The Company of Solitude

Now, I seek solitude for company
Waking to the spectrum of vitality within,
Enough of your rhetoric,
Now's for my soliloquy.

Beneath the semblance of the Silence,
On the verge of bursting any moment.
Silence, spelled as chaos,
Sitting in fear till now,
At the sight of sound and the voice of light,
Stabbing itself with self-consciousness.

Where no one can reach
Neither the notorious comfort of darkness.
Nor the shadow of light.
Neither my thoughts, 
Nor my circumstances, can reach.
For they just are.
And I just am.
When no one's watching,
When I'm not thinking.
(For to start thinking,
Is to not be yourself.)

P.S. Not a narcissistic retreat of self- pity, this.
       I look within myself,
       To rise above myself, eventually.

Choking for a Lifetime

Over-hearing the familiar glare
Signalling the same struggle
Pre-destined to defeat to follow.
The rising voice, the shadow of a raised hand.
Divided by a wall,
My presence reclines to a shadow
Cowering under the blanket,
Fists clenched, trembling,
Twitching to sounds anticipated to be
The final hit.
The final scream
To be heard,
Silenced by her own tears.

Years later,
The scene replays in my head,
Choking on screams in nightmares for help
That failed to come out as my voice
Then and now.

The Evacuation

Skin flaking away to shreds
Breathing a fresh whiff of mockery your way, my way,
Shrouding their compliments and
My pride that turned stale
As they were uttered.

Alphabets 
Lisping out of my mouth
Numbers
Trickling out of my mind
(Not a hospitable host,
This existence of mine, they recount.)
Fears & dreams 
Going into comatose.

Clock-hands pointing at me, 
At the stroke of wakeful realization
Like arrows, yanking out and
Darting past me, in all directions
On a time-bound mission.

Sounds, gone out of tune inside of me
Screeching out of my ears
Favourite colors, smells, sights 
Now driving me nauseous
A choking cough that echoes 
(Was it not supposed to stifle it, like in movies?)
Of all of these
Crashing at me, 
Trying to weave again
That familiar path on that train
That leads to the crossroads of that maze
Of self- destructiveness 
That I seemed destined for,
No matter where I'd exit from.
("The exit is only a dead-end!", a fleeting voice quivers)
As I stagger under weightlessness
While familiarity squints into a blur 
and
Alienation burrows a happy home
Mute stares from my end lasting three nanoseconds
Angry for they still don't get it
Thrilled, breathing a sigh of relief.
For I get it, lest I should forget it,
This, where I had arrived.

Or

Was I inhaling stagnant complacency 
Slipping into the reprieve of familiarity again,
Of accursed i-dent-ity
Wait. Am I getting familiar with myself?


P.S. Things you held dear
Where are those now?
Were they yours to admire?
Or mine to own?

Conversations in My Head

Now, I utter words
Thinking them twice over
Overwhelmed as I am
In your presence.

Hesitate looking up,
Prefer staring blindly at my hands
(Knowing you're happily staring at me)
Risking that sheepish smile
Which would eventually
Give away feelings, mine,
Acknowledge; yours.
Anticipate and weave 
Conversations I'd like to
Have with you, someday

With childlike glee 
End up thinking in my head
Of things you'd long back said,
Making myself happy over & over again,
Breaking into half-embarrassed laughter
Then hide behind a coy smile
Thinking of the few times,
When I did not turn away
Pretending not having seen you.

P.S. Beating about the bush
       Till now in words
       Giving the matter a push
       Through this corny verse.

Women's Day and no Men's Day

Women's Day is here. For some, it means attending seminars, for some others, it's about forwarding text snippets wishing each other a 'Happy Women's Day.' For me, it may be about writing a tactful copy line for my company's newsletter content informing customers about how we mean to acknowledge this day, by offering an 'irresistible' discount of a few dollars on outfits on our site. And more such claustrobhic cliched images blurring past your sight that drive you crazy. It'll be there to greet me, and many other humans, next year too, I'm certain. 

