fear

Fear. The gut wrenching sensation, as if your entrails are being held by clippers and pulled out. The pit of your stomach becomes a void, larger and larger as the seconds pass and darkness is palpable, it is in front of your eyes. Death appears to be a welcome inevitability just so that you can avoid the engulfing fear.You perspire as if the glistening moisture would wash the fear away but to no avail.your heart beat is no more rhythmic and pounds like a judge's gavel until you feel you may not have another beat.You look around like a helpless yearling expecting the ax on your neck, any moment. Blood would be all over and the end will arrive.You cant sweat or dilate your pupils anymore. Any minute and the fear would overtake your senses.You are counting the senses that are still functional. Eyes can partially see, ears can partially hear your own heart pound heavily, nose is smelling the stench of the ugly ugly fear in your deepest core and skin feels the harbinger of death and prickles, gives you goose pimples like you are standing stark naked in the arctic winter.

I have felt this every single time I have undertaken something that is beyond my little existence, an exam, a rafting experience without knowing how to swim, skydiving from a plane when the instructor says there are odds that we may not come back alive; that the concept of probability in mathematics for which you were searching a real life phenomenon to apply it on, you have found it the moment your partner cum instructor attached to your waist whispers that think of god and jump.This is what I have felt going for some of the toughest exams in my life, be it accepting a truth in front of my parents, friends, going for reciting a poem in front of a crowd of 200 people, compering a show in front of 2000. Be it trying to learn how to swim and hold my breath in the blue water, as comforting as it is around me,I sink and find it impossible to hold it for even one more second and the comforting water enters the mind and eyes and tries to take you towards the tunnel with the white light at the end of it.Be it gathering up the courage to go and talk to my boss about a pending presentation or to go to my dad and let him know that my current job may not last. Be it a nightmare where an invisible entity is pressing down my neck till I cant move my fingers, or scream out. Even if I scream, no one appears to hear me. They are all around there smiling but no one can hear.Fear does this to you. It makes you believe that you are nothing but a useless piece of shit who is about to be annihilated from the face of existence and wait and watch till it gets you. It makes you believe in the panic that your own sane mind presents in front of you and you become nothing but a caged animal about to be killed or a kidnapped little girl about to be beheaded when your loved ones cant hear you and cannot get you out and you just wait and watch..

But you try, you try to move that little finger, you try to calm your freaking brain down, you try to move one muscle at a time, you try to remember a smile, a kind face, a warm hand just to make sure fear does not reach the core. You try one step at a time and slowly you muster enough galls to challenge the fear.You challenge it to appear again even when you are deathly afraid of it.You keep challenging and threatening it little by little until it raises its hands in surrender.Guess what, you just took the leap of faith and jumped from the sky accelerating at 2G's towards the earth and you just won against it.

                                                                                                                          - Supriya

Rain Rain

'Rain rain go away , little Johny wants to play' was and has been my favorite rhyme since I was a little kid because, I sympathised with Johny. I always wanted to play in the rain but my mum wouldnt allow. So I thought why not write something on it :)

The smell wafts from the freshly rained earth and reaches all the senses
Makes you want to make some mistakes
Urges you to stand under the pouring waters
And purge some of your pains

Grass is never so greener
As if it is saving its chastity till the rainfall arrives
And then it breaks all the barriers of shyness
In the raindrops, it revels.

You too want to let go and get wet
If you fall sick , so be it
But first soak your tired feet in a puddle of fresh rain water
Jump in joy a little bit

Let it wash away some frazzled lines off of your face
And replace the frown with an innocent smile
If you wanna dance, go ahead
It will be worthwhile

Splash splash you go kicking the water on the road
Swish swish goes the wind whizzing by
Water speckles the body with muddy freshness
All the flowers, leaves sway and smile

So rain rain please stay
Pour down on me like there's no other day
I shall fall and roll on the wet grass
Dance up a storm while I laugh and play

You think

oh god this urge for writing never leaves me yet it doesnt provide me with an engaging theme or the best writing capabilities to put forth that theme, that topic. I yearn and yearn to write but nothing happens that drives the thoughts in my mind to be penned on a paper ( blog in this case).
How do we quantify the grasp over a language , a writing technique, a set of experiences that would enable us form something meaningful out of our thoughts? Do we have to be extremely good at a language or do we deem it sufficient what we already possess?

