Mad Girl's Love Song

2009-09-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

Such a mad paroxysm of love for strangers

Is not normal, they say.

But staring out of the cocoon in which I live,

As each day rushes towards a violet death

And the world ages before my eyes,

I have had innumerable first loves.

Men lean against graphiti-ridden walls,

Shadows on their faces and black hole eyes.

Them, I have loved more than any lover of mine…

My lovers with their keen maleness

And professions of love.

Colourful women,I see, flying with wings

And as they catch my eye,

Start for a tiny moment,

And smile beautifully before they soar off,

Love sits in a lump in my throat.

Twilight thickens around me like a sweater.

Swathed in its warm security,

In such rare, fleeting moments

I dare to love.

2009-08-08T13:42:00.001-07:00

Evening was waiting around the corner, eager to stride in. These days, she felt, she was in huge demand. A little girl in her tattered rag of a thrown away, once fancy dress, was whispering to herself, coaxing herself into believing that the day would end in a while and make everything alright, that another day would pass and the war would be over soon. Very meekly, bending over her ware of glittery bangles, she murmured, “Let it be evening soon”. Something pulsated inside Evening. She wanted to accompany the little one to her cottage. She suddenly wanted to sit on her haunches and watch the child glow and glitter, playing on the snow with her peers.

The street-lamps were a new bunch in this out-of-the-way little village but its humble ways had taught them to forego conspicuity. But they were a young lot and the charm that self-admiration presented was yet to wear off. And they had had a rather tedious job of keeping still all day long. They couldn’t wait to see the snow turn a beautiful mellow yellow under the haze of their diffused light. And when the throbbing gang of children,bathed in their light, looked up in admiration and frolicked happily, they felt extremely important and contented. Impatient to explode into life, they beseeched Evening to glide in. Evening was amused.

The old painter was still trying to paint a masterpiece, something he could pour his years and dreams into, something that would capture the sense of his thoughts and the essence of his being. It could be a trifle, but it should be a masterpiece. Tonight he wanted Evening to set in early and seep into his painting of the brightest star in the purple heaven overlooking a group of children playing on the snow, glowing and glittering in the puny haze of the yellow street-lamps. He had told his young daughter, “Evening will set in early today dear. Come back home before it is dark.”

The boy would be going away the very next day, Evening overheard anxiously, to a war. He had bought Daisies for his girl, but she wanted testimonies that would last longer. Evening felt she should throw her maternal arms around them but as the last crimson rays of the sun fell on their faces as they kissed, and she caught a rainbow in her tear, an overwhelming wave of sorrow inundated her. She lamented her power of uninhibited vision, sometimes unwilling. She crept into the shadows of an old ruin to catch a breath. The whiff of cold air whistling through the narrow openings between the crumbling bricks was a little surprised to see the lost look in her eyes when he shook her soft dark hands.

The crimson sun dropped behind the line of the white snowy field. Evening shook her head and trudged in.

2009-07-20T01:41:00.001-07:00

It shall find a way…

Seep in through frayed holes in curtains,

Narrow gap between the wall and the door,

The door and the floor,

Through eyelids squeezed shut.

Whether you will or not

Light will force its way

Into the darkness behind your eyes.

2009-07-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

There were whispered promises in the air

Jealous ears tried to steal,

And love in inebriated eyes.

There were dream-sellers too

Vending pretty bottle-fuls

In exchange for all your nightmares.

Hearts bobbed inside tall wine glasses

And hands touched,

Tenderer than before they part.

You touched music with your lips

And hung on to a kiss

As if you had tasted the light of the soul

And night melted away

like the aftertaste in your mouth.

Now the sun’s high on the horizon

And the night’s vapours are gone.

Molts litter the ground

You had danced upon

And the sequined mask

of last night’s Ball

Has welded into your face,

You, forever a Cinderella

In the endless masquerade

that began last night.

2009-03-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Splotches of colour
at each window
carelessly painted
and already running down…
Rain makes their outlines melt
from this side of the fuzzy glass.
Behind those ground glass,
once upon a time,
as in fairy-stories,
a new tune was sung
everynight, till the city
let its horns and bugles
kill and drown noise,
and they, behind those glass panes
forgot how to sing
and then, quickly
before a messiah could intervene,
music altogether.

And sometimes in June
when on a rainy evening
light from routine streetlamps
slides off
the rejuvenated, wet black city streets,
shapes I thought looked queerly like faces
broken-jawed and bleary eyed
peer from pot-holes.
Somebody, almost always,
too worldly to care,
splashes through them.
Some times I see them gather
the loose pieces and resurface
indifferent to the sound of the world,
or even the sights, the light,
staring blankly…
language lost.
Mostly they just float
in threads of molten colour,
like those behind the glass windows
till the sun has, by the next evening,
sucked them dry.

2008-12-15T11:32:00.001-08:00

He’s a man of the rivers

And you can see it in his eyes.

He’ll look at you nice and plain

And take off his hat and bow.

But when on a full moon-drunk night,

You are looking for the moon

In his deep set blue eyes,

And you are not too careful

He’ll lift the flimsy scrim

And drown you full and well

In the calmly flowing river

At the back of blue ink eyes.

2008-11-27T05:07:00.000-08:00

I have muted the TV’s voice, the crass cacophony of the radio channels. I have tuned in to a mirthful song where jazzy beings play at being in love, wooing, laughing, hugging the trees, gyrating, pirouetting in joyful bliss. I watch and watch and imagine they are you and me, us in our days of youthful glee. Youth shouldn’t have left us though, I am only 27 and you 28 or so, but outside our bedroom window the sky has gone grey, the grass in the garden dry and yellow, sorrow has been sitting on it for so long. And when at night, you are sleeping by the baby’s side, by the cold moonlight, I hear you sigh, and I count the wrinkles that cling to your face and the frozen tears that don’t come out. And I climb out of bed and press my nose against the frosted window-pane and in the garden I see Him, sitting silently, morose and grim. He looks me in the face but I am not scared, I don’t think I’m strong, I’ve just known him for much too long! You have come back from wherever you had gone. You ask me “ Have you seen the news honey? Read the papers? Heard anything in passing?” I point to the ashes that remain of newspapers; I burnt them...they reek of blood so! Then you say, “A killed B and C gunned A down. In Austria there have been homicides in a town…They were in their twenties who wielded those guns…” and I say “Stop! Don’t fill my ears with the sound of bullets! Stop! Don’t fill my tired eyes with slaughtered people’s blood! Stop! I lost my childhood sleep dreaming of lost souls! Stop! Don’t stain me red, I have my baby to tend. Stop! Hush! Drop the topic now! Love me, kiss me, hold me close!” You do so. You know I am right for you lost your childhood sleep too, once upon a time. For you are scared just as I am, when the baby cries what is it for? It’s not hunger, it’s not pain, it’s a terror that congests his chest, and returns again and again and again! I’m scared if he dreams of guns, I’m scared if he smells blood, like you and I do. I have seen you burying your nose in artificial flowers. So you go on, like you are told, loving me, kissing me, holding me close. But the sky is grey and the trees are bare, the waters calmly flow, and outside our window the world ages so, and in the garden I see Him. And when I love you and you love me and we both love and try to find a refuge and some warmth, I can see Him seeing us two and I can tell that you’ve seen him too! But you tell me to close my eyes and think of baby, you and love and you help and I try and I try to not give up and we try to stay alive.

2008-11-06T09:39:00.001-08:00

Darkness falls like a curtain.

And between the two of us

Words lose their way

In hidden mazes

Of the treacherous air.

I have communed with

The dead and the past.

But dead now

And banished to silenced words

How do I touch your hand?

Words are the most unruly of all things

They don’t fall in place.

And nothing, not love, not hope

Can ever transcend death.

2008-09-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

And that night when I kissed you,

Pressed my lips on yours,

Your skin rippled under my fingers

And I could feel the waves

Travelling through your candid frame.

Your eyes were closed,

Your mouth rosy and ajar.

I knew I was pushing you to madness,

To the point of no return.

But this isn’t an apology.

I don’t deign to console your grief.

It was a mistake I had made

Thinking Love would impart some warmth,

Melt the chestful of freezing loneliness

That made breathing so hard.

It was then that I let you go

Unfastened those encircling arms

That trusted and clung,

Feigned indifference to your frenzied tears.

Because, you see, I was afraid,

Afraid that your heart,

So young, so eager to love, so prone to life,

That lay on my cold withered one

Would freeze to death,

Like hers had, so many years ago.

2008-07-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

There is darkness enough in there

To bury myself in…

Like in daddy’s huge, black overcoat

Silent, safe and sweating in it…

Through games of hide and seek

On long summer afternoons.

You stretch your hands to touch me

There’s mastery in your fingers, and triumph

As they try to unbutton this coat of darkness

And expose my invisibility.

I cringe as the black turns grey

Fading, as drops of knowledge

Inundate my existence.

There’s a better darkness somewhere,

and darker still.

So in the dark pool of non-memories

Sprinkled with pieces of a broken self

I drown…inside me.