Celebrating Women's Day? Commemorating this day, is an acknowledgement, or a feeble but sinewed hope towards promulgating egalitarianism. Or so I would like to think, not believe, yet. Keeping in mind instances, like the stature of transgenders in our country - the government a little to eager too boast of having given out 1600-odd Aadhaar Cards to transgender residents in Delhi way back in August last year - when members of the community do not even have the prerequisites for applying for the Aadhaar Card, for obvious reasons. Besides the stench of notions about them that have floated in the form of furtive glances and whispers all along, in the country. What about the fact there's no 'Men's Day' in the calendar? In a country where gender has always been misinterpretedly veiled under monochromatic extremes, forever struggling to code gender as binary opposites, love as pink or gay, where the majority seems to be unable to cope up with the acknowledging/accepting that the question doesn't end at a simple 'You're pardonable because you haven't committed the act of rape in real. (Oh but he's fantasized about it with quite as many women passing by him, at a bus stop, maybe?') 

The rampant and forever unacknowledged inequality that women face, and all internalise, as natural, for the rest 364 days of the year, in all spheres - does a 'global' celebration actually boil to even an echo of the 'ideal', at a home, cultures, geographies away, is the question.

Regretting Smiles

A genuine (or not?) smile 
Caught from the corner of her eye,
Returned with a beaming smile
Now awoken to her own presence
With innocent glee
She smiled,
For she was smiled to.

She read his tears 
Frozen into words,
Cried with empathy,
Glad at last,
For pity would 
Haunt her no more.

She wonders now if she
Had imagined the smile?
(She prizes her tears for now.)

With Love, from Death

You've sketched & sought eternity,
Throughout the map of history 
In effulgent hues.
And what prompted it, pray?
Futile attempts at
Squirming out of 
The shell of mortality.

Of course you don't seek death.
You haven't been living life either.
What then, is it that you
Lived all these years?
Had you been living
The fear of death instead,
Lurking near?

I've been subjected to
A tirade of judgments from you  
But then you've judged life too
All along anyway.
(You've judged it more, 
And lived it less.)

P.S. (Achilles was wiser, 
Must I say.)

Word is Out

An encounter with words in life hitherto
(Brought me asking yet again a helpless -
"Now, where to?")
For company was all I had back then       
An ebbing ebb of 
Self-assuring words at times, 
To a frenzied slew 
Of words, twisted & few 
Which sapped & gnawed away 
My spirits into mute stillness.
Like no adversary had ever managed.
Then another capricious turn
To a voice of rhetoric that mocked,
At every occurring thought 
In my breathing existence
Angry at what, I knew not.
Every mono-syllable I pondered over, or dropped.
Words plundering away words 
I had uttered, memories earlier,  
Words I saw, heard, smelled, lived -
Were they ever in my favour?
Or was it a path, I ought to have taken not?

Those words had more life in them
Than I then did, let me tell you.
Now and then, a war of words with 
The consciousness of words 
They and I had created
A dialogue, now supporting, now doubting,
I had become a dilemma.

Words are all I had at all those times,
And they failed me when  
I needed them most.
They sought a different muse.
Conscious of their mistress's dormant existence
Stammering her way through life,
Were they teaching me a lesson?
To take ownership of my articulations
With courage, wisdom & tact,
That which I probably lacked

Here comes news
Within dreams, with strides taken, 
With gestures, glances, I awaken
As I cross paths again with words,
Uttered - un-uttered, 
Now knowing their worth
Breaking the slumber 
of 
Clenched fists, 
Asphyxiating knot of syllables,
Scripting now, 
Drops of ink 
That shall make a million think.

Blast from the Fart

Us shaam woh Valentine's Day manaane chala tha
                                                        ghudsavaar ho kar,
Man mein laddoo phoot rahe the soch kar 
Ki uski premika khud ko sawaar rahi hogi.
Ki use hawaaon ki sasaraahat sunaayi di,
Pata chala woh payt dard ka shikaar ho baitha tha,
Uske shareer se gas ka aandolan faraar ho chuka tha.
Ye dekh kar kaanp utha uska tan-daban,
Usne perfume chidak daala in shareer's ang-ang,

Uski premika ke pahuncha jab woh nikat,
Dar gaya woh yeh soch kar,
"If I fart again, there'll be no ifs and buts,
But only many a kick on the butt."

