she, the traffic post....

'Sometimes it is good to be back...
To the usual ways after a drift...
It so good sometimes...to be back on the road...
Hitting it hard with all muscles raring to go...
Speed man speed!
It is good to rev up the engine strong
And speed through the road...
As lightposts whiz by like lightning rods glimmering for sparse moments...
And the stray leaves blown away...
Blown away by the gust of exhaust...
And the silence being broken by the purring of the cylinders running incessent
And faces going away so quick...'

He thought as he sped through-
Till  a traffic signal, which forced him to stop...
A traffic signal red...
A traffic signal with blue tee and black jeans staring curiously straight into his eyes...
He looked and smiled light...
The curious pair of eyes did not smile back...but they scanned him and his machine...
Scanned and scanned...
Till she grew tired of scanning;

He moved right his handle bar...thirty degrees...thinking to navigate her and the post...
But the signal was still red and she was still there...
Looking at him-
Asking him a question...
Leaving him a cue...
'Why?'
'Why dear?'
'Why you move so reckless? don't you care for life?'

It took him exact 4.8 seconds to realise the cue...
At the 4.9 th second he nodded...
He nodded in affirmative, as if he was submitting...

Just then the signal went green...
Green...

Affirmative...

O my black night! my love...

O my black night!
I love you so!
Cause you are the only one so pure and unconditional...
You're the One!

O my darkest day!
You're my heart's joy!
Cause you're the only One
Who come to me everyday!

O my bleakest thought!
You're my favourite...
Cause you come to me
To remind me of the brightest ;

O my singed heart!
You're the blessed one...
For you show me the shore
Where beauty and Love galore!

O my wildest mind!
You're my estranged love...
Cause you make me do things
Which no one can!

the Guru...

So, by chance I met him...
Near the river Koshi...sitting cross-legged as any sadhu should entomb oneself...
Eyes closed...
Palms rested blithely on folded knees...
I looked at his face...calm...
As calm as the river flowing by...
Calm with little ripples...
I looked at his face...same eyebrows...same lips...same square jawbones...
He appeared a bit frail though...

The last time I saw him...some ten years back...
He had worn a pair of jeans faded...
And in all probability a fag was dangling from his lips...then...
He just nodded me farewell...
I had  heaved a sigh perhaps, adjusting my dupatta over my heavy bosom...
I had flashed a faint smile perhaps...
Perhaps I had checked my tears...
Only my black eyeliner got a bit smudged...I remember!
But I had hidden all my sighs...quite efficiently...under the garb of my dimpled smile...
He had stared at me for a while perhaps...
Stared hard...
I had remained impassive...outwardly... though God knew...how the storm had raged then...within...
How my two unruly arms had tried to defy my orders of brain...
To embrace him hard!
To hold him tight over my empty bosom!
O! what a pain it had been-
To let him go...
To let love remain unrequited!

Now....
After ten long years,
I, by providence, discovered him...
And on the very first glance
Realised that sadhu under the tree by the river was my known man...
The man who  had left me giving no pains external...
The man who left me flooded by dreams and unforgiving memories!
I thought...
I should pounce on him and wake him up from his deep slumber!
I thought I should jerk his unconsciousness out!
I thought I should plant a kiss on his thin lips...full of my pentup lust and love...
But
I just thought...
Never garnered the courage to face his eyes opened...

Me thought...
I should click a photo of my man sitting under the tree by the river Koshi...
Without jeans and cigarette...
In an orange loin...and bare chest...

the violinist...

She stood up like a swan...
Her hair was caught at the nape...
She stood under the arclight white..
Her black flowing gown looked like a curtain flying...
Then she took the bow and rested it delicately on the strings...
Just like a feather touching a harp...
She closed her eyes...feeling each of the strings...her companions for ages...
Her friends of sadness and beauty...
She knew how to touch them alive!
Her bow...her strings...
Her wooden violin polished...
Then she started playing with them-
Playing as if she was born to play!
Playing as if she knew exactly how to bring senses to strings so taut!
She played...
And I could see her
Almost stirred up inside...
Her eyes closed carried all of her mind and heart...
Her sweet eyebrows twisting up and down with every move of her hand and the bow...
Her whole body became a song...
I saw her...
I saw her through...

why so?

why so dear?
Why we become cats when we can actually be lions?
Why?
With the Nature, being the most benign mother, smiling at us with all her beauty so gloriously presented-
For us to be engaged with...
One can only be lions and roam free...
Understanding every bit of one's freedom...
Delimiting oneself from being mere copycats!
We are all lions and lionesses...aren't we?
Bravehearted, fearless...
Or we might be like THE TYGER
Of Blake!
Even better...than a lion...
The Tyger....
God's creation...'fearful symmetry'
And be the Lamb as well...
Standing for all that is meek and mild...
And be the Tyger still!

walk...

