Faith

They push and fight

for a single sight

of the sacred stone

I turn my eyes

and think

 of someone who died
in the hope to unite
them all in his love

Oblivion

Toothless smile

oblivious

of the still silence

in the room

She will never know

what its like

to lose a mother

Last night

You came last night

dressed in your best suit 

My heart fluttered 

as you smiled

that familiar, disarming smile 

That gold wrapped box 

you held 

glistened

in the light of the moon 

that looked almost

like a halo behind you 

But it was blurred 

by the mist in my eyes 

as you placed 

under my feet

those beautiful ballerina shoes

And I lost myself to the music 

and to you

for what seems like an eternity 

It still smells of you 

all around me 

almost as if 

you were really here last night 

Just you 

and me

No accident 

No wheelchair

Linked to One Shot Wednesday. Happy Birthday to the site!

Banaras

People here name their kids 'Banarasi' and 'Varanasi'. That is how pervasive the spirit of this city is. It seeps into your identity before you know it, like the water of the Ganges filling all those earthen lamps of hopes, prayers and dreams that float on its surface every evening. The city bustles with its very own Banarasi energy that years of bewildered foreign gaze could not refine and change. They wear saffron and chew paan. They wear green and chew paan. They laugh a paan-ful of laughter as they roam the streets of Daalmandi and Chowk like the characters in Premchand's Sevasadan. But that was decades back. Since then, the bicycles and horse carts have been replaced by cars and buses. But the streets are just as narrow, the buildings just as colonial and ancient. But that is Banaras, ever bubbling with noise and energy, never changing.

Love Died

There was a love who died. No, it was not resurrected, not even on Easter. It died a sudden death. True, it was not doing well for a while. But its death was like that of a man dying of common cold. Shocking, mocking, almost comic.

P.S. This is just a random scribble. To me, this story is complete in itself. But if it inspires you take these words and create something more, I will be interested to read. Leave me a comment! :)




P.P.S. I am still on the 'break', and I am enjoying these days of refrain when blogging does not come much in the way of life. I have moved to a bigger, more airy house that overlooks a park, and I love it! Thanks for your love!

Oblivion

Fling me back in oblivion

where I could paint you

with naked desires,

no eyes on them

Where you would smell

the fragrance on you

and know I have

stroked my brush again

and changed something

tiny, and impossible

for you to find

but never letting you be

the same

I would shroud a shade of you

with purple 

and love you until

I wouldn't remember 

what you really are beneath

Thats when I would start over

bottom up

to reshape, refactor,rearrange, 

my reasons of loving you






Linked to One Stop Poetry. Visit them to read other poetry and also Shay's brilliant opinion on what makes good free verse. 

Letting Life Happen

It has been a hectic blogging spree for me for the past few days. I have met and made friends with a lot of amazing people in the blogosphere. These are friendships that transcend space and boundaries, because when art speaks to you, it speaks to your soul. It inspires you to create. To live. To slow down. To breathe. 

Art is alive. It is not the artist. It is more than what the artist is. Because it is also what the artist wants to be. The artist is human. Art is her attempt at things more celestial. It is her attempt to dream things that are somewhere above her, in a place more glorious and more beautiful than the world she lives in. An artist lives multiple lives, dies numerous deaths. Art is those lives and deaths that are not her own, but that she experiences every day. It is the dance she was too awkward to dance, the song she could never strike that right note of, the painting she spilled wrong colors on, the dessert with an extra pinch of sugar, the verses that never rhymed. Art is the artist's imperfection. It is what makes her go on. She loves what she creates, but it never satisfies her, because she has a taste. For utter brilliance. She explores and pushes her human limits expecting a new glimmer every time. She is always trying. Never, ever content. Art is her child. She suffers to give birth to it, and she is reborn when it is born. She protects it from mediocrity, and nurtures it in details. She knows it is not perfect, but she loves it none the less. Art is the mark of her affair with life. A passionate, ignited affair, the flames of which burn her soul and keep her thirsty all the time.

I am going to take a break. And allow an inspiration to engulf me, till I write my next post. I am going to lay back for a while and allow that inspiration to happen.

Style!

I returned from work this evening and logged on to blogger as a routine, to see this sweet surprise waiting for me. It was a moment of elation, of that peculiar squeaky feeling you feel when something amazing happens while you're least expecting it. Thank you Anne for the lovely surprise. I must confess I was a little amazed to be called 'stylish'. Apart from my avatar picture where I'm posing with a stupid hat(that I did not even buy) in a shop, I did not think anything on my blog was really 'stylish'. Again, thanks to Anne, for thinking otherwise.