Smitten by her smothering kisses he was lost,
Till she heard odorous hisses and then 
A blast from the arse.
She struggled with uttering a few syllables
Swooned to faint & fall into his arms.

Thinking she'd accepted him in all his airs,
He exulted with one final resounding fart,
Exclaiming, "Farting ain't nothing less than a glorious art!"

To Tweet or not to Tweet, is the Question.

No, this isn't a 'fresh' perspective on how Sunanda Pushkar may have died. This is more of a fresh outburst of thoughts on news gone stale, sorry, the ethos of media gone stale, lately. Thus apparently, what was deemed more worthy of being a front page headline in the newspapers, or prime news on various channels, was the Twitter quarrel between Sunanda Pushkar and Tharoor's alleged love interest. Indicting the paparazzi (yes, that's the word I'd like to use here) for trying to create a ruckus in the already muddled relations with her husband, she asked them to back off. However, the newspapers and channels could only stay loyal to their profession and go on to scrape off finer details about who Mehr Tarar is, for instance, and more. 

Now that all coverage has died down, I wonder what prompted the lull. Is it like it took Sunanda Pushkar's death for the media to realize that things can take a turn more tipsy-turvy than a wife vs. vamp TV Soap, much like what they were trying to portray the whole 'Tweetathon' as? And hence, after paying due respects by mentioning that she may have died an 'unnatural' death, they finally decided to let her rest in peace? The question is, what did the media ever have to do with the turmoil in her life anyway? 

Suddenly, the speculations have ended, Sunanda Pushkar's death is now stale news. Or let's say, the approach towards journalism on the part of media has turned stale. A flurry of articles, file pictures, and more didn't quite suffice to keep up with the national news that her 'tiff' with the 'other woman' in her husband's life had turned to. But a woman, who divorced her first husband, who faced the death of her second husband with courage to bring up her son, moving across countries to secure his future by switching jobs, someone who's been called a 'spa-owner', a 'beautician' by the press, did make things alright, each time. Being haunted and having her life and her very image manipulated by the media, was nothing short of a "medieval witch hunt", in her words.  And to have committed suicide after only having vehemently expressed her dislike for the state of affairs in her life, seems like a mammoth printing error in the public story her life was turned into. 

So is the media trying to boast of finally letting Sunanda Pushkar rest in peace, after her death? In that case, clearly, they've got their priorities wrong. The stark reality of her mysterious death, surely has less relevance for the press, or didn't quite manage to go 'trending', unlike the virtual reality of the Twitter tiff. I'm guessing, my new-found interest in reading the newspapers again, wasn't such a great idea after all. 

A Happy Re(s)trospection, This.

  For I don't really know how many nanoseconds of this one second have become the 'past' already. No I'm not caught up with you, and yet I am, for as I write, I realise I can never be 'one' with you. And maybe, it's meant to be that way, for the best. You're never a part of my present, but you have always been my present, once. I'd rather not term my past as a ragged piece of cloth worth being dumped in the bin. From thinking that I could just 'leap' to the glorious, fanciful future I'd visualized earlier, I got to realizing that just as I used to look forward to what was my future once, that future now having turned into my past, is probably no longer good enough, in comparison to what my goals for now, both short-term & long term, may be. However, were I to erase or undo that staircase of 'trivial' victories, life would probably not make as much sense now, my recent achievements would seem incongruous, neither would I know where to turn next.

(Past is the mirror with which we see our future. Yes, you may be looking forward to building something concrete from the muddled slumber of thoughts, but it's always in relation to, in comparison with the things, thoughts, and every influence that has defined you till date.)

From wanting to pass out from school, to retrospecting that it was probably the best phase in my life, till college happened, which became the  new best phase, these so called realisations do have a lot to do with a chunk of perspectives coming from a particular state of mind. 

