Boredom

I feel bogged down
Among the swamps
Of controlled orderly thought
Is it age that drives me?
Or conformity that guides me?
Or the chaos of boredom
Disordered and bereft of reason
To be bored is to have ONE line
Of thought defined
To be bored is to know nothing
But an eternal gnawing
Inside the mind
To be bored is to see
With jaundice-ridden eyes
The bitter pain of living
With a limited body
Housing a limitless mind
To be bored is to die
A thousand deaths
To live and yet not
To see and yet not
To question the relevance
Of each breath taken
To lie asleep and hope
Never to awaken
To be bored is death

Sea of the Living

Bumping and tumbling
To the rhythm on deck
As we swing and sway
To the rhythm of the Sea
Salty are my eyes
Swept by the wind
That blows towards virgin lands
And from stale shores left behind
A shooting star races the rain down
As I make a wish to see ahead
We all go forward and look behind
And hear tales carried
By the sweet breeze laden
With the moisture of the Sea
The winds are blowing
And the waves are flowing
As the Sea carries me on
Away from the lands
Where I began and now
 To them we are gone
And we have moved on
To other lands and distant shores
Only the wind runs to and fro
As it sees stories embedded
In the foaming waves carried on
Yet to those left behind
And to those who await alike
We are gone
And we have moved on
Or they are gone....

Out of sight is out of mind...

Atheists Lament

It would be so easy
To just believe
In tales of immortals
Of men who are giants
And of beauties beyond skin
I would give my life to see
Something beyond the grip
Of cold man-made reason
And find that life is more
Than mere flesh and bones
And to discover the spirit within

Memories

This is how I've always perceived memories.

A room to curl up in away from the noise
Streets you walk in times of emptiness
When all seems bleak, empty or merely devoid
Of any colour cadence or illumination
I walk streets seen years before
I jump for joy on tiles I stepped as a child
I walk in the mountains and sit by the sea-shore
Inside my mind it is vivid
It is bright
Full of light
And with it darkness made
A  tapestry of checquered shades
It is recovery
Sometimes it is the malady
Yet even memories of rain
Ease the sunshine into ones being.

I know I know, it's bad, but at least it's something. After this horrible dry spell, it's all I've got... cheers

Ramblings

Endless ladders
Knots and threads
And more is the confusion
It is chaotic
It feels right
A tangle of THINGS
Of whats and what-nots
And wheres and whens and hows
The seeker ascends
The endless ladder
Leading to the ultimate destination
The place where it began
Before there was an aim
There was
IT.
And after the end has ended
It shall be
As it was
As it should have been
And was not yet is
Before the beginning
Is there chaos?
Or what is order then?

My dearest wish

I've always wanted to go away
Walk alone for years and days
And nothing between the horizon and me
But the foaming-frothing deep-blue sea...

The Joke of Pretences

Whew, writers block is a horrible thing. Not that I have legions of fans beating down my door to read anything, it's just a personal thing. Anyway, I have a muse. She broke my block by giving me an interesting perspective on 'facades' that people put up for others. I started thinking on how everyone has a facade and how ultimately it's more of a filter.

We all live behind veils

Of our own creation

Laughing at the tales

We seemingly display

Yet the joke lies ever upon us

For through our masks

Does come coloured and dimmed

Even brightest light of day

These Memories of Joy

I watched the Indian team as they lifted the world cup on their shoulders. I also watched my friends and college-mates as we ran riot on campus. I remember thinking: "We are now part of history, the generation that saw the world cup come back to us" and thanking fate that it happened while we were still in college. We have one more month to go before each of us parts, perhaps forever, and follows each his own path. We are drinking in every moment of every day of this magical last year. This year, this time, will never come back save in memory...


They laughed in the sunlight
Jumping with joy golden as
The streaking sunbeams
That flashed across their
Happy faces
They were young and strong
With laughter that only the
Bubbling of youthful joy can bring
Each drank in the moment
To his own measure and need
Seeing all the same but remembering
Apart what today feels like
They leap and bound among peals
Of laughter that colour their faces gold
They live now as much as they can
For, years later when aged
And weary of walking they run only
In their minds to those days so long ago
When they were young and free
Light of loads and carrying bundles
Of joy unbounded and uncontained
They shall remember and be glad
In a small corner of their hearts
They shall live those golden moments
Again and again and never tire
In their minds as once they did not in body
Of those memories of joy

They walk on

For they know not where the road bends
Nor where ultimately the horizon lies
Where men go when they leave this world
Nor to the unknown regions where time flies

Ignorance is bliss verily and thus happily they walk
Laughing with joyous face and singing lips
They walk down the path knowing not
Where goes the Sun once beyond the horizon He dips...