2008-05-29T13:09:00.001-07:00

Polka dotted blues drape her body

And she wears a smile.

People think she’s charming,

Bubbly like the froth

In a goblet of champagne.

I’d have thought the same too…and happily

Only if she hadn’t said

“My eyes are stars

They can only twinkle.

Forgive my up-curving lips.

They can only smile.”

2008-04-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

The wait is long…

It had started in this star-lit valley

Twenty crescent moons ago

When the ghost of the faded moon

Had not yet left the mauve sky.

Through incomprehension

And blankness of burning days

It grew old…

Evening has descended on the leaves

Of gently swaying palm trees

And their grey shadows have grown

Black.

The moon has burst upon the bare sky.

With a vengeance.

The leaves shine

The smell of wet mehendi on beguiled palms

Waft in.

The silken feathers you had clipped

Have grown again…stronger this time.

I want to fly, yet I want you back.

The wait is long…

And the night sky allures me.

I’m on the verge of a take-off

Return soon and fly with me.

2008-04-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

The pent-up anger of a burnt out day
Sublimates into a purple haze
Of rain, smoke and dreams.

The earth is angry.
Trampled to dust
By numerous pairs of marching feet
(so alike in their fated doom)
Kicked and mauled
Day after day, night after night.
It is as thirsty as desire.

The red eyed traffic monster stares at
The impotent anger
Of people who lose against time,
Dissolving into eddies and puddles
Of slime and rain.

The earth has licked the rain,
Sucked in its share of
Ambrosia
Before the lesser gods strike again.

Tonight the city shall sleep.
Tonight it might dare to dream
Before the red-eyed monster devours them
at mid-noon...
tomorrow.

2008-03-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

Delinquent stars peep and blink
At me, outside his rusty door
That has claw marks and dried blood
On it’s weather-beaten, crumbling body.
His door has on it, some charm
The witch-doctor dipped his palms in
And applied.
Like an ointment on a wounded body.
Though rusty and broken in parts
The door doesn’t allow me in
Nor my pleas
Nor my angry kicks,
Nor my amateur black magic
So I tried his dreams instead
Where I knew,
the rat-woman sat sipping wine.
But he has forgotten my face, it seems.
He takes the rat-woman in his arms
And says “who let this witch in?”
Delinquent stars peep and blink
As I go back and claw at his door.

2008-03-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

I have poured myself into endless wineglasses
for you to drink. I am a shape-shifter as you know.
I melt out of your enclosed fist, you say “you’re silk”
And I revel in my new found silk-ness.
I am the scorching mid-day sunshine that seeps through you
And the murky evening shadow. I am poison for you.
Red and green and blue punctuate the dreamy darkness
I can create by closing my eyes, the one I share with you.
The one time you licked the salty tears off my lips
You said I taste of myths and rainy evenings by the sea
And a guiltless, mirthful Paris night
One hears stories of, from old, ancient, dying sailors.
And then you said I smell of old, yellowed books
And dark alleyways with a filigree of light on the floor.
I think I am your muse, the pagan goddess of love
Ageless, shapeless and loveless.

2008-02-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

What shall I bring you from the far far-away land?
What?
I asked. “What shall I bring you from the far far-away land?”
You are going there? When?
Soon. Very soon.
Can I come?
Umm…would you know it when you saw it?
Would you?
No.
Alright. How do you go there?
There’s a winding road. And one has to walk or fly or swim. That’s all I know.
Swim? On a road?
Yeah, it’s a funny road.
Okay. I’m coming with you.
Please don’t.
Why not?
There’s a charm in returning for someone and knowing that someone is waiting. It’s an old charm. But there’s also a magic in knowing that I will return for you…and…never really return. It somehow extends the horizons.
Like the horizon extends when you lie on your back on a green field on a cloudy day?
Yes. But vaster than that. Besides I want to bring something back for you.
I don’t want anything. And how will you bring anything back when you say you shall never return?
That would make the wait all the better for you, don’t you see? There would be something to look forward to everyday. Every morning you wake up, you will look for me, the afternoon will be dreary and gloomy I know, but the night shall fill you with anticipation once again. And I will return someday, you’ll see.
Are you this cryptic with everyone?
No. With them I talk of puppies, temples of Madurai and bitter chocolates.
I am honoured!!!
But tell me, what do you want me to get for you?
Nothing. Just come back.
There must be something.
Yes.
What?
An end to my wait.
Are you quite sure?
More than ever.
Okay. But that will end a lot of things too. Your love for instance. Or my value. I don’t like conclusions.
Nothing will end other than my wait, I promise.
:).I will write to you.
Oh no! Don’t. The postal system is horrible here.
There’s a charm in reading old, lost letters that after many days of sunshine and rain, dirty mailbags and all sorts of fingers reach the right address.
Every weird thing has a charm for you?
Not quite. I don’t find that goatee-d, auburn haired rapper friend of yours charming. Nor Mr.Reshammiya. But every little every-day phenomenon that people love to hate appeals to me.
Are you trying to be Romantic?
No. Only truthful.
I give up. When you go, let me know.
It rhymes! Delightful!
Will you?
No. I don’t think I’ll have time.
I expected so.
I never denied that you know me better than I myself do. I adore you.
I wish I could say I don’t. Bye.
Bye.

This is entirely fictitious and totally impersonal.

2008-02-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Don’t stare at me quizzically
with your black crystal eyes
when I am writing of love and pain.
The light of the table lamp,
you interrupt with the shadow
of your lanky frame
and head full of noodle-curls.
You hover like a constant refrain
at the back of my mind.
Like some catchy tune
that would not let me alone
and go on playing inside my head
even when I am thinking of
something else…someone else.
I try to be impersonal.
Can’t you see?
Can’t you refrain from
devouring my words
and upsetting their coherence
making my poem
dance to your cadence?
But you will push your face
close to mine…
so close that nothing distances
our skins…not even air.
So close that I can see
your pupils dilate and retract.
your strong perfume suffocates me.
The same one you called masculine
and I, obnoxious
and yet craved for
behind the façade of lies.
You keep drawing my head
onto your shoulders
knowing full well that
I have given up needing them.
I hate it when you smile
your slow lopsided smile
as I search for metaphors
to explicate love.
And that’s not only because it distracts me.
Don’t you realize it has to be impersonal?
Bringing in my schoolgirl mad love
like that! Immature, juvenile!
And don’t you realize it’s all gone now?
Gone and dead!
Dead and gone!
How is it that we always forget
that you killed me and I, you?
There! That clouds your eyes
That wipes off your smile.
Leave me now, please…alone...
to write impersonal poems on love.
where all the characters are fictitious.
The boy doesn’t grin like you
The girl isn’t full of quirks.
Where our shadows do not linger.
Yes I promise
I’ll give them a happy ending.

Happy valentine's day everyone. Enjoy!!!

Anonymity.

2008-02-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

Your eyes touch my face.
I feel like the poor pebble,
One among those hapless millions
that the heedless stream leaps over,
touches for a moment
And forgets in the next.

2008-02-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

JUPC...short for Jadavpur University Photographic Club (how I wish they'd let us change the 'ic' to 'y') is as the name rightly suggests ,a photography club I belong to and which belongs to me. Excuse the cliche' when I say it's my second home because that's what it is.
Arranging for a photographic contest every year falls under one of the many activities of my club. This year we have arranged for a national photographic contest on portfolios- 'MONTAGE' to be judged by eminent photographers.The last day of entry is 15th February 2008. So if you are interested...Hurry up!! Not much time left now.
For further details log in to http://jupconline.com/MONTAGE.htm.

2008-01-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

There might be no time.
There might not be time enough
to step out of this silk-spun cocoon
and walk under the glare of
the ruthless, mirthless sun
after the security of artificial lights.
It takes years to tell a man from another
and an eternity to tell a face from a mask.
There might never be courage at all
to plunge into eyes lined with false lashes
and trace the route of tears,
or read out loud the unwritten tales of defeat.
There might never be freedom enough
to swim against the flow
or ride on the winds of change
or hear a turbulent sea sing
the song to set all free.

