(VIBG)Yours, Sincerely.

Rainbow in my Room

Colours stand out so much more in the monochrome-tinted winters. Just something I wanted to capture with the sun making a special appearance today in this month's fifty-shades of grey hued winters. 

Life at Cross-Roads

There's no going forward, and there's no going backward, for it's not a regressive backward, it's not a forward-leap, either, for how do you know which is which, when can you ever claim to figure the coordinates of any point in infinity? There is no path because the path e-merged from the whole. To be sure, all paths lead us there, but all paths had begun from there, so there's no mid-point limbo where you're stuck. And all those paths, they spilled in all directions, criss-crossing each other, overlapping each other, like strains of water sliding down fogged-up window, suddenly giving you glimpses into the other end.

Timelessness

The way we keep hoping to keep track of time (thank God there's time for it) by matching our clocks/watches with another's, or the community's clock towerc- Do you really think the inevitable back-and-forth jumps of a few nano seconds couldn't have shifted us a whole day, or weeks, years, millennia in time? Even that atomic clock with its precision will stop one day in submission to the timelessness of time.

Un-Limiting the Sky

The sky opens up to us, by and by

Even with someone or the other

Staring at it at some point of the day,

(It’ll get to know light years later, it’s alright!)

Some squinting for inspiration, some with disappointment,

Some with hope, some at child-like wonder.

The sky is a shy, breathing being, you know.

Who knows what secrets it keeps on the other sides?

Do you think it is two dimensional?

It never perceived itself that way, you know?

The changing colours are only a peek into her person’s aspects, you know.

It’s constantly unfolding,

Like a neatly-folded piece of origami

Sky’s the limit, you all say?

I wonder whom the sky looks up to

For inspiration.

The Recital Part II

Pondering over 'Prose versus Verse'

As the participants recited AND narrated

Their feelings & experiences,

I started listening to them,

Jolting myself from the lip-synced mute

I'd imposed on their words,

As they'd read out their experiences,

I'd exult with a 'Touche!' & 'Ditto!'

Each time they'd share emotions

That I'd bumped into, rolled over, jostled with

A million times,

But faced, spoken to, never.

Emotions I'd always considered 'trivial',

Too 'trivial' to be written down.

The Recital

(Attended) a poetry session today,

Enacted by a poet through his

Onomatopoeic, gesticulated gestures,

Clenched fist-ed, strained, wide-eyed,

Shifting his weight from one foot to another,

Like dodging his public-speaking fears,

From one leg to the the other,

As he tried to build

A rapport with the audience,

Through his words as they (the words) sifted

Through the folds of the air

To make a silent thud against

An attentive soul's solid, soiled exterior.

While reciting, looking into lit screens,

Scrolling up and down,

And trying to look for that line,

That trail of thought which was (most) perfect

Only in its untimely, chaotic, vague birth in that mind.

As the poet tried to familiarise

Himself with his feelings

Flattened out on fresh paper in

A font different from how

The curves & edges had felt 
In that first gush of thoughts,

When he'd probably first thought of

Penning down his thoughts,

Wise as he was to realise how

Precious they were.

Maybe he wanted to

Articulate his thoughts in written,

But ended up pinning them down.

P.S. Having attended a poetry session today, where the emphasis seemed to be on gestures, sounds, or let's say on the 'enactment' of poetry, I had a question stirring from within. The strain of thoughts, must be penned in words for retrospection and introspection. But once a poet, in all his earnest yearning to convey his/her feelings through his words, to his audience now, and not to himself, takes up the task of 'presenting' his composition in a certain way, does not that precious, original thought, lose its very essence? 

Maybe, poetry isn't about being accurate. Maybe that is why, we converse in the intricacies of language, and not in equations and formulae. :)

Light as the Emblem of Darkness

The dog preferred staying still in half-bent posture in the drain, with its ears plopped down, and tail between its legs for hours this evening, for the kids in the lanes were still weren't done with burning those blobs of light and shooting them high into the sky. 'Am I insane, to not be able to sense the 'festivity' in the air, with the choking smell of crackers being my only memory of this day?' he wondered, each time it felt a thud hit and vibrate his body.The bird in the nest bent and dug its head deeper, curling its head with its feathers, thinking to itself, 'These men know that we birds can sense the break of dawn through 'rods' and 'cones'. Alas, they can't sense yet that we can sense fear too.' I observed a kitten curled up in my backyard, waking up with a start to the resounding boom of firecrackers every minute or two. 

