Independence Day Sarcasm: Pleading forgiveness to Tagore

Where the mind is neglected and the head is immersed deep in the past
Where emotions are free to be inflamed by each and everything
Where the world is broken into convenient fractions by smooth selfish curtains
Where tomes are written without making any sense
Where tireless striving humans crawls to 50 rupees poverty line
Where the clear stream of sycophancy has lost its ability to laugh at sarcasm
Where the herd is led forward killing all possible questions
Into that heaven of inactive ecstasy, my adopted father and my disputed mother let me sleep

Wisdom of 26 Years

Its 26 years and we are not much surprised. 2-3 December 1984, poisonous gas entered the air of Bhopal, surrounded those who were sleeping, or preparing to sleep, killed, remained in the air, entered the water sources and importantly generated a law-suite which ran for marathon 26 years. Gas must have died in its intensity since accused have been given punishment of 2 years and fine of rupees one lakh. Are those who were guilty have really been punished? Is that funny thing called ‘Justice’ has been delivered? And have we learnt anything from that night, which killed many people instantly and polluted healthy life for years coming. Let’s go one by one.
Who was guilty? There is list of 9 officials of Union Carbide which were summoned and eventually punished. But they didn’t really own the company. The plant which operated at Bhopal had about 49% stakes from Indian. It is understood and fair from strict profit driven framework under which corporate operate, that Union Carbide denied many of the charges. Union Carbide has provided medical help after the incident, invested in the hospital which started functioning from 2001 and started few other initiatives. I am not advocating the company, but I do not want to be blind in putting all the blame on Union Carbide. It is failure of those who should have stood for the victims. They didn’t stand, but played safe and to the extent, didn’t allow the lesson to be taught. Who are they? List must start from Government of India, a usual culprit in many of the crimes against people who don’t really bring foreign investments or add considerable percentages to growth engine. But one must go deeper, who constitutes the state? Who allows the state to take actions? Who has power to show and revert defects of the states? I do not want to blame the state too, as I do not see it as some absolute entity operating on its own. I blame to our lost consciousness of justice, which is happily sleeping in our mind and does some impotent yawning when we read loud articles citing deaths, exploitation and corruption. We allowed it to sleep somewhere near 1947, and since then some pseudo system, which delivers justice is operating.
Am I sounding like a woman who few days back declared to be on that side and made some provocative statements to give a temporary boil to urban blood and generate some lukewarm discussion on democracy? May be. I want to sound like one mad youth who did something to ‘make the deaf here’. How can be ‘Freedom’ or ‘Justice’ are given to somebody? One is free or not free, but never a one is made free. And freedom is never a collective function. It is strictly individual. When we say a group of people is free, it means they can come together, are free to decide where they can curtail individual freedoms and accept something which if violated, can enforce punishment. Such simple concept becomes extremely difficult when group is not homogeneously formed from inside and that what case of India is. How freedom and Justice are linked? Who determines something is Just and something is not. It is collective decision of free minds, which keeping in mind spectrum of action an human being can take, determines widest range to operate individual freedoms and curtail which will harm group, even if benefit individual.
We all want to live as we want. Individually, the end one wants to pursue is of being free to do whatever one wants. Collectively, we all want to be in situation where we all are free to do what we want, without cutting others wish to be free. There is difference between these two ends. Some act can be termed as error when viewed from personal point of view, on collective front it becomes crime. Humanist cries for terrorists, maoists or police brutalities because they see terrorist as an individual who is walking erroneous path. A nationalist accepts these killings since he perceives these acts as threatening for collective existence and termed them crime. What one should be?
I do not know. But I know what to do if I get into such a dilemma. One must call for consciousness we all have for our own and for one whom we see as our fellow human being. I feel outraged at the verdict not because it is delivered in such liquidated manner after so many years, I feel outraged because knowing that this is the system, one never really try to deliver a timely blow to make it correct. A Law, a society or system which corrupts in its mechanism of self improvement, needs external aid or annihilation to appear in improved form. If we look at evolution of societies, we see that every time an act which was out of domain of acceptability happened to cure the disease. A mutiny, on success becomes a justified struggle.
Have we learnt lesson? Our blind belief about perfection of technology is yet dominant. Bhopal tragedy has not shaken, and now it is part of distant memory. We are allowing nuclear power plants, of scale which was not functioned before and can have most disastrous and silent damage. We are allowing them in fragile coastal area and near the sea. Companies which will run these plants have limited liabilities in any Bhopal Like tragedy. I see the need of power. To some extent, I agree that nuclear power will be current solution, but are we placing solution in manner which will cause least harm if anything goes wrong? And, if ‘the state’ is repeatedly failing to place it in right manner, why we are not delivering the timely blow, which may end up in some short scale violence, but can make amendments which will help. Even ‘the state’ in its actual operation, is run by a person. That person can err, but should learn eventually. If there is no learning, then that person must be punished, either by ballet or bullet. One must be conscious with bullet, but should not forget that it supports ballet.

Remaining and other update

Most of them had left. they have asked me to keep few things of them. these things have filled my room and room looks different.
Some of our friends were ill. but now they are recovering.
I cleaned fan, tube light and my table yesterday. dust filled my hands and then I washed them. Wash basin is dirtier than it was when I started living in the room.
I am under the influence of 'Catcher in the rye....' this particular genre is called 'Stream of consciousness'. Like stream of water flowing through tab over your palms, then to wrists and then dropping into sink since it cannot go anti-gravity. Stream of breaths, stream of letters, stream of memories, stream of steam, stream of books and stream of streams...
i am feeling like throwing darts in the darkness. Soon some darts will chase me, like your words.
I am not drunk, but I am feeling elated.
Dart, Dark, Drunk....
I took few things from my friend's room. i heard voice in empty room and then neglected. I can't use those things. there are touches everywhere.
I forget everything sometimes and then remember with one tiny hit.
I am writing like some hostel student writing to his mom, which never really his mother.
I can't send letter to undefined address. It returns.
Else is fine. I am learning about fear, memories, future, others, regions, truth and so many other things.
Evening is little difficult. I cannot drink tea alone.
I write to somebody and at the end of writing I forget whom I am addressing. So I am writing here.