Something Like Love

2008-01-20T04:33:00.000-08:00

I saw love today, felt it, almost touched it. All my senses could perceive it without any difficulty even in an intensive care unit ward in a nursing home.
He’s not my blood relation, but he is more than that. I call him Pishemoshai [that would be my father’s sister’s husband]. Aged and ailing, in his late seventies my Pishemoshai is now in a nursing home. Pishi [father’s sister, not related directly by blood either] who is a good ten years younger to him, and I visited him this morning with a change of clothes and today’s newspaper.
*************************************************
Even in the cold white light of the neon lights and the typical smell of illness, medicines and anti-septics, I can see his face light up as soon as he sees Pishi and me.
Pishi has to lean over his bed to hear what he was saying, his voice now low and raspy. Their hands are touching carelessly and they are looking at each with anxiety and love writ in their faces. Love is almost tangible.
He asks about all his neighbours’ health, if she has taken her medicines, if the domestic help turns up regularly, if their son has called her up and keeps assuring her that he is alright. At the same time he reports every detail of his health meticulously.
“Hyan go, Gopal ke dekhte ichhe kore” he says.
[It’s difficult to translate ‘hyan go’. It’s an informal way in which Bengali spouses address each other. I’d say it’s equivalent to the English ‘dear’.]
* Dear, I wish to meet Gopal*
To which, she promptly rings up Gopal and asks him to try to come over.
He cannot talk much, it makes him cough and the excitement makes it difficult for him to breathe. So pishi admonishes him for talking so much and straining his nerves. He obliges, but for a moment or two and then he goes again, all words pent up in the twenty-two hours that he cannot see her gush out. He asks me about my parents and sister and then looks for a longish moment into Pishi’s eyes and like a child that has erred and is now ashamed, says ‘sorry’.
I read out to him from sports section of the day’s newspaper. Watching cricket is what he misses the most, cooped in a nursing home cabin with a few other ailing aged people. He’s characteristically calm, composed and cooperative otherwise. Everytime I hand him the glass of water he calls me “sona meye” [darling child], everytime a new visitor drops in to see him he draws his attention towards me, showering praises on me generously.
I tell him “Tumi taratari sere otho, bari fire cholo, ami tomake dekhte asbo”*Get well soon, come back home and I’ll visit you*
He sounds excited at the prospect “Nischoy!” *certainly!* “but not at the cost of your studies.”
I can only smile.
***************************************************
It’s time for us to leave.
He has been telling pishi about a dream he had the previous night. Both Pishi and Pishemoshai are God-loving people and he speaks about seeing his God in his dreams.
Pishi petulantly pouts her lips and asks him to stop dreaming. He can only smile indulgently.

Then he says “Tomar jonyo koshto hoy” *I feel sad for you*.

I can see she’s near to tears but she looks ever so affectionately at him and consoles him.
He hears about my Maa’s decision to stay with Pishi for a couple of days and animatedly exclaims “Such a sweet sister! Such a sweet sister!”
He holds our hands in both his hands, he is not willing to let us go but he is one of those few men who never complain.
We leave him sitting with a newspaper, propped up against a stack of pillows, wrapped in a blanket and an air of sadness and hope.

I wish you get well soon Pishemoshai.

2008-01-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

The road winds like a persistent question
Through shadows and regions of light.
Huge mansions and run-down slums
Peer from either side.
Men stop to look up from their works
And women lean on doors
with children in their arms
As the morning light peeps
From behind dark, gaunt concrete giants.
Young green leaves sprout from the crevices
Of their weather beaten bodies
Little children finger the patterns of light
Carelessly painted on the paved street.
Ancient streetlamps sputter to life
When twilight comes in soft unheard steps.
For a while the aged daylight looks
At the hazed yellow halo around the lamps
And retires with slow tired footsteps.
Let us walk on that road, hand in hand
Through curtains of mist and cigarette smoke
And in the fading light, let us get lost.

'Mera pehla pehla pyar'

2008-01-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'd enjoy doing this so much. I loved doing it, thanks to you Zahid and Mr.Jiffy. I tag all you visitors.Here's what you have to do if you want to do the tag.

1.Put your music player on shuffle mode.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what - no cheating!

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?
You fill up my senses –Annie’s song- John Denver.
Hell yes! If It’s that special someone! and if it follows that special question!

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
But it rained-Parikrama
Well it does!

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
If tomorrow never comes- Ronan Keating
Yeah, yeah yeah!! I love depth and people who think about death.

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Ab na jaa- Euphoria
Uncanny!

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
May it be- Enya
Yes, a promise lives within me now aand I will overcome the night to see the sun rise.

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Mora saiyaan- Fuzon
Well this is very romantic and I’d love a romantic story to be my own…but that doesn’t top the motto chart.

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Gham ka khazana- Sajda-Jagjit singh and Lata Mangeshkar
So true! I give people the impression that I’m a gham ka khazana. Hehe.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Tanhayee- Dil Chahta Hai
Nope. Doesn’t do justice!

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Pani pani re- Machis
I tell you this is uncanny!!

WHAT IS 2+2?
Leaving on a jet plane-John Denver
No no wrong answer. 2+2 is equal to 4.
There! I am good at Math! Yay!

DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Mera jahan- Taare Zameen par
Yes! I’m my bestest friend and this is MY song!! And again my best friend is really a little sweet, a little sour, the best one could ask for. She is my world.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
A new day has come- Celine Dion
I wish I could say that!! Okay lemme be optimistic.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Wish you were here- Pink Floyd
Yeah I believe in that.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Piya tora kaisa abhimaan- Raincoat
Very likely! That’s what I’ll be like when I grow up…if I ever do.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
May it be-Enya (again)
Yes! That’s what I wish. That’s what I think.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Us and them-Pink Floyd
Haha! Them and us (me and sister)!

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Annie’s song!
Oh yes oh yes oh yes! I love my music player.

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Dheere jalna-Paheli
Couldn’t have been more apt!

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?Hotel California- Eagles
Haha no!

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Dard se mera daman bharde- Sajda-Lata Mangeshkar
Masochism! Yeah!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Bas ek pal-Bas ek pal
Wow! On both levels. If you read pal as pal (friend).[I have more than one though].The lyrics too!

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Mera pehla pehla pyar-MP3
Well…it isn’t exactly my ‘pehla pyar’ but I’d love to post this as my pehla pehla pyar.

Cotcha! So you thought this post is about my pehla pehla pyar did you? Haha! now you know!

2008-01-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

Thanks zahid for tagging me.I tag anyone who would love to do this tag.

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it ?
There’s one on the inside of my left index finger. I was late and hence running at a breakneck speed to attend a lecture and crashed through the door [yeah hindi-film ishtyle].In the process I smashed my hand against the glass part of the door and watched blood draw patterns on the floor…while the professor kept shouting for a broom.:D

2. What does your phone look like?
It’s a sleek, silver and black Motorola C168.

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
Pinkness and blankness.

4. What is your current desktop picture?
A cloudy red evening sky, expanding over a placid lake. I am not particularly fond of this picture.

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Yeah! why not?

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
Everything to get right.

7. Are your parents still together?
Yes. Very much so.

8. Last person who made you cry?
A relative of mine.

9. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?
There’s isn’t one particular brand.

10. What are you listening to?
If tomorrow never comes-Ronan Keating

11. Do you get scared of the dark?
Only after I watch a horror movie.

12. Do you like pain killers?
Yes and no.

13. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
I am completely unpredictable! *shrug* So I don’t know.

14. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
Somebody’s head.

15. Who was the last person who made you mad?
Me, myself.

16. Who was the last person who made you smile?
Oishee, my two and a half year old niece with her funny blabs.

17. Is someone in love with you?
Maybe yes. May be no.:)

2007-12-30T23:23:00.000-08:00

If I were you
I’d drive a bull-dozer
Or be an atom bomb
Better still.
Then I would make
colonnades fall
With one swish of my imaginary sword.
The world shall collapse too
With its old habits and rituals,
Aged concepts and biased notions.
The noise! The noise,
I want more of it;
The noise of an approaching end.
I hear the footsteps.
Everything…fall, break, die!
But not lives!
Not a stain of blood!
I’m a bloody massacre
But the blood is only mine.

2007-12-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

And she knew she shall rise
Above the squalor
And the humdrum of a thing called life.
She shall walk past
Tedious rows of strange shops
Lining the busy road,
Constituted by her and the likes of her…
And never look back.
Not even to say 'goodbye’.
Dark reflections
On pools of stagnant water
Shall haunt her no more.
Like an old abandoned garment
Or a childhood bad habit,
These too shall fall
These too shall pass.
In solitude and darkness,
The hard buds under her skin
Below the shoulder blades
Are growing silently.
Soon, she knew, she would sprout wings.

Playthings

2007-12-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

Gods are playthings
Of helpless women
And powerful men.
Pretty little dolls
Fed, dressed and put to sleep
And prodded awake
In the middle of the night
For money,fame and name.
Some chide, some fear
Some claim they love
And kill brothers with hands
Joined moments ago in prayer.
Gods here are
excuses to kill.
Dumb idols stare on
As red stains paint them black.

Five Minutes of Random Thoughts

2007-12-05T12:30:00.001-08:00

This one time I have tagged myself because I simply couldn’t but submit to the temptation of prattling freely and without any responsibility whatsoever on my blog. Anyone who comes across this blog is free to consider herself/himself tagged.
So here follows my post on five minutes of random thoughts.

