DARK SECRETS

Everybody has secrets because everybody believes they lead a normal life.

I drift through the pages of life,

I roam between the hands of time,

I wander in and out of consequences;

I ride high, I ride low,

I sail in clear waters with a free spirit,

And when the storm sets in,

I am lost rudderless,

Caught off-guard in deep oceans.

Sometimes on solitary nights,

When ominous signs hang in the sky

And murky moods hang in the mind,

My past crumbles at my trembling feet.

My conscience

Is victimized like a dragonfly tethered to the fancies of a juvenile mind.

The air turns suffocating,

It stinks like a bat-infested cave

And shrills like the musings of a million raucous insects.

The vision of what lies ahead is eclipsed by the burden of what I left behind.

Its the haunting of the dark secrets again.

(A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to each other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! - 'A Tale Of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens)

WHO IS THE BEST SALESMAN IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD?

The question, 'Who is the most influential person in the history of the world?' has been answered in the 1978 book which goes by a similar title written by Michael H Hart. The findings in the book are based on extensive research which simultaneously answered another closely related question, 'Who is the best salesman in the history of the world?'. The two questions vouch for each other because an influencer is a person who successfully sells his idea, theory, product or service to one, many or to a large percentage of the masses for profit or other intangible, and often, soul-searching reasons (an inspirer, on the other hand, is a 'positive influencer'). No brownies or free vacations for guessing the winner, but the frontrunner who influenced his way up to the summit rightly deserves the slot by all means for spreading (selling) the 'Word of God' across the two most populous continents in the world. The prize is, clearly, not a symbol of 'how many he influenced' but it's a reward to the aspect 'how deeply he influenced how many'. The winner is Prophet Mohammed.

- Sunil D'pudi

STRINGS OF ETERNITY

The night air is crisp and tender, 

and the vibrant life forms: 

blooming inside and out. 

The silence of the late hours

is broken

when the autumn breeze

gently blows a single leaf - away

on its mirthful journey.
The leaf
dances its way to the cobbled pathway.
The echo of the fall

reverberate through the distant light years

of star and sand.

As the seasons pass by,
the echo 

transforms into sweet music

and tunes in 

with the ballet

performed by a drunken bee

to an amused, wide-eyed violet.  

CALL CENTRE BLUES

Sinking sun, stirring souls, false identities, fake greetings, bee-hived cubicles, coffee-stained styrofoam cups, vigilant cameras, hidden angst, cursing cabbies, angry customers, abuses, apologies, plastic smiles, snakes and ladders, flashing deadlines, stress-busters, a few analgesics, easy going, hard coming, flying times, dragging minutes, rocking, frolicking, pushing, stretching, haggling, nagging, bragging, fretting … all in all, in a day’s (night’s) work.