5. References of Ephemerence

Realization doesn't last long. One who gets one quits the whole game so quickly. There is no fun living once you know what worth it was. But he was alive, and he realized being alive is being in reference to something.
Reference of what? whose son or daughter or student or relative you are? Where do you have your home? What is your education? how much money do you get per month? What do you want to be in some absurd number of years down the line? What book do you read? What sort of clothes you wear? Who is your wife? What movie you watched recently? Contacts in phone book, people who will come to meet you if you are hospitalized, the college where you got your degree and what not... the list goes on until one goes off. Fuck! nothing absolute.... everything is damn relative... understood in reference to something else..
Even this sea has references of shores. He satirically smiled at his own addiction to analogies. Since long back he lived with reference to what he saw himself from some different place than he actually stood. And kept himself providing analogy of some or other story he provided to his life. One cannot lie, means should not, one should tell stories instead. What if one becomes a story, a mix of lie and imagination.
He walked back. Different sounds reached his ears. one of sea waves was loudest, then conversations of couples sitting near shore. He felt like a silent participant into so many dreams around him. He turned into one scantily lit lane and walked till he came before a restaurant. He couldn't enter. He was not somebody who carries thousand bucks and lots of cards and drives a car and has a perfect postured woman with him.
A car stopped near him, inches away. It was some latest model. It's rear shined in lights of restaurant. A handsome guy came out, and soon followed a girl. Her smooth legs went into borders of red dress above her knees. Near perfect buts mingled into flat roads of back. Her hair were meticulously made. In all darkness, her neck shone among black of her hairs. She locked her fingers into her man's. she leaned on him, giggled, her breast touching his body. He put his hand around her waist, and put his nose near to her. Her lips made an inviting movement for a while, for a second or none and her finger with colored sharp nail carved on his chest. His hands moved slowly on her back. They came closer till their lips touched, eyes half shut and hands pulling each other even more.
He walked away. The peace he had touched moments back was all shattered now. He just wanted to be that guy now. He wished to be touch on her lips. He wished to be a finger on her bare skin. He wished to be caress through her hairs. And knowing that he cannot be one hit him hard next moment. He lacked references for such.
He kept walking till he reached railway station. Now his ears are full with crowd of voices. Yellings, calls, bye's and hi's, names, sledgings, breaths, sighs, whistles. Flock of smells captured him. A strong smell of human sweat, perfumes, urine, dog shits, eatables, smokes and faint smell of distant sea. He kept walking through pool of human bodies touching him, shaking him, pulling and pushing him, avoiding him and surrounding him to provide him one eternal reference of crowd. It is metaphysics in action, he noted and erased. Fuck to philosophy!!
He got the ticket and took the train. He stood catching breeze near the door. Coach was full not croweded. What day is today? He just didn't remember. Whatever it is. Why does it matter, he thought. He felt nice being away from scale of time for a while. Whenever he feels time, he feels it escaping from his grip, something always getting late, timing of everything is always lagging behind some moment few slots of times back. This is better, no time. Train stopped stations. he felt sleepy being inside large amount of exhaled carbon dioxide. Now all he saw are heads and all he felt is different clothes and underneath human flesh. He leaned on rod behind him, straightned himself to avoid touches and felt his breathing at his nostrils. Crowd was expanding itself at every station. He sort of started listing touches he feelingh and meanwhile concentrating on edges of his nostrils. First one loose elderly skin looking to be hold on by crowd, then a tight working man hand having metal wrist watch, then hairs of small boy suffocating among butts of crowd, then contracting touch of a girl and then one arrogant shoulder almost hitting him in his abs. Meanwhile he dozed off in his attempts of concentration. He thought of getting down at next station and having something. He was feeling hungry.
He got down at station and swam through crowd towards exit. He stopped for while to see where he was. He knew these roads, these garland sellers, these book vendors, these smells of coffees , scent of incense sticks in the temples, a warm murmur of friends having tea, fast walking priests and old, tired couples walking slowly from the roadside. He thought of one cheap place to eat.
He ordered a meal. H ordered few items more than his meal. He looked at people eating around him and found them looking at him. He just concentrated on his meal. He kept eating, few crumbs failed on his wrist, he made noise while sipping curry, he ate with much part of his fingers inside his mouth and he almost licked his dish. He felt like some animal who is grabing all pray it had hunted. He paid the bill and walked away on some street entering a gloomy looking next lane. It is like web of lanes and addresses are told with reference to lanes next and behind. So when you are searching somebody here, you are like trapped into old magic of lanes. but he was searching no one. He walked some distance and lit the cigarette.
He felt better when nicotine pushed his spirit a bit. He had few continuous long puffs. He had almost forgotten why he started all his roaming. He watched street though shores of smokes. He suddenly found himself being pulled away from everything else. He tried thinking about his friends, his mother,. He tried feeling a connection with somebody. He tried calling on number of a girl he had flirted with long ago. But somehow he let every impulse pass and emptied his mind with that particular thought. Names of some books flashed before his eyes, he tried sticking plots and dialogues of those books to moment he is right now, but that too disappeared. He threw away the but of cigarette. He was all sweating, his heart beats are quicker than normal. He felt like hiding behind some warm and friendly darkness. Silence is pleasant when it has certain termination. He wanted to speak now, but all his word found a counter word and annihilated. To each of his feeling, there came and struck an opposing feeling. Cloud of pains burst inside his head and yet he couldn't call anybody. He see people around him withering. A web of lanes turned into web of his own imaginations and choked him. He sobbed, muttered something with fast drying lips and lost the last thread of consciousness.