         I've come to realising that it's wonderful to strive constantly towards whatever you yearn for, but concomitantly, you must realise that in working towards that so called 'ideal' future, you're not really escaping from it your not so ideal past, but learning from it, everyday. If things didn't upset you enough to make you want to change things in and around yourself, wouldn't it be more likely that you'd feel all sluggish and demotivated, in general? Past, present, of future, you have this one life to do whatever the hell you can. And living with the thought that you don't really value your past as much as your present, is as morbid as you could get. Your past will never leave you, and you must accept & cherish it, and learn from it. Many a time we've cast a disappointed glance to it, thinking there's no reason why you or I should remember any of it- of course, if you don't respect what has been and will always be a part of you, where you have always thought your past is an entity separate from you, you're not really building a future, you're only escaping your past, not facing it, or welcoming it. And when you do let go of that barrier deep rooted in your mind, will your mind be at rest.

‘A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.’  - Henry Adams

The Shadows in the Mirror

अब आईने ने खुद पर धूल की परत चढ़ाली है

छुपा लिया है उसने खुद को

मेरे चहरे पर सोए अर्सों के साए से । 

मेरे दिल में अश्क़ों की धुंध  

भी अब जम गई है, 

सिकुड़ते- सिकुड़ते, रोशनी के खौफ़ में । 

उन पाज़ेब और झुमके की ओर नहीं ताकती अब मैं, 

मैं ने अब खुद से ही मुँह फेर लिया है । 

खुद से नफ़रत करने का शौक़ चढ़ा है, 

खुद को खो देने का एक खौफ़ ही अब  
मेरे ज़िंदा होने का ग़वाह रह गया है । 

उस लाल शॉल को अब ओढ़ना नहीं चाहती शायद 
२२ साल पुरानी वह क़िताब में लिखी गयी 
मीठी शैतानियों और प्यार की अनगिनत कहानियाँ 
मेरे लिए एक ख़िताब हैं, 
जिन से मेरा आज भी लगाव तो है 
पर उस क़िताब के पन्नों पर सूखी स्याही को  
मेरे आँसुओं के कलम ने भिगोकर 
उन घावों को हरा कर दिया है
अब उस क़िताब को खोलूंगी नहीं फिर शायद
अरे अब तो मैंने खुद से मुँह फेर लिया है ।

उस दिन घर से यूँ ही चल पड़ी थी,
बेवजह हँसी के ठहाके ले रही थी
उस दिन आईना नहीं देखा था ना |
अब उस शीशे के टुकड़े पर तरस आता है 
क्योंकि उस आईने में 
जिसकी  खुद की पहचान नहीं 
उसमें मेरे खौफ की परछाइयों को 
अपनी पहचान समझना छोड़ चुकी थी ॥ 

P.S. This poem is an attempt to peek into the mind of a woman who is hitting menopause- probably in her late forties, and has just about started to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer the pretty damsel she used to be in her heydays. However, she mistakenly assumes her physical lineaments to be what primarily is her identity- she dearly holds on to her past, her fears are magnified to the extent that she thinks that her very surroundings are disappearing into darkness, as if alive and consciously moving away from her. But she lives in this world only for a while. She soon does realise that a mirror- a concrete, finite object, cannot capture even a fraction of her identity, which is infinitely evolving. The larger inference being that, never must we assume that we know ourselves, there are different levels of truth, yet at each higher level we become complacent with the thought that we know ourselves the best. 

Overall, the poem touches upon the issues of identity, notions and truths, relativity of truth, the constant urge to define ourselves under categories of the symbolic order we've been living in for ages. Interpretations are welcome.

Guest Uninvited

A guest uninvited, that gust of winter wind,

Thumped, seeped and snuck

Through the window in my room the other day,

Seeking shelter in my room, maybe?

Did he guess someone was up still,

From the embers in the fireplace

Shining through the window sill?

Making him feel uninvited

In his own season,

I closed the window,

Drawing the curtains on his misty face.

Back in my bed, a while later,

With toes peeping out of the blanket

Doing a temperature check,

I stepped out into the backyard.

Walking upon the dried up leaves,

Looked up and saw the sun curled up,

Beneath the blanket of clouds.

Nearly scared a kitten almost asleep,

Feigning pretense to stay awake,

I’m guessing it decided against

Venturing to catch another prey today.

Stagnant Reflections

As I brushed off 
The six week old dust
Off the mirror the other day,
I was happily taken aback to see 
Myself a tad bit prettier, after weeks.

