Big Foot

They are locked in, Oh!!


The doorkepper's
feet are twelve
yards long ! ten shoe -


makers used five
oxhides to cobble
sandals for them!!

The Edge

Come to the edge, he said
We are afraid, they said
Come to the edge, he said
They came to the edge
He pushed them and they flew"



(Guilliame Apollinaire, 1880-1918, French poet)

Salvation

When I was relatively young I WAS HARD AND ANGRY.

I could walk away from any face, no matter how full of pain, sadness or pleading. I could close my eyes to children, who were being sold in the night. or to those whose limbs were trimmed so they could beg -- those who soon lost their trueborn smile (that every child is born with).

I could stare unblinkingly at the starving who sat outside the temple or mosques; those who were not with us any more, not men or women but expresionless bundles of skin and bones.

I could push torn women, who were crawling weighed down by their hungry infant sons, out of my path when necessary, or step around heroin addicts who were bleeding to death.

You see I was angry then, I did not see people underneath all the filth.

Nothing mattered because there was much that did.

I made money though. Hard Cash, every bit of it a reward for my indifference. But soon I found that I became indifferent to myself, that I would not accept my own need to laugh, to cry, to release my breath and take in everything outside that was already a part of me. I was emotionally numb.

I had become a shell, like the starving ones. But things are different now.
I am not sure what changed me. I know it happened when I went to visit my dying grandmother in our anscesteral village just before she passed away.

Maybe it was what she said about my eyes. She said that they reflected like dirty water: hiding the organism inside, not letting light through.. Or, maybe it was the quiet serenity of the lush green countryside that made my frustrations spill out; the limp coolness of the Mango Grove, the warm embrace of the lush green grass on my naked feet.

But I began to feel sick there... When I tried to sleep, all the faces I had ignored came back to me. I thought my mind would heal itself if I stayed away ferom the city. But they kept reappearing night after night relentlessly. So I did return to face my demons.

Now I am much softer. The faces do not gatecrash into my dreams any more like uninvited guests, because I speak to them everyday on the street, do my little bit for easing their pain and suffering.

Yes, I am no longer distant on the streets to my fellows.

I listen, I blink, I give, I smile, a word of comfort before I am on my way because I would like to think that there MUST be a way out of here for all Mankind & what has become of our society.

Only that smile on their faces or that return of their trueborn happiness even if it comes back for a fleeting moment...just that moment is what I get in return for showing a little compassion.....but it is enough...it is my salvation to all those years of indifference....

You...Only You

You came here of your own accord
and are lost in yourself;
I know not what you search, or who.
If I want anyone it is you,
If I want to see anyone it is you.
You are the desire of my heart and my eye’s prayer.

Savour It

From her place in the shadows, the woman wills you to explore deeper and lose yourself in the green wood. Let your life merge with this fecund world that alludes to all seasons.

Dark branches festooned with garlands of verdant leaves all traced with the autumn shades of gold and burnt umber. Tangled roots and stinging nettles, heavily scented by decaying leaves, guard the sleeping, infant seeds of spring. It is our life and we have to live it in the NOW.

Enjoying the pleasures of watching cherry blossoms bloom & fall at the height of their beauty. Glorious to see autumn leaves fall.

What is NOW will pass into memory tomorrow but we would have been more blessed to have seen the poignant beauty that the things in nature make us aware of, while also making us aware of being alive and be counted amongst the living..

To seek solace in parting with your beloved, to calmly bear the loss of beauty.



After all sometimes....just sometimes....there is great beauty & purity in death too.





When In the garden, enjoy every moment
Every moment of every day.
Spring passes into summer,
and summer into autumn,
And all the flowers of Henna
Shall wither away...


- Alamgir Aurangzeb





.

Here & Now.....

Travel has played an important part in my life. Travel has been my vehicle to look outward. It has kept me going. There is always one more place to see, one more road to traverse. There is always an in built goal. Aside from all the solace it has provided, it has helped continually redefine myself. I can only guess the Transformative power of grander passions.

Take chances; to not do so kills the spirit. Live on the edge a bit, peer over the proverbial cliff's edge and feel the adrenalin pumping ever so often. Ask for that promotion. Propose to that girl you've always had a soft corner for. Don't let go of your passions even at your low points; these are what sustain you. And forr your own sakes put your past mistakes behind you. You win some. You lose some: That's just the way the cookie crumbles.

CONCENTRATE ON THE HERE AND NOW.


















The Epic of Gilgamesh, speaks across to us across the centuries on the meaning of it all.

