Happiness

Happiness, An Abstract
Credits : www.bidorbuy.co.za

What is happiness but a touch from
A word that calms your soul, when
You want to weep sorely on words
That forever remain unsaid.

What is happiness but the tricks of
A clown that jumps you off
With laughter and fills his starved
Dreams with a hope of life.

What is happiness but the magic
That fills the air from a masterful
Hand, and creates strokes of mystical
Finesse which made breaths and smiles.

What is happiness but the thoughts
Of a philosopher which resounds that
‘Happiness is a shadow that creates
A blackout in our miserly memories’

Breath of Life

DEDICATED TO PINK FLOYD, A BAND THAT OVERPOWERED MY HEART

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/PCSFz_YycYA&source=uds

I was listening to ‘Coming back to Life’ by Pink Floyd (video above) just now when this poem came into my mind :

Here, where the bleeding rose overruns

The boundaries of a garden nurtured in

My limitless infinities of imagination,

I am thrown into a stupor by the breath

Of life that emanate from his firm voice.

The dark rains, that followed me since

The day I took my path away from the

Nomadic followers, slowly eased into

Oblivious chants of support that the

Singer got from the deep stretches of

My solitary existence.

Standing on a land that smells of

Blood and unaccounted ‘sarin’,

I heard cries of battles I never fought,

I saw lost lives that I never known,

They danced frantically along with me,

Death may have liberated them, but

Music have granted them salvation!

I kept walking, I kept running,

I made pace onto the gravity that pulled

Me towards it, like a child hopping

Behind a lost balloon, I found my feet

Make frivolous jumps to catch the tunes

That were being thrown around for me.

In that faint seconds lost in towering eternities,

I knew I am not alone until my ears go deaf,

And I am not sad till my hearts shuts the doors

To the divine tunes that floats around.

A modern recreation of the artwork made by George Hardie for the album
‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd released in March 1973

Friendships are Personal

Picture taken during our college trip to Goa (India) last week

When I look back at the 20 years of experience I had on living in this lone planet which is found to harbor life, I find a lot of images passing by like a moving picture. Some faces stay on longer on my memory screen, I prefer to watch them forever.!
This poem is dedicated to everyone you see in the picture, and to anyone whom I find staying a second longer in my memory. Without you life seems a lot less colorful.

A melancholy poem of loss got stuck
Between my pen and paper last night,
In a vain struggle to untie the knots
That choked my words, I injected
A dope of fresh prompts, quite
Unaware of the loneliness that slept
Undisturbed in my rusted mind.

Without knowing the reason why,
I wrote, ‘How shall you describe friendship?’.

Just as a faithful dog whines when
A master dies, my pen made a noise
Which killed seven different powers
That blocked me from my words,
I wrote about seven seas and infinite stars,
I envied the path of a frenzied quark.

Though I never added much to the question,
‘How shall you describe friendship?’.

Feats of enchanting fleets from fights,
And tales of untamed heights of joy
Passed by my mirrored mind, where
I saw a part of me surrounded by
Hordes of faces I loved seeing beside,
The haste of passing images never took away,
The smile that sprouted from my heart.

With the same benevolent joy, I faced
The question, ‘How shall you describe friendship?’.
I knew then, that some things are better
Described when you experience them.

When you look out through the window, what do you see?

Credits : abstract.desktopnexus.com

You shall surely see the grace of a bird in fight,

But I see a mother’s desperation to fly home to her hungry young-ones.

You may then praise the art of the setting Sun,

When I fear the fading shadows that unite stealthily with the night.

You laugh at a running saint being chased by a ‘mad’ dog,

I cry for the dog, cause he shall face the wrath of a mindless ‘God’.

You shiver at the howl of a wolf, magnified by the silence around,

I smile with the symphony which gives me an illusion of company.

You see the moon rise steadily in the East,

I feel its webs of attractive aura making me walk into it.

Now, do you see a lonely poet juggling with words and missing many?

Because he sees you like a classic painting, while I continue the scrawl.

Salvation

Before the days of customary depression,
Joys of nature blossomed secretly like
A garden which was gifted with hard-work.

Credits be to the cycle of existence, all
The passions of youth merges finely into
The senseless devotion of adulthood!

We search for keys to happiness more
On the outside than the inside, as we step
Into an illusion of inflicted feelings.

Boarding a vehicle that guides you
And leaves no option for choice
Makes me think who is making the travel?

Is the path left to us? Or are we followers?
Why do we prefer a visit to the zoo,
More than a survival at the deepest forests?

Answers that float like an unguided missile
May breach any of our insane limits.

Between the momentary thoughts that pour,
A glance at the unleashed power of nature,
Left me in a state of chronic awe.