Not sure and afraid that I will ever know the answers of the questions mentioned above. I could rant what is disturbing me, I could form verses to make my thoughts poetic, I could intellectualize them and put them down in a way that no one understands,not saying that intellectualizing is bad but could be an obstacle for a reader who really does want to understand your thoughts and opinions.

But seriously the urge for writing just doesnt get sated even when I am out of the energy to write. What could I write about that hasnt been written already. How do I engage you when nothing engages me, when especially I give such fleeting attention to writing. I try to read but I cant anymore , I try to watch sensible things that would make me appreciate the writing behind it, be it comedy or serious thoughtful drama, but it works sparingly. So I listen to music at times that gives me inspiration. Dont think that because music pieces are short hence they capture my attention, because short stories and short movies do not appeal to me at all. I did not like short stories and I absolutely cannot stand short films. Very rarely a short story engages me and even then it would lead me to pine for more, it would make me want to beg the writer to write a bit more in that story.

Ironically , I try writing articles in few words and hence I fail because I do not like the idea of them myself. May be I should stick to poetry, may be I should not even write, may be I should get up now and leave this in a draft. What am I doing?

Such a dearth of tools in my own mind that I do not use the universe full of themes around me to encapsulate them in words.

khaali makaan

makaan khaali khaali sa laga
usme ghar jo na basa tha
balcony bhi thi virani si
bachchon ka kahkaha jo na tha
imli ke ped ko bahut jhada
par usme imliyan thi hi kahan
samay ki parchaiyon me apna chehra dhoonda
lekin man ka aaeena dhundhla mila

khidkiyon ke sheeshon pe
mitti ki parat jami payi
pata nahi kab makdiyon ne deewaron pe jaala buna
dahleej pe lagake rakkhe kaan magar
barso se teri aahat ko darwaazon se na aata hua suna

kai arso se koi chala nahi is makaan ki taraf aati hui pagdandi pe
chhat pe soi soi hawa ko bhi thahra paaya
poocha toh kai baar dakiye se mere purane basere ka pata

laakh dhoonda kuch pata na chala
laakh poocha par kuch laapata hi raha


translation:

House was empty empty
There was no home in it
Balcony was also lifeless
Noise made by kids wasn’t there
Shook the tamarind tree
It didn’t have any tamarinds
Looked for my face in the time’s shadow
But found the heart’s mirror hazy


On the panes of the windows
There was a layer of dust settled on it
Dunno when spiders made their cobweb on the walls
Had put my ears on the threshold
But haven't heard the sound of your steps at the doors for years

No one has walked for a while towards this house on the small unpaved way leading to it
The air on the terrace was sleepy and I found it still
I did ask the postman many times the address of my old home
Searched a million times, nothing was known
Asked for it a million times something was always left unknown



(basa= built/made/settled)
(virani=empty/withoutlife)
(virani=empty/withoutlife)
(parchaiyyan=shadow)
(dhoondhla=hazy/transluscent/covered with fog or dust)
(khidkiyan=windows, sheesha=glass/mirror)
(mitti=dust/soil, parat=layer,jami= settled/frozen)
(makdiyan=spider, deewraon=walls)
(dahleej=threshold between the inner house and outside just below the door frame, darwazon=doors)
(barson=years,aahat=sound of movement or feet)
(taraf= that way,arson=a while/years, pagdandi= sort of unpaved way made by walkin over grass)
(thehra= still, soi=sleepy,hawa=air,chat=terrace)
(poocha=asked,kai baar=many times, purine=old, basere=home, pata= address)
(laakh= million/some number, kuch=something,daakiya =postman)
(laapata=unknown/lost)

Just a thought

With the inception of social networking giant Facebook, it seems like it has become all about the face! Literally. Wait , what I mean is the photography and taking pictures and posting them regularly (read : unnecessarily most of the times) has become the reason to exist and feel happy with the outcome.

