Chagrin (Click image to enlarge)

Take your call (Click image to enlarge)

Foreplay - an allegory (Click image to enlarge)

The Egotist

He gloats
as he wanders
in the 'House of mirrors'.

Painting Green

Wailing in the shadows
Cast by the tree that bore no fruit,
Her eyes glimmer with the dream of the distant sands

That bore the footprints of Kokopelli.

(Kokopelli is a Native American fertilitiy deity)

You may say that I’m a dreamer

Fading with the miseries of uncertainty
And the horrors of gun-smoke,
Yet searching for hope gone astray
In the stench of the killing fields.

(Inspired by the original movie by Roland Joffe, title inspired by John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’.)

To miss the last bus home... (Click image to enlarge)

The passing

He drifts across the stage, suspends midway
and gives a performance.
Some applaud,
others give a thumbs-down.
When time beckons
he scurries for the exit.

A discreet teardrop 
reflects the dance of spotlights.

Innocence

Little children
Tease the wrinkles and the plodding walking-stick,
Like a firefly
That mocks at pieces of a broken lamp.

Visitor (Click image to enlarge)

Sepia - II (Click image to enlarge)

Sepia - I (Click image to enlarge)

The Crossing (Click image to enlarge)

Minus the dimensions (Click image to enlarge)

In death there is no being or knowing,
In death - the endless nonexistence.

Voice of the world (Click image to enlarge)

(The story of the war, and thence history, is always told by the winners.)

For a few decibels more!

The crowd swings in a wild trance

Feigning tonight is their last chance,

Some just shake a leg and surrender

While others jive their passions to the thunder.

(Best wishes to Jags on his new venture)

My green valley

How far away is my green valley!

The day dismounts the sun-basked saddles,
Two or three flies buzz over a milk cauldron,
A lone woodpecker works on its chosen bark,
Supper signals from a distant chimney…

Memories of my green valley

The warmth of an old armchair,
The echo of rhythmic hoof-beats,
The fragrance of dust-blown lilies,
The sight of flickering lanterns…

Alive! (Click image to enlarge)

My country, my planet

Take people out of a country and with them will be flushed out the culture, the history & all the traditions. What will we be left with? There’d be no political ideals, no patriotic fervor, no religious pride, no senseless hedonism. All that remains is just plain geography (and its factors). Then what is that elusive misunderstood concept that we refer to as ‘my country’? It’s not the physical mass of land nor the waters and mountains, it’s just a sense of belonging, and an identity that we crave for and afraid of losing. No common good can ever happen or be imagined unless we expand our sense of pride to ‘my planet’.

Hyderabad blues

You know you are in Hyderabad when…

· The biryani in ur plate is equal to 3 square meals for other south-Indian counterparts,
· You find a Irani café at every street corner,
· Irani chai means ‘one by two’ (and the waiter asks if you want ‘samose’ or ‘biskit’ to go with it),
· You hire an auto-rickshaw and find either a Salman Khan (sporting a lousy hairstyle - from ‘Tere naam’) or a Shahrukh Khan poster staring at you,
· You can live in the city all your life without ever having to learn a single word of the regional language,
· ‘Paradise’ doesn’t relate to performance-enhancing pills, ‘Blue Sea’ is not about aquariums and ‘Pista House’ is not a place to shop for dry-fruits,
· You actually know the reason why the city can’t be rendered the sobriquet ‘Lake city’ (even Lord Buddha will vouch for the same reason),
· Yellow, red and green flags are passé, pink flags are in (for political reasons),
· While finding your way out of the labyrinths of old city always keep in mind never to ask for directions...because the direction to any place in the city means ‘seedha jaao’,
· The city wakes up somewhere between 8 and 9 in the morning,
· Your boss (if he’s a Hyderabadi) would never ask you why you are late because he’ll never be there to notice it,
· Like in any other Indian city you’ll find people speeding up the wrong side of the road, but if you gather the courage to question them they’ll retort with a three-syllabled profanity that starts with ‘M’ and rhymes with ‘bhevde’,
· Saturday nights are like any other nights,
· ‘Night life’ is widely misinterpreted…according to the locals it is thought to be a vague term loosely attached to define work culture in BPOs,
· You go to a multi-specialty hospital and observe that every other doctor on the panel has the surname ‘Reddy’,
· Pelvic thrusts and rigorous dance movements accompany popular drum beats, locally called ‘do maar’ and ‘teen maar’(down extreme south its fashionably called ‘kootthu’),
· You wonder if drinking beer (more beers are sold here than in any other Indian city) helps cultivate a care-free attitude – ‘beer peeo, bindaas ho jao’,
· The usage of the ‘M’ word (mentioned above) is assumed to be cooler than the usage of the ‘F’ word,
· The DJs suck here…particularly if you are a big fan of pop, rock or hip-hop,
· Marine drive minus the sea and buzz is Necklace road,
· Looking at burqha-clad women is immoral, staring at them is criminal, winking at them is fatal,
· Loitering in the ‘Lamba’ theatre campus is considered lecherous but watching internet porn in your drawing room is fine (after all ‘We are all part of the same hypocrisy' )
· Due to inadequately publicized tourist spots most locals would stare at foreigners as if they are from a different planet,
· You realize you don’t have to stay in this city for too long to fall in love with it.

