath away, shamelessly and without a disguise to their hurtful nature.His poems were true.

Everywhere he went with an example of his art, he was shunted aside and excused. Boards of indignant people met and discussed and failed to figure out the source of pain in his poems and the nature of words that so disturbed them.Producers had no use for his ballads of woe in their movies, albums could not be sold on grief alone, Girls could not dance to heady music set to his biting phrases, boys couldnt court girls with such pain; not in this age.He was born with the intuition for heart-wrenching wordplay, a century too late into a fast-world of pleasures, yet he looked ahead into a world of happiness, born out of self-realisation, for the pain in his poems was cleansing and inward-looking, the feeling that those boards and producers and script writers couldn't understand; that which caused them so much anguish and left them with no explanation.

He needed one person to understand him, just one to employ him and after some years and a few more kilos lost, he got them.
One who employed him, and the other who married him.
He now teaches english at the local school, where his daughter studies too.
He is fond of watching football and takes his family on yearly holidays to small hillstations.
He owns a scooter and a mobile phone and takes tuitions three days a week.
Needless to say, he is not a poet anymore.
He is happy and content and happy and contented men don't make good poets.
So i wonder who got to him.. the people who didn't understand him, or those who did; for the former didn't pay him and let him be himself and the latter gave him money,security,happiness and whatnot and he lost himself instead.

Are you a doctor?

I have a medical condition.It has no name.Yet.

The problem is I have a lot of thoughts camping around my idle brain.As a result, i keep wandering from one nice train of thoughts to another, without sitting down anywhere.The result is that hours pass by and my 'to-do' list keeps accumulating, (which gives me guilt trips every now and then)but my mind keeps loitering.

My mother says its hereditary.She also shoots a scathing look at my father, who she is pissed with because he is watching the world cup when she wanted to watch one of those regressive hindi soaps, which are so tedious that their names have to be long phrases.(Sigh, my parents use my illness as a one-upmanship tool).

She also says a good spanking was a good remedy when i was a kid,but i have grown too old for that.

Needless to say, without adequate attention, my condition has aggravated to the point where it has become an alternate world.

Let me elaborate.

Recently i have come across a spate of blog-posts on the well-rehearsed topic of social networking-its propensity for false identities and accumulation of previously unimagined junk(Have you seen the latest facebook app?).Most of the people i have asked are confused about what is really the deal with online-avatars and stuff.What is the parallel universe of online-existence? The freedom of personal space? The modern application of "georgesque" buffer space to all acquaintances (and not just parents, what? you havent watched seinfeld? what are you doing here?)? Dont get me wrong, i head that list of the disillusioned, who get fooled into clicking every facebook notification and re-tweeting everything we pseudo-like.But i am digressing...

The THING is, people are disconcerted about the splurge of social-media on the online scene(if only in the closet), because of the uncomfortable squeaky new untested feel of the virtual world- just that they dont say anything for the fear of being branded dinosaurs(or WTTHFU) .

And my problem is- there is the 'real' world of world cups and balika badhus, there is the virtual world of buzz and tweets and there is this EXTRA world i dwell in, in which i ski the alps, climb the qutab, visit my dead grandparents at their new scientology ashram in california.I am not confused, i am mega-confused.. and that is just the symptoms of my affliction.

Have you ever had the feeling that you are floating in a sea of standing water, (that is the chinese way of saying things-temple of unending peace,sword of eternal sharpness,blog of infitely long bullshit) and random thoughts and images bombard you like a blitzkrieg gone silly?I live like that, every single waking moment of my life.And you know what sucks?

No one can ever know what it feels like, because Every time i sit down to write about it in my blog, it all comes out wrong.

N.B: It must be some disease from the future,travelling back in time, so it is hereditary - from my descendants to me. Thank you mom.

True Love

He was standing on the edge of the precipice with no intention of jumping down.He only wished that he could sprout wings and leap off, to soar into the magnificence of the waiting thunderstorm before him.He wished to dodge lightening as it spiked maliciously towards him; to churn the clouds heavy with torrential rains; to tame the winds that drove those beasts of watery burden across a thousand miles, dredging cargo from the seas to lavish the land with.

He wished to escape the reality of the fact that she had left him.

His hands raised in a welcoming gesture; his eyes closed; with spears of chilly wind tearing his hair, lashing his otherwise calm face; he betrayed none of the turmoil inside him; much like the behemoths before him, waiting patiently to unleash their tempest.He felt nothing, no feeling could be felt in the nothingness that had been left behind, within him.

Not all the water in the sponges before him, nor all in the ocean below could fill it and bring him respite; and so he felt nothing, not even the void; its immensity shrinking to insignificance within itself.

He remembered all of her and yet nothing, it seems.Images, sounds, feelings, emotions were all churning within him and yet not connected to him.It was as if a chord had been cut and he had been set free,beyond all the necessity to live.

He had loved her.Truly.