After slogging so hard for days, dear...
Come...lets go out for an evening walk through the boulevard...
Come...
Just hold my hand...giving me your warmth and taking from me my moist soul...
Let us walk...
As if we are out to kiss the earth
And let the earth kiss us back...

Come...dear...
Let the walk be our only talk...
Holding on to each other's hands...
We just walk
Through the boulevard so absurdly beautiful
In this evening...

We just walk dear-
After slogging so hard for days
Missing several hours like these...
Just we walk and never talk...

on Dali...

He stood before the gigantic frames capturing moments of the frenzied painter's artworks...
'How unnerving!'
He thought and looked at the Persistence of Memory
'So liquid...the Time...almost slipping off from the edge of the table and that tree branch leafless...'
He thought and strolled to another...
'My god! Young virgin...so deconstructed?'
He asked the empty hall which echoed back his words in no time;
Then came to view the best of the lot...
At least, he considered it the best,
Though he was always aware he had never been the best of art critics...
Infact he felt belittled by the gigantic works-
Reaching up to the ceiling of the hall...
Spread as wide as a big projector screen...
Jesus on a three dimensional crucifix...hanging light in the void...

He looked and looked...
Till he thought he was just one of the minions
Standing at the feet of the God...

the Time...

She had never felt tired of running round and round...
She had been doing that for the last few thousand years...
Running with perfection unattainable!
She knows that she is invincible...
The undefeated champion of everything...
The most experienced of all...
The wisest...
The coolest...
The luckiest...
The bravest...
The most beautiful one...
The best thing ever conceived of...
The truest form of moments, so fleeting...

She knows what preceded whom...
She knows by her hands, so easy!
She knows-algae was born on earth at 2.08
And the first sexual reproduction in the truest form had happened exactly at 6.08...
And how the Homo sapiens and Homo erectus came to rule the roost...
And that too at 11.58.43...

She knows all the facts...
And fictions too!
She knows how the poet next door fell off to slumber at his desk, leaving unfinished work on pages...
She knows how the little girl giggled when after a long time she saw her pet dog getting well...
She knows...
Being the most perplexing kind of dimensions accountable...
Being the Time...

lets go to the wild...once again...

Lets go to the wild...once again dear...
Leaving behind whatever we did in between,
Just zipping 'em up in wastepaper basket...
And cleanse our past...
Cleanse ourselves...

Lets go to the wilderness...once again...dear...
Remember the way we caught salamanders from the creek?
Remember?
How we built tepee using our black waste bag?
How we light up fire...the most fragile thing, using frictional force on two bamboo sticks?
How we survived the roughest terrain and climatic conditions just using our intuitions?

O how blessed the times were!
O how good we spent the time in wilderness, dear!
How good!

I remember distinctly how once in a forest near the carribean sea...
We ripened green bananas by putting them into hotwater spring!
How we cooked our dinner, mere snails and prawns...
And how well did we survive...
In the wilderness!
In moist and heat...
In rains and the Sun...

As good as all weather friends...
Good forever...

the motorist...

'I swear by Wankel engine...
And if you ask me why...
The reasons are purely technical
Rotary engines are smoother than those piston types pumping in and out constantly...'
Saying these our motorist stopped
Cause he had more important business to attend-
His fag...

It was burning low all the way
But with him talking too much without attending to it;
The fag, being the most whimsical seeker of kiss...
Decided to die down,
Putting across a serious warning to our motorist
Reminding him sternly almost, in his symptomatic manner,
That he and all his rotational stuff will be seriously impinged by lack of the intoxicating air
That the motorist would die for...eventually...