Funnily enough, I had made
The mistake of believing my
Reflection to be me.
Introspection's a better mirror, 
I reflected.
Why does one look into the mirror everyday?
To remind himself how, or rather who he is?
That opaque shard of glass 
Could never encompass
The zoetic surge of thoughts
That have gushed forth from me
Since the time I have existed.

I'm sure, the mirror pities 
It's own lack of identity.
Manipulated by reflections
Of a myriad kind,
The mirror manipulates us thus,
Mirroring us and itself 
In another way.
They thought this opaque shard of glass
Could contain the infinitude within us.
It has only mirrored the illusions 
We projected each time we looked into it.

I am only distanced from myself
Each time I seek to find myself
In that stagnant pool of perceptions.


What good is a mirror, which itself is under constant manipulation. 

The Eclipse

         -(Lights' Conversation with Darkness)
  Light said, 
"We're adversaries, maybe.
But I've come to see the possibility
That you are my shadow after all."

Darkness dawned, and said,

"And I thought you could see everything,
For you were light yourself.
Am I merely a fear, of your and mankind's?
(They think you could have no fears, either.)
I am also, Nature's nocturnal rhyme.
I exist, for you cannot make up for me.

An ever unraveling mystery,
I am humble, for I become
What the world makes of me.
You make the world see,
Little do they know,
They see the world 
Through the colours You colour them in.
I make them face fears,
Away from illusion-ed complacency,
With my silent presence giving them company.
From mere empirical sight,
I have given rise to vision/ imagination in them."

Oh, I am not here to seek pity.
I'm sure they wonder,
Why something like me,
Has existed as tenaciously as you.
I am not to be sought,
I am not light years away, 
I am the recourse within.
Truly, I had underestimated myself for long."

Light flickered a little,
To glow anew in realization, then said-
"I am the spotlight,
You're the impactful dot.
I comprise the glorious endings,"
Darkness said, 
"I am the prompt to the start."
Darkness beamed, said
"Dawn and dusk are but a 
Celebration of our synchronicity."
Light chipped in to continue,
"I begin to see things in a new light,
For I have acknowledged you,
And that is our victory."

From thinking of light and darkness as two opposites in perpetual contention, to realizing that the two exist because of each other. The very conversation attempts to break the notion of them being mere adversaries. Also, light is perceived here from different vantage points in the poem- If one sticks to the light- darkness adversary notion, then light itself has always been in fear of the dark. But light, being luminous as it is, cannot see the larger picture.  When light falls upon an object, we simply see it with our empirical senses, and believe it to be true- a big risk we're taking all the while. Darkness isn't necessarily literal here, it could stand for emptiness- which may thus not necessarily prompt fear, but introspection, or imagination. Hence the difference between sight and vision. Darkness seeks to be throned on no pedestal- it let's the world shape it in the way the world  likes to right now, giving them time to discover its real form, unlike light which has been venerated all along.

Across The Sky's Roof

For the lack of an apt photo for a while.

She'd swooshed by on her skates.

He'd seen her in her reflection that day

On his car’s rear view mirror,

For the first time ever.

The new neighbour, was she?

That very night, for the first time ever,

Both happened to be on their respective rooftops.

The clock had just scaled eleven.

Now that they’d seen each other,

Tonight's coincidence sufficed to make way 

For a rendezvous every night, thereafter.

He’d often be smiling his sheepish smile,

Panting for breath as he’d reach the terrace

While the clock would strike eleven,

A few heartbeats later.

Oh, but she would often already be there,

A teasing laughter on her lips,

A childlike smile in her eyes.

Relief followed by exultation in his heart.

And so, they’d be standing a lane's length apart,

United under the zoetic starry sky, every night hence.

You’d wonder, how both were somehow convinced,

That the other still believed

This nightly tryst 
Under the sky's roof to be a coincidence.

She'd light cigarette after another.

He'd pretend 

To be caressing his pet, 

Fast asleep.

Or some such silly thing.

How he’d wish the whiff of smoke from her cigarette

Would drift across to his terrace.

He’d imagine the wafting smoke

That’d emanate as she’d part her lips

To be a peek into her coy desires.