Style, is not just in glitter and glamour, its also there in works of art that are understated, but that still shine, due to brilliance of content. So, I will pass this award on to

• The West Wind, whose creativity I truly enjoy and admire, and to
• Helen, whose paintings, made with deft and detail, speak to me without words

The award requires me to write seven things about myself. I usually don't speak much about myself here, so I guess its time :)

1. I am a Software Engineer. I enjoy science as much as I enjoy art.
2. I do not consider myself a good writer. I used to, once. I wrote my first poem when I was 6 years old; since then, there were always a few people who liked what I wrote. So, I kept believing that I wrote well until the day internet (and blogging) happened to me. That was when I saw how ordinary people similar to me, people who write casually, have the power to move you, touch you and turn your world upside down with their writing. I knew I had a lot to learn. I am still learning.
3. I am blessed with a healthy and short memory. If I decide to move past something, I eventually do. Although I often feel nostalgic thinking about good times in the past. May be I should say, I have a 'selective' memory. :)
4. I love F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I have watched re-runs of it over and over and it still has me in splits whenever I watch it. In general, I laugh a lot. Possibly a little too much :)
5. I dream a lot. I wish to see and experience as much as I can. I dream of making a difference to at least a few lives by the time I close my eyes on my own.
6. I am currently evolving to be more aware, and 'world-wise', as you call it. I am a year and a half into my first job, and I think life takes a 180 degrees turn when you start to earn your own living. You are suddenly not just an observer and receiver, but a do-er and giver.
7. I have never been called 'stylish', except may be when,as a child, I would pretend to shape my eyebrows by touching the tweezers on them, and my mother would exclaim how stylish I was going to grow up to be. But I grew up to be someone too lazy to care much about looks, as long as what I wore was comfortable. But does it really matter, as long as you have style in what you say and do? :)

Gathering Dust

Picture by Rob Hanson

Its been a year

since the end of anticipation

since the last of the million times

she picked the receiver

to check if the line still worked

and placed it back

with shaking wrinkled hands

He had said he would call

to tell her how high 

the jet had flown

How inviting the sky seemed

even at war

'Although there are
no borders in sky'

She had observed and sighed

He was thrilled beyond words

Too thrilled to hear the prayers

she muttered 

beneath her shaky breath

Then one day, the phone rang

and severed the last thread of hope

in her tiny fretting heart

Yes, the battle is won,

but he was her only son

The phone, his victory, her life

since that day, gather dust.

The picture that inspired this poem is taken by Rob Hanson, who is interviewed today at One Stop Poetry, and lends his picture for the Picture Prompt Challenge. If you are inspired by his picture, or if you would like to read other entries inspired by it, visit One Stop Poetry. 

Could Have Been

She walked the aisle

and looked at him

as he sat there misty eyed 

If only he had loved her

just enough to try

and not so much 

to put her on a pedestal so high

This 160 characters poem is posted for the Sunday 160 challenge over at Monkey Man's.

Old Woman In The Moon

As a child, I was very choosy about food. It was a pain to feed me. The only possible way to make me eat my meal was to distract me with stories. My mother was a wonderful narrator, and she had a rich stock of stories to tell me. My father, however, would have a hard time as I would ask questions when the stories did not make sense, and I could tell when he was making them up.
Once, when I had a stomach infection, I woke up in the middle of the night due to pain. My mother went to the kitchen to cook the only thing that I would agree to eat those days, and my father picked me up and took me out on the verandah. I must have been four years old then. My father wiped the tears off my face and showed me the moon and the pattern of an old woman in it. The memory of that night still transports me to that verandah with the cool summer breeze drying my tears, the sound of utensils clattering in the kitchen as my mother prepared my food, the moonlight washing the street outside, the comfort of my father's lap, the peacefulness of midnight with the knowledge that the world is asleep, and the pattern of a kind old woman watching over us from the moon.

Somewhere, something inside me had captured the beauty of it all, for me to cherish years later, on a similar summer night.

Faking It

I understood that not a lot of people got the perspective behind this poem. Of course, its art, and open to interpretation, but I would not want you to miss the message. The poem is written from the perspective of someone who is deep in the abyss of prostitution and has lost all hope of coming out of it. Hopefully, this knowledge will add more meaning to the poem as you read it.

I twirl a toe,

let out a sigh

Its practised

and perfected in a classroom

I was forced to enter

I am the clatter you hear

on glass bangles, slowly breaking

I heard the same clatter

in the shatter of my hopes

long ago

I am a lesser human

I pray to a lesser God, perhaps

who is as polymorphous

as the dark street I live in

that turns bright red at night

My God too, changes faces

comfortably

Perhaps she too is accustomed

to the only rule of my trade

'Faking it'

I loved music once

I'm deaf to it now

It helps to be deaf,

and blind,

and numb,

and to fake it.

P.S. Thanks to Daily Love for featuring one of my stories today. :)


Linked to Poets United. Visit them and read a lot of inspiring poems. Savour art! :)

Its a Warm Winter Afternoon

I ran away from your thoughts

all night

and sat down on the bench

in the park by the lake side
where I had seen you

that first time.

Here, you permeate me,

like the winter sun

that shines all afternoon

and brings the most dreamy naps

I allow your dreams

and this time,

they glisten and shine

as the children play

and the churchbells chime

The world spills over

on my search for you

and I seek you out

in a lonely stroller

who walks about

and stops to admire

the fallen, golden leaves

that crunch into my heart

as the wind blows

the hair off your eyes

I peep into them

Deep and blue

and I open my eyes

again, without you

Its a warm winter afternoon

and you have come around

in my poetry.

Again.

Thanks to Poets United for the above picture prompt. Park benches can inspire such varying lines of thoughts.   So much happens on a park bench! Love, heartbreak, the frolic of childhood, the agonies of adulthood, the imaginations of a poet, the laments of loss, the mundane gossip of everyday life, the lonely memories of old age! This beautiful picture is taken by Ella Wilson.

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