So our motorist looked at the tip of his fag,
Which looked charcoal
Instead of being in its customary color-Red... as invigorating as a lipstick...
So...
He brought his lighter out...
Another rotary kind thing with external combustion...
No cylinder, of course, to help complete combustion...
To light up his charcoal fag...
To turn it into invigorating red...

Satisfied with his puffs
Turning the charcoal red...blazing...like a dot of glow...
Our motorist
Took up his pencil
And started to draw...
To explain things to people like me...

He put on paper his logic and motor sense
To make me convinced of his undaunted faith in the rotary design...

Me?
I just looked at both the engine types
Rotary and piston reciprocating one...
And wondered...
Does it really matter?
Does it matter really as long as we're driving and driving it fine and smooth...
Only the road matters...
The road...

Highway blues...

'Just another ride...
Though the evening is somewhat different this time!'
He thought...
As he rode through the Highway so straight...
The evening was filled with more mist...
Highway mist and highway illusions...
Headlights from incoming cars zipping past like screamers create the same maze...
'Only this time...'
He thought...
'I have no helmet glass to make things more illusory...'
He missed his bike but loved his drive still...
Driving down...
And the car seemed like an isolated room on the move...
So alienated...
Barring the windscreen showing him every moment
The passage of the evening...
The passage of the people, dhabas, deserted petrol pumps...
He kind of liked the passage...
Liked the passage of the car and his soul...
Down the highway...
So long and straight...
So long...

He kind of liked the localities whizzing past...
Buzzing as exceptions...amidst darkness and lack of human presence...
'Just like our existence...so peopled and so much lonely...sometimes...'
He thought...

Come'n! we are no bodybags!

Hey! why are we doing all these?
Ain't it too clumsy?
I mean the way we smash the window panes every moment if we find something going wrong around?
Why dear! why we go bonkers like that?
Can't we be a bit tolerant...
See...
Your blood carries the same what we call...O I forgot!

Yes! Something like haemoglobin!
Right?
So you carry haemoglobin in your blood...me too!
Now look at your heart...
It pumps the blood...
Your lungs?
They purify your blood...
Right?
Mine too!
We all are so same dear! we all are so same...
Then?
Why are we fighting?
Remember that young poet who died in the bunker?
Died...pitiless in a foreign soil...
With a blood sputtered note-book on his red bosom...
Come'n!
Let's be friends dear!
Let's stop pushing knives into each other's bodies...
Let's live...
Let's stop turning us into mere foolish, dumb, bodybags!

why you died? you ass?

Tell me...
Tell me dear...
Why the f...k you died silly?
Why?
Didn't you scream it hard saying ' It smells like teen spirit'?
And everytime I cried, you cried with me too..
From the jukebox old...from my dad's sunday lazy afternoon's radio shows...remember?

'Nevermind' you said...
'Nevermind bro!'
You jammed...all through...

Then?
Tell me dear...
Why? why you the greatest ass who actually went poppier and poppier...
Died that way?
You claimed you are getting happier and happier...
Getting removed from your angry days...
But still you died...took to death...
What a shit!
Come'n!
Take us to the Nirvana, now...
Take us!

Atonement...

He thought did it right finally...
Facing his destiny with no clenched fist and parched tongue...
Facing his roughened soul with a piece of cake, with red cherry toppings...
Facing her with all the smiles he had stowed away for a while...
After being sent for the gallows for no reason strong, but because of wishes and dreams never been deciphered by him...

He thought-
Sitting in front of the white marble tomb...as white as the wings of doves flying close stretched to the full...
He thought he had to sit there...in the tomb...becalmed by the serenity of divine blessings...
After making such a beautiful journey of lies and videotapes...doctored...

He thought...
Sitting in the blessed tranquility,
Is like getting closer to the Atonement...

moving away...

He took the loop and fixed it
On an open space,
Fixed...
One end, of the string that had no loop, of course...
And started moving the loop at an uniform speed...

He did simple tricks like that on open space...
Several times, in his life...
Moving away...
Moving away in the open space with an uniform angular speed
Itself has its own geometry!
Geometry on the open space!
Moving away at an angular speed, yet being fixed at one end tight!
'Wow!'
He thought...
'What a spiral motion I have become!
My God! I am an Archimedean pattern on the open space...A pattern moving away...
Yet being fixed at one end...'
He thought as he looked how the uniform angular motion creates a spiral...
On the open space-
 Multidimensional!

on a diwali night...