There won't be a cry
nor a tiny hint of interior
What will you hear is a call
my deeds will generate
loud enough to reach in any corner you choose to be....

4. Awakening

(first three parts are prologue, city: initial verses, dream skeletons)

Bus kept traveling smoothly and he slept for a while as if he is living kind of swift and smooth life he always looked for. life with constancy of motion, life without doubts of if and should, just a life. but it was just for a while. soon dreams came back, resembling the memories he had, like old skeletons in brand new clothes.
'But why you did that?' somebody was asking.
the voice was hurt, pains filled in it beyond any estimation of depth. he tried answering with sort of poetic reality he has assumed for himself and that voice. In poems, reader resides in words unwritten and one's ownership over that unexpressed content and twin relationship with expressed poem make one reader, a true reader. But poet often forgets that such a reader is assumption to express poem, not hard reality on which poem can grow. he too has forgotten. he changed his poems and so reality which kept shaping his poems.
He lured words to fit in the stage he had set for them and to lure them he camouflaged. now he has forgotten his original color or colorlessness.
'Enough of this webs of yours. you cannot balance emotions on threads of your momentary colors.'
That voice was sharp, wounded and stroked him like a whip.
He started fumbling. He tried erecting some temporary clouds of words to cover the unbearable light which was penetrating him.
'you got to answer questions'. voice said, as if it was of stranger.
he knew this point, he had escaped it before.
he uttered 'I answer but my answers are not what you expect or will fit in image you have about my answers.'
voice laughed, a sarcastic laugh. 'you cannot fool me. Answer!'
'I am not fooling. Nobody accepts something as answer until it fits into our image of that answer. We seek answers because there is space in us which needs something. There is space inside us because whatever person, event we enter inside us cannot fit the experience of that person or event. Experiences are bigger than our encounters with them.'
He expected voice to turn sympathetic, showing some congratulating softness. A strange silence followed, silence which has germs of self destruction, silence which deepens chaotic interpretations, silence which let words form shape which is farthest away from their birthplace.
'Is this your answer? Answers are in plain facts which cannot be excavated further. answer me who am I for you? Answer me who are those for you? answer me. '
'You? Those? and how can I tell it in facts. I know no facts except few like my name. And they too are very shallow'.
'You are weaving one illusion again, but not this time.'
'But I do not have defined me and any of my references.'
'But references are what we have about anybody else. We comprehend by references, not by what it is actually'.
'But that actual exists. Reference is one limited dimension of our perception of that real. Real is incomprehensible.'
'So what do you mean? You are multi-dimensional, much more than what your references can tell about you. Aren't you lying? Fooling yourself?'
Voice didn't say last lines, but it was there unsaid, but almost felt.
He kept looking towards fingers of his feet, aimlessly scratching digs, his body was trembling inside, he felt like jumping from a very very tall cliff or crying, tears rolled to his eyes. he controlled them and kept watching fingers of his feet.
'So be with your incomprehension.' Voice marked these words without saying and faded.
Even with disappearance of that voice he was not at peace. Loss of pain is a loss only. Having nothing is not exactly happy.
He woke up. He was alone in the bus. He felt sea-breeze and salty smell of air. He was soaked with sweat. Few drops were lingering on his eyebrows. They were about to fall and light, entering though their dense media was splitting in droplets of brightness and illuminated his eyes. He removed those drops, dried his forehead and got down from the bus.
Sea was in front of him. He knew this places, lot many poems this sea has in it and he has taken few of them. All those poems then formed a collective appearance, took some name and co-ordinates along space-time and dragged his life till here. He looked at sea, he looked at shores which are too distant to be perceived clearly, he looked at sky, where light was making incomplete attempt to define age old darkness. He felt all moments he lived or thought of living collapsing into the one where he was now. He felt every corner was getting folded into the place beneath his feet. It is just now and here and I.

I know this is only way to release the uneasy sorrow I am carrying with me. I am not used to keep something locked for so much time, except my attempt to identify you with name. It is weird silence, it is silence after long awaited death of bed-ridden person who is better if dies. But even such desired worst result when actually happens shocks in most extraordinary manner. This is numbness of such shock that my words are just lingering around.
I look back to all distance we walked. There are places that any relation can reach. But what make sense of loss severely painful are some spots where we talked, a child in me to a ever present child to you. I was like boy who has just done something wrong in his home and has run away to his dearest friend, to tell her whatever he did without missing any detail and then be free with burden of guilt. Do you remember these spots my friend? You are, I know, because forgetting is habit for those who need to produce constant lies. I am just seeing all these spots, bright in calm, soothing light of their own and making your silence bearable by travel through them.
I never found a child in me so easily conversable. And I realize everybody has such child in them and this child keeps them weird enough so that they remain identifiable in pools of regularity. Child is fearless, to touch something and then on keeping it or leaving. The way I see you loosing yourself in simple acts, trivial for somebody like me burdened with me false sense of theories about world, I wondered whether I have such doors in my self to converse with my innocent self. Now, with your departure, a boy is wondering through all these doors, searching all places where he used to find his friend waiting for him and going lost, as there is no sign of anybody ever present. There can’t be even a cry, because sense of absence has struck him like a hammer, a quick load of immense pains turning him unconscious to any reality around him and he is just watching a newly found world with dry and empty eyes.
It is growing up. When one grows one comes to know that we have limited ability to assimilate people we like to be in us. We cannot assimilate them in all the forms they have. We have to choose. We have to choose whether we take them with us or we carry weightless but heavy memories. I hate such choice dear, and I hate is forced on me by time. I feel toyed, made useless to convey anything to anybody and not able to remain child. I am making escape by saying time did it? Such illusive masks are wore by grown ups, of ambiguous questions, of inconclusive philosophies. Innocence goes without any mask, and that is why it is stern enough not to look back on decisions once taken.
Will you read this? Let time have this answer. But I know what you will say after reading this, “ grown ups are like that..”.