The clouds, like the great muster of Armies above, like a juggernaut, confident and tumultuous, indifferent to this puny man's indifference are rolling on, much like the suggestions everyone kept throwing towards him, to move on and to let her go.

He did not understand those words, he did not comprehend their intentions, She had gone and he was still here, incomplete without her and incapable even to feel it.

If he were all right, he would think, perhaps about the nature of his love for her, one that in her absence is worthy of the tag of being true.Love, like nothing else, is most valued in longing and separation and tested through loss.

He, would know, then that he loved her, truly and move a step closer to closure.

But he, like many before him and countless yet to come, had loved, truly and would never know closure, perhaps.

And all he wanted to do, here, standing before a threatening storm, was to feel- something, anything- in vain.

His life was over when she had gone.

All he wanted was to live again.

But he had loved her, truly.

Delirious on a Hot afternoon...

Image courtesy: 

Horseshoe Bend Near Antelope Canyon - Arizona - Dan Kosmayer @ www.photographyzone.com

Lethargy is the affliction of the vacationing masses.Every year as the sun becomes trying, we are excused from education and the pursuit of job-ensnaring skills to come back home. To rejoice and recuperate.And ready ourselves, after a fashion, for another stint, our next shot at closing in on our destinations;those that have been chosen for us.

I can see only when my eyes are closed.

I open my Eyes and See a meadow, rolling away in a sea of green, as far as the eye can see; warm sun adorning a welcoming sky, with swift clouds promising the gift of rain soon.i am still and at peace and moving twixt locales and surroundings like the undulations of a sand-artist.Smudges, dots and the flair of sure hands; how i wish it were so easy to mould destiny.

Treacherous and unfair; and scary,for now i am flying over the immeasurable expanse of a soaring canyon.The lay of this ancient land quietly presents the story of eons past, times when different creatures professed to be rulers of their domain, all to the dust and arcane history, have diminished.Quietly and without mourning.

The canyon, unassuming, bearing the mark of their presence; evidence of actions -momentous and trivial alike-like canvas on an easel,painted with unending patience and care and unimaginable rigour, by the seemingly frail and powerless stream, whose voice is unheard at the depths of such a chasm( or heights, for i am flying).Time and perseverance - the masters of all past and yet to come.

The healing touch and the sting of unforgiving ire;sweet chances and bitter memories apart; The gurgling of the stream of time in our lives, never pausing and lofty-Tireless in manner and chilling in abstraction and detachment-hurts us, consoles us and cradles the very heart of hope.And teaches us, those that pause, strive and listen.

Every moment of the future, as it passes, is relegated to the depths of the past, only to be unearthed and exposed, as stark truth, staring at us, beseeching us to learn and correct, to look back and dream ahead, to step correctly and with confidence, with the knowledge of that vast chasm(or heights?) building in us, only as time passes- that we call Experience.

In that, in looking back, the luxury of physical lethargy, is it really so wrong?The pursuit of something worthwhile, for a change?

The Blink of time

"Let us go eat man. I am hungry" he said with a convincing grimace on his face.And then he rubbed his tummy and sat there at the table playing CS.
We both know we are hungry. and high. The exams are done, one way or the other and there is nothing to do now.This should be an improvement, but ..

"You know, we only do work when our ass is on fire."

"umm..?" unintelligible responses are common when your roomie is a CS addict.

So i continued.."When we dont HAVE to do something, we dont do it.because we dont have to do it." repetitions are common when you are high.

...fire in the hole...

"DAMN!!"I dint open my eyes.Obviously he died.And now...

"hey let us go eat man, i am hungry".

"hmm..."i dint open my eyes.Sure enough,soon, the rat-tat-ta of an AK-47 restarted.The weather is not predictable, but some things are...

I look around (eyes opened, eventually). There are books, clothes and loose change lying around the room ;Dirt, litter and waste paper that found its way out of the overflowing dustbin is dancing around under the fan; like arbitrary thoughts, images and memories ricocheting about my head now.

It seems like just yesterday, when i reached this place and was tucked in by mom.A flicker later i remember staying up at nights with my new friends; those unforgettable nights on the basketball court; unfunny jokes and smokes and the starry night besides; We used to shout just so we could hear the echo from across the swimming pool.

I remember so many things in so many flashes of colour that it is impossible to separate them. We played football under streetlights; we got ragged; We went to the city to watch movies; watching tare zameen par was a bonding experience for us -some of us being only sons away from home; and then we got ragged some more; we had awesome parties, all of us and it was the first time for me and it was awesome fun.Then we went home, eyes still wide from the sights of the world and filled with stories that we couldnt share at home:-)

I remember the vision of second year; to up the grades and cut down on the partying. I remember the running around for books and the seriousness in making notes .Make no mistake - it didn't work out.But its all in the past eh?

"DAMN!!" It was a headshot.He wont be delivering his dialogue now. A headshot is an insult; no one gets up without giving it back.