While she was busy lighting the diyas on the terrace...
So evenly panned out...like little stars dazzling yellow
And her face glowed by the light so soft...

He,
Just sat there at one corner...
Looking at the glow on her face
And the diyas...
So pure!
As if the whole terrace became an aisle of a church...so somberly eloquent...
Carrying all the talks of undisclosed hearts...
And the murmur of the last autumn leaves...yellowish orange...falling in ones and twos...
Left him amused...

He thought Peace was the only word he searched for,
Right from his cradle days...

Peace...
It was there when he was on the crib...
Peace...
It was there till he lost his innocence...
Peace...
He wanted to regain it...
On a diwali night...
Full of diyas...all around...
And incessant bursting of crackers as well, which created smog...

Peace...
He wished he could live by it...
Amidst the smog..
And the crackers...
He wished he could become a diya himself...
Facing forever her...
Lighting him up with matchsticks...
Peace...
He thought...
Was She...
And he a simple diya...on the terrace...being light up...
As autumn waned to usher in the winter...
And as the darkest night glowed with light...

She became Ether...

'Come on board the cloud...dear...'
He said oneday...arriving at her door...wearing a flannel white..
As if he had been a part of cloud for long...looking wondrously fluffy...just like a cloudlet himself...
'Where's the cloud?'
She asked...
'Why? can't you see? we're all in the cloud!'
He exclaimed;
'You got to be joking...'
She said, suppressing her smile, taking all these as part of his whims...
'Oh dear! just feel it...just use a bit of your senses...'
He pleaded, looking seriously overwhelmed by something...some kind of magic, perhaps...
But she just kept on looking at him...his clothes....flowing in the afternoon breeze...carrying scent of distant seas...

He...
The cloudlet smiled...
He...just smiled...benign...
He then mumbled, as if he is letting go of a secret...
'Dear...just close your eyes...and feel the breeze blowing...take in as much air as you can take at one go...
Then release it slowly...very slowly...and release it feeling every bit of its passage through your lungs...
Your airlobes deflating every second...
Just release it...as slowly as you can till you feel there's no air any more in your lungs...'
She looked at him, dismayed...

Then,
She did exactly what he proposed ...
She closed her eyes...
And a dark curtain set in...
A dark curtain...shuts her into a dungeon...

Then she felt the breeze blowing by her untied hair...
She felt it blowing by her ears...
She felt it blowing by her body...almost caressing every angles and rounded shapes of her physique...
She got a mild shiver...
As if she was being made a part of a foreplay...
She got goosebumps...
And she felt the air more...
She felt she was forgetting where she was...who she had been...
The Dark became a blue space everspread...
The Light blinded her...
She felt the light making her transparent...
She felt the Light passing through her unsexed presence...
She became a non-being...
She became ether...

waiting for your bus...

With the sky turning blue like the freshly painted canvas...
And the scent of shiuli reaching me every early morn...
I know, dear..
That you're on the way...
To meet me after so many months...
I can get the news of your arrival!

I know, dear, that you've already taken the bus from your place...
And probably the bus driver is amazed to see you walking into the bus so early
Wearing your favourite white knee length skirt with floral borders...
I know...
That the bus is virtually empty-
Carrying only you to me!

I can see you sitting by the window
And the mild morning breeze playing with your scented hair silky...
I see you looking out of the iron bars of the bus...
With your eyes being so eager to find me standing at every bus stop that lines your way...
I see you filled with so much of happiness
Are you not equally eager to relive the moments?

Well...dear...
I am eager too...
Waiting for your bus to arrive
Right at the stop with a corrugated tin shed rusty
Opposite my balcony...
I'm here standing right!

You might be confused, I know...
Seeing things changed so much here...
The big mahogany tree with its sprawling branches
Is no longer there by the bus stand...
So also the small park across the road...
They are all gone dear...
All gone...making way for the big apartments you see...

But still, as you're on your way to meet me...
I think...
The mahogany would return with its soothing shade...
And all the children with fill the space with their playful cries...
If you're on your way to meet me...
Dear...everything returns...
Me too!

at a village fair...

