लिहू का नको असं किती वेळ गोंधळ चाल्लय. आणि आता लिहिण्याशिवायाचा पर्याय नाही.

एखाद्या कागदावर चित्र काढायला सुरुवात करावी आणि अनेकदा चित्र बनता बनता काहीतरी चुकून खोडायला लागावा आणि सारं शुभ्र स्वच्छ कागद काळसर, खराब व्हावा आणि नवीन चित्राच्या प्रत्येक प्रयत्नाला अगोदरच एक मळभलाभावं असं झालाय.

का व्हावा असं संवादांच? संवादाला शांत, स्थिर आणि आश्वस्त रूप येईल असं वाटतानाच एकदम असे भोवरे का यावेत? आणि मग त्या न जमणार्या संवादासाठी बाकी सारं सूर हरवल्यागत का वाटावं मला? मी माझाच आहे न, मग हे न उलगडणारा गणित का? हा प्रश्न नाहीये तुला, ऐक फक्त.

खूप काही घडलंय ना अगोदर आणि म्हणून तू आता या क्षणी जाणवत नाहीयेस ह्यानेही तुटून जायला होत नाहीये. एक समतोल साधणारा निर्विकारपणा यायला लागलाय, ज्यात सगळंच हळूहळू समान आपलं आणि समान तटस्थ वाटतं. मला आवडत नाही हा असला शांत समतोल, तोल असावा ज्यात परस्पर विरोधी ताण आहे म्हणूनच आयुष्य स्थिर व्हावा.

पण असं होणारच होतं न. मग शांत राहू? तुझ्यापर्यंत हे काहीही पोचू न देता? तुलाही जे समजतंय त्यावर परस्पर संमतीच्या मौनाचं पांघरूण घालू?

आवेग अजूनही इतका आहे माझ्यात कि तू अशी अबोल, अस्पष्ट झालीस तर समोरच येईन तुझ्या आणि शब्दाने नाही तर त्यापलीकडच्या शरीराच्या आणि सोबत जाणवणाऱ्या एकमेकांच्या निखळ अस्तित्वाच्या संवादानेच सांगेन तुला, कि पोचलीस आहेस तू आता माझ्या शब्दात एवढी, तू त्यातून बाहेर जाण म्हणजे माझ्या शब्दांना अस्ताच्या तीराशी ठेवणं. का जातीयेस?

काहीही म्हण ह्याला... insecurity म्हण किंवा स्वार्थीपणा म्हण. गृहीतच धरतो आहे तुला, आणि सांग तुलाही हवंच होतं न हे कुठेतरी?

तरीही सांगू, बरोबरच असेल हे , ह्यातूनच परत केव्हातरी संवादाच्या नव्या आणि अजून गहिर्या आयामाशी येऊन पोचू. तुझ्यापाशी माझा संवादाची सोबत शोधायचा प्रवास संपलाय. आता एकटा असलो तरी त्यालाही किती समृद्ध केलयस तू.

आता शांतता आहे एक, ह्या शब्दांना माझ्यातून बाहेर ठेवून पाहतोय त्यांच्याकडे. थोड्या वेळाने ते माझे नसतील आणि ते तुला केव्हा समजतील कुणास ठाऊक

माझा आवेग, माझी शांततेची तितकीच गहिरी ओढ आणि त्यातून माझाच माझ्याशी दुरावा , आणि तूही तशीच, आलीस, एकांताच्या आवर्तात दूरच पण माझं चांदणं झालीस, चाललीयेस, तेही अनिश्चिततेच्या आवर्ताचे संकेत जिवंत ठेवून...

अशीच राहा, अशीच तहान राहो, ज्यानं तुझ्या येण्याचा बहर गात्रागात्राने भोगता येईल आणि ह्या एकांतालाही एक मृदू पालवी राहील....