The first thing that strikes me is the incompleteness of the name of the tag as a signifier. Am I then supposed to compartmentalise and then take out a chunk of my thoughts (conceived and conjured in five whole minutes) from the continuum of my thoughts? The problem intensifies with the fact that I consider my thoughts to be fluid in nature…sometimes they are threads also…myriad threads exhibiting a plethora of colours, entangled and creating a complex web of their own in which many a times I myself get ensnared and suffocated. How does one break a fluid up? Now that makes me want to return to my fundamental physics lessons. Day after tomorrow I have an exam on British Romantic Women Poets…I am under prepared…nay, ‘not prepared at all’ is the right phrase to use. I wonder if my five minutes are over! I suppose not. Only yesterday I was reading a travelogue by D.H.Lawrence…and his staunch refusal to economise with words and the vivid descriptions resulting from overabundance of adjectives re-created before my eyes the breathtakingly beautiful church premises of San Tomasso. Strangely, after a while I found myself conjuring up my own phrases to describe the beauty of the few days and nights that I spent in Sikkim. Very soon I’ll be writing all about it. But how can words do justice to the sentiments those heavenly surroundings aroused in me? How can I even dare to venture to reproduce the image of a snow-capped peak deluged in moonlight or the sound of the hilly river that flowed below a suspension bridge or the thrill of trekking on a narrow jungle path ,narrow enough to make you walk sideways lest you fall into the deep dark gorge running parallel to it on its one side? I who am always full of bizarre and outlandish thoughts am drawing a blank now. I can’t think of anything more to write. It’s 2:32 in the morning and the mosquitoes are buzzing around my head singing some awful dirge! The mosquito repellants don’t seem to work anymore. Oh well! They are now immune to these coils and sprays and stuff and are perhaps gloating over the fact that it has taken about a million (they don’t keep a tab of course) malaria-struck and now a few (not so few really) thousand chikungunya-affected human beings to realize that the old-world charms are inefficacious. And finally before concluding my five minutes of random thoughts, well before anybody else can venture forth to ask me if I am pursuing an academic career in Biology, I’d like to politely and in an unwavering voice declare…No I love bio but I am in love with English literature and that’s what I am studying at present. After examining my thoughts on an open platter, I now rest ascertained that my pseudonym suits me fine and does me justice.

By
The only one who flunked BRWP

P.S- Please be kind enough to pardon the liberty I have taken with numbers and statistics.

sahadev aka Ponds

2007-11-24T12:09:00.001-08:00

adopt your own virtual pet!

2007-11-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

The sea water over her body
blue, foamy blue, green, blue-green
sparkles where the sunrays touch it.
Her hair or seaweeds
like flagella, like tentacles
are scattered over miles, miles, miles.
Is she breathing water then?
Like she wanted to?
In this state…this limbo like state
its so hard to distinguish
between the sea-song and the death-dirge.
The sea may even sing of life.
Waves crash on the shore
erasing her footprints…
nobody would have identified anyway.
She floats, blue under the blue water.
It is so difficult to choose…
When life is death
And death…
Well, death is death itself.
The booty never has a choice.

Anurima provided me with this beautiful picture. This is just what I had in mind. Thank you Anurima.

Fantasy.

2007-11-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, far away, a clock struck two.
A wayward wind scattered blackness
over the already dark trees and the placid lake
and spread some like a blanket over you and me.
Mingled with the church bell gongs and a cuckoo’s cry
I heard your voice…wispy, soft…'its time to go’
I was lying in your embrace
hoping that time would stop
or lose its meaning
and our kiss would last
till time seeped into our senses again.
You arranged your white gown, smoothened the creases.
You brushed away the remnants of love
from your face, neck and wiped the love-kohl away.
Astride the wayward wind you flew away, blew away,
a virgin again and stripped of love.
When I opened my eyes
and realized
you were a figment of my fantasy,
a dream!
the mirror told me…I have your love in my eyes
and your bracelet nestling in my fist.

2007-11-14T23:57:00.000-08:00

Priyadarshini tagged me on this and I having nothing better to post at the moment take refuge in getting tagged and tagging people in turn. I tag Indranil, shreya, sohini and inihos.
Dont change the words in block letters.

A ACCEPT your shortcomings.
B BREAK the shackles of mediocrity.
C CREATE Art and beauty.
D DECIDE firmly
E EXPLORE your true self
F FORGIVE justly
G GROW taller [stictly for myself]
H HOPE to reach perfection.
I IGNORE people who praise you falsely.
J JOURNEY beyond known environments .
K KNOW your faults.
L LOVE life and death too.
M MANAGE time and anger.
N NOTICE beauty in everything.
O OPEN your mind.
P PLAY games not with life or love.
Q QUESTION everything.
R RELAX to gather strength.
S SHARE happiness and sorrow.
T TRY to make this world a better place.
U USE your faculties well.
V VALUE every experience.
W WORK undefatigably while you can.
X X-RAY your emotions .
Y YIELD not to temptations [except the chocolates]
Z ZOOM high above mediocrity.

An Apology

2007-11-05T06:12:00.000-08:00

Baby, baby they do not want you
Baby, I know not what to do.
This world is a bad place anyway
People here die a new death everyday.
My sweet, my precious, I have no power
They shout, they stomp…they make me cower.
Yet I wish you had seen the moon
Poems, chocolates, ballads I croon.
I wish I could hold your little toes,
When you cry, your tiny crinkled nose.
Baby, my baby please do not blame
I was ignorant…only playing a game.
You’ll never see these salty drops of tear
You’ll never feel my heart freeze in fear
Of hurting you, of losing you
When they abort you and my soul too.
Darling, angel please forgive
A weak mother who truly does grieve.
In reveries and dreams come back to me
You and I baby, happy shall we be.
Bye my child please do forgive
Poor your mother still has to live.

The women in the story.

2007-10-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

I

She sits there
amidst flashlight bulbs,
crackling microphones,
cameras and
a sea of eyes and mouths.
Bathed in a pool of light
she sits, silent.
The lights are too weak
to trace the hollow in her eyes.
Or her eyes have ceased reflecting.
An angry buzz surrounds her.
Protests and heated debates.
The flames do not touch her.
She sits alone
in a crowd of well-dressed, learned people.
In her soiled saree
and comatose eyes
she looks a complete misfit.
Some marvel at her composure,
the strength of her mind,
the incomparable tolerance!
Their praises do not reach her.
Comforting fingers do not reach her.
She sits, stares blankly.
Perhaps memories crowd her brains so...
she can not think.
And then it's so hard to believe.
She doesn't cry.
Tears wouldn't heal the gaping wound.
Tears wouldn't fill the neat, round hole.
One could look through it
and see a death and a crowd.
Everybody claimed justice.
Perhaps she should claim him back.
She is too tired.
She needs some sleep.
She searches for his face
somewhere in the crowd
to take her home
and lull her to sleep.
Somebody is wishing her a happy Eid.

II

In the hollow cave of her room
She sits,
away from prying eyes
and voices dripping in sympathy.
Sleep is an absurd commodity
her father can not buy. Nor her dead husband.
Things are so haphazard now
that she lives inside her head
and relives her short-spun life.
She despised tragic-heroines,
sacrificers and sacrificeds.Always!
And he knew.
Mother's hands are not so soft now.
They don't bring sleep.
She wonders why.
And her eyes;those twin pains!
They do nothing but see and dream.Him!
And him!
She never thought he'd torment her so
haunt her so...
He who promised he loved.
The pink on her wall is so bleak!
Layers of dust on green leaves!
And those inauspicious drums!
Her head aches!
This palatial prison suffocates her.
Mother's womb would be safer perhaps?
Or...Or...
that box under the green turf...
inside it, beside him,
not yet turned to bones perhaps.
At least the grass above would be fresh and green
and the box cozy and warm.

The saga of the music box.

2007-10-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

They trampled it under their heavy spiked boots
with a vengeance weighed against wads of notes.
They jabbed at it viciously with naked hatred
lurking in the safe recesses of their goggles-clad eyes;
eyes snug and secure in not-seeing and shadows.
Their cold metal fingers pierced at it wildly
while imprecations rained on it
“his goddam fucking heart”-they called it.

It was a little red music box.
Quaint shaped.
Small as a fist.
It sang of love
Unwavering, undying love
and danced too
to its own rhythm.

It took a battery of armed mercenary
to quieten that little music box
and bury the songs it sang.
Battering it to an eerie silence
they heaved cold sighs of relief
“his goddam fucking heart has stopped”
till she lifted her wide-brimmed eyes
and they read the words
poised calmly in the single film of tear
“it was my heart you stopped
and my song you buried”

They pulled back the goggles in place,
the lord and his henchmen
and retreated to their safe world
of shadows and not-seeing.

Unwavering, undying love-songs
reverberate in the plain once again.

P.S-I have used words here I strongly refrain from using in my real life. Not snobbery or anything...I apologise to those of my friends who find these words crude. The poem is dedicated to Rizwanur and Priyanka's love.

Desires.

2007-10-05T21:54:00.000-07:00

I want to walk barefeet on soft green grass moist with morning dew in the wee hours of morning. I want to be the first one to be touched by the first sun-ray of the day.

In the still, silent afternoon heat,I want to drink the mild fragrance of white and orange orchids, anoint myself with the soft breeze and whistle bird-songs.

I want to stand on a mountain top overlooking the vast stretches of green valleys below. I want to fall down, float in the wind like a feather and hit a bed of vibrant hued flowers with a soft, dull thud.

I want to take off from the peak of a mountain and soar high into the azure sky,high above the clouds. And when it rains I will come down,spread my wings and feel the first drop of rain trickling down my shiny white feathers.

