Surrender

I am sitting here in my room.
The last couple of days,
I haven’t been myself.
My dependence on externally
driven happiness
is teaching me a lesson or two.

There are some things,
they say, you can’t put in words.
What I have been feeling lately
feels just like this.

I started off, trying to explain
what I am going through.
Words fail me.
I give up on this venture.

Lost

I look into your eyes,
in an attempt to find
the proverbial way
to your heart.
The beauty; the intensity,
of your cherubic eyes,
making the path labyrinthine.
I find myself miserably lost.

Why the ruckus?

For the last month, the issue of electing the President of the nation has been bagging front page
coverage in almost all national dalies.The presidential race was under discussion in the world of the internet too. A couple of weeks ahead of the declaration of the candidates by the UPA and the NDA (the third front did not exist then!), I was forwarded a message, asking me to log on to some web site and sign a petition in support for a second period for Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam. I did that without giving a thought (the incumbent being the 'people's president') and also forwarded the message to all my friends.


One of them replied telling that the ruckus that was being created, regarding the President's
election is totally unwarrented, since the President of India has only ceremonial powers. I felt the argument to be very true and wondered why I had not thought in those lines earlier.


It is through articles on the the President's role in India, I learnt about the real significance of the Presidential race.Firstly, in today's India, coalition governments rule the roost. Coalitions are inherently associated with instabilities, and under circumstances when no clear winners exist after elections in a state, it is through the discretionary powers of the President, the decision is made regarding who will rule the state. Secondly, it is true that bills which are sent to the President for his consent have to be mandatorily signed by him the second time. What is not understood is that when returned from the President's office, the first time, the political parties consider the suggestionsproposed by the President, and most of the time, changes in the bill are introduced to comply with the President's suggestions.
These two powers of the President imply that a diligent selection of the President is a necessity.
But the partisan struggle between the various political fronts that we have witnessed in the last
couple of weeks has made a mockery of the whole issue.

Your own

I still remember the days we had together when young,
A complete lack of care and responsibility,
supplemented by the sheer will to have fun!
The tears we shed and the little tiffs we had,
The bear hugs and the kisses that followed - the panacea at hand.

Time and changed circumstances
have brought in a thousand miles between us.
But we keep holding on to the common strands
of love, of friendship, of kindness, of care,
and of the certainty that we would be there for each other
even when the world has seemingly turned bad!

We have in us the belief, that the closeness
we’ve shared and felt with each other,
would not spiral to the physical distance that has us apart.
This belief and hope keep us going.

Hope

I remember knocking on this door once
waiting outside for an acknowledgement
which was not to be received.

That day I had left with some hope.
Was wondering ‘when would this
dogs day be?’ ;
That day I believed that there would
surely be – as they say – a Sunday.

Today I am standing in front of the same wooden door.
Facing the closed door,
gives me the shivers I had then.
Acknowledgement or not, I am knocking.

The latter scenario
would not leave me with any hope.

Childhood

I was travelling back from work one evening.
A couple with their little child happened
to sit beside me.
The girl was crying over some petty issue.
Her parents kept trying hard to console her.

How much I wished I could tell her
to make the most of these years,
when she is with her parents.

I may be older then her, but not old enough.

It is true when people say that we value
things more when we do not have them
in our vicinity; this as exactly what I felt.

In a few more years, even this little girl,
then grown up, may travel in a bus,
and feel the same, seeing some child cry.

It would be late by them to make changes.
She can try to change the present,
If only I could tell her.

She may be too young to comprehend all this.

Motherly love

I was young, somewhere in the fourth or
fifth year in school
I returned from school one day
not feeling very well.
I kept sitting on the sofa,
then on the bed;
this continued for some time.
Seeing me sit on the sofa,
my mother came to me.
She touched my forehead with her palm
to check for running temperature.
Her guess proved to be right,
I was having fever.
I hadn’t mentioned about the ill-feeling
to her, but she could read it.
Some days after I had recuperated,
I asked her how she had found it out.
She replied that since I wasn’t
the chirpy me that day,
she knew something was wrong.
Is there any reason for
love to be sought by a being?

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?