Roots of Insomania

I am missing you this time. Means I know that there are mediums by which I can make you talk with me. But then that’s not what I wish this moment. I wish you to be here, giving these amalgamations of thoughts, memories and dreams an existence.
I had planned to sleep sooner than my norm these days. I wanted to have early, workable morning. I like to sleep with calm mind where no scratching questions. I am uncomfortable with questions, since they don’t usually have answers and I or somebody else wants them to have one. So I can’t be peaceful if I have question in mind. Usually I cheat myself and run away from question by either cooking up a dreamy, rhythmic world with no uncomfortable details or generating some uncomfortable but invincible and trivial solution. But even such runaway keeps scars and I can’t sleep peacefully. So I avoid conversations when I want new next day, without any signs of yesterday. Somehow my plan failed. I got into the conversation and that too philosophical one.
My roommate is a composed and thinking person. He hardly puts any statement without giving a thought. He has his priors and some strong justifications of these priors. Somehow we got into argument about Amartya Sen’s contribution and Human Development philosophy. I was in my usual iconoclastic role. He defended his argument, I counter argued evoking my favourite ‘limited cognition’ and ‘decision making’ principles. With lot of heat and no real light, argument ended in difficult silence. And, I have lost my sleep.
So I am awake. I know that I will wake up late now. So I will be laggard in this perfectly timed world. I will be following, running after trend setters and will be questioning myself, why the hell I am running like this. I will find myself at undesired places in undesired times. I will wish that I should have slept early. Everything is just cycling.
And, you must be wondering what is really going on. I wouldn’t have been chasing these mirages if I would have defined you uniquely.
Are you listening? Or have you left and I am just feeling your shadow, touches, voice, and words and assuming your existence to keep pieces of my identification together?
Now it is calmness. No untimely cries of crows, nor a cry from a fearful kitten. It’s silence. You are somewhere, sleeping, working, dreaming or thinking. I am here, with these words, with lots of lines extending in pasts and futures, collage of meanings of myself and you....

Thanks for the listening!

Morning Raga....

Good morning! Yea, yea, I am still little bit bored, but you know new things have some fresh effects. So this morning, which already became old till I got up, making me new, enthusiastic and asking me to do something. So many mornings were like this….
After few tomorrows, somebody won’t be here around. Not in a distance which can be zeroed in few hours. And, it is not just distance between places. What is the probability that we will be meeting again? We will be talking as we are today? Oh, we are or we were? So the morning is turning into some blackening and thickening cloud cover. I don’t have tears and I am choked…
Want a poem? ‘I hate boredom, I will have freedom’ or some free, vibrant expression, which will fade itself soon.
Where? When? What? why? I have questions and you have questions. I have dry, self circulating philosophy too.
Yet, this is new day. There is still hope. There are still ignited interests. And, there are you, yet, waiting, albeit more and more passively, to see me live, not just vegetate.

Wack....!

I am just thinking of dam angry shit to girl sitting few steps away from me. I will just tell her that you are fat, you are talkative and what you are talking is in some sort of sharp, ugly voice. Should I wish she should shout back at me? What is the point if she starts observing silence once I shout at her? Victory, even a smallest one should have some bloodshed, some wounds. What else will generate songs of glory?
What if she starts crying? Will I enjoy it or will I feel bad about hurting her weak heart hidden under layers and layers of McD fats? She should apologize, humbly recognizing her mistake. Some people, when one shows them their mistake, shrugs shoulder and start doing new mistakes. Nobody points your mistake to improve you, the one with such intention will keep mum till the point you ask him to point out the mistake, but to get some satisfaction of humble apologies. And, some people deny such a pleasure. I wish they should encounter greatest mess in the next task and nobody should be there to show them that they are messing up.
Do you ever feel that you need to have some automatic gun while walking on crowded road? And, then you need to reduce burden of people on that road to certain extent and let the buildings, plants and even road have some breath? No? Don’t you feel that even vehicles are much more breathless these days and keep drinking fuel more and more? Shouldn’t there be some trees left surrounding roads so that our next generations can have pleasure of uprooting trees and having wider roads leading to nowhere? Don’t you feel that you need to have some solution in your hand which you can pour over girls, erode all the colors over their faces and make them realize that colors are beautiful, not they? Don’t feel ashamed, if you search deep down you will find that hatred has been living as neighbor of humanity since long.
You must be thinking what weird writing is this. So what do you need? Sunsets, sunrises, nature unfolding it’s mysteries in some lyrical rhymes, moons and moon lights, Mozart and Beethoven, dreamy travelogues of cities and catchy conversations with people, tales of love and friendship, determinations and challenges and all that which you and me both desire but have in very little quantity. You want that? Then this is not the place right now….
Right now I am in hate mood. Hating myself and everything that is around and not in the way I love to be tight now. Silent….