Notes

A poetic rendering of thoughts that sprang on into my mind during my visit to Jog Falls, Karnataka yesterday. Standing underneath the falls and looking straight up, you see yourself and your life as a miniscule part of something that is too extraordinary to be explained.

Jog Falls, Karnataka

Gifts of Servitude

Artwork by Jeanie Tomanek
Courtesy : The Mag

Angelic psalms of care often deprives

The pleasure of waiting for your God,

A noble crime is to forget the divine,

And rest assure in a miraculous drive.

It is sane to wait outside, when ghosts

Of hungry men waits to rape even after

Their lust has broken down into fine dust,

There you cradle your fear and drink

The burning blood that drains through.

Yet with a misplaced anklet that adorned

Her one leg, she swung upon branches,

(An image of love flew for the ghosts to see)

She left herself for the heavens to free.

Measured glances of hope dripped her

Fragile face, she was a daughter, a lover

A mother, a saint and a believer,

She planted herself onto the tree

And sat forever with her bare basket,

For the ghosts and the Gods to see.

Wings of faith were never too large

To lift her off, crowns of thorns

Were never too sharp to keep her down,

A bird which ceased the desire to fly

Now gave her adept company.

No mirrors were born out of the tree,

Which makes me wonder,

Is the bird I see a part of her?

Or are they both a part of something else?

Jealousy

Image : ‘I hate humans’
Courtesy : bendragon.blogspot.com

Buried in a self created grave

Where the world lay in deep sleep,

Between undiluted wrath which

Pours pangs of targeted grief,

Our habits are allowed for torture.

What we retrieve as memoirs are

Uneventful days of passionate dreams,

When Eros flew around to spread a

Golden weave of lust, to entrap

Our innocent thoughts and poison

It with a dark potion of grudge.

As the poison spread, we fall

Into a trance devoid of charm,

Which we later coin as a slip

Towards the gorges of love,

But what the mind let pass,

Is the slow death of a comrade.

Can we cipher the unwritten

Words out of our past?

Could we pen it down like

A poet? Maybe then we would

Glimpse the grave where we lie, and

Rediscover our thoughts before they die.

Conversations with God

אחד

Dear God,

It is not that I need to say,

But my heart is not giving a way,

You are the one who knows it all

(Cause after all you made it all),

Meager is it to converse on me,

When you are the architect of

Each and every one of my cell.

Sometimes whilst I sleep, I see

Lights that blind me with radiance,

I feel my head shake with violence,

I hear the sounds of an ebullient bang,

Then I see me flying like a drop in the night,

A whole world of people join me,

We settle near our homes in a bubble.

Like all dreamers, I wish to know

What it meant? Hope to hear a reply.

With love and account,

A fellow born out of your hand.

שנים

Dearest God,

It is only after I ceased the anxious
Spread of words last time, I realised
I never knew whom to send to
(Never have I known where you live),
This is why I kept it beneath a statue of Christ,
Which I am sure you would have got.

It is to be noted that I never got answers,
Maybe some answers are best when unsaid.

I searched for you in the church,
I hunted you among temples,
I even slithered beneath Buddhist caves,
But all I found were images without life.

Sometimes when I get afraid,
I stubbornly call your name,
But no mountains moved on my word,
Is this because I love you less?

I find truth unfurling like rising dust,
The more it shall rise, the lesser you see.

With love and intense account,
A fellow who loves you more and more.

שלושה

God,

Days where I waited have gone,

Yet, the pursuit for truth continue,

I met people, I saw lives,

I heard unanswered prayers and

Dying saints.

I blaspheme now,

Why do you spread hatred?

Why are people fighting each other?

Why do souls haunt even after death?

Why do they drink and fill their thirst,

Out of the Earth’s chopped breast?

Beliefs are meant to change,

And some truths be left unsearched.

While you are asleep behind a fading image,

I shall spread the search onto my mind,

I hope to find you cold and dead,

Cause it is I who made you with my fear,

And I am sure I killed you with my sense.

With the last drops of love,
A fellow who failed to find you.

Four

My dear mind,

What distances should I traverse to find you?

What toils should I receive to taste your essence?

Within the arduous lies you create, I wept

Within the boundless happiness you showered,

I fluttered on unafraid.

When my search for you began I was afraid

Of not finding you, I was afraid I may end

Up monotonously settling back onto normality,

When I tasted your faintest scent, the fear turned,

I was afraid of my cynical knowledge finding you,

Conquering you and crushing you with all its

Idealistic irreverence. But then you stood firm.

Oh, heavenly it is to know little,

My dear dearest mind,

You made me taste the bitter tastes of spree,

Now take my body and possess it,

Devour it with your insurmountable force,

Alter it, rattle it and then kill it.