Riding his bike as usual...
Somehow he reached a village fair...one wintry evening...
Yellow lamps hanging from wooden poles gave the fair a distinct festive look...
And the village folk in humble dresses...oily heads...thronged every nook and corner of the field
In which several makeshift tents were set up...

He gazed at the wares being sold...earthen pots...simple wooden kitchen tools-wooden spatulas...
Wooden flat round shaped boards and barrel-like artifacts...used usually for kneading doughs and making chapatis...paper-thin...
Glass bangles in another stall...
Bangles as varied in shapes and designs as feminine faces, so varied and charming!
Bangles red, yellow, white, purple, green...
Bangles made of wood even!

He looked around with his eyes-
Not curious but full of curiosity...
How simple people of the village gather at a humble fair...with their children and wives and women...
Weren't they full of mirth and gaiety?
Weren't they pleased and wonder struck by simple things?

Then he looked at his expensive bike standing a few paces apart...
Two hundred cc engine...with all muscle power...
Switch-type ignition...
Oil filled suspension...
Digital tachometer...burning blue fluorescent!

Then he looked at his shoes
Branded, freshly bought from a mall selling brand equity...

Then he looked at his soul
Such a commodity, so cheap!

At the village fair...
He rediscovered his forgotten self...
He thought he got rid of hedonistic illusions
Which come wrapped in malls
In shapes of colored paperbags and designer elements...

Peace...

One hundred and forty thousand
For Hiroshima;
And seventy four another
For Nagasaki;
'Let's give Peace a chance, dear!'

'Let's give chance to Peace...'
Cried that bespectacled man with boyish charms
And a beard running astray-
With his wife by his side
And several hundred young Turks
Sitting on the pavement
So red ...so red!

One hundred and forty added
To seventy four more...
'Let's give Peace a chance, dear...'
And we shot that young bearded man dead
On the pavement so red...so red!

(This poem was listed up as an entry to UNO international social media page on World Peace,2011)

when u meet me...

Whenever you meet me...
By chance, on the street...
Or at that small bookshop round the corner...
I feel so happy inside...as if thousand flowers bloomed just then on my strangulated desert...arid...

When you meet me dear..
And your hazel eyes meet mine...
I feel so happy inside...as if I had chanced upon meeting my sole soul...a scroll...
Unwound by your breezy presence...blessed!

Whenever you meet me dear...
Across that dark alley...depopulated...
I feel so pure inside...as if I had chanced to take  holy dip in the Ganges...so mythical..
Ganges of my past...and my future...

When you meet me dear...
As matter meets antimatter
An explosion is always on the cards!
An annihilation of both of us!

the city...post festivity...

The streets still carry all the marks of revelry...
The city, my love, still bears on her body the bamboo structures
Which hogged all the limelight even a few days back!

The ball-chain lights still hang from someone's ceiling...
The paper cups of ice-cream and coffee are lying strewn unattended yet by the corporation cleaners...
And those structures which got so many clicks with flashbulbs blinding
Are now standing erect like some ugly puzzles made of bamboo and tarpaulin and jute mats...

Where all the people gone?
All those people who thronged for the last three or four days-
Making roads choc-a-block...
Where all those cars gone?
Those cars which a few days back stood bumper-to-bumper-
Like immobile serpent on the streets?

O!
How I miss those days of my city dear decked up for the occassion!
O! How I  miss her in her festive best!
O!
How I miss her sweet charms with new paints on
Of lipgloss and mascara...
And high heels, stilletos...
And ramp walks...
And rock songs emanating from cars whizzing past through the Redroad...

The city, my love,
Post the revelry looks so tired
So weary...sans the gloss...
Like that beauty of the lore, without her glass shoes...

The sine wave...

The moment he dropped the stone into the pond stagnant...
The point where the stone touched the surface of the water
Became a point of origin of the waves...of expanding circles...
Expanding forever...till the energy of the stone dissipated...
The waves came forth in uniform undulations...of water, which henceforth remained calm like the statue of Buddha...
Yes!
He stirred the water...
Created ripples and loved watching the ripples dissipating into the calm of nature...
So absorbing!
Knowing that he was actually creating a basic function of Time
Through the sine waves...
He giggled like a schoolkid, small...curious...
'Hey! I have created just a Time function on water!'
He cried within...
And thought of understanding the amplitude of the Time function...
Then his focus shifted towards another thought...
'How can I really change the phase of the Time function?'
He thought...
And thought...
Becoming a Buddha himself almost...deep submerged into thoughts that instigated his actions...