Primary opinion about arts

So last two days I had encounters with ‘culture’. These definitions are tricky. If you probe deep, you can understand that they are trying to portray some dynamic thing into static form. There are so many examples, like culture, society, nation where we feel that there are certain fix, eternal elements in these definitions, but on second and deeper examination, we can find that they are dynamic and hence they need evolutionary definitions. Enough for barren semantics!
Arts are interesting. On inner end of artist, they are means of earning livelihood, passion, devotion or best possible form of expression. All these are not separable. But, from artist to artist, priorities to arts characteristics are different. On outer end of receptors, they are entertainment and expression to convey some patterns in fabric of life. The first role is essential. It acts like a glue and complete in itself. There can be mere entertainment, but there is no exchange of feelings without having elements of entertainment. Do not try to see conversations and philosophy as exceptions. They convey feelings and patterns of life, but we do not seek entertainment in them.
Arts get birth, they grow and die. This can be observed for any creation of humanity. But dying is painful. Folk arts are dying. And, they are dying because life is transforming. Basics of life are not like that of folk life. Our myths are changing, values undergoing transition, beliefs are shaken and reformed and more than all these, the pace with which interact with our environment is accelerating. So change is happening in forms of entertainment we seek and patterns of life we need to convey. The standard portrays of battle of good and bad are no longer appealing. Thinking mind has understood that world is gray. Feelings of love and ultra-human devotions and rivalry are no longer assumed, though they are used strategically. But modern human, who is product of loads of information, automation and inquisitiveness needs entertainment and patterns evolving with time. Folk arts are enjoyable as exotic products or vintage cars, but they cannot live by themselves in these times. Either they will die with their purity or they have to evolve in their basics.
There are arts who have kept alive their traditions. But, artist has undergone change. Bhaaratnatyam might have been same as it was 200 years back, but artist values are market driven. Indian classical still has ragas mentioned in Vedic literature, but singer now eyes the shows, not any moksha. And, why should we strive something prisoned in form which it was few years back? Changes brought by time might kill many art forms, make them extinct. But it is as natural as their evolution was. They are product of human beings. Human beings change, so as their creations.
I do not say that past has no useful things for us. It might be treasure. But our mind which has evolved throughout these years of human existence, certainly and surely contain wisdoms of ancients. The dip into these waters of past is refreshing. But trying to hold the flow and trying to revert it is foolishness.
Art is expression when it starts. It becomes business or profession much later. Expressions are not constants. They are very product of time, space and people. They have imprints of these forces on their existence. That’s why western music differs from Indian, salsa differs from tribal dance, paintings has continuum over time and space. Such difference and cycles of births and deaths are what keep beauty in all of these alive and rhythm of life ever flowing.