So here i am.
looking around my room at the things that are a part of my life at college; some of which i can never take home.
The bracelet i got from goa is missing; i know where it is. The picture on my desk. The empty bottle of vodka rolling around under my bed. The magazines stacked carelessly in one corner- unread; something that never used to happen.Pretty shells from the beach- collected on a wintry night 2 years ago, when the moon was bright and round and the waves were extra high and strong. shiny round stones from a trek ; i remember the night when we were too late to catch a bus and we walked across two rivers and hitched a ride on an empty bus from maharastra, which took us in because the driver needed directions.

It seems almost impossible to me now, on the threshold of my final year in this place, to comprehend all that has happened to me because i came here.Looking around my unbelievably dirty room gives me a weird nostalgia, for the happy moments and the sad ones tend to inhabit the place where they happened and transport me back to their time, when i close my eyes and look.And when i am high...

Emotions and checkpoints of the past are incomplete without the people involved and their chemistry.The trip down that memory lane for another day.
because i can hear the sounds of a computer shutting down.

Sure enough..

"Hey, lets go eat man. i am damn hungry". You forget, he is high too.And repetitions are common when you are high. :-)
 

Trick of Time

Time has stopped ticking for now,

a long moment, held awhile

i linger on that pleasing smile;

taking in the bewitching gaze

and skipping a beat or two.

As she pauses.

With a rush of heady emotions;

time slows and halts for me

and rewinds and plays for me, and fast

like a gasp of scant breath in me

like a thunderbolt from the heavens

as she walks away.

Ticking as it is, the world moves on

And time and everything else, the same

i am breathing ,dead all the same

As everything is new and lit

words fail to describe my spirit ,and feeling

blessed,elated to see her now

As she turns again.

and reality, in a land far away

strikes like early doomsday

as time hastens and swoops on me

and the earth is pulled from under me

and all happiness is snuffed for me

as she smiles and waves goodbye

not to me, but to a passerby.

GOlden Tears

A swift wind blew through the gilded woods. Uplifting in their mood yet chilling in their manner. Swiftly as she rode toward the west, carrying the tidings of fate for her land, her golden hair streaking behind her, her white hands clutching the reins with measured determination, her black stallion charging towards vengeance, retribution and peace.
He could see her as she rode, down the valley opposite like a sweet flowing river. Her words had the charm of an angel and her wrath, the destitution of hell. Her lips, softer than rosebuds. He was pining for them, and there she was, riding toward him. High on the precipice of his castle, he stood, waiting.
She was blind, like she had been for the last twenty years. The purulence of her septic existence was an abominable blight on the quiet, honourable street. She lived there, but withdrawn into herself, destitute and surviving on scraps and leftovers. If she was in her right mind, she might have been inclined to seek justice, but she was mad. She was crippled and out of her mind, had been for the last twenty years.
He was a good man. Very shrewd and very kind. He had fed her and clothed her since that terrible night. People often asked him, in high-end parties, why he cared for the old witch. He just smiled. He had his own penance to pursue, he said.
And who could forget the night, of course. The night was dark as hell and the winds forlorn and whining. The soldiers were meagre and certain of their death; they were shivering and filled with dread and despair. The villagers too were fazed and had surrendered to their fate. Rape, pillage and destruction. Then the attack came like the swoosh of an unfailing tide. Merciless and determined, the swords of the attackers chopped, swerved and slashed through the defence with disdain. In minutes the resistance was crushed and the village was won over. It was not how the villagers feared however. They left most of the businesses intact. But she was too bewitching to ignore, too ravishing not to defile. Her husband was murdered, her children disembowelled and she was raped, over and over again, by a hungry pack of wolves, rabid and putrid. When they were done with her, it was dawn and it was red and she was going to die. But they all went away, satisfied in their heinousness simply because none of them remembered to kill her.
He had been the one to take her. Not like the other villains took her. But otherwise, to safety and a place of relative calm. He took her away across the valley, across the river to this village, where they had been living for years.
She and her daughter, her beautiful daughter, who had escaped death that night. Like her mother, due to a stroke of derisive luck. Her suitors were nonplussed by her coldness and her friends vexed by her perpetual distractions. Their neighbours smirked at her swordplay and her lack of propriety.
He was struck by her loveliness though. And his infatuation was as if, meant to be. Governor of the region, a man in good standing with the king himself, was considered a splendid catch, even if he was a bit old. And she was pushed into the wedlock and engagement by her people. He went back early to handle state affairs and she had some time to say her goodbyes.
Her mother was a destitute and she could barely think coherently. But she could remember vividly the night that was her last and she told her daughter, amid hiccoughs and struggling breaths, of her villains and their faces.
The Gilded woods stood between her and her husband. They stood between her mother and her vengeance. They stood between a place of life and a place of hate. They stood between her sword and his slain body. The wind blew swiftly and it seemed to be whispering. At last, vengeance was riding home as a bride. And it was going to be swift and sweet.