I want to dip my callused feet in the transparent green water of a mountain stream that leaps over rocks in a lively gait making a gurgling sound as I sit watching the fiercely bright day mellow down towards a golden...red...violet end.

When the summer moon rises, round,milky and magical, I want to sit on a bed of fallen maple leaves, red,brown and reddish-brown, on a forest floor, listening to the tinkling of the clear blue stream rushing nearby as the vanilla moon melts in it. I want to be silhouetted against the moon light.

In the midnight hours, I want to lie down on the edge of a cliff and count the millions of stars thronging the beautiful night sky. I want to forget myself and enjoy my insignificance and wonder at the beauties of this world.

I want a sky-blue sky, green forests, red flowers, grey clouds,blue streams and a box of colours to colour them anew.I shall mix the colours in strange proportions and exult in the creation of every new hue...like a creator.

I want freedom and a lot of sky.

The Love-song of a Jilted Youth

2007-09-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

Blueberry eyes
and strawberry lips
who would have plumbed
the venom-sea in you?

Blue black-hole eyes
had a steely end to them
A cul-de-sac
Love bumped against.

You painted my dreams
with the blue of your eyes
Or the venom
running through the soft blue veins
beneath your glassy white skin.

I drank your red,
you flowed with me
and I drowned in your venomous waves.

Blueberry eyes
and strawberry lips
from a mound of dust and bones
Stare at me.

Narcissus

2007-09-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

I am Narcissus.
Born from the shadows of night.
The pale moon, the inky sky
beautify me.
My colour blooms
against the dark of the night.

Stranger, you may drown in my eyes
and never see them again.
My fragrant songs may bewitch you.
Beware! Walk not in this path
if you fear a thing to lose.

I take myself apart
part by part,sense by sense.
I examine their beauty,
caress their softness,
kiss the bruises away.
Then I tuck them back,
my broken parts,
join them by a feeble faith, a fickle faith.

Everybody loves this body
of a patched-up rag doll
but only in the dark of night.
I am a fairy
born in the absence of light.

Visions.

2007-09-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Splinters of broken resolutions,
dark maroon blood trickling down one
clotted on the other.
phantasmagoric visions of a red and blue night.

This city can only sleep
This city can only die.
This city can cozen humanity out of humans
and showcase a herd of mannequins.

The little roadside flower
without name or pedigree
has survived yesternight's rapacious gale
I call her 'Hope' now.

You are fading fast.

2007-08-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

You are fading fast
Did your eyes smile with your lips?
Oh what colour were they?
Ah! And your pink fingernails
On those long slender fingers!
Wait!
Your fingers were short and pudgy
Were they not?
I sometimes hear your voice in my head
When asleep I lie on my bed,
low, almost whispering
talking of love perhaps
or indifference or the climate
By god!I don’t remember.
Nothing remains of you
But a stray word somewhere.
A tuft of black hair.
A certain piercing look may be!
And they will run down one day
like colours from an easel
that has been splashed with water.
I’ll trample them under my feet perhaps,
in one of those insomniac nights.
You are fading fast
Or merging in the milieu of my world,
becoming one of them.
On misty mornings you follow me
I don’t turn back.
You are fading fast.
Don’t return just now.

2007-08-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

Universal Death Rate:One death per person.---

Corridor-Sarnath Banerjee.

Swing.

2007-08-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel,
life is like a ride on a swing.
Slow when it starts,
watchful eyes and careful hands
ready to support
if need befalls.
And then the flight begins.
Feet leave the ground,
eager eyes penetrate
the unseen world beyond.
An urge to break free.
An urge to soar past all.
Constant oscillations
between the happiness high above
and frustrating mediocrity below
that has not become a habit,yet.
Then evening creeps in
stealthily and brings slumber with her.
Watchful gazes and careful touches
have long been left behind.
And as loneliness spreads it's wings
the swing moves
slower and slower
till it stops
at the end of a long long ride.

A short story.

2007-08-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

It had to end.She knew.Good things don't last.Not as long as one wants them to.She had known that all her life.The silver lining around the dark cloud is but a flimsy,fragile possibility.One that is visible only in glimpses and never there when one wants it to be.But she wasn't complaining.All her life she had loved clouds.Or rather...had learned to love clouds.When the sunrays first touched her,she was overjoyed and eager to nurture and cherish the feelings they had inculcated in her.Momentarily she had forgotten it wouldn't last.When night falls the sun is not there, nor are his rays.She wanted to wait for the next morning.It never came.In her heart of hearts she had known and dreaded it's non-coming.But she had hoped.Night had even stolen her shadow.So now she had nobody to talk to,nothing more to wish for...except that memory wouldn't desert her.Perhaps it would have been better if it did...but it did not.So it ended...the story of one sunny day...ended without a clap or an encore...ended as silently and unceremoniously as it had begun and the world didn't notice a change.

Tagged again!

2007-08-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

Here I go...
If I were a beginning, I would be:- the beginning of love
If I were a month, I would be: -december
If I were a day of the week, I would be :– friday
If I were a time of day, I would be: - dawn.
If I were a planet, I would be:-earth
If I were a season, I would be:-monsoons.
If I were a sea animal, I would be:-dolphin
If I were a direction, I would be:-the one people will advice you not to
take.
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be:-a little couch
If I were a sin, I would be:-hubris
If I were a liquid, I would be:-tears.
If I were a fraud/scare, I would be:-lovelessness.
If I were a gem, I would be:-ruby
If I were a tree, I would be:-maple
If I were a tool, I would be –the brain
If I were a flower/plant, I would be:- a nameless little roadside flower
If I were a kind of weather, I would be:-a light drizzle on a summer day .
If I were a musical instrument, I would be:-pan-flute
If I were an animal, I would be:-a wild horse.
If I were an emotion, I would be:-melancholy
If I were a vegetable, I would be:-onion
If I were a sound, I would be:-the tinkling of a wind-chime
If I were an element, I would be:-fire
If I were a car, I would be:-a scooty.
If I were a song, I would be:-Hridoy aamar prokash holo ononto akash e.
If I were a food, I would be:-chocolates.
If I were a place, I would be:-an evergreen forest
If I were a material, I would be:-silk
If I were a taste, I would be:-the taste of water in a parched mouth.
If I were a scent, I would be:-the scent of a mother.
If I were a religion, I would be:-peace
If I were a sentence, I would be:-'dying,
is an art, like everything else
I do it exceptionally well.'
If I were a body part, I would be:-the eyes.
If I were a facial expression, I would be:-innocence
If I were a subject in college, I would be:-romanticism.
If I were a shape, I would be:-a curved line
If I were a quantity, I would be:-always less than enough.
If I were a colour, I would be:-red
If I were a thing, I would be:-a camera
If I were a landmass, I would be:-the Bermuda islands.
If I were a book, I would be:-‘The catcher in the rye’
If I were a monument, I would be:-a ruin.
If I were an artist, I would be:-a poet
If I were a collection of poems, I would be:-poems by Sylvia Plath
If I were a landscape, I would be:-a dense forest
If I were a watch, I would be.- one that doesn’t tell u the time.
If I were God, I would be:-a failure
If I were a vowel, I would be: i
If I were a consonant, I would be: s
If I were a formula, I would be:-an easy one.
If I were a Science, I would be:-chemistry
If I were a theory, I would be:-hypothetical
If I were a famous person, I would be.:-A nobel laureate in literature.
If I were an electronic equipment, I would be:-a digital camera
If I were sport, I would be:-‘catch me if you can’
If I were a movie, I would be:-Mr and Mrs Iyer.
If I were a cartoon, I would be:-snowy
If I were an explorer, I would be:-myself
If I were a scientist, I would be:-Da vinci.yes.
If I were a relation, I would be:-a friend.
If I were a river, I would be:-The Nile
If I were intoxication, I would be:-love
If I were alone, I would be:-free
If I were a question, then I would be:-really?
If I were a hobby, I would be:-writing
If I were a habit, I would be:-grinning wickedly.
If I were in an atom, I would be:-a quark
If I were an end, I would be:-the beginning
If I were you, I would be:-myself still.

I tag all those that read this post.

Silence.

2007-08-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

Suddenly there is a lull all around.
The incoherent medley of incongruous voices
that had reached a crescendo,
not very long ago,
has now died down.
Voices inebriated with happiness
voices drunk in despair
voices of men and women
and their tedious complaining drawls,
voices of the sky and wind,
dry leaves and ripples in water
have suddenly been hushed
by the movement of a withered nervous hand.

Now it is raining.
Silently.

I stand alone
at the far end of the universe
waiting to hear my decayed voice
and the beating of my heart
to know that I live,
that I still live.

A Promise.

2007-08-06T22:57:00.000-07:00

Thousand years from now,
When we meet,
In a different world
Under a different sky
Painted in my mind’s deepest hues
Red and purple…and psychedelic blues,
You shall find me
…Waiting
…by a sycamore tree.
Iridescent dreams
In a halo around my head,
eloquent in my eyes
thousand years of silence.
And extended toward you
A hand full of soft and thick love.