      Maybe, the only way of reminding ourselves that we're alive is by choking ourselves to death.

A Leaf from a Tree's Life

Decades

Of pushing myself to the extremes

With one arm squirming

Into crevices of the ground,

The other reaching out to the sky,

Squinting at the sunlight,

Shriveling up with the raindrops.

I've turned out taller than the year before,

Though I wonder how far I've really come,

Because my flailing arms are still

Groping at the sky,

With me still pinned to the ground.

Tug of War

While I try to figure

Which is the trigger

And which the consequence,

A battle breaks out

Externalities cave in.

Simultaneity takes on a horrid meaning.

Anticipation becomes the catalyst

Of a demon that I created

But know not how to kill.

I forget where my comfort zone lies

In the sphere of my inability

To face, to do things all these years,

Or the realm I wanted to leap to.

There's no single-leap shortcut though,

I've been crawling all the while

With my head buried in the sand.

P.S. My stubborn mind preferred the stagnant familiarity. I don't. I had to distinguish between the two till I won the war.

Experiences

As they say

Words fall short to describe experiences.

Photographs are still pixels away

From being a reflection

Of one's memory -

A refracted reflection,

Of the experience itself.

So what about hopes

To capture, treasure memories for this lifetime?

What about people

Who love to imagine,

And spend their lives

Living on memories

Of those imagined sights,

Scenes, smells and people?

How much more real is our world from theirs', I wonder.

Epilogue: Memories are interpretations. Memories are karma. Retrospection is imagination in an inverted frame, or a regressive mode.

If Thoughts Were Audible

If Thoughts Were Audible,

Would you try to catch & make

Every fluttering thought your Bible,

In your craving

To come face to face

With that one thought

Which would have the answer

To what is the question,

That has gnawed at you since birth?

What if you bumped against

Hitherto infrasonic tremors

Of a morbid sigh or curse,

While hoping to tune into

A blessing or yearning?

Would you consider yourself

The sniper of the Panopticon

Or a prisoner of it?

Would the nail-biting curiosity

Of groping the trail

Of fragmented thoughts

From all (how many?) corners

Make you lose your own 'stream of consciousness',

                         as they would call it?

Deaf now to your own mental utterances

Would you (n)ever speak again?

[Since,

Your eavesdropping mind

Would already know

What the other has to say

As would he, about your thoughts

Before either uttered the first syllable.]

Or,

Would you start thinking

About what to think first

And what order to place those thoughts in, next,

So you could fool your mental trespasser,

Sending him off to a parallel trail of thoughts?

But of course he would be able to

Hear through your strategy

As he would also know

Of that moment

When you decided to

Guard your own thoughts.

But the question is,

Do you have any left, now? 

A numb stare is reflected

In your mental neighbour's eyes

As you both confront

The fact that

Deaf people don't have

Songs stuck in their head.

The Night It Rained

The moon lulled itself

Into few second-long naps,

The winds whispered the smell

Of the oncoming rains

As ants did a tight-rope

On the tree's sleeves.

The dog pricked its ears,

Each time the tiny hurricane

Of dried leaves whirled round.

The spider attempted to balance itself

On the maze of its own making,

As the web threads strummed

A happy tune

In response to the wind.

The lull before the storm,

Was becoming too much of a bulk

For the clouds to bear,

Before a slant of water droplets,

(Some drying midway through

The atmosphere's layers,)

Stamped their arrival

On the parched layers

Of land, leaves and minds.

Streaks of lightning

Conducted a survey

On the distribution of downpour

Clicking vintage tinted photographs.

The rains slowed down to a drizzle,

The insects buzzed through a banter,

The moon tried to

Sneak through the clouds,

Surprised at its reflection

In a puddle on the street.

The morning wakes up 

Smelling a misty presence 

Of the (previous) night it rained.

A Dewdrop's Tale

A drop of dew
Pristine and brand new
Landed atop a blade of grass.
Though tempted by the wind's song,
Balanced itself on the blade's tip,
Strove to not trickle down
Lest the grass strand would lose its crown.
Birds stretched and perched
To take the morning's first flight
While the sunlight wrapped its
Arms around the earth & sky,
And the coy dewdrop glistened anew
In the multitude of a million hues.
Reluctantly, it began to bid
The grass fraternity adieu
Evanescing into vapour,
To accompany the wind
In the search of another grassy patch

The Echo

Before you set off on a song

Strumming tunes

Of a hunky dory future that calls,

That frenzied adrenaline rush,

Bring it to a halt.

