The Stage

The engulfing darkness, the dissolving lights;
The spinning planet, the blazing sun;
The surging oceans, the roaring waves;
The thundering skies, the rumbling grounds;
The stretching deserts, the shining sands;
The flowing rivers, the rising tides;
The changing seasons, the emerging colors;
The blossoming flowers, the buzzing insects;
The thinking mind, conquering all;
The spinning ideas, the blazing furnaces;
The surging speed, the roaring wheels;
The thundering passions, the rumbling motors;
The stretching possibilities, the shining alloys;
The flowing wealth, the rising sky-scrapers;
The changing needs, the emerging technologies;
The blossoming fashions, the buzzing mills;
The engulfing lights, the dissolving darkness.

(Interchanging the first and the last line will change the mood of the poem)

THE SILENCE

The telephone ring, the monosyllabic talk,
The striking of a matchstick,
The irregular rattle of the ceiling-fan,
A desolate mind turning the pages of a newspaper,
A little artist scratching crayons on the bedroom wall,
Termites eating their way into an old bookrack,
Two lizards prowling around a fluorescent lamp,
Water draining from the sinkhole,
The tinkle of the wind chimes,
The haste of the clock,
These little sounds
Emphasize the silence in the house,
The tension between the man and the wife
Reemphasizes the silence in the house.

Throughout the history of human interaction,
There was a lot unspoken by the imposition of silence
And there was a lot spoken by the language of silence.

The blue sky

Forty-five or fifty years ago, he was crying in the cradle,
And some thirty years ago, he was an adult.
A hurried transformation
Untouched by the innocence of childhood,
Unscathed by the recklessness of adolescence.

Four or five weeks ago, he had a cardiac arrest,
And now, with one leg in the grave,
He dreams
Of exploring the ignored chapters
Of his lost years.

One of these days, a little after two in the afternoon,
He gets up from his bed and slowly walks the way to his son’s room,
A nine-year old rebel.
He opens the door, looks at the mess around,
And tries to make some sense of the bizarre posters stuck to the walls.
He winces as he picks up the cricket bat lying on the floor.
He grips the handle firmly and swings the bat wildly in the air.
At a distant space in time,
He could hear a cheering applause from the crowd.

 He clenches his fist with grit
And instinctively smiles to himself.
Some desperate tears escape from the corners of his eyes.
He experiences a strange feeling he never felt before: an absolute sense of freedom,
And delight in its purest form.
His spirit, as eager as a young bird on its first flight,
Rearing to explore the promising horizons.

IT’S ALL IN THE MIND

A long time ago, there was a carpenter who worked under the commission of the royal patrons of a small kingdom. The work-quarters assigned to him consisted of a poorly ventilated room with a very small window to its east side. To work on blocks of wood, there was an immovable, heavy metal table placed right under the window.

When the carpenter started on his assignment, he observed that everyday between ten and eleven in the morning, the sun shone directly through the window. Often he felt that the rays hit him directly on his face. Though it was a silly reason he found it very difficult to concentrate on the work at hand. He would be frustrated at the mere thought of the approaching hour and the annoyance would snowball to affect his work for the rest of the day. His productivity levels continued to dip drastically because he always imagined that the world beyond the four walls of the room is very beautiful. Within a month he had to be replaced for his inefficiency.

 

The new carpenter who came in looked at the room from a different outlook. He sensed that the intervention of sunshine in the dark room was a welcome relief. He would be rejoiced when the clock struck ten daily, and the smile on his face lasted till the late hours of the evening. During summers, when he realized that the sun shone very harshly through the window at the appointed hour, he would take a small break, but only to get back to work with double the rigor. He was strongly convinced that his work among the four walls of the room is going to lead him to the beautiful world outside. 

 

 

In due course of time his work was recognized and he was awarded a huge contract to work on the king’s palace.

More often than not, it’s the way we look at things that affects the way we live our lives.

THE 'CROSSROADS' DILEMMA

There were men whose unprotested submission led them to an internal conflict to introspect if they were played the scapegoat; there were men whose indomitable spirit urged them to scale those perilous heights, but ultimately landed in the jaws of death; and there are those unfortunate souls who backed off at the last mile only to discover later that they missed their big ticket to fortune.
When faced with certain events, some people blend into them, some remain unfazed and others just shy away.

There is no single defined course of action applicable to all situations at all the times. So choose your option wisely.

A PRECIOUS FEW

Some men
Have minds like an abyss,
Exhaustive fountains of innovativeness
That promote human thinking to the next level.

Every generation produces a handful of maniacs who come up with offbeat ideas which might be ridiculed as crazy daydreams by their peers. The individual members of such an unusual herd are mostly loners, isolated by their own sense of superiority, and their behavior is looked at with extreme contempt in social circles. But strangely, it is the spin-offs of such eccentric minds that define the destiny of their generation, and the subsequent ones that follow.