Today let us part
For this mundane world
Will not let us die in love!
A glance, a smile, a touch
To last us a thousand years
Till we meet again
In a different world
Under a different sky!

Dilemma

2007-07-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

Sharp edges of broken dreams
lacerate my sleepy eyes.

I dare not open them wide.

Brutal naked light of stark real life
May shatter my fragile vision.

Magic lives on.

2007-07-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

Several times today I realized with a pang that it was all over. The spell has broken and the tale has ended. Around 2:30 this morning I finished reading the seventh Harry Potter book titled ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. And the feeling that shadows one’s mind after one has finished reading something that one felt attached to is gripping my mind now and it is an intense feeling and multiplied by the fact that this is the last book of the series. It is a loneliness mixed with an inexplicable sense of melancholy that I often feel gazing at the inky-blue sky at dawn and a dusty red sky at twilight.
‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ happened to me in my 9th standard…the first book featuring Harry Potter that I read. Perhaps because I had never read anything like it before and it was my stepping stone to the world of magic, witchcraft and wizardry ,I prefer this book to any other in the series, whereas many of my friends swear by the third book ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’. By the time I finished the book I was so in love with Harry, Hermione and Dumbledore and so sorry about Cedric and so drawn into that black and white world Rowling conjured so perfectly with a flick of her ‘wand’, that it did not take me long to finish the first three and wait eagerly for the next three.
I liked to believe that I resembled Hermione…that illusion is long since broken. The characters were all so identifiable, so human yet magical, some so good and some so frighteningly bad which back then I believed was a realistic representation! I told mother I wanted to be a ‘witch’. She was scandalized …which was a pretty natural reaction considering she hadn’t read the books.
The writing standard, I felt, fell in the subsequent three massive volumes. I didn’t much like ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ though I thought that the teenager Harry had been portrayed fairly realistically. ‘Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince’ failed to match my expectations and caused me a little despair. The compactness was somehow missing. Nevertheless I waited eagerly for the 7th book to release, believing all the while that Dumbledore wasn’t dead.
I wished with all my heart that none of Harry Hermione and Ron would die at the end of the 7th book, like his millions of fans throughout the world did. Finally when I laid my hands on the 7th book in an electronic format, already having discarded two fake versions, I wasn’t so sure it was Rowling’s writing. It indeed was Rowling’s. Slowly I got engrossed in the book and though at places it seemed rather contrived and made-to-fit-in
I liked the book. I liked the fact that finally there were shades of grey in some of the characters, most of whom were previously ‘innately good’ or ‘incurably bad’. I loved the hitherto misjudged Snape. I quite disliked the epilogue, which seemed rather ‘bollywood ishtyle’. At the risk of getting ‘Avada kedavada’ed by my sister, who belongs to the ‘Crazy about Harry, it’s him I’ll marry’ club and contrary to what I myself had wished for earlier, I would have liked Harry to have died, of course killing Lord Voldemort as well rather than have him pay that little trip to heaven/King’s Cross.
All said and done, I’d really miss waiting in eager anticipation for the huge volumes, scampering through the alleys and secret passages of Hogwarts,sipping the Butterbeer at Hogsmeade, the creepy ambience at the Forbidden forest, the defence against dark arts classes under Lupin and fake Mad-Eye Moody. Lord Voldemort too.And millions of other little things. But I’ll dream. And the magic will live on.

2007-07-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

My strange moods and a stranger mindscape [need I say pun intended?] often witness my conscious hours being spent in and my conscious-ness being subjected to a plethora of self-assessment tests and self-analyses. By self-assessment tests I do not only mean those MCQ tests that people take online...mine are of a more critical bent and definitely extensively analytical. My action or inaction as the case most often is in a particular situation impels my over-active conscience to critically analyse my basic nature and allow me no remission whatsoever.
Today was one such day. I was the co-passenger of a forgetful,grumpy old woman en route to garia. She sat beside me in her soiled old white saree, obviously one of her very few, carrying a thole, grumping all along and rebuking the poor auto-driver. When it was time for her to pay the fare she searched frantically in the folds of a yet-more soiled saree which she took out from her thole, while me and a fellow passenger waited for her to get down,patiently. Finally with the driver's help she was able to recollect where she had hidden her money for safety, and took it out of a knot in her aanchal. It was a tenner and the only money she seemed to possess. She paid her own fare.Now she only had Rs 5 on her. Poor helpless woman! And there was I, witnessing her distress silently. I could have paid her fare. What would I have lost? It's not that the thought didn't cross my mind at that moment but I was unable to transform it into action. I have not yet been able to acquit myself of this charge.
And then, once again the cynicism that had gripped me when I wrote the post before last, came back in it's fullest flow and flooded me. Yet this time I knew, I still know it wasn't a fancy cynicism of sorts that one falls back on when one has nothing better to do. A never-felt-before emotion inundated me as I looked at the world in a never-seen-before way.
The over-crowded roads,incomplete creatures on the run,hurrying past each other...do they know where they are going? Or why? To survive is their motto of life, I was one of them untill that moment, till I questioned 'why'! Why should man live? Just because he was born? For his parents, his love, his dreams, his children? But all is falsehood.That old woman...what was she living for? What is she still living for? A hope? A dream? But nothing is real. Nothing will stay. We Human beings...soulless survivors,our eyes steeped in the colours of illusion, spin tales about life, create webs and get entangled, wander aimlessly till one day so-called 'death' happens. fame, success, money, love...fallacies. And I detested being a part of that world of soulless incomplete braggarts.

A few minutes later, I had tears in my eyes when a father dangling his baby boy in his arms,the centre of his attention, the cause of the light in his eyes, peeped at me from within a photograph in a book of photographs titled 'Family'.

Thank you Family.

I am sorry about my incoherent ramblings.These days they keep me company though do not make much sense to me either.

2007-07-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

Tomaro asheeme pranmon loye jotoduure ami dhaii.
Kothao dukkho, kothao mrityu, kotha bichchedo naai.
Mrityu shey dhore mrityur roop dukkho hoy he dukkher koop
Toma hote jobe hoiye bimukh aponar pane chaii.
He purno, tobo choronero kachhe jaha kichhu shob achhe achhe achhe
Naai naai bhoy shey sudhu amari nishidino knadi tai.
Antarglani sansarobhar poloko felite kotha ekakar
Jeebanero majhhe swaroop tomar rakhibaare jodi paai.

He taught us everything, including how to accept death.

2007-07-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

There are days when nothing helps. Almost like those ‘A day when everything went wrong’ essays that one used to write for literature assessments in junior classes. Unlike in those essays, nothing happens and whatever happens doesn’t help. Waking up to see a dear face inches above your face doesn’t help. Her display of affection towards you doesn’t help. Nor does the steaming cup of morning tea. A cynicism grips your heart and mind and nothing seems real. The scorching sun, the stray clouds, the articles on the newspaper, the glint in your dad’s eyes and his ecstasy at hearing a melodious number, your mom’s iciness, the melodious number itself, an email reminding you that human beings are not as superior as they think themselves to be; so don’t be complacent, prospects of watching a good movie with people you like and people who like you back, promises of friendship, a book that makes you think, Romanticism, learning a foreign language…all seem as Holden Caulfield so rightly used to say and say again ’phony’. The superficiality of everything surrounding you strikes you hard on the face. And suddenly you just don’t give a damn! Yet you want to close your eyes and shut the world out. You try that. Sounds and smells and touches assault your senses, infiltrate your thoughts and encroach on your privacy, disrupt your rare moment of being able to stare back at the truth that usually stares sardonically at you full on face making you cower and avert your gaze. You thank the ostentatious celebrations of life, the splendour, the pomp that have helped you delude the truth once more! The truth that you are an insignificant nobody, destined to die from the moment you were born, like everybody, that you can do nothing to improve any man’s life, that you have known very little about life and beyond life in these 20 odd years that you have spent on earth, that there are more books than you can ever read in one life, that you have been cursed with mediocrity. You retire to your cocoon defeated.

2007-07-04T03:35:00.000-07:00

He was a lovely kid. Looked like a cherub and talked like a totapakhi,repeating every word that he heard.I loved his sky-blue eyes wide open in unceasing wonder and the untainted innocent light in them.
Now five years down the line, he's only six and it wrenches my heart to see that his child-like innocence is fast-depleting, or shall I say it's being snatched away from him forcefully.And poor him! He doesn't even understand the value of what he is losing! His eyebrows now remain raised not in wonder but in cynicism.

The horror shows that still manage to haunt me[I should, however, admit that I am a scaredy-cat] leave him non-plussed and nonchalant. He gallantly declares them to be ostentatious gimmicks constructed by computers. He dismisses the super-human power the protagonist inherits from Ma Durga to defeat the macabre bhoot in one such serial in a very grown-up manner.He refuses to fold his hands in prayer before an idol mouthing words like-the true worshipper of God is one who does his work sincerely or something to that effect. For goodness's sake those are his mentor's words that have been imposed on his naive lips. Does he understand the significance? Five years down the line he's still a totapakhi and in danger of forever being so.