Memoirs of Poems: Dream skeletons

He traveled back into time by flash of poems. Nostalgia surrounded him and dry, colorless details of past were transformed into a romantic movie, running at breathtaking pace and projecting life as collage of so many beautiful dreams, even now, at a irreversible distance he has walked from them, he felt them still growing inside. He thought, as he regularly thinks about poem of poems, not just poem, 'poems are not imaginations, not any work of fiction is purely imagination. we cannot visualise anything unless we have encountered with some sort of approximation of that visualisation in out lives. it is our mind which then transcends them, remove unwanted dimensions and fools us with product called 'imagination'. ' He thought of imagining her, whom he had traced through his poems, he has marked her footsteps on every encounter he had with her shadows, he has kept some hidden spot on his now rotten soul where she scribbled her poems sometimes. Bus was travelling through southern part of city now. He loved this area. It has ecstasy of life completely filled inside, in slums surrounding skyscrapers, in sea shores lined with free flowing high ways, in delicacies presented in inviting rappers, possibilities exploding of flesh and mind, he loved it. He remembered when he first walked here, it was 9 years back, when he was just a boy, pipping into region of youth which then seemed so wonderful.
Suddenly bus entered into some region, like Harry Potter movie. He never knew city has such a part. Road was surrounded with old villas, creepers running down from balconies of those villas. Every villa is like age old myth which kept fueling dream of the city into distant minds and made them come here and live. though old these structures are, they have exuberance defying their ages. He felt poisoning by bars hold inside these villas, beauties sketched and carved inside those dungeons of passions, he was getting ultra-conscious, poems vibrating strongly near the skin, blood on the verge of exploding, memories coming out through every breath and occupying empty seats of the bus. He closed his eyes, felt a soothing breeze touching tips of his nose and ears, and open his eyes by a familiar but heard long back voice.
She has come, as if listening to urge. She never came like that before, he thought. Why now? 'I know when I need to come', she answered. His doubt melted away by her smile. He felt security surrounding him as she approached and sat beside him. Nothing changed, except few lines on her faces, which have grown matured now and are adding to her look. He puzzled though, to say or ask her anything. He just kept looking at her, sensing her existence near him, covering his orphan one, pacifying every wave of disturbance. Through glimpses of outside visible through patterns of her hair, he watched moon light touching calm sea surface, reflecting back and shining with sprinkles. Finally, he found route to speak to her and asked, 'why had you come? And, will you leave soon?'
'Life has some points when it comes and asks us to ride it. Question comes in deceiving form, it is asked so humbly that we feel it will stay humble like this forever. We have to humble with that humble moment, we have to understand that there is only infinitesimal distinctness we posses, everything else is continuous journey of impressions. We should see what choices that moment has, and then answer it, whatever our answer is. But we should not be rude with it. That moment disappears, then comes mirages of self search, vacant justifications of survivals and misery of dragged behind life, never living it. We deny destiny even when we are crushed under it, and destiny denies us of single moment of unifying with life that we see it in us, but are not able to live. '
He bewildered by what he heard, but soon he realized he deserved what he listened. 'So how do you see me now? Do you think I have nothing left and I am just getting flown by wind? Do you think all poems are just empty treasures? Is only way to happiness is to discover your madness and leave the world to run on it's own? Is there nothing one gets by watching others' lives and then channelling them into another world of stories and songs? Is it all useless whatever I lived? If it so, why not you just end it? I want one new, untouched by you, untouched by any conclusion of what it can be or should be, and then I will sketch my own. '
She put her fingers in his hairs, pulled his head into her lap and kept running her fingers on his head.
'Once I was sitting in the hospital. waiting for test reports of my father. There was one kid playing there. He was running behind balloon given to him by his mother. Suddenly he put his foot wrongly, foot twisted and he gave a very painful cry. It wasn't a very harsh twist, but that boy started crying as if he was in immense pain. His mother ran towards him, her face was red and worried. She took him in her lap, sat on the coach, removed shoes from the foot which was hurt. That boy had leg deformation. The foot got hurt because it was very weak, almost lifeless extension of ankle. It was that shoe which has supported his weakness, but with twist shoe separated from that ugly deformity and he cried. I was in tears when I saw that such innocent boy and his leg. His mother soothed him, but he refused to get down from her lap. He never really looked at anybody else, not to that balloon which he chased so vigorously few minutes back. His cries were not loud, but he kept sobbing in his mother's lap, his weak leg floating in the air, and show lying sadly on the ground.'
She made nodding sound. He felt very calm, as that child would have felt in mother's arms. He was falling like a leave, who has finished it's assigned conversion of sunlight and now ready to meet the roots. He had fallen asleep.