The Mingling of the lights

It comes twice everyday
Once each at dusk and dawn
Rarely do we notice, litte we say
Unaware we move on
It is the time of death, an end
The death of day or of night
A death on which a birth depends
The mingling of the lights

The mingling of the lights
Neither the dying sun suffices
Nor the lamps glimmering bright

The mingling of the lights
When the world is grey and dark
And shadows flicker in aimless flight

The mingling of the lights
For dusk and dawn are moving on
And thus will change alight

On a world stuck in stagnation
The daily change reminds us
Of it's ignored presence
And yet it's eternal continuation
The wheel of time goes on.

Passion

I was trying out the mode Haiku for the first time, it is refreshingly liberating. Although this is more of a word based one and not strictly 'hora' based.

That fruit on life’s labour-tree

While tasting of which  one is oblivious

To the toil growing took

***

The juice of fleshy fruit

Enchanting the senses thoroughly, that grates not

The coarse textured seed within

***

Listening to the river rushing

The swift musical harmony erodes any sense

Of getting ones feet wet

Passion to me has always been a sort of loss. An immersion of the self so deep that the internal sense of time or continuity is lost. This disconnection with the motion of ones life, the disorientation I feel when I come out of the phase is how I recognize it. Sad in a way because it takes the death of something to recognize that it lived.

Random Sketches

I resumed sketching after perhaps 8 years. It feels strange. Like I'm meeting an old friend. Or maybe visiting places I've been to before... I don't know.  The first just made itself. The second was a whim on a cold december night while I was waiting for my turn in badminton. I was observing the shadow of the shuttlecork as it swung from side to side. Which got me thinking. Light and shadow and life and death and winter and spring. All one and the same? Or all the same? Is it merely about transition or about two different states altogether and their contrast???

The shaman and A horse. Not THE horse. Just A horse. A shaman. Mystery man. Is he supremely unnatural or completely in tune with nature? Is he the Machine, bringing a semblance of progress amidst illiteracy or the Spirit? Something completely different altogether? Why does he persist in our minds even amidst steel and nuclear technology? Why doesn't he die?

The horse is the shaman. Free. Boundless. And yet, completely controlled. One by his own limits and duties, the other by a rope. A study in contradictions. Or merely a chaotic muddle of thoughts. I do not have the answers this time.

Love

I hear the whisper of the wind in my ears
I see my breath rise in steam before my eyes
This silence is deafening
The steady soothing rhythm of water dropping
Why is my mind wandering?
Where does it go?
The realm of uncharted thought is vast
I fear it will be difficult for it to come back
I see him
He is so beautiful
Do I know who he is anymore?
He looks at me wonderingly
He knows not what I have become
To him I am new and fresh
To me he is unattainable
He is lost
He is beautiful all the more
I long for him
To be him once again
I run to touch him, to grasp him
Air and thoughts lose themselves in containment
His eyes full of laughter shine mockingly
Always he is one step away
He holds out his arm
To feel
To touch
To learn
His face changes
It is changing
The joy goes first
As always...
Naught but happiness remains
Contentment replaced by mere satisfaction
And sadness by sorrow
He is aging before my eyes
My wonder
My once-joy
My one true love
My child
My dream
My past
Me
Years pass
Fleetingly
I have lost what is most precious
Myself
I look at the past through a timeless mirror
Of tears is it?
The wonder is lost save for a few seconds
I will see him again
Before the end
Me
He is me again
I wish I could be him
Once more
I desire just his hunger
His wonder
His laughter
Him
Me


The rain beats against my window
I hear the whisper of the wind in my ears
I see my breath rise in steam before my eyes
This silence is deafening
I am insensitive
I am alone
With myself
Again....

The Lament of the gods

In dusk the days glory revealed
Death: bright-last-light of mortal coil
As the wind of change blows errant afield
Where mortal man does ever toil
It is we immortals who equally see
Both light and the shadow-black-dark
And as we see the River-Time flows implacably
As from the life-breath do things part...

The world changes and Earth turns
The day and the night dance eternally
The rivers flow and the flames burn
And truly, change seems the only certainty
Yet what of we who do not die?
Who are doomed to endure unceasingly
Spectators in a changing world that passes us by
Prisoners in our chains of immortality...

What cannot end cannot truly be
In a circle unending do the Twins dance
The two snakes Life-Death entwined for eternity
And  their music the song of Time, Fate and Chance
Yet we are apart, a different path we tread
For this cursed immortality do children-men try
Away from the Circles of the World our 'life' we lead
In living forever do we Undying cry...

And our tears are in the songs of this world
And our pain is perceived by those who can See
And in our sorrow we can feel but Love
For mortals, in their short lives their joy and their misery
And our song is echoed by the silent mountains
And by the birds that fly high in the sky above
And  is echoed in the rivers and the fountains
And the sound of the Sea is the song of our love...