His words affect me much more seriously and in a worse manner than those mind-less horror shows do. His matter-of-factness, his 'Realness' scares me. He's only six ,for God's sake. He is being made to act as an insufferable know-it all!!! He has been taught not to believe in magic, in God ,in fairies, ghosts and anything his mentor considers unreal. He has been taught not to imagine. The key to the fantasyland has been jerked away from his grip. He has been instructed to do away with faith, and very sadly, very wrongly he has not been taught to have faith in himself. His mentor has forgotten to tell him that to not have faith in anything else one needs to have faith in himself. And I shudder to think of the rootless heartless soulless ideal machine that he might grow into, ostracised from under the tender influence of magic and faith.

Alarming as it may sound, he isn't the only kid in this century to lose his innocence. Many of his little friends are on the same precariously balanced boat as him. These logical little ones will grow up one day to be logical grown-ups who shall be driven only by the force of neccessity. For them flowers shall bloom to be dissected, clouds shall dissolve into rain for watering the crops that satiate their hunger. For them the moon shall provide another home away from the over-crowded earth. Literature will in all probability be an obsolete word. Love affection and humanity shall be vague memories of unintelligible words that they heard in their short-lived childhood days. Irrational imaginations or fantasisings shall not cloud their 'survival of the fittest' days.

And then perhaps one day magic will happen once again!!!And faith shall hold it's reins.

p.s.- This is not a diatribe against his ill-informed misguided mentor, who i hold solely responsible for and guilty of depriving him of his childhood.

2007-07-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

yay!! I have been tagged. Feels nice, in a way, proves people care. :)
hmm...8 things about me?
1) I think, therefore I am. I love to think. :)

2) At the present moment,my life is directionless [ except that I know I'd be hitting my bed in half-an hour.that way it has a direction.] and I have no idea what I want from my life.

3)When my friends and family say that I live in a different world, a dreamworld, and that I am a complete misfit in today's world, believe them.

4)I dont get angry, I get hurt.

5)Death has occupied a huge portion of my thoughts since childhood and it's image to me is that of a lover's.marana re tuhu mama shyam saman.

6)I am extremely sensitive.A rude word, a little indifference towards me,a careless remark are enough to cause me great distress.

7)I have a lousy taste for movies and even the stupidest melodrama can make me cry.

8)More often than not the I in my poems and me are completely different entities with some co-incidentally similar traits.

Thats about it.summed up all that I know about myself that others dont in 11 sentences. So there!!
I tag Girl in the dark, Arnabda and Sreetama.

The Last Dance

2007-06-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Come my love, let us have this one last dance
And then no more.
Our hands shall touch,
Our lips shall meet
Your heart in me and mine in you shall throb.
The rain shall be our tune
And silence our words,
While by the blazing firelight we dance.
We shall carve a shadow on the wall
Of not two lovers but one.

The night is young;
Hold my hand and let us dance,
We shall whirl around,
Fast as the days that we have left behind.
Thunders shall sing for us
Memory shall serve as words
Like waves in a storm raged sea
Like lightning in a cloud-laden sky
Come my love, let us dance.
Like souls of lovers possessed by love.

Behold the night is gone,
The rain has stopped
The moon is wan.
Hold my hand and let us dance
We shall tread softly as if on flowers,
We shall murmur words of love, music to our ears.
Time shall stand still,
While we savor the delicate present moment,
Drowning in the other’s arms and eyes.
By the dying firelight,
Come my love, let us love this one last time
For tonight and then no more.

Tomorrow is another new day.

dunno what to name it. The Last Dance?

The Wait.

2007-06-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

Isn’t there anything
that you haven’t said to me?
A little something perhaps
that you have hidden in your heart
For reasons unknown to you and me!
Isnt there a soothing voice
suppressed by your real booming baritone
that contemplates saying aloud
Words that your real voice couldn’t?
Words that welled up in your eyes
as you sat by me day and night
watching my shadow grow thin by day
and thinner by night?
Words that oozed through your fingertips
when you led me on to see the setting sun
and the rising moon
but never tumbled down your lips.
Say it aloud then for the world to hear
or whisper only in my ears.
For life is not long for me
and my shadow walks on earth
only for a couple more of days
waiting for you to say…
Isn’t there something
that you haven’t said to me?

P.S sorry. i know it's dumb.

The gypsy girl

2007-05-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

She swirled her myriad-hued skirt.
A velvety black night descended upon the desert sands.
A thousand burning stars
lit up and scattered themselves
on the dense black of the night sky,
as she cast her fiery glance heavenward,
daring them to defy her.
Her slender fingers conjured a silver moon
and like a child at play
threw it up and bade it stay.
A silver orb of light against the star-spangled sky.

Then she stood silent awhile,
silhouetted against the crests and troughs of the vast desert.
And suddenly, as if in a mad frenzy
She started to dance, like a possessed soul.
The fire in her eyes burned bright.
Her dusty locks, as enraged serpents, flew in every direction.
The tiara on her crown sparkled,
the bangles on her wrist clanged angrily.
The dancing necklace on her heaving breast
And the jangling anklets on her lively feet
Set in motion the world around her.
Together they danced
The dance of rain, the dance of life, the dance for change.

Every little grain of sand her feet touched,
Turned into a wild flower, steeped in colours of her skirt
Every part of the sky she touched with her hands
Gave birth to a promising cloud, dark as her hair.
Every time she twirled on her toes
A fountain sprang up, defying the tyrant sands.
She danced as if this was her only chance
She danced as if this was her last dance,
little nameless flowers at her feet,
silver lined clouds around her head
her body damp with the rebellious fountain water
And the world danced with her.

And then, as if tired and weary of her dance
She stopped, as suddenly as she had begun.
She waved her hands and the moon faded into oblivion
She looked towards the sky and dimmed the stars
she swirled her colourful skirt and the night evaporated.
As the first ray of the sun touched her body
The flowers at her feet disappeared
The fountains passed into nonexistence
And the clouds lost their lives.
She rained, reminiscent of her mad dance
She rained and rained
And lay beneath the sands, weary and hopeful
In wait for another night of magic, dance and life.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.

2007-05-16T03:54:00.000-07:00

I still remember the first day I saw her. It wasn't long ago.I had accompanied my Mom and sister and a cousin to her father's[my mamato dada's] Lansdowne home.

And when we first saw her, my mother couldn't stop gushing about her...proclaiming her to be the prettiest 7 day old she ever saw.I on the other hand could not reconcile the concept of prettiness to the very white almost transparent skinned one-dimensional little body with blue spots on her belly,with a head sans hair, slits of eyes that blinked,and moved it's tiny fingers and toes even when it was sleeping.I distinctly remember exclaiming to mom when out of earshot that she looked like a 'bnadorchhana'!!

Now she rules my heart! Forever on her wobbly little feet,looks like an angel sans wings and talks like...I can't supply an appropriate analogy, because she chirps incessantly,and she chatters sense, none of those baby-talks for her.

She talks of important things in life...identity-'tumi ki...pupun?' she asks me in her clear melodious voice confirming that i am myself and not my identical twin [a popular confirmatory question with my friends].

She transcends the spatial and temporal when she stuns me with a -'achha ami kaal esechhi.baghum er golpo bolo.'-in reply to my promise of belting out another baghum-story[tigers rule her senses] ('kaal')-the next day.

This little one is the epitome of justice and woe unto the one that reprimands me or other subjects of her's in her presence. 'kaano bokechho Gudun ke' in the fiercest growl that she can manage with a special emphasis on 'kaano' to the guilty party and 'aha re ,o shona re' in her softest tone and a couple of kisses to the aggrieved [me in this case] which leaves his/her heart soothed and face smothered with saliva.

Oishee,Tutun, Puchu, Pushu,Byangachi,Chhotto Beral,Puchithang,Myao,Chhutki and the numerous names that me and my sister call her by meet with the same welcome response-an upturned angelic face with an ethereal smile playing on her pink little lips and the most beautiful sound-'ki maa?' [point to be noted-we are her pishis.everyone she loves, she calls maa.isn't that sweet of her?]

She has an astounding sense of rhythm and a keen ear for music.And poor you readers who haven't sen her swaying her little hips to any dance number that plays within her earshot.And you too who haven't heard her recite'baburam shapure' or 'pompom pompom' or 'row row row your boat' or 'hashi hashi takahashi' or 'old macdonald had a farm' the 'ya ya o' refrain of which she uses to disarm me when I throw bombastic English words at her [just for fun i assure you].

I have used so many words and yet her portrait has only half been drawn, that too sketchily.My princess, My baby, My darling [ Warning: dont address her as 'darling when you meet her for the first tme. Brat that she is, she's sure to retort back 'tui darling'] My cuppy cake, It's your 2nd birthday today and I have no gifts for you other than this that says that you've been my bright star,you have filled me with heretofore unfelt pleasures, unprecedented joy,love and affection, and you have made me nurture my softer emotions and made me more responsible.I know you can't read this but you surely can read me.After all ,what escapes your eyes Queen of Infant Goddesses?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.

silent voice

2007-05-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

I had grown to love that cosy little room I lived in. There wasn't much space. I could hardly move my limbs. You made my life easy. I ate your food, drank from you, I breathed your air.I wasn't much of an entity then. But I was happy,and you knew that.

