A borrowed Wish

I read it... I loved it... Sorry but I have borrowed it....

A wish like the morning dew upon the cold palm
Like the effervescent laugh on the lips of a three-year old
Like the silence between the naked lovers sitting by the window
Like the cluster of stars hovering above the crowded head
Like the eyes that glisten with hunger and shamelessness,
Like the madness of a vagabond venturing into the unknown, knowingly
Like the windy night removing the peels of sorrow… slowly
Like You and I, torn and apart, forming a coherent whole
Like the wish itself, born in the mind, nursed in the heart and never told
Like love, surpassing the boundaries of the known, traversing the limitless possibilities with that one wish…

One could not say this better.... Sigh!!!

Of the Head and the Heart

Before these first letters and words made into this space, I have written and keyed the back space key on my keyboard more than once. The indecisiveness was again between writing prose or verse and I know where this is coming from. I am in midst of a waging battle between the head and heart. This is not a new feeling but this time the sentiments are overpowering and it is exhausting me. The feeling is similar to the that of an athlete, running the last mile, the finishing line in site. But, I know that I am no athlete this time. I am just the road on which the race is being run.
The body, I realise, is strangely only a shell to the two imperialists-the head and the heart. It responds to commands that they order. When there is a truce between them the body is the happiest of all. Lest the imperialists decide to conquer each other, may hem break loose and so is my state right now.
So what is the bone of contention this time? If you ask me, I will not be able to define it just now, because as much the heart wants to disclose, the head wants to hide. Thus, my expressions are incoherent and yet in midst of it there may be a meaning, an elixir to calm the furnace that burns inside me, taking away pieces of me in each blow that one strikes to another. I write tonight, not because, I want to express, but because I wish to find myself in these words, lest all is wiped out in this war. Tonight, I write for myself.
There are photographs hung up on the wall that stare back at me and then there are photographs in my head (or is it the heart?) that stare into me. Each one has its own space and each one have stories with it. The stories are sometime simple tales and sometime part of an epic that I feel I live in. Our lives indeed are no less than an epic. Each story has another associated with it. Each moment is fraught with heroism and malice, love and hatred, betrayal and loyalty. The list would be endless. What happens when all these stories demand an ending. It is then that battle becomes inevitable. My stories today demand an ending and the head and the heart have different scripts in mind.
If the bard said "To be or not to be" is an eternal question, his postulation was not far from the truth that mortal beings have to go through. Yes, I generalise my state with everyone because at this moment I would feel a bit more secure if I were to feel that the state that I am in, is not something that I am waging alone. I have realised that we do not fear driving a moment to its truth, we fear the consequence of it. Hence we hold back and let out exasperated sighs speaking of it all someday (if ever) over intoxicated states and the more enterprising yet cowardly lot like me, would express it subtly with words that other would find hard to understand.
I have feared driving many decisions to their moments of truth and tonight they all come out of the closet and stare at me. It is not they want me to act on it but my heart renders in pain seeing their state and revolts against the head who push them back inside the closet. Of all these, one such decision is what my heart would not allow to be shoved back into the closet. So the battle.
Fools, I say. In the battle that you both ensue, the moments and memories around the decision is getting ravaged and raped. Stop it, I say. Let me survive with those moments and memories because if they die, I die with them. Understand that it is the memories in the head that lead to the moments that reside in the heart. One cannot survive without the other. And the decision... Know this, as I did a moment ago when I heard it:

Zarre Zarre Mein Usi Ka Noor Hai
Jhak Khud Mein Woh Na Tujhse Door Hai
Ishq Hai Usse To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Ishq Hai Usse, To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Is Ibadat Ka Yehi Dastoor Hai

Amen.

Silence

You and I
have a silence that
speaks of us.
A silence that measures
our thoughts,
our memories,
in a single moment of a lull.

You and I
have a silence that is
sometimes loud,
sometimes silent,
sometimes not at all.
Like a secret
known to you and me,
whispered to our ears
by our eyes.

You and I
have a silence that
undresses the noise between us,
bares our naked soul,
revealing,
like the way it always was.

You and I
live this silence,
long after the phone line is cut.
A Silence that speaks
Of all that remains
You in me
and I in you.

Inert

I have this very strange feeling since morning today. No matter how hard I am trying to define the feeling, I am just unable to do so. It is almost like as if I am been etherized, made inert. Every conversation that I am indulging in seems mindless and all that seems to be echoing in my mind is a drone of some thoughts, which I yet again have no idea of. If you ask me, it almost feels as if the whole universe has boiled down many questions on to me and I do not know which one to answer.

I am asking myself if this feeling actually erupted with the first chapter that I began to read of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." The philosophy he propounds is interesting -

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into new heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

I understand this thought but I cannot relate it to my condition. Is it weight that burdens me or is it the mere absence of any that is managing to create these strange confabulations? My guess is that, it cannot be the absence of a burden. Rather, it is confluence of many 'weights' that is creating this condition in me.

Simmi and I will be distanced even further, now with me shifting to Dwarka. There is a piece of news regarding my professional growth that I have been waiting for since sometime and the anxiety of both seems to be the root cause of this inertness. Along with this and so many other thoughts that I seem to be effortlessly indulging myself in, this condition refuses to budge. Permit me to Sigh. It helps. Every pause helps, but only momentarily. Grrrrrrr!!! Oh so Prufrockian!!!

...And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Saints are Sinners Who don't give up!!!

Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:55 AM: Simmi had this status on her gtalk and it swept me off my feet. When I first read it, I thought that she had picked this line as a random thought from Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" which she has been reading for sometime now. I gave the line a thought and though it intrigued me, I failed to arrive at a concrete or even abstract meaning to the same. I requested her to explain it to me and from that moment on when she did so, I am in a complete awe of the statement. I will try my level best to rephrase the conversation that we have had online and later on phone to share my ecstacy and mental orgasm:

Me: Tell me na what it implies

Simmi: Wait

(after 2 minutes of innocuous prodding)

Simmi: Saints are sinners, because they refuse to give up on their ideals...

Me: ? (I was wondering if she had read anything Marxist recently)

Simmi: Look, how do you define a sin is inconsequential. What matter is, that saints in their attempt to correct and do things right and in doing so they end up 'sinning' in expecting a result. Expectation is a want, in many ways a sin. The true form of duty should not hinge on expectation or result, but only on duty. So many saints in succumbing to expectations, become 'sinners'... (pause)

Me: Go on... ( I was not convinced. If a person expects, then he cannot be a saint, is what I thought!! But I knew that she had more to this, than just that)

Simmi: Saints also have a will to never give up... They will fight for a cause because they expect the change, which for all probability might be for the best of mankind,... but they fight because they expect a change and in doing so they succumb to it as a temptation. (I was sniffing a philosophy of Gita in it)... I shall discuss this with you further when we talk. Got to run now.

Me: K... Hmmmm

I was still thinking...

We could never proceed with this conversation, but I bet there was more to this. My verdict - "I liked the conversation"