He soon realized the moment...
The moment...
When the stone touched the surface of the water of the pond stagnant...
Time was a big zero then...

'Just at that moment perfect...the oscillation was about to begin...'
He,the ascetic thought...thought deep...
'Life is just like that...a sine wave perennial...till the phase changes..and the moment of truth arrives...'
He nodded in appreciation...
And sat still...

Riding through...

His back was already having that typical rider's ache...as they call it in medical parlance...
A kind of an ache that occurs usually in the lumber region and...
it spreads out evenly to all directions...
Till it follows up the spine..
Sitting for long on the bike and riding through the mob-
One had to experience all those stuff as part of the ride itself...
Even if one's bike has a cushioned seat and even a backrest...
Sitting immobile for long physically with only your reflex working...
Is boring no doubt...specially riding through thick crowd...

He knew all that hazards...
So when the ache started to develop at his back...
And his fingers went stiff (effect of continuous pressing and releasing of clutches...)
He just felt he should get down somewhere...
But finding a lonely spot in the city street as crowded as a pen...
Was a tiresome ask...
Really tiresome and difficult too!

By god!
He found one at last!
A particular less crowded spot...
In front of a teashop lonely...
Only a man was at the stove...
And a kettle was on it...
And a cosy looking lonely bench was there too!
Too tempting!
Tired as he was...
He thought he should jump down there
And park his bike somewhere near...
And sit down on the bench first and light up his Navy cut...
And take a puff or two before ordering a cup of tea...
The time being after sunset and the winter being not far away with the chill getting into the air...
Making the ambiance kind of moist and hazy...

Aha!
He thought...of the prospect of having a cup of warm tea and a few puffs...
So he got down...
So he went to the shop...
So he sat down on the bench and brought out his white packet of fags with a typical 'anti-smoking warning printed in bold lettering' on it...
So he lighted the fag up
And took two frequent puffs...
And ordered a cup of warm liquor brownish-red...
'No milk please...'
He added...
Before he took another two subsequent puffs...

The smoke came out white as chimneys spread smoke to pollute...
Smoke came out in small packs...like small, not-so-dense fluffy cloudlets...
He smoked...
The tea arrived soon in clay pot...
He took two sips...

Aha!
He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth...of the tea...the flavour of the warm liquor relieving...
His aches on his back and fingers...
Then he thought...
He saw a face of a woman bright...
Through his eyes fast closed...
A face of a woman...with...with a small round mole on her left eyebrow...
Perfect!
Like a face of his mother perhaps...
Or like that of someone in the crowd...
Someone's face...
With a small, round mole on left eyebrow that made the face so beautiful...
He thought...
He was not sitting in a teashop...
He thought he was far away...
He thought he had faced his Life...
He thought he rode through it...

what is love...dear?

'So...what is love,dear?'
She asked...
Hearing and thinking and recycling all her thoughts given birth to
By his incoherently soft mumblings...impassioned speeches...fervent pleadings...

'I donno...'
He said;
'Come on!'
She replied, feeling disappointed, for she thought she would hear another long story cut short, from her strange lover...
'Seriously? you don't know?'
She asked him again, trying to read his mind through his eyes...
He smiled...

'Now...now don't smile please...this smile of yours make me weak and crazy...please...'
She said, carrying a slight warning, knowing fully well how in the past his smiles made her budge...

He checked his smile and just kept looking at her eyes...her face...

Then slowly he stretched his hand to touch her silken hair brown...
'Now...now...don't do that, dear!'
She said, her warning tone still working fine;
For she knew well how in the past his mere touch ignited her body...

He took back his stretched out hand like a rubber band contracting at a high speed;
Then he looked again at her eyes...just stared...kept on staring...till-
The four pairs of eyes of the two, his and hers...
Went smoky...
They, the two children of god, felt smoky in their eyes
And a deep full cry rose alike in their throats...
A deep full cry alike!
They sat separated by the time...
They sat separated by the space...
But they cried alike!

Love?
Who said it exists?
Love?
It is non existent...
yet it makes u cry...