Wishful thinking

It’s such a blatant paradox
That as a child we just can’t wait to grow up
And as an adult we long to be a child again,
But never to learn to revel in the present moment.

Suspended beliefs (Click image to enlarge)

Profile of a 'Yes-Man'

Part 1
I resign my soul,
My identity and my wings of freedom
Only to be sucked into a sugar-coated flytrap.
Conformity, unquestioned, is suicide.

Part2
Scared of their own shadows,
Haunted by the acrid smell of fear,
Subdued voices, surrendered minds & misled lives
- Welcome to the world of conformists.

(Too far removed from his own identity a conformist is like a bastard, always afraid of his past and, predominantly, of himself.)

Madness (Click image to enlarge)

...the pessimism streak continues.

Coffee (Click image to enlarge)

Crossroads (Click image to enlarge)

(In a rather cheerless way this post relates to ‘The metaphor’, posted May 31st, 2007…but taking the wrong bus is better than missing the last one home. What's ur take?)

Joy (Click image to enlarge)

Oh, this is the joy of the rose:

That it blows,

And goes. (Willa Cather)

Frozen (Click image to enlarge)

Now and forever (Click image to enlarge)

Longing (Click image to enlarge)

The metaphor (Click image to enlarge)

(The 'metaphor' is similar to the essence of the post 'Final colors' dated 24th May '07)

Mediocrity has its way, and so does gibberish!

The so called ‘creative’ clowns of the Indian ad-houses are sporting a field day with a conceited attitude that they can get away with anything more degenerating than slapstick because they presume their audience to be fuzzyheaded morons who waste their time wagging to the heavy-duty emotions of tearjerky soaps and “pre-scripted”, and yet, very lucrative talent shows. Keeping all the prejudices apart, the producers of such programs are happy that they are offering the public what is demanded of them, and the current trend of the falling TRP ratings speak a lot about such ‘public demand’.
Debating about the hackneyed path that Indian advertising is treading these days, we can observe that as we flip channels across the tubespace we jump into some stupid commercials that make us wonder why the ad-makers are grossly underestimating the acumen of the average Indian viewer. On one hand there is the commercial of an ITC-launched snack brand that portrays a stereotypical lungi-clad, charcoal-smeared guest playing puppet to the strongly syllabled usage of a South-Indian language, and on the murkier side is a veteran TV-actress who repeatedly stretches a piece of lingerie to prove its super-elasticity (she comes on as if she suffers from a strange kind of fetishism). I guess, on a meagre shoestring budget, even a municipal school team can come up with better, fresher ideas.

Gibberish should stay where it belongs...in the drains.

- Sunil D'pudi

From the inside (Click image to enlarge)

(The poem's last line is inspired by the title of John Mellencamp's song 'Rain on the scarecrow'.)

Final colors (Click image to enlarge)

The truth (Click image to enlarge)

Blues (Click image to enlarge)

Color Purple (Click image to enlarge)

What's your kind of humor? (Click image to enlarge)

The Maverick (Click image to enlarge)

Voice of innocence

The eye of the sunflower
Stares into the clear skies;
Acres of bright, yellow effluence
Mimic
The voice of innocence.

Red earth
Weaves a ominous silence
Into the wilderness of the valley.
The phantoms are exiled into a world of renunciation
By the voice of innocence.

In the chosen web
Stirs a fly - vanquished to submission.
It disowns the pastures of winged worlds
And trembles
With the voice of innocence.

THE DIARY (Click image to enlarge)

LEMON (Click image to enlarge)

EYE OF THE STORM (Click image to enlarge)

The Pilgrim

I am a stranger in my own life;
I am an outsider in my own territory;
I am an unknown in my own world of reason. (reference to 'The Parasite' - Oct 27th'06)

I belong to no land, faith, nor history;
I don’t belong to yesterday, today, nor to this moment.
I am not a child of consequence
Nor a guest hinged to the doors of conscience;
I am like sweet music (or a ghost)
That floats at free will in palatial marble halls;
I am the hope
That glitters in a peasant’s forlorn eyes.
I am the voice
To Man’s call for freedom.

(In life I am the child of time,
In death I am the child of eternity – Anonymous)

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.

It's 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

reverberates 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.

THE PARASITE

I am a stranger in my own life,
I am an outsider in my own territory,
I am an unknown in my own world of reason.