City: initial verses

Night has some strange properties. Means everything has some strange capacities, but night is like mother of all miracles. Night is bonsai death. Every day dies in realm of night. Now what one has lived can be seen in many manner. He is seeing it too. He, one who took the bus and put himself into journey of nowhere. He is a bus, yes, he is a bus, which travels different routes, take people to their destinations or non-destinations like offices, rests into yards and then resumes again, but bus doesn't really reach anywhere. It is kind of entity which reaches everywhere without having any dictate. So he resembles to bus, right now he is in the bus....
So much people, he thought. He has been thinking about this huge and growing presence of people around him since long. He hated them and tried metamorphosed them as characters in his poem. But then his poems flooded by diversities this mass easily posses and nobody really understood what he was trying to write by those poems. This is problem when one tries using poem to cure some real problems. Poems are sedatives, so called pain killers, which make us forget pains, strong ache of being crushed under burden of such large scale existences. He got confused. Was he talking to somebody? He always found himself talking to somebody. He never really thought as of his own, but kind of response to questions put on him by somebody in his imaginations. Sometimes, these somebody has faces or at least partial recognitions like textbooks. ' Am I turning schizophrenic', he wondered. He found the thought soothing as John Nash was schizophrenic. There is pinch of joy when any small life event matches with some recorded life event of somebody great. It inflates life and makes it bearable. Even if it is not about resembling with anybody, a complete jump into insanity is always desirable, he thought. Difficulty is being somewhere in the middle.
He found that bus has TV. There was some adds going on. But it's nice, he felt. Sit in the sort of empty bus, run through web of flyovers, watch city transforming into island of shining among dots of darkness and meanwhile when there is still ample time left to meditate on what exactly he is doing, caress the smallest pain and preserve it beyond anything. Camus once said, man either has wife, or he believes in god or at least he keeps the pet. Camus' point was nobody is really lonely. Camus is right, as he is always. His pains, which he has nourished through years has accompanying him like his shadows and he found himself floating into sea of life events, memories, dreams, visualizations and some patches of poems where life kept a bright mark, unforgettable.

Nowhere: Prologue

He left his room in chaos. Means it is difficult when one enters incomprehensible situation. It is like two sharp edges, touching either side of the neck. Then he walked away, away from familiar space, into something more random and more chaotic, resembling what he is right now.
He thought about drinking. But there is not any sponser who can accompany him at this moment. And, it is really inefficient to drink when you have less money to spend. You need to consume more alcohol when you drink by your own money. A constant worry of out of pocket expenditure slows the poisoning and hence delays journey into terrains of self full-filling narratives, written in first person and decorated with many heartbreaking phrases. He passed in front of bar. There are few drinking inside and same steady face waiters serving them with unsaid pity on their face. He thought positive points of his decision, this is self optimistic mechanism he has with him from childhood. 'Morning will be better if I don't drink now. cheap alcohol causes headaches and expensive causes delayed headache accompanied with financial crisis.' Suddenly, thought of morning caused some sort of aches in some unidentified spot of his mind. Do I really want it till morning? And what sort of night is needed to have one plane vanilla morning? He entered his whirlpools again, sinking into mud of his own cause and effect mechanisms. Conversations started echoing in his head, he started begging and crying for understanding him, mirage which he hasn't understood yet, he explained and got counter explained. He felt tired in middle of the flowing road, sun setting over west, clouds steady in the sky and weaving colors into different contours of illusions, another day passed into piles of unidentified lost days, he cried, tears whose meaning vanished into unnamed sad violet color bordering the horizon.
One mother was teaching her daughter to ride the cycle. As usual in his recent childhood, being exceptional he escaped childhood when it usually happens and he is living it now, he remembered his mother by slight reference. Choked, he kept looking at mother-daughter. He didn't remember anything, any incidence when mother taught him anything, except ordering him to eat all vegetables, keeping shoes in shoe rack and forgetting to keep her own and punishing him for not behaving modestly at her friend's house. Yet, he thought about her as woman of substance and kept choking. Tears have some amplifying mechanism. They kept excavating you deep and some unknown pains grip you and you feel them so familiar.
He felt like sleeping for a while. Where? Thats an old problem. Finding a place to sleep. A place where one can sleep without any feeling of entity called 'others'. Others are dangerous. They just change you. If you look at yourself, by being yourself, it is totally different than what you will look to yourself when you see yourself by becoming others. He has fear about others, especially those who can uproot all superstitions he has kept about himself and make himself unreflected in any mirror of references. Though becoming conscious is gift, he cannot afford it. Somebody said so long back....
Well, he thought, where to sleep. He took bus, against the crowd so that it will be silent, quiet and can provide sort of undisturbed corner to nourish his grief. He took one book out of his bag, Line reads, 'I have and have been committing mistakes.I felt like having chickens inside me. They kept hatching and multiplying themselves. And now they have occupied all the space so that there is no way to keep memories of right thing I did.' Fuck off!! He kept book in his hand and looked outside the window, from edges of flyover to last silver line of the day sky and thought about the line. He is no different that what that line is. So true as like many other things book tell. Only thing is they tell it when things happen first. Theorizing life depends on the next turn life takes. Turn alters and so the theory.
Yet his question of where to sleep for the night is unresolved. He purchased ticket to roam through the city. Night is falling, through yellow sodium vepors, through shines of malls, through scarce breeze of coastal wind and through words, like patternless drums, ringing in his mind. Memories, books, movies, some said and unsaid conversations and deluding silence of meaning... He is the bus, going nowhere...