Waiting....

Waiting for her under the soft yellow light hanging overhead,
At the southern avenue restaurant, was a pretty exciting assignment...
He thought and taking the paper napkin started scribbling, as he had been doing for the last few years...
Waiting for her is like scribbling all paper napkins out!
The minutes passed by like water down the tap of the basin which can never be closed tight...
Water drips...like time...
He waited, nonetheless...
Waited...
The waiter came and went...heaving a sigh everytime, watching him lonely, scribbling on paper napkins...

Finally, as the clock struck eight...
After at least ten minutes of wait...or maybe twentyfive...
She came...the sexy siren...
Dressed to kill, perhaps...
Red saree...sleeveless arms like two beautiful branches of tree...
Embrace...
Hugs...
Kisses...
O the perfume!
Was it not lovely?
He thought he was turned the god...
By her sheer embrace so soft...
He thought he owned the whole of Southern Avenue...
The restaurant...the tap...the water dripping...the waiter...the paper napkins...the clock...
He thought he owned the Waiting!

mirror...

The child stood in front of the mirror...
And his eyes were full of wonder!
'Who's this guy? smiling at me...'
The child giggled, as he felt like giggling, seeing another in front of him...so much like him...naked...plump faced...
The child screwed his eyes
And the child on the mirror did the same...as if he was imitating him...
This made him angry...
'Who's this brat? imitating me? you kid!'
The child made a sound that expressed his angst;
The child on the mirror did the same, only the sound of a growl never came...
The child wondered...
'So u can imitate my actions...but not all...u can't growl like me...ha ha ha '
The child laughed...
And the child on the mirror laughed too...
Thus went the game...
Infront of the Mirror so cheat!
Thus the game continued...

the distance...

'So all u want a distance from me, huh?'
She asked, with her singed love and angst turning slowing into rage, self castigation and hate...
He looked at her eyes, burning like a forest caught fire...

He smiled faintly, as if he did not know how to answer her back...
how to cope with fire and spite...
how to soothe the tempestuous soul, the morbid heart ...
'I demand an answer!'
She barked, losing her cool...
'Now, dear...don't be so...stormy...cool yourself off...'
He tried to speak, feeling hurt by her recurrent outburst...too frequent qualms...
But her eyes...
They were teary...
They were...weary...
So, he started to elaborate, saying-
'Dear...You and I are like different particles...attaining different positional vectors in an open space full of other particles as well...with different positional magnitude...'

'I don't want your physics...I don't want your kinetics...I don't want your philosophic gibberish...'
She cried, crying all the way...
'But...that's a necessity...to understand life...life in motion...life-kinetics...'
He tried to speak, being weary himself...being soft...benign...
'Okay...Carry on...lemme listen your views, your excuses...your ways of building walls...boundaries...'
She spoke, still her spite taking full control...on her deserted soul...her torn heart...her fragile body...
'As you promised, just listen with patience...giving patience a chance...'
He uttered sadly, uncertain of the effects of his talks on her;
'Okay...okay...'
She said, impatiently...
'As I said we are just like two random particles...like millions of other particles...thrown into an open space called Life...now...if you are particle A and me particle B, then in this open space your position is rA=(xA,yA,zA)...while mine is rB=(xB,yB,zB)...and your distance from your point of origin is [rA]...
which is naturally different from my distance from my point of origin, i.e; [rB]...cause we are of different origins...our magnitudes i.e; [rA] and [rB] are different...Our magnitudes are so different dear...so different...'
He said, saddened...yet happy...for being finally able to put things in concrete mathematical terms...
She just sat there, silent...tears drying up...thinking...thinking hard...

hey u crazy...(In memory of Steve Jobs, Founder, Apple Computers,)

'u r crazy!'
They said...looking at his lean, withered face ...longish...
'u r an egoist!'
Cried some others...
But he the man with a self professed love for the cloud and the memories embedded...
Stood on the podium, under a small spotlight focussed on him and the giant screen at his back...
He carried himself that way, oblivious of the people's comments and passing remarks;
Then he took a recluse
Torn with with body's fluids vaporizing, perhaps...
But he broke that to reappear only, aplomb!
He broke that...
He broke himself...
He was a madcap, we all knew...
But a man with a half eaten apple,
Can actually afford to be a madman...
A man with the cloud in his brain...
Can afford to be so, really!

city at the dawn...