Sometimes you would talk to me and when I answered back nobody could hear me but you. Sometimes you would sing to me. Remember I told you that you have a beautiful voice? You smiled. Such a beautiful smile! And then your song would enfold me in it's arms and lull me to sleep. Peace!

And on somedays, I would grow claustrophobic. I would become restless. I would scream in my silent voice. you would still hear me. How did you do that? you would muster all your patience, all your endurance and soothe me till I would grow calmer by degrees , till I would once again turn to my little room and lie there quietly.

And on days when you would grow angry and call me names, not very nice names, and complain about how much I caused you pain, how much I harassed you, how much of a burden i was to you, I would cower and tremble. I felt helpless. I had nowhere to run. I would still lie in my little room waiting for you to shed your anger. You would too, after a moment or two.

Were you very angry that day? Infuriated? But I sensed tears in your eyes. I sensed love in your bosom. I felt you wanted to hug me tight and never let me go! Why did you then?
Why didn't you have me? Why didn't you give me a chance?

TADA!!!!

2007-04-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

Himesh Reshamiya stars as Himesh Reshamiya in the movie 'AAP KA SUROOR'!!!
A treatise on his love-life, this film will also answer the (im)pertinent question that baffles the minds of millions of indians at home or abroad-why does he always wear a cap? About time!
I can't wait to c the movie! Can you?
Ahh when did i last laugh?

RE-union

2007-04-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

Finally!!!!U and i are back again!my dear dear blog!
...err...umm...well...i'm sorry.
Should have been more careful...err...caring.
I didn't at all want to desert you.I couldn't even if i wanted (mind i never wanted), i forgot the password.
:( yes I know! That's unpardonable.'How could i?'...indeed...i knowwww.
Let's talk about something else ,shall we?

I picked up two Enid blyton books from the BCL.:) The twins at St.clare's and The O'Sullivan twins.The connection is obvious to people who know me personally.:).
I can't remember when i last read Enid Blyton, but i remember the day i started reading Enid Blyton.The first book of the 'Malory tower' series was given to me as a prize honouring my academic excellence in class 2(biiiiig deal!!!!), and then there was no looking back.The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-outers and dog, The 'r as initial letter' mysteries...and the Adventures of the Wishing chair.
Ah!!Those wonderful days!The simplicity!The wide-eyed wonder!And the undying faith in magic,in beauty, in good's victory over bad.
And then those days vanished,got blown with the wind and time,but left back with me their melody and rhyme.
An attempt to recreate the magic and charm again.

Not the only reason why i picked up those books.
The children's fiction section is warm compared to the rest of the library room!gawd!!I bet u the temperature must have been near 18degree celsius.And i had to wait till 6p.m to bag a comfortable seat in my dad's chartered bus on its journey back home free from the sweaty smelly shoving crowd. And then nostalgia of course!
Alas! the cold won!drove me out exactly at 5:08,when i started shivering like a candle flame in the wind (only it trembles).
crowded bus!smelly sweaty shoving crowd!expletives! yuck!!
back to home! a shower! Good old Enid Blyton again!! after soo many years!!

2006-12-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

The newspapers these days are crammed with horrible news of maniacs slaughtering innocent infants and children. what the heck!! And what's more alarming is that women ( if they can be called so) are the masterminds and in most cases the hands behind these despicably heinous crimes. How on earth can people kill such little babies without the slightest of weights on their conscience? what confers on human beings the right to take away lives when they can create none try as they might?

2006-10-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

ALL RELATIONS ARE POWER-RELATIONS.

Am I Honest?

2006-10-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

I take immense pride in calling myself honest. Till recently, for me honesty comprised only of- being truthful and never cheating during exams, minor or important. Now there’s something more to it. Honesty of thought. Honesty in action. Those are however not the issues I would like to deal with, now.
When I was quite young, during a minor class-test, I remember refusing to pen down an answer I already knew, because a friend next to me had spoken it out aloud. Most people would perhaps categorise this action of mine under juvenile-stupidity.. but I was proud of my honesty. Since childhood I have never once lied to gain something for myself, neither placated myself by some self-deceiving lies nor tried elevating my position by braggadocio. But a question that perturbs me no end is- how much of this drive for honesty is a part of my individuality? Perhaps this is a result of my upbringing, the immediate environment surrounding me and some ethics inculcated in me. Had I not been a well-cared-for daughter of a happy, economically unconstrained family, would I have been eligible to claim the ethical high-ground for myself as I am now doing? Had I hailed from an economically backward family, with the entire responsibility of the household to shoulder, would I have refused to take recourse to ‘unfair means’ during a crucial course-of-life determining exam? I have no answer to that. I have no answer to that riddle. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. and this brings me to the final question..am I really honest? Or is it just an effect of my surroundings on my mental constitution? After-all honesty, these days is nothing but a psychological imbalance.

Of love and losing

2006-09-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

You, I swathe
With the warm darkness
In a shadowy grove
In my mind.
And with you contained by me
Smiling proudly at the world,
That would not let you die
Nor me,
Pronounce you dead.
But you, as always
must prove me wrong .
Ambush me and humiliate
Before the world to see
Reflected in my eyes
My truth and yours.
And like before
Like in the days
When we loved and lived
I lose and smile.

incorrect corrections.

2006-09-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

Heh heh heh heh...this sure is funny. Microsoft-word has a hilarious way of suggesting corrections for a wrong word [they think]…especially when the supposed wrong word is an Indian name.
Below is a list of my friends’ names and their respective distortions... [Chuckle]

disclaimer: ppl mentioned below are my friends and so are the ones not mentioned below.

Sohini –shiny, shine Shin, shinny, shins.[I wonder why they didn’t suggest skinny?]
Sayani –saying, salami, satanic, saran, sean
Sayan –satan [hahahaha..how did they know?]sean, saran,saying, say an.
Pratiti – partite, partita, ratite, partition, patti. [he he prati I guess u do know what patti stands for in Tamil…or is it Malayalam? or even Telugu.]
Sanjana –santana.
Megha –Meghan, mega [acceptable]
Ujjayini –no spelling suggestions [see what i meant by hilarious!?]
Abhishek- banished [yay!!] banishes, banisher, Bishkek.
Arnab – Arab, arena, Arabs, Barnaby, Ana
Tanmoy –tammy, anomy, tango, tomboy, annoy [bulls eye]
Indranil –ingrain, Indiana, Indianola, ingrains, intranet.
Sayori –savory, saylor, savoir, savor, seri.
Shaona –shauna, sheena, shaun shone.
Debosree –debaser, debasers, debase,[huh??] depose, Debora.
Oindrila –india, conidial, Cinderella [hmmmm] indri.
Sreetama –streetman [hehe] streetlamp, retime, sesame, seedtime.
Tanusree –tonsure, tenure, tonsured ,tonsures, tenures.
Sandipan –sandi pan[ whoa!!]

Wow!! I have so many friends!! And I have not even named half of them…feels good.and the majority that i have not named...please do excuse me...its 2:53 in the morning.....[my sweetest possible heart-winning {i hope} smile]..i am so sorry.

on request. :)
Insiya –India Inseam Unisia Indian Insofar ...hehe.

Geometry of emotions

2006-08-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Circles of love
Entangled in triangles of greedy passion
Coupled inproportionately with
Deep rooted jealousy in ellipses
Make a hap-hazard multi-section
of the shapeless human heart
And
Give rise to cascading spirals of pain.
Sphere of rage engulfs the same sad heart.
Hyperbolic hubris dominates all affections of square nature
And distorts the shapeless human heart
Into a crooked inverted cone.

Pain

2006-08-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Pain left me not
I begged, I cried, forced and beseeched.
A fonder smile and fonder arms around me.
In that strong inexorable embrace
The world lost itself.
Melted into mellow madness
Or lost its rhyme in a whirlpool of time
I knew not which,
As I blew, I burnt, I flowed and I froze
Weeping and laughing
Awake and in dreams
Enraptured, enamoured, over-whelmed.

I still flow and I still blow
Screaming that I love him not
When in solitude or in a crowd
He comes back
Or ghost of his fond embrace,
And clings on to my body and soul,
Like a lover!
And yet after he vanishes,
Signs left back but in my heart
And on my tear-stained cheeks,
I call him fond names,
Wishing pain, my love, back again.

vanished, asleep or in coma

2006-08-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

I have looked carefully
pondered over markless stains in vacuum
detected the immortality of time that is not here now
Time that has vanished without a sign left back.

I have searched carefully
ideas in glimpses that never matured into thoughts
lie snoring and roaring at the back of my mind
asleep; asleep as a volcano before it erupts and flows.

I have noted my dream carefully
In a bed of white lies my conscience, comatose.
The whiteness of her eyes contradicting the surrounding dark
saying as if,” I’ll be back before your lamp extinguishes”.