I will miss you

There were times when we cried together.
Sometimes courtesy of you, sometimes me.
And there were these little secrets that we shared,
They still remain, many of them not to be cared for now.
There was a time when we spent most of our time together,
The little games we played, the small fights we had.
The way we made up so fast, realizing both were at fault.
There were instances we corrected the flaws in each other,
Sometimes taking long to accept ‘yes I am wrong’.
I still remember us plotting against the ‘not-so-friendly’,
Soon realizing how unintelligent this venture had been.

How you came into my life, meaning so much to me,
Taking a place in my heart, in my family,
Like no one else’s has.

The fun we had, the jokes we cracked,
The songs we wrote and sang,
The questions of life we answered,
The problems in math we solved,
The trips we made,
The hours on the phone we spent,
The crisis at home we made,
The deepest feelings we shared,
I will miss all these.

I will miss you.

Criminalization of politics

This was the topic given for an inter-school extempore competition held when I was in the final year at school. Though I wasn’t taking part in that event, I had mentally made certain arguments regarding the same. If I were a participant I thought, I would start my talk, asking the crowd a question – ‘How many of you students sitting before me would like to enter active politics? Those who would, please raise your hand”. The sparse response I assumed I would get, would be the starting point of my attack on the Indian polity, I thought.

I carried with me this tendentious belief, all through these five years that have passed since. I inferred that politics was turning sour because of under-participation from the ‘better’ and the ‘more educated’ strata of the society. I concluded that it is only with active participation from today’s youth, politics in particular, and the country in general could develop and reach the heights, that many have prophesied it would.

My stance on this issue took a new turn after I watched an hour long program on NDTV, where a panel of well known members and political analysts from the media and the polity, were discussing who the next Indian president should be. There was an opinion poll taking place simultaneously, where mainly urban Indians (with access to mobile phones and internet) were making their voices heard (though of not much significance in this particular case of nominating the next president). The poll result clearly showed that the urban Indian had lost faith in the polity and preferred non-politicians like the Infosys’ stalwart Mr. Narayan Murthy and Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen to take the seat of the highest honour in our country.

It is at this juncture in the program, when the panel and the participating crowd in the discussion were happily playing the blame-game, accusing the politicians of their wrong doings, the editor of the Pioneer newsgroup (who was one of the panelists), made a very valid statement. He asked the public for the number of straightforward and hounourable men in any profession - among journalists, among technocrats, among sportsmen. Since there was not one profession in which all the persons involved could be given a clean chit, he said that that was the case with politics too. He reminded that it was the same society that threw politicians. So unless the mindset of the people changes and the society becomes a morally improved one, not one of the professions, including politics, could get a totally ‘clean’ group of workers.

Though I still believe in my past inferences and the plausible solution I had mentioned about, I had no other option than to wholeheartedly support his point of view.

Near, but still far

Every time I take one step
forward in understanding you,
I sit with a sense of satisfaction.
It is then I scuttle;
for every step I take,
the destination seems to
go a few more steps away
from where it was.

Would I ever reach my destination?
You could make the task easier
by complementing this effort.

Unnatural

The sky was glowing red,
unnatural for that time of the day,
giving the dry leaves
an unnatural crimson radiance.

There was smoke seen
at the horizon,
from some bush fire;
Unnatural, because it had been raining.

The moist environs
totally unlike the summer heat
that had troubled many
in the past month - unnatural too.

Forgetting you – unnatural.

Nature’s unnatural nature.

Question

They say, “Once bitten – twice shy.”

Now, if twice bitten -
would it be forever shy?

Goodbye time

The feeling had finally sunk
in the people around.
We were parting,
after four years of fun and frolic.

We had the downs which
played low to the umpteen highs.
Who would remember the
one black sheep,
when we had ninety nine white ones?

The people around weren’t their
normal selves for a few days now.
They were happy at getting across
a wide autobahn in life,
but then the idea of parting from
friends, wasn’t very appetizing.

Some asked me how I felt about the same,
I replied that I had experienced
many such days in life.
I gave instances – when I had to leave
my parents, when I left school – two different ones.
I didn’t know when I answered that I was
only feigning mental strength.

We all said to each other,
that our lives would cross each
others some time, somewhere.
I knew we had our apprehensions about
this question – we hid it well.

When it was the actual goodbye time,
I still felt I was the ‘experienced’ one.
Little did I know what I was feeling
deep within.
When on the bus taking me away
from them, a sudden sense of loneliness,
gloom dawned in.

A phone call from one of them
was the last straw on the camel’s back.
It broke my defenses.
I had tears wet my eyes after a really long time.
I lost my normally present poise.
I had my glance fixed out of the window,
lest the co-travelers would see me in that state.

With my eyes moist I felt ‘normal’.

Life - the journey

You are sitting beside me,
on this journey,
twitching and turning.
The frequent glances at your watch
showing your impatience to reach home.
The afternoon sun and heat
playing their parts in
adding to your annoyance.

There is this part of me,
making a secret wish.
Could this journey last
for some more time -
a few more moments with you?

One question lingers in my mind -
can we traverse the paths in the
journey called life
beside each other?