Driving down the vacant streets of the city
Still wrapped under the quilt, cozy in bed...
Methought I saw her peeping through shyly
As if to guide me through the mist and the smog of the dawn...

She knew that I am no good navigator but still I drive...
She knew I am a bad driver as well!
She knew it all...my morning Sun...shy...veiled...like a babe...
I looked at her pinkish face
And thought now that she had shown up
I will never lose my track...
Methought I will never lose her...
As the smog will soon be made to flee...
Methought I saw the brightest day...
Sans all the darkness...
So early...
As the dawn broke through two towers of concrete...standing like vanguards...
Right there on the empty street of the city...
The city that still slept...

Escape velocity...

Sitting jacketed and tied up on the white cushion
In the belly of the machine with a wingspan of 23.79 metres and the length of 56.14 metres and travelling
At over 17000 miles per hour...
He thought he would just die being tied up...harnessed...

The speed was horrific...
Stupendous!
Wonderstruck he tried to open his fast closed eyes a bit...
To look through the thick metallic glass cover fitted at the nose of the cabin...

What he saw, made him dizzy...
He had read all about the experience...
He had seen the videotapes...
He had heard astronauts speaking about the experience at length...
An experience of a lifetime!

But nothing matched what he himself felt...
He felt like a shooting star...
Being shot upward with an unimaginable speed...
And the airdrift was magnanimous...
And the buzz still made his ears ringing, despite he wearing earplugs strong and the helmet with phones embedded...

He thought he should not look through the metallic glass for he thought
That might make him mad...
The ordeal was long...it was long enough to give a rise to his blood pressure...
And then suddenly...
BINGO!
All the tugs and pulls and the air resistance gone!
Yes!
All pulls and pushes became absent...
All tensile force gone!
It was like being plunged into a calmness...
It was like being part of the calm...
Silent...ever spreading world...
And the mother earth looked so tiny...
Like a blue colored watery ball...
A ball full of gel...
A mere ball!
Suspended miraculously in the void...
Miraculous suspension of beauty and disbelief...
Strange!
Gosh!
We're so tiny!
He thought...
We're just tiny creatures of a tiny ball...full of gel...suspended in the void...

gnothi seauton...

I know dear...
I know fully well that I'm not Pythagoras...
And there's no Phemonoe around to stir up me with her myths...
And there's no temple of Delphi to write the mind on...

But still, tell me dear,
Is it not fair and fine to delve deep even when we apparently think we're deep enough
To challenge the Mariana trench under the ocean?

Tell dear...
Can't we be more deep...
Not like a captain Nemo, dying under twenty thousand leagues...
But like the polyp and the corals colorful...
Adding color to the depth?
Or those starfish...
Or those seahorses...
Roaming free...under the depth of the ocean blue and green...
Knowing ourselves...as creatures of the depth...

this festive season, I see you...

This festive season, I see you on the streets
Cutting across the crowd, wearing your best clothes-tempting...
Plunging neckline, deep navel show...so sexy!

This festive season...
I see you on the bikes...speedmachines...
Looking like the perfect hunk...muscular, speedy,
In your jeans and tight vest...like the hero of the movie...tattooed...
So sexy!

This season with the arclights spread far and wide, lighting up the darkness...
I see that old man on the bicycle in dusty dhoti and rusty frame...
Riding down the lonely road...alone!

This festive season, I see  the urchins of the street...
In gifted clothes...shiny on their crumpled haggard faces...
Playing with the thrownaway garbage...plastic bottles, beer cans, cellophane wrappings...cheap
So cheap...

This festive season
Is so full of contrasts...of economy, mind and health...and age...

BORN...

Wandering across the streets and the busy traffic...
Being a part of the mobile vulgus...
Got a feeling I've been there always...
As if I am born with all those memories, bright!

Straying away to the fringes of the city...
Meadows and wastelands...
Got a feeling I've been there too!
Being born with memories so true!

The flowers, the trees, the roads-populated,
The traffic signal lights blinking, horns, smoke, dust and diseases...
All are part of my memories perhaps...

Being born with memories innumerable
Is like being born with a prophecy...
Being born...
Is a prophecy by itself...