And many such cheesy things.

They hadn't exchanged a word till date.

Oh but they'd exchanged hearts that very first night.

She didn't even know his name yet

She'd wonder if he knew hers’?

'Has it ever mattered?' she'd think.

'I'm better off not knowing her name!'

Thinking a name could define her

Is to be silly', he’d think.

She was at his door one evening,

To hand over a letter, 

Mistakenly delivered at her home. 

Or so she said. Something he'd happily believed.

She'd slipped her heart along with the letter,

She later happily realized. 

The ensuing night lingered

Six and a half cigarettes longer,

The first time ever.

Fifteen evenings gone by since

She wouldn’t be seen.

He stayed for a brief bit on the sixteenth night.

Disappointed less, worried more.

Did she feel this silent encounter

Of their worlds had stayed silent too long?

Words could never suffice, didn't she know?

He went down to his room ruefully.

Oh but she’d reached just the terrace at that instant.

And they thought coincidences could only always favor them.

A few evenings later he saw her. 
Not veiled by the sepia-tinted street lights this time.

Nor in the crimson blush of that evening.

Decked in bridal finery

The vermilion vows on her forehead

Staring starkly at him like an exclamation mark.

And you thought coincidences could only always favor us,

Seemed to be the rhetoric she was throwing at him.

That night, his tattered heart 
Writhed in dead wakefulness on the rooftop.
Even now, he looks across 
At her absence, a presence in itself.

P.S - Two neighbours, who can't keep feeling that it's too soon to meet, to engage in the language of words, and dates. They're too happy, knowing they will see each other across the roof, every night, after the first coincident meet one night. This goes on for months, till she doesn't turn up for a few days, and the day she does muster up the courage to convey to him, that she would be married soon, is the day he turns up too, only to leave a tad bit early. A happy coincidence that they thought they continue turns tragic. Does he know she meant to tell? Does she still think, he'd forgotten her in that fifteen day span, so as to not up on the sixteenth? After all, they'd never exchanged words. 

The Cosmic Consummation

K: So you think I'm just going to barge in 
And smear your lipstick? I have better things to do you know! 
You said you could wait, 
But this 5 minute time frame that I've spent staring
Into your eyes says otherwise.

 S: Yeah, let the romance build pace.
You think you'll make me impatient? 
I think its time to teach you perseverance. 

 K: Teach me perseverance? How? 
With your impatience? 
You know you rely on words too much.

S: You think words don't suffice? 
It's because actions and glances and gestures haven't been enough till today. 
Which is why the recourse to words. 
And I'll pen an eternity in this billet doux

 K: Haha eternity is a long long time ma'am. 
Trust me, these words wouldn't suffice. 
And if you think they can, well, we shall see.

S: The war of words began, they wrote down 
The deepest of their affections on that piece of paper. 
Affections that awoke, evoked with a new vigor 
As the sheet of paper rustled. 
He tugs at the paper as she hands it to him. 
She doesn't quite let go of it, 
unsure if she's handing over the right feelings.

 K: The room descended into sheer darkness 
As he got hold of the piece of emotion she held so dear. 
Even though he was unsure about where he was looking, 
He recognized the depth. The depth of her never ending eyes. 

S: The incessant, now faster dripping of water from the tap in the kitchen, 
Seemed to give vent to vivid sketches of our romance. 
You tossed the pen away thinking the ink dried up. 
The pen gave up, for my feelings had just welled up, 
Now seen as mere invisible traces on paper.

K: The traces you define as invisible, 
I'm not oblivious to them you know. 
Invisible they were meant to be, 
The pen did not stop writing without a reason you know.

S: The candles blew out as the sparks anew flew. 
He wrote, she heard and responded. 
It was dawn now, but their night had only begun, 
with the crescent moon and the hazy stars nodding approval, 
As they regretted not staying on to witness this cosmic consummation.

K: As she regretted the cosmos not being able to witness this consummation, 
He smiled with contempt for the candle light they shared till the morning sun came up. 
He smiled because he knew the universe had played it's cards 
For it's omnipresence was what had conspired this consummation in the first place. 


                                                                                                                 - Written by me & my friend Karan.