I am lost;
I dig through layers of mud,
Through the decaying memories,
Through masks, pretenses, compromises, blind beliefs,
Through a past, strongly influenced by loud theories and pointed fingers.

The world’s adventure was my adventure,
Their game was my game,
Their life was my life,
Their passion was my passion,
Their defeat was my defeat.
After the soul-sapping battle,
I am ashamed of the journey. 

I crouch in the shadows,
Assaulted, beaten,
And mercilessly molested by temptations.
I am lost in the wilderness.

I envy
The great leaders
Who, like a lone oak tree
That clutches firmly to the barren harsh grounds through sun and storm,
Have the courage
To fiercely defend their individuality.

They are the motors of the world.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

A smile can break the ice, and that humble initiative can be yours,
A glorious sunrise can start an era, and it’s up to you to paint the glory on the sky,
An idea out of the blue can reach the stars, and that spark can spring from your mind,
A single step can start a revolution, and that small effort can be yours to raise a foot,
A man with conviction can awaken a generation, and that giant can be you,
What becomes of your life is because of what you make of it,
What becomes of your life is because of what you choose.

It’s not all over until it’s really over

When it’s deadbeat in the heart,
When the body is completely drenched in sweat and blown by dust,
When pain browbeats willpower,
When the most comforting thought is about surrender,
When the sight turns hazy and the head turns dizzy,
When exhaustion has sucked the last trace of stamina from the limbs,
When the mind plays tricks, constantly throwing images of defeat,
Then do not give it up,
‘cos it is most crucial to hang in there, and give it all
To run that little extra.
Forget critics, forget failure,
But then, in the end, you will be happy you did it.

Remember, ‘If you are keen and willing, even the race you lost will teach you how not to run the race, and will prepare you to excel in the next one’.

The Dark Tide

His mind is hysterical, spinning at high speeds.
At the east end of the house
Is a study room packed with old furniture and numerous paintings.
The blinds are drawn
And they throw a view of the misty hilltops.

He sits near the rear window,
On a large wooden chair,
And his eyes stare intently
At an insect sitting on his right index finger.
 
His mind is like a cinema-house,
Constantly flickering images from the past.
First - a purple-painted tongue, sharp, slender and sudden,
Like the color of some forbidden wild berries;
Second - the bitterness of his father’s baritone voice
Shrilling through his ears;
Third - sticky, sweaty little palms
Clutching to a black gown at his mother’s funeral;
Fourth - the urge he felt in his calves,
When he crushed a flower
Under the weight of his heavy boots;
Fifth - a scrawny, slender figure in black metal
Hanging, or seems to be hanging, from a cross,
And the haunting chime of the church bells;
Sixth - the tingling in his forearms
When he smashed a kitten’s skull
With a single blow from a stolen baseball bat;
Seventh - the nauseating smell of rain-soaked grass,
Color – a violent green,
And the instant loathing for every object the world calls beautiful;
Eighth - a large, hairy man pinning a little girl against the bed,
Completely overpowering, physically devouring,
The memory chokes like a coin stuck midway down the throat.

The images
Never fail the sequence.
They howl ferociously,
Until the migraine sets in, spiraling his head
To grotesque proportions.
He escapes to the basement,
To the home of seven rotten corpses, 
And two rotting ones.
Thousands of termites
Eat into the damp, wooden cabinets that hold them.

The doorbell rings,
And he abruptly awakens

Into a subconscious mayhem.

The Mayhem:
The introvert closes his eyes,
The attention-seeker opens his.
The conformist ducks into his shell,
The narcissist emerges.
The facade peels off,
Something feral surfaces to the boiling core.
Conscience clings to the last straw of hope,
While an insatiable hunger throttles the soul.
The emotion is inexplicable, 

It runs deep,

It’s an inexplicable wrath
That compels the monster to murder.


The doorbell rings again.

BLUE BLOOD

When in deep thought,
He raises his left eyebrow
And his long, magician-like fingers
Drum restlessly on the velvet sheets.

The ever-rising storm
In his deep dark eyes
Deals with the clownery of the rich
And consoles the agony of the masses.

His black and white logic,
With no gray shades,
Render indisputable justice.
The red stone
Embedded in the cold metal
Wields the ultimate authority.
The sheen
Of the sharp sword
Reflects a merciless carnage of guillotined heads.
The determination
Clenched in his tight fist
Breaks the shackles of doubt.

A life
Tempered by the testing tides of friendship, treason and political intrigue;
A calm
Born out of the simmering chaos.
A life, a penance under the volcano.
A truth, which he refers to as ‘the absolute’.

Enchanting Whispers

A voice
just loud enough
to have him want to listen to it.

A voice
that runs like prose,

smooth, convincing and mesmerizing.

A voice so subtle,
and yet stirs the soul
In a sea of warmth.

A voice so subtle,
it teases

and tames his stubbornness.

A voice,
just loud enough
to make him come back to her every night.