The Path to Freedom – My Thoughts on India’s 67th Independence Day

India celebrates her 67th Independence Day today. But for me, Independence is now reduced to a word. We are still bound by rules that makes us dependent on a government which cannot be even termed democratic. The great Indian Parliament has forgotten the days when it functioned properly. States are struggling to be split apart. Some struggling to counter natural disasters, even more waiting to be falling into the list. Curfews imposed in various parts confuses one with the mere notion of freedom. And then we have a group of politicians accusing each other and campaigning for a distant election. It is true we have made flee the British on this day 66 years ago, but still a long way to go for us to be free.

Independence is a state of mind,

It is challenged on counts of thought.

Brought about by an Eastern notion

Of scurrying the Queen and her zest.

Like a married Indian woman, freedom

Is forced to remain silent. To remain unknown.

Break out of the thoughts that hold us,

Shatter the images of living out of a government.

A provocative struggle is what the father

Wanted, not a passive resistance.

Indeed we can live without being afraid,

If we live the way bureaucracy wants us to.

But why live unafraid? Why reduce to being caged?

When we can live in the wild, roam, eat and revolt.

We are independent, but there are miles to go

Before the state sinks in to our thoughts.

Freedom stays away till the last person feels that he/she is the country, and it is he who should make his rules. Till then, we are still not independent.

My thoughts though march towards a distant past. A past where people stood up in defiance, and were not shadowed by leaders. A time when India was a colony, but the Indian was free in his mind.

Chandrasekhar ‘Azad’

Subhash Chandra Bose : A forgotten hero


Newspaper report on Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt. They bombed the assembly while also making sure that no one got hurt. They were later executed.

The trio which were hanged on the same date.

Mahatma Gandhi : The man who inspired a nation

‘My name is Azad, and it means freedom’

The man’s eyes glowed in passion with each word,

By the irony of his birth, he was caged,

But with the might of his thoughts, he was

As free as a drifting hawk.

Men like him could never be ruled,

They could never be smothered

From taking off. They crave to fill

The world they live in with the

Freedom that unsettles their poignant

And struggling minds.

They face deaths with a blatant smile,

Face bullets with an ease of mind.

They are driven by courage and

Not with the terror of fear. They

Live, smile and die. But the ideas

They shared shall never pass onto dust.

With a modest appearance, they are

The heroes that no soul hails,

No praise garlands their stubborn resistance,

They hold no glitz, they hold no skill,

But their spirits could never be contained.

It is this a country wants,

Freedom is bridged though thoughts,

When thoughts frame our acts,

We live to be free. When our actions

Unite with the world, everyone

Shall live independent.

The hope and prayers of this country rests with its own people. If they could idealize these individuals who have laid their lives for what they believed in and also to emancipate a nation from the grips of torment, changes could be made possible.

With a heart that beats for all,

I bow to you, my motherland,

Within your arduous love,

All of us remains united.

When we embrace each other with love,

It is your tricolors that sanctify us,

When we release the charms of duty,

It is your soul that ignites our body.

I bow to you in respect

JAI HIND

Ghazals and Enlightenment

Unguarded thoughts pierced his existence,

Tales of eventful passions, lost loves,

Miseries of hate, lust and hunger continued.

Impoverished streets in his mind was

Tormented with winds of revolt, but

Easier was it to remain inert, to let

The weather clear, to remain the same.

Each night when peaks of love was forced

Onto his meager heart, he thought of the saint

Who came to talk to him during his sleep,

Who said, “Peace shall come from within”.

A storm was nearing his mind,

An apocalypse always leads to calm,

Like bullets to head do calm a brain.

Ghazals were staged in his dreams,

Wails of a sorrowful harmonium, with

The broken voices of an aged singer

Agitated his flesh and bones, he sang

Along with the singer, they mouthed words

That praised a fading God in the midst

Of frauds that wrapped the weeping Earth,

They praised the Lord’s benevolent soul which

Gave life to buds, tunes to birds and love

To children, who were all beads in a single string.

Like how a singer from the past forced

Rains onto a burning Earth, their song

Made a downpour in his life. In a puddle

That settled forever in his mind, he saw

The reflection of himself standing bowed

With the saint who talked to him in dreams.

With a relieving pain, he saw the Sun

Shine brighter than ever,

Earth spinning slower than before,

Leaves making food with devotion,

Ants building homes before the rains,

And felt the peaceful notes of a divine Ghazal.

He remembered, the saint once said,

“The teacher shall appear when the student is ready.”

Notes

Ghazals in this context means the musical rendering of Sufi poetry. To know more check : Ghazal

And the 2 times when the saint in the poem is advising the narrator, I have used words of Gautama Buddha, which have been slightly modified to fit well into the poem.