When Gilgamesh goes in search of eternal life, he is advised by SIDURI, the wine maker, to accept mortality and live in the here and now: to dance and be merry, to rejoice and make his wife happy in his embrace, to take delight in a child holding his hand as all life is transitory.

Wise words to live by....I intend to do just that....

mooning

Awed by her splendour
Stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces

when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver

A Talk

We could be so great
if only we could sit or
stand in the same room together.

We could drop the 'silent' bit
and try a chat or hug for reassurance.

One chaos after another it seems;
life takes its toll I try to stay ahead
but I seem to always be one step behind you.

Angry Skies

Did you see the sky?
Cremated...
The Dark Brooding Clouds
They Surround

The sun
extinguished by leaping flames
dips down & disappears


All this Crimson
drips into my Soul
Absorbed by my pores
Lays bare my Soul
My skin it bristles
The Heat makes it, prickle


Tis' the other side of Dawn
& I wait there alone and forlorn.

Bitten

With its venom
Irresistable
and bittersweet


that loosener
of limbs LOVE
reptile - like
strikes me down

I stare,
transfixed, in
starry eyed surprise...

A Walk Down Memory lane

The hoopoe that used to tap its long digger beak on the windowpane has flown away; it isn’t there to cock its brown crest sharply, to warn me where the next attack of fate may come from. Half the day wasted on an idle game of chess and now I walk briskly past mansions whose owners have disappeared, empty houses that have wilted and collapsed to the dusty, yellowed grass at the edge of the watercourse where a river once flowed. Only the signs remain.
**

Something of the defeatism of these dead houses enters my soul. Blood straining at bone, half phantom and half stubborn desire to keep going. I stagger up the long shadows that the streets throw at me. Keep to the right and look out for rogue drivers, even a sleep walker cannot break the law, even as he staggers up those tilted shadows all the way into the sun at the end of the square.
**

This now is high noon. All this and a bell tower that launches itself from a red – tiled roof. The wind flings a rain of silver coins through a crab apple tree that has squeezed what water it could from this earth and now makes its last stand.

When you lie alone with yourself, as I have over many a summer, it isn’t surprising that only first things and last things should come to matter. Over all that intervenes, a discrete veil is drawn.

A whirr of helicopters, the harsh sound ripping through the prudent clauses of history. And a burst of bugles that strums the tangled telegraph wires.

Curious signals from the future but not a crow in sight

**

With age you lose your gift of prophecy and cannot predict the future from the patterns that form in the red sands of time. It’s a sacrifice, which I accept, with stoic grace. Now you can no longer predict which way the two headed god of time will point.


A principle of growth: as you age, your needs grow fewer and fewer. Or they should, but I won’t moralize, it’s never been my custom nor do I have the authority to coin precepts for others.


**

1985

The year was 1985.


It was as Dickens so magnificiently put it: the best of times: it was the fairly OK of times.
It was the age of the communist collapse; it was the age of Sridevi on top. It was the time of Vespa scooters arriving in India, it was the time of Priya Pickles going global, It was the age of NTR taking up sanyas (and then changing his mind to marry a young woman), it was the time of The Ambanis and their love for Tina Munim.


It was the time of the Indian Cricket Team under Sunil Gavaskar being crowned WORLD CHAMPIONS in Australia and Ravi Shastri being crowned the CHAMPION of CHAMPIONS and driving his AUDI all over the cricket ground in a totally Indian Manner with people on the bonnet and some team members spilling out of the open Doors....

It was as always, the age of fiery summers and fond, freaky monsoons in India.

It was the time of of the beloved *(few) and that of the reviled (many). It was as it always seems to be in India,

The age of blinking HOPE mingled with remarkable resilience. It was the the age of 'just the same'.

Yet change was just around the corner waiting to pounce.

And finally it was the time when I, my mother and my brother spent a glorious one year in GOA and we went to school on the Miramar Beach (panjim) at Sharda Mandir...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I get all nostalgic thinking back to that time when we left Delhi behind for a year and ended up never returning (at least for my parents) and my four years of vanvas before making a somewhat triumphant return to the city where I was born.

Paradise Lost

When paradise is no longer fit for you to live in
And your adolescent dreams are gone
Through the days you feel a little used up
And you don't know where your energy's gone wrong
It's just your soul feelin' a little downhearted
Sometimes life is too ridiculous to live
You count your friends all on one finger
I know it sounds crazy just the way that we live.

Afterlife

Rich as you are

Death will finish
you: afterwords no
one will remember

or want you: you
have no share in
the white roses

You will flitter
invisible among
the indistinct dead
in Hell's palace
darting fitfully