Malai Pav

Its about Malaipav. I had one about half an hour back.
Malaipav is nothing great. Sugar layer is put on cream separated from fresh milk and served in soccer. With it, set of two hard to break and hard to bite bread, 'Kadakpav'.Malaipav has time dimension which turns it in a kind of thrilling food. There are lot many other things that adds to it and make it a memorable event.
first thing first, malaipav is served at 3.30 in the morning and stocks are vanished if you reach there at 4.30 am. So there are always 20 men, all who are up throughout the night, gathered near entrance of the shop. then comes a pair of servant and owner, owner always in his stripe night dress, supposedly he has 5 of same pattern, and owner joins group of youngster while servant opens the shop with no hurry. there are few people already inside and they have arranged dishes, prepared few other delicacies like payapav, khima and chicken.
once shop is opened, all people waiting outside run towards shop, even owner. then owner grabs his place near entrance, which is opened to allow just one entry at a time. suddenly place is filled with shouts, fumes and noises of plates, empty and full. kitchen is same for last years, tea pot is of the sort which is easily considered to be antique and service is no doubt prompt, you order and one sitting next to you get served. People come in group and mingle with other groups involuntarily. Hot gravy is served as per demand and you get small drops of that delicious gravy on tiny exposure of your leg skin, between your trouser and sandal and you are sure, its pretty hot. No sorry, No argument, offer document is carefully read before entering.
this shop is situated in Muslim dominated part of the city. however Malaipav and other dishes are secular. there is evident voraciousness in everybody who eats there and it is not ugly. A night reaches a good, fulfilled end with Malaipav. I don't know what these coinsours do after they leave shop. But they must not be sleeping. What I and my friends often do is to take a walk around, walk through empty and somnolent streets, there is nothing to talk about, eyelids are heavy and stomach is full.
I heard about Malaipav from my school. It is kind of teenage legend to boast about visit to Malaipav shop. When I visited first I was expecting some well prepared dish, but I loved the simplest preparation of Malaipav.
Every city has such places, I guess which farm kind of folklore of that city. there are late night tea vendors, burjipav, Paan shops and Malaipav. This makes night worth wasting. Crucial is hour before shop opens, Malaipav shop, around 2.30. you will feel sleepy, feel like there is no point in eating Malaipav when it is just cream and sugar and bread, there is point in waking up on time and everything else which is fine and perfect. Keep yourself up, your home doesn't have such ambiance, you don't really mix cream with sugar and eat with bread loafs, waking up early morning is what most people do most of the days, and more importantly, you will be proud when next day, when your friends ask you reason of swollen eyes, you will have answer and that is too, sugarcoated Malaipav.

Public Sentiments

http://www.dnaindia.com/sport/report_stop-treading-on-india-sports-ministry-tells-ipl_1369173

I happen to read above news at the start of my time. And it talks about 'public sentiments'. And, it talks about 'IPL' which I guess will be ranked as most talked about concept in contemporary discussions. Yet, there not yet much research literature about IPL which seems puzzling to me. May be Lalit Modi doesn't seem to be much fan of the academia or he hasn't purchased it yet.
SP about the article. You might click (it's not clickable here in my blog)the link and have your share of fun.
1. How player running on 'Building India' logo going to harm nation?
2. If one agrees that such act is going to cause harm to public sentiments, then how painting Indian flag on the skin by spectators doesn't harm public sentiments? There can be many other incidents, but let me have only this counter example as it is happening within few meters from 'controversial' DLF logo.

Yet, there is some positive in Sports Ministry's voice against IPL. There should be somebody speaking against, especially a gigantic business plan like IPL. There are numerous cricket pundits who are speaking against or cautioning against IPL as sooner or later IPL is going to harm beauty of Cricket as a game and will convert game into some 'Hit-&-Run' movie. I have curiosity over valuation of franchise and players. I haven't made comparison with English Premier League, but I guess even though EPL is also market based activity, it has much deeper sports and social culture tied with it. It seems daydreaming that over the years IPL will take the same course because it is very difficult to come from bigger level activity to micro social activities while EPL got evolved through village level competitive football and later transformed into commodified event. Though IPL is providing stage to domestic players, there are limitations to penetration of IPL to gully and grounds where cricket originates and is played only as a game.
My greater interest is about public sentiments. If one agrees that public sentiment is harmed and national pride is devalued by running on logo 'Building India' then extending logic to reasonable ends, one must remain conscious of so many visual and other impacts on the values that we face day to day. Are individual's and community's sentiments are so prone to visual and other media impacts?
If not, then why we should worry about where our flags are used or thrown? After all if we are not much driven by symbols, we should not worry what is happening with symbol but should think about what symbol means.
Our courts often produce surprising result and then provoke media debates. The baseline question of what influences what and importantly, to what extent is neglected. With behavioral sciences getting shape and incidence of mass hysteria ubiquitous, this question of roots of our behavior is not just of interest but of importance too.

Restless

I am awake throughout the night. I am restless as if i am ending an age which I lived, like a burden, like a cage and yet i tried to love it as much as i can. I had been through stories for the night. Stories of utmost human courage, stories of brighter life and stories of life unexplainable in any pattern of meanings. Where will be i am tomorrow? Where will be these woods, hiding in the corner of city and displaying whatever they have to offer? I drank one evening last day, i was choked as if all zest i have stored for my actions was leaving me, then suddenly I entered a spell, a lyrical feat, which is carrying me into some unknown rapture, I am conscious that it will be grand fall once this spell ends, but i am helpless as i am enchanted. I am feeling you, I am feeling all those who are shaping my words, i feel these sunrises and sunsets, I feel all colours and vivid expressions of sky, i feel music of all languages and un-languages which kept me warm in dry hours of self search, and i feel futility that my words carry, and yet they are the only thing i have, as my own, unique and without any doubt.
My heartbeats should stop now suddenly. I do not want to creep into future or find myself dragging from the past. I do not want to seek for any listener of these rotten words, which have nothing of their own as they are always carrier of something beautiful apart from them, or i do not wish to dive into bottomless fathoms of myself. I want to end at this moment, when new day is spreading its marvel outside, all the chords of life are ready the echo into their unison and the only secret of existence is now imbibed in my veins. I will be transformed; I will be alive as Rilke says ‘Life is lived in the transformations’, but the form I had before this is decaying, signs are getting lost into this flood of words, tide of expression is occupying all unknown terrain of dreams, I am withering into silence...
I remember poems now, which are carved in my mind. Every poem is same, even though it is knitted into different knots of languages. It has poet’s soul which burns between the lines, which is lost into region which poem explores, buried into meaning where poem signals and alive in the one who carves the poem into one’s heart, mind, soul and remain cursed for all the life after that moment.