(These dreams my dear,

Should be taken with a pinch of salt.)

If you're chasing a wish,

Because the inaudible frequencies

At the back of your mind

Clash rather than merge 

With your future song's rhyme,

Then you've clipped its' wings already

For your creations,

Fantastical as they may be,

Stem from a mental hypochondriac

Stamp of injustice.

Epilogue:

‘Do you often catch the chime of reality,

Singing to you a morbid lullaby

Have you lately been crawling

To unbeknownst corners and turns (in your mind)

Only to slide down back into the pit of

Questions, angst, fears?’

Problems are meant to motivate,

Turning our thoughts to action,

Not so we become complacent 

In our mind's utopia

While reality becomes

Only a reminder of 

The mental hypochondria 

We subconsciously keep 

Seeking a right to.

On Curiosity

How do you define something that always escapes us, 

Something which we sense only by virtue of its anticipation?

Curiosity (at times),

Turns out to be nothing but a tale

Waiting to be deciphered and interpreted

In a new way each time

For without the other, neither could exist.

Puzzled Enemy

There’s vengeance gnashing its teeth

The anger, blindfolded,  

Flagellates at my insides

Churning out a fresh helping

Of supine decay,

Feeding its crippled existence.

I shrink at the sight

Of fingers pointing at me

To then direct wobbly steps  

Of melting courage

To be able to peer at

The faces behind

The exclamations

Of accusations aimed at me.

Till I bump against a mirror,

That, I had thought to be a window.

My palms scramble for strength

Clamped on to the mirror

As I slip on to the floor

I hope the aches will

Numb me into sleep,

Till I wake up

To fidgeting arms and feet,

As the glass ceiling above shatters

To reveal in mockery

A mirrored ceiling right above,

Which I had thought to be the sky

Before I had entered the room.

 P.S. The mind is its own worst enemy. 

The Blame Game

Sometimes I think the situation's wrong

To then severe the blame from myself

Almost as though it were a part of me,

Thinking absolving oneself is a crime in itself,

All the while.

I discover a retrospected, yet un-inspected wrong-doing

And tug the blanket of blame over me,

And that's when another blame game 

Conspires to defeat me as it calculates

The next mortal embrace

I shall make at the count of fear.

There are times when we grant forgiveness to ourselves, and on some occasions, one ends up giving blame to oneself, as if the so called 'acceptance' will purge all. Blaming oneself every now and then can be compared to self-flagellation with no growth resulting out of it. We assume we know we're in the wrong in a particular situation, not remembering that the only guide of the situation here is your opinion/interpretation of the incident, the incident which is infinite in itself. And then one starts to fear and get used to having guilt hover around. Eventually, everything around gets shaded into the vicious cycle of anticipated or retrospected wrong-doing. 

There are Times

There are Times

When I am

Groping at the vapours                         

Of nothingness 

Hoping to churn out

Life and hope from it,

(With a desperation 

That makes me feel

As though I were 

strangling emptiness itself.)

There are Times

When I wish with all my might

(Believing for just that dead moment 

that my thoughts are powerful indeed.)

That the concrete reality 

Would crumble and melt

into nothingness.

There are Times

When I remember 

That it's darkness

Staring at me in the eyes

[Threatening me or encouraging me, 

                                          I know not.]

And I shut my eyes

To crawl within 

The cold comfort of familiarity

That I first meant to escape.

There are Times

When I seek to

Merge into a shadow

As the gust of Light, 

Having shot out 

From unseen corners and walls of impasse 

Now straining its eyes at me

Sears and sieves through

The dust of opaque fear

Settled since long before I was born.

There are Times

When I realise, a truth

Shall not be uttered by me

Not the right time,

How do you set a time for truth?

There are Times

When I must not let

The truth run amok

Lest it wreaks havoc.

P.S. / Epilogue 

Don't tell me that you

Have already forgotten

That there were times, 

You did not know 

Or even want to know

What you wanted to do, or 

What you ought to have done.

 There are times when we seek hope, in the form of an opportunity, a person who could guide us, without realising that the only person at that juncture to help us, would be our own self. But there's a constant wait for (Godot?) something to change things, as if trying to make the universe say that we were in an unfair place that could not be helped, and only a definite pattern or turn of situations would give meaning to one's life. The manifestation cannot be, prior to the determination. 