Forgetting yesteryear

The defeat of the Indian cricket team at the hands of the minnows, Bangladesh, and against the more formidable Sri Lanka, has drawn the ire of its supporters. They have gone overboard in expressing their displeasure at the team’s defeat, by organizing mock funerals for the players, burning effigies of the players, raising slogans against the player etc. I ask all of us to take a turn back, and observe our own lives. How many times have we failed at attempts in the past? So many of these failures have come when people - our friends and our family- have expected something from us. Did these people go around burning our effigies or shouting torrents of abuse against us when we had failed? In fact, these were the times when they supported and encouraged us the most. Why the difference when it comes to the team’s loss? The team has accepted defeat gracefully. Now it is time for its supporters to accept gracefully that the players are also humans.

The journey continues

In your years in this world,
you touched so many hearts.
You brought smiles to many a face.
Your convictions lessened
others misery.

You climbed to heights,
you would never be satisfied with –
your desire to continually improve.
You’ve left your mark in our lives.

You are remembered today.
In a years time, people would
accept this loss.
This void you’ve left, would
show its face in our lives
if not theirs.

I still remember the lessons you
taught me during this course.
I never told you how grateful I am
for these.
Today I may be late in this attempt
I have your words ringing in my mind.
You said ‘It is better late than never’.

I am not shedding a tear for you today.
you would never had enjoyed
seeing me thus.
Thanks for giving me this strength.

You are at the gate of another world today.
A higher force has felt that it’s time
you graced some other lives
in some other world.

Closed

You are watching the person facing you;
Looking in to his eyes.
He’s opening himself bit by bit,
letting you into places he has
let no one before.

But you still don’t yield.
You remain rock solid –
closed.

The rationalist in me

I had never believed that I was a quintessential rationalist. But I always had a thirst for knowledge, especially knowledge of the unexplained. I remember questioning every religious ritual (from something small like visiting temples to more challenging ones like avoiding non vegetarian food during months of fasting) I was put through. Some other features of our religion (and largely a part of the Indian culture) like the disregard shown to our feet (the prayer one says before one puts his feet on the ground, asking mother earth for forgiveness, for touching her with our feet exemplifying this) have not got an advocate in me. It was this rationalist in me that pondered on this issue – the issue of life after death – or can we say life before birth!

I believe a very simple principle – of good begetting good. I believe that life throws at you what you have thrown at it – both the bad and the good done For a staunch believer of these statements, the question of whether there is life after death (or more precisely life before birth) would give an indubitable answer – YES! I have only one argument as a vindication. Take a newspaper and read the accounts of little children dying or being inflicted with injuries, or of them being exploited, due to various causes and for different reason like war, disease, or simply ill-luck. Had these tiny tots done such grave mistakes in the few years they graced the lives of the people around, that they have been reprimanded thus?

One thought lingers in my mind – in what sense am I a rationalist?

The Breeze

I took up a seat near the window,
hoping to catch some light,
to do some reading.

The open window,
allowed a light breeze in,
which brought something along.

It carried with it,
the fragrance of the wild flowers
on the trees outside.

Distance made the
flowers look modest.
Their beauty and scent
augmenting their smallness.

It wasn’t a very strong scent.
But it succeeded in initiating
a desire in me.

A desire to refashion the whiff to
a continuous feeling.
That was not to be.

It is said that all good things in life
come in tiny packets.
It was true in this case.
If I had my longing satisfied,
maybe I would never have taken
pleasure in the scent
as much as I do today.

A small dose of the good,
with a discontentment -
a want for more,
is the most beautiful feeling,
second to none.

The Yellow Trees

The yellow trees along the street;
charming they were,
forming a delicate arch over the path –
Attracting birds;
Squirrels playing hide and seek
on their branches.
How many had noticed these?

A few birds – elegant, sweet,
but tiny,
perch on the stalk holding the flowers.
A subtle movement of their neck,
and they sip the nectar
from the yellow flowers.
How many had noticed these?

Open up your senses, look around;
in people, in animals, in birds,
and in these yellow trees.
When beauty is all around,
How can people complain of seeing none?
The ‘beholder’ is different,
and so are the people.