Somewhere in the middle

Stories at evening

The end is not just one time phenomenon. I experience it every evening, when I sit with myself, thoughts and images of past and future lingering around me and there is nothing but a thin membrane of something unknown between me and melancholy of fading day present in everything around.
I have a book in my hand, last few pages left. It is difficult to read stories which pull you inside them and make yourself appear in not just one but many characters of them. You see yourself torn not just this great pull, but by shake of your image you held with yourself, being one, not scattered and repetition of many. I am soaked into floods and storms of the story. I am feeling increasingly tired as story is nearing the climax. And, stories, for they are not like or much alike life, do not have ends, but plethora of nods, each leading to end which you sketch. I will not experience my end. I will experience all the ‘ends’ which hare not mine, but connected to me. Like this day, like this story, like this phase of time, like these words, like this evening, I will be nothing but an observer, helpless and left with some withered expressions.
A strange anaz is in the surrounding. I remember evenings when I used to sit on the shore of creek and similar pale voice used to fill the air from nearby mosque. City has not penetrated all islands of silence then. The sun used to hide into other ends of the water, reminiscence of losses spread over the calm surface of water, boats carrying tired sailors anchored in near-midstream and I, a boy with nothing as guilt or burden of time evidencing this. It was not like this. I never felt evening like this when I was actually there. I am fooling my mind by covering it in nostalgia.
Stories end, but somewhere near the end of one story, other one begins its journey. There is no perfect end or destruction as there is no perfect creation. Everything resembles something previous. That’s how I am able to connect, wit stories happening in space and time unknown to me, with space and time which is never in those stories.
The spell is ending, of the story, of the evening. Now, what I will do? My limbs are weak. I am feeling drained. I will see this story everywhere for few days, until a new story will grip me. it is just crust and troughs of stories, dreams and memories, guilt and prides woven in strange pattern, but with astonishing consistency and appearance which eludes every time and then disappears one day, and then everything is just same, dull and boring as it is for last so many days.
Now poems are rippling on the skin, evening has sunk deep into time and I am watching these lines, passing away, somewhere, nowhere….

The last lesson

Every story generates its listener when that story comes into being, into the mind of somebody or into the surroundings of the one who ultimately tells it. And, stories do not exist without listeners. Even when it is not told to anybody, it is repeated into the mind and heard by the one who tells it too.
It is difficult to live anybody in mid of fiction or reality. Encounters should be without any anticipatory images formed in the mind or anticipations and imaginations should not culminate into anything real and approximate.
I do not know how I will be in the future. I want to submerge into pool of people living continuously around me. I want to watch formations and interactions of personalities. I want to see how people come together, cross initial mud of disbeliefs, form mutual trust and then how uncertainties rolling over them wither all what have been achieved, even with careful and delicate balance of human actions and diverging intentions. It is not I am sadist. But, I am not really ‘optimistic preacher’ which will sooner or later proclaim about some ultimate truth, happy and eternal.
Or I wish I should be just away from them. But, these questions are engrossing. Once one start thinking about them, it is difficult to leave them completely. They haunt, they elude and they keep you in their mystery, almost forever.
The every end generates new possibilities. This is what we hear right from childhood or adolescences when we first experience some end, in family or in school or in relations with people or animal or things with which we live. Soon we forget and jumps into honkey dorey state and feel like ‘life is just happiness’. Then again it goes back to ultimatum, again we console ourselves with age old wisdoms, but we do not really live it. I am writing it, am I living it?
So about the story.

They all have gathered into vast roads of the city. They were not shouting, not crying, and not seeking any familiarities with people of the city. They have brought many creatures with them. They have animals, some of them were declared ‘extinct’ by city scholars with statistical significance, some plants which were not yet listed into piles of Ph.D.s and some smells, voices, touches, none of which are listed into giga or tera storages of information. They are not having any identity cards and they were not filling any applications. They were just standing, chatting with each other in friendly murmur, hugging each other, caressing animals and birds and plants, listening to voices, experiencing touches and just keeping themselves away and yet into shadows of familiarities from city.
News has spread in the city about empty villages and empty fields and empty sanctuaries, museums and empty conservated areas. But, since nobody is elected from empty lands, nobody has asked news channels to cover such ‘emptiness’. The worries have reduced about resources with such vacancies. In the night, some librarians have reported that few books have turned blank. Some of them are travelogues of jungles, fictions about land where people lived with their mystics and symbiosis with something called ‘nature’ and voyages into hitherto unknown then. Since, there is nothing new and unknown left now, nobody is worried about such disappearance. After all, past leaves its relevance quickly these days.
They formed some sort of arrangements, not like marching forces. It is gregarious flock of friends, going for beloved destination. They started walking, towards boundaries of city, near the sea. They walked, in the afternoon gaze of sun, in reflections of them into mirrors of sky-scrapers and through roads full with wonders of automation. They walked, barefoot, bare skin and with tidy nakedness of their unnoticed existence. Soon, some songs flew in the air, whistles of woods, calls of birds and animals and conversations of man with another man.
They reached the shore. Now sea waves are running among their feet. Sun is about to set, but paused momentarily with bemusement. One of them came in front of them. He has rugged smile and enriched years on his face. He said, in soft, unwaving voice,” this is it my friends. This far and no further. Our friends living in the city are in trouble. Their ideas are blocked by our innocent but foolish amalgamations with the land, water and time in which we live. They see much further than what we see. They listen much sharply than we can and more than all this, they cannot come back to us, even though we remember that once they were part of us, we bidded them farewell since they promised to bring back us our dreams in real life. Now space which we have occupied, not on earth but in their conscious and trouble which we are causing, not of adjusting our retarded lifestyle into their, but of making sense of our irrationalities into their perfect system of meaning, let’s give them what we deserve. It is not outrage, anger but simple act of accepting that we do not belong here. See, this huge canvas before our eyes, sea and the beautiful blue limits in which we soon depart.” He smiled, few tears rolled on his otherwise calm face. Others stood metamorphosed for few moments, and then they looked at whatever surrounded them, filled all their senses with memories but no dreams and started walking into depths of sea.
Soon, with last few rays of sun left, they all are peacefully assimilated into sea. Part which cannot be separated from it, part of sea from what once first living being crawled out. They completed the circle.
………. In the night, one child, as child often does what it is not supposed to do, hurriedly wake up mother. “What?” mother said. “I am not seeing any dreams” child said with touch of loss. Mother looked at child, may be helplessly, as answers have submerged and cannot be traced now.