Some men
Have hearts like a sponge,
Highly accommodative to the sufferings of mankind
That elevate human consciousness to a higher plane.

One attribute common across all the centuries that passed by is human suffering. Most people turn a cold shoulder to the downtrodden because they understand that the easiest way to deal with somebody else’s agony is to ignore it. But somewhere, lying among the rubble shines a noble heart, which is a humble possession of a few giants. They are giants, not by physical disposition, but for the reason that they have the courage to hug a leper’s dejection, accept his misery, and to reinstate the moral conviction that kindness conquers all.

THE STARE

Everyone left the burial ground.
Its been four hours now
And I look intently at the remnants of a few glowing cinders.
A wave of winter-cold creeps into my bones.
The day slowly resigns into the late hours of the evening.
I’ve been sitting in the car for a long time,
My melancholy weaves into the engulfing darkness.
At sporadic intervals, tears would flow freely down my cheeks
And without a conscious effort they would stop suddenly
Caught in a strange confusion between dream and reality.

The air inside the car is infested with a swarm of mosquitoes
Murmuring the tales of the dead into my ears;
By now my eyes got accustomed to the darkness.
At a distance, a few feet away from the car,
I see two tiny playful animals nibbling at the bark of a tree.
They hurry up and down the tree, chasing each other,
And for the next few minutes, I was completely lost in their busy, sneaky bustle.
Breaking into the eerie silence a pair of violent gigantic wings
Swoop down from nowhere and the vicious claws dig into one of the squirrels,
And grab it with the ferocity of an overwhelming predatory instinct.
I look around for the other rodent.
It already escaped somewhere deep into the wilderness.
Carried by the occasional breeze, I can hear echoes of a frightened, panicking life;
A life still breathing. 

Perched on a mounted rock,
The bird pecks into the warm flesh with greedy strokes
And within a few minutes the prize is completely devoured.
After the meal it stares into a void. Or directly at me.
I stare back at the large disturbing eyes of the owl.
The eyes reek of a cold emptiness: a void as certain as death.

As I drive back home that night,
I silently savor the memories of a strong friendship that dates back to my college days.

THE OTHER HALF

To understand that home is not a dump yard for office tensions,

To cope up with lecherous looks and snide remarks on the streets,

To instill confidence in her little son that he can count beyond five,

and to gladly reward him when he does,

To relate to her responsibilities at home and work from a mature perspective,

and to balance both,

To make a thirty-two-year-old man realize the relevance of the first sentence mentioned above,

To forgive him for some unspoken indignations,

To lie to her friend that the swelling on her face is just because of a nasty fall from the stairs,

To take her son into her reassuring, warm hug when he is terrified by a bad dream in the middle of the night,

All in all…it takes a lot to be a woman.

CAN ART BREAK FREE?

The artist
Dips the brush carelessly in the passion of his soul
And stains the white canvas with his fiery emotions.
(Picasso inspired)

To a casual onlooker,
The painting might mean nothing but a disoriented assemblage of human thoughts,
But on a closer look
It is art stripped naked to the most fundamental form of abstractness;
It’s a creative merchandise from the mind factory.

The interconnectedness
Among the seemingly distracted patterns
Translate into volumes of artistic fervor, an absolute treatise to the five senses.
But the beauty of the painting
Lies in its complexity,
The way it teases the scrutiny of the staunch critic.

The unperceived expressions,
Which are inconspicuously hidden in the masterpiece,
Want to ‘break free’
Like the dripping lust of a tethered elephant bull
In full musk.

HAPPINESS IS EVERYWHERE

From the hand that pats, to the delight that smiles,
From the heart that feeds, to the stomach that is fed,
From the ego that gives, to the need that takes,
From the touch that heals, to the hope it gives,
From the lips that kiss, to the passion that blushes,
From the assurance that speaks, to the consoled that listens,
From the past that teaches, to the future that learns,
From the times that fly, to the memory that relishes,
From the values that bind, to the legacy they build,
From the authority that pardons, to the wrongs that are forgiven,
From the flag that flutters, to the fervor that salutes,
From the sweat that ploughs, to the gold that harvests,
From the autumn breeze that sways, to the dry leaves that fall,
From the seasons that roll by, to the colors they bring,
From the wings that soar, to the heavens that shine,
From the dark hanging clouds that contrast to the silver lining that borders,
From the rains that fall, to the mud that exhales,
From the thought that sparks, to the form it takes,
From the mind that conceives to the world it delivers;
Happiness is not what you see
But how you perceive what you see.

To be a happy man, imagination is the key.
And when imagination looks around

Happiness is everywhere.