I read about farmers, their lives and their difficulties.
I read hike in petrol prices.
I read stampede killed 60.
i heard somebody got admission at good place.
I heard somebody claiming that their art is the only one, others are nothing.
I heard somebody saying somebody is just not doing anything. He is fired.
I have home, mother, father and some more relations, by default.
I have few people, I don't know what they are exactly to me. I know myself through them. They serve as connections to me.
And, then I have these thoughts, a future about which I hardly know, fears, insecurities, puzzles, philosophical traumas, failed days, disturbed nights, crash down of own system, recovery for new crash, so much for one brain.
I put in front of some listener, either I imagine or I get one. Listener just listens. Listener is like a large jar in which muddy water is kept. Jar doesn't clean water, it gets nothing on that water or of that mud, it just allows water to calm down, it allows water to reflect in itself and see mud separate from water.Listener does this. I feel settled, not solved. Questions stay away, at bottom, I feel clear, calm, till I try to reach the listener. I cannot. I should not. Listening needs a distance. Listening needs a continuous tension, uncertain but interesting time which will keep current flowing. Move closer, everything turns into nothing.
Sometimes I encounter to strange thing called 'truth'. It is really a funny thing. It exists in contradictions, which is it's twin brother. Inseparable twin.
I told one friend that taking life in thoughts, sketching some definitions and then evaluating own actions with them is not real. Reality is indefinite. What I am doing then? If these words are not sketches of what I dream, what are they? mere fun? Why I end up contradicting even a simplest statement of mine about reality? Is reality not simple at all?
Eternal is something strongly felt at a particular moment. Try feeling a time, many eternals seem ephemerals. Try feeling a space, even own existence seems illusive. Don't try it frequently though.
Writing is putting your turmoils into fictional ones. It is real difficult. Once turmoils are realized, they tend to hide themselves. Story teller must fool himself ( Sorry to feminists, But I am man, can't help, I will use him) while taking those turmoils out and putting them into fictionals. Even a word is recited in mind, fiction seems fiction. Writer has strange sort of disconnection with inner core, cheating that makes writing real. It is not a simple cost. To keep your characters real, exclusion of very real people is needed.
Was it truth? The one I above wrote above? It mostly be illusion. Words often fail to carry burden of meaning. Beautiful words turn into uglier memories.
I have few simple questions for myself:
1. Is there a place where I can sleep with peace?
2. What exactly I do in least boring manner to myself?
3. To what extent I need people and people need me?
There is one hope, one day I will reach where I supposed to be. This is not my finding, I borrowed it from one movie.

जळोत माझे शब्द, सरपण बनून एखाद्या शेकोटीत
जिथे चार माणसे हाडे गोठवणाऱ्या थंडीत शोधत असतील
शेवटचा उबारा
बनोत माझे शब्द कच्ची कोरडी भाकरी
भुकेच्या आगीशी खेळ मांडून
असोत माझे शब्द आंधळ्यांचा कंदील
पांगल्याची काठी
अस्तिवाच्या अर्थाची चाल संपू नये

अजून असेन दिसत माझ्या शब्दात मी
तर नाही माझी कविता खरी अजून
मोठी आहे किंमत जिथे
शब्द असतात नियतीचे प्रतिरूप
इतका लागो कस, वेदनांच्या भट्टीत उजळून निघोत शब्द
अक्षरांची लांबी घटो आशयाची खोली वाढताना
माझीच मला पटो ओळख माझे गाणे अंतरात राहो निरंतर
आपल्या आयुष्याचा पडून जावा विसर
माझ्या मस्तीत बनावे मी फकीर

प्रश्न उरू नयेत क्षुद्र त्रिज्यांचे कण कण कुरतडणारे
प्रश्न असोत असे ज्यांच्या उत्तराला असावी
अशक्यातेची परिमाणे
स्वप्नांना असो जहरी दंश
आयुष्याची शांतता वावटळीत फेकणारा
कवितेचा क्षण असो
सार शोषून घेणारा
डोळे मिटोत तेव्हा असावा कृतीचा समाधान
अपूर्णतेच्या शापाताही आनंद असावा अस्सल

दुखे बनोत माझी आयुष्याची कोलमड
व्हावी पडझड सार्याच निवार्याची
अनिकेत असावा चालायचा रस्ता
मान टेकावी तिथे जिथे असेल
अर्थाचा शेवटचा मुक्काम

येवो न येवो बहर डोळे दिपवणारा
नव्या अंकुराची धडपड अखंड रहावी
विजय मिटोत हार करोत राहो डंख
शब्दातली लढाई जिवंत रहावी