Before and After

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401

Got this link with some random search. Google is awesome!!

People with happy faces are dying with sad ones and vice versa for complaining people.
One woman looks like my granny and my granny is still alive...
Does somebody looks familier to anybody known and alive to you? Don't try really!

Precautions

I can’t listen to silence. Silence falls. It doesn’t come or cannot be invited.
The problem in attempt of living stories and poems is simple. They are hardly real. Especially you try to live stories of others; it ends up in misplaced notions about yourself. Either have your own story or just live. No story is needed to live. Life exists and flourishes with itself. This is not i intend to write, but carry on...
From childhood I have been introduced to harmful things. Language and past are most hazardous among them. Language ruined me as I started believing it as cornerstone of interactions. Today only I realized it is the best tool of selfish achievements. Even freeing your own sorrows, tiny or gigantic, are selfish! Past has many burdens. It makes me to have identity. Identity cannot be searched. The more it is searched, the more lost it is. Some people have identity and they are homogeneously tied with it. They are lucky!
One should not learn probability. It doesn’t allow answering in ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Most of the problems do not remain problems if they are put in yes/no framework.
Silence is very illusive. It deceives you very cleverly. It gives you the feeling that you are experiencing a silence. It is just a ploy for next turmoil. Practical way of reducing pains is curtail the happiness which starts them. As example, it means have abortion; it will avoid pains of death for that child in future. But future is again tricky phenomenon. Information is fluid essential for any movement through time or space or people. More information, easy the movement. Future is state for which information can be of many type. Somehow, information is more than required for past sometimes.
Balance is with us from childhood. We get it in our walking by making mistakes, and most of us loose it until they die. This is cycle as every other thing.
This writing is sarcastic and unfortunately, it is or will or was true. Truth is useless if it is time and space independent.
There are always alternate definitions and sometimes more appropriate.
You can listen to songs, birds, vehicles, leaves, yells, tunes, murmurs, whispers, shouts, machines, clouds, animals, yourself, someone else, god, speech, death and many more...
What cannot be listened is silence... what cannot be contradicted is contradiction....
Poems are hazardous. They can cause emotional cancer. It grows and occupies rapidly. There are medicines with simple side-effect- death.

Dance! Dance!!

Its music penetrating every spot of the skin. whole body is thirsty to get more and more. as every beat hits the skin, it passes through veins and converts into movement of body. I don't know what the song is, I don't who is dancing with me, I don't know what will be after, I don't know what will be before. It is close, close to madness, but not madness as I am able to recall it and write this dance of words. My fingers dancing on keyboard, voices and yells yet loud in ears and asking me, Dance! Dance!!
Brain is confused for the escatacy. It doesn't know it is alcohol ruling it or it is sheer joy of putting all body, all existence to one and one coherent rhythm that makes it go wild. It demands every pleasure that it can have. It demands every wild passion it can experience. It demands this state to be continued forever. Dance! Dance!!
And it is just not me. There are people around me dancing. Walls are dancing. Air is dancing and so the everything that my senses can sense. And above all, past and future are just sublimating into joy of being my own this moment. I feel myself. I feel every action of mine. I feel myself, close to everybody, yet defined uniquely by my own. Dance! Dance!!
You should have been here. No, it's better you are not here dancing around me. It's nice that dream is yet accomplished. Wounds of loss are fresh. They are crying to conquer, to roar a loud and massive cry of victory. And, yet, I am passing quickly to a rapture which will be away from every such counting. It's music, it's that wild thunder-beat which would have made my primitive ancestors dance. It is lightening, it is first rain touching thirsty earth, it is passion which brings a man to a woman and it is bell which tolls for everybody who dreams. It is tolling now, it is calling now, it is asking to submerge into pool of waves of music, music that accompanies us right from our birth and ends into silence forever. Before such silence grips and everything falls into endless peace, Dance! Dance!!

To Myself

To myself

Dear,
This is the only time I am using ‘dear’ as you are the only existence which I love most and at the same time, as I am feeling now, I feel bored of and wish to end. There is no great loss, but series of tiny but acute failures which is pushing inch and inch forward, either to break every connection with ‘others’ or on the verge of explode and vanish. It is time, as it was before on many occasions, to put the head down and accept that you are limited, nothing special or gifted but a wayward dreamer and most important, without a useful thing called ‘luck’. Life is nothing but continued boredom when there is no central, burning passion that keeps you restless every moment. You don’t have one. Dear, understand. There is nothing wrong being like everybody else. Remember, you used to run faster among others once. You used to hate and compete everybody who seems to cross you. Where are you now? Looser, you haven’t left the race and you are dreaming to win it when you have been thrown out. Tick, tock, tick, tock, listen, madman, your time is finishing soon. Do you see a laugh on all those faces watching you sunk? Don’t you see pains that you are putting on those who put hopes on you? Your shoulders are down with continued failures to keep yourself on track. You messed up every role, kept running away, faked everybody with ephemeral promises and now, you don’t even recognize yourself.
Looser! Looser!! Down! Down!!