Somehow being still in a picture and displaying myriad emotions while at it, is the new 'life'. Moving, meeting,hanging out and actually MOVING is fast becoming obsolete!  way to go 21st century! lets become more sedentary and still and 'picturesque'.

PS: Well, I will 'fess up,I am one of them too! (displaying sheepish grin :-/ dont believe me? look at my pic , I just took it! wait, actually let me post it first :-| )

Get me back my carefree days

Sometimes I wish we did not have facebook or smart phones. This urgency and the need to stay connected i.e, stalk people and their lives would not be there. The urgency to let the world know of every small moment spent in your life. For them to appreciate your happiness (read fake happiness) ,to make the world jealous, aware and awestruck by the false grandeur in your lives.

I wish sometimes, I would walk in a garden without the need to take a picture of every little nuance that I used to capture with my eyes instead. Oh, how lovely were the mornings when my mother would help me wear my woolen socks and braid my hair and send me to school in winters. Wasn't I carefree? I would hop and skip on my way to school and meet my girlfriends and sneak a peek at my crush. I would chatter with them incessantly without the urgent need to check my mail or my 'notifications'.I would fill my day with hundreds of little things that I would do without getting tired or bored of the monotony of my routine. I would be ambitious to dream for a great future but I would not be sad of my present and the things I achieved then.

Sometimes, I wish I could pack all of the social sites and phones and cameras and gadgets in the world, in a sack and throw them somewhere deep in the ocean where no one could find them so that I would spend one day at least one day peacefully without being stalked electronically or the need to 'look something/someone up' on the internet.

I would take a long walk and forget that there ever was something called 'connectivity' invented and that I could just cherish the walk and go back home to read a book and sleep a dreamless sleep. That I could just get a sense of wonder from a book than to browse through various channels on the television or internet and get disappointed at the efforts of the shows and movies to amuse me.That I would be happy just thinking and looking outside the window at my home or in my school, deep in some thought and when I would come out of that reverie, I would be pleased at that moment well spent. I would be glad that I had some happy thoughts and I would think some more and gaze some more out of the window.

I wish I did not have to return to my laptop every waking, free moment of my life to check something interesting/funny/amusing and that I would rather play basketball for hours and then later sleep like a zombie. I wish I could just do that without thinking of what others are doing and others are thinking and being vulnerable the majority of the time.I would just be strong and fearless.

I would do so much more and crib much lesser if only I could go back to my growing up days which were filled with careless activities and harmless fun. I would read a newspaper and learn new words and I would play scrabble or ludo or chess while aiming to beat my brother at it.Such shamelessly small and beautiful were my ambitions.

I try hard to match my lazy steps with the speed of life now, but I have forgotten how wonderfully I was unable to measure the pace of years passing by, while growing up. And now I feel the moving of each second like it would never end and that I need to fill it with something 'worthwhile'.If at all, I could just lie down on the grass next to a busy highway like I used to as a kid,without thinking that someone would laugh at me , I would be so very glad. I would hopscotch all the way till the end of life with a smile on my face like a little girl's innocent,genuine smile.

So much more I would do and so much more I could do if only I could get rid of this frenzy of technology added to my life cruelly and without even having taken my permission for doing so! It just crept into my life stealthily without making any noise but brimming with chaos.

far far away

cross your doorstep and look at my world
there is fragrance and intoxication in it
wearing precious jewels and wrapped in gold is happiness
dreams are mysterious
eyes that shine
hair that flows till some lovely lass's waist
music mixing with the fog and resides on the tip of your finger
can you feel it?
she flies with freedom into the cages of her heart
liberated are her feet  adorned with flowers
soft as the sound of a cuckoo in a mango grove
walk there in that haven till you are tired
and then walk some more
careful! dont tread on the fallen yellow leaves of the fall
they will have life again
kiss the horizon that gleams with the union
of the blue rivers and black skies
you would want to swim in those waters
you will find life in your veins
blood is not as red as the blush of the shy evening there
touch its colors, you might just want to keep painting this picture
forever.