There are times when the opportunity doesn't merely knock at your door but stays put like a silent comrade waiting for you to pack your bags, so it can bring you to a new dimension of you yourself. Many a time, our fear stifles us, overriding the striving that seemed hope enough till now, only to bring things back to status quo.

There are times when one feels that one needs to take a stand, make his/her voice heard, to try and bring a halt to something that shouldn't happen, and is happening, yet. But circumstances spell out a different path altogether, and then we are faced with situations where we'd rather not let something be known to everyone, because it would do more harm than good. What is the truth, then? 

On Education

Indeed, over the years, all the definitions, I scooped up for exams, have been washed out from the accessible corners of my memory, thanks to them getting used to not being summoned for recollection. This is of course, barring a few things which happened to be of interest to me. For I still remember the day when mom-dad woke me up to have me get ready and wear a new set of clothes, socks and polished shoes, when I realised that was to be my first day at school. Since then, I have only gotten used to knowing, and not understanding education in the context of fourteen years spent at school, besides college, and in terms of qualifications that keep getting dropped like fused bombs around me. Taking up literature for my graduate course, is probably the best decision I have taken so far in terms of pursuing something that caught my interest. Learning and remembering things taught at school perfectly, and trying to pin them in all four corners of my memory, through semantic codewords, if I may term them so, sounded a little restricting, then and now. For despite 'words' being frightfully cradled by 'definitions', things go haywire. Miscommunication, failures, and so on.

Experiences or observations, translated into retrospective memories, having left most vivid of impressions on my memory/mind, are one of the few things I instinctively refer to, when stuck in situations I need to get the better of. Also, I would any day prefer to have something catch my curiosity and have me chase that thought till I reach a hypothesis, a conclusion, never mind if it's a dead-end. I don't want to wait for concepts to squint my very vision of myself, the world, and all that exists, and all that waits to be discovered. I would rather die thinking too much of things that make me wonder, with me progressing towards it, one step at a time, some forward, some backward, for the aim remains to go one level up in another dimension. That is when I day-dreamingly wonder when, or rather IF, I'll get to use a few or every thing I 'absorbed' like a sponge in moments of 'devoted student-hood'. And that's also when in a half-correcting, half-disappointed mode I remember what I've heard often - 'Every moment of your life, has something to teach, just that you realise the worth of it at such-and-such time.', and that's when I feel, that it doesn't seem to fit in with this situation. Maybe education in this symbolic order is just, self-regressive in nature. One that you may be aware of, but not necessarily be able to help.

The Anti-Rape Strategy

The moment the word ‘rape’ is dropped into a conversation, an immediate association is made with the portrait of a female. In that case, one really needs to reconsider the very definition, [it’s sad the word exits in our mental vocabulary] of rape – for it is [not just] the act of forcing someone for the act of sexual intercourse, but also that it is typically committed by man, according to Oxford dictionary. How about defining who a man is, next.

For, till 1992, male rape was not recognized as a criminal offence under British law, and was only termed as ‘non-consensual buggery’. Quoting an incident that occurred in 1992, where a man was gang-raped by a group of men,

Mr Leak, chairman of an organization for male rape victims, then said ‘that reluctance to report attacks stemmed from feelings of shame and humiliation. 'There is the fear that he will not be believed or that people will think that he asked for it, that he must be gay, or weak, unable to defend himself.'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/man-abducted-from-train-and-raped-1557478.html

On one hand, people speak of unnatural sex, and on the other hand, people seem to be confused about knowing what the term ‘rape’ could imply. So a man cannot be ‘raped’ because sex between people of the same sex is unnatural and hence cannot be clubbed under ‘rape’.

Then, a girl must be inside her house by 8 or 9 in the evening, because apparently, no one ever got raped till 8: 59 PM in the world’s history. A woman is better off returning home alone in the dead of the night than with a guy because every guy she interacts with outside her family milieu is a threat to her modesty. Then again, talking about incest and domestic sexual abuse, one cannot really know whom to trust. In that case, maybe it is better to not have more than one child, so as to banish that remote possibility. But what about the fact that minors, infants get raped as well - even better to not have children in the first place. What about the minors who end up committing the crime instead – not really a great idea to bring up a child in today’s times. And then, it’s not like old people are spared, nor that they don't commit the act, so might as well kill oneself and everyone else in the family, so that no one ever gets raped again. Oh but forced sex between a married couple is sacredly sanctioned, so let that be. So, building a family, encouraging your children to interact with people outside of their home, is the worst thing you could do in times like these. Let's head out to a massacre today, maybe that will purge us.