Humans evolve, not by killing the beast in themselves, but by making persistent efforts to civilize that beast. And society should be ever-vigilant to the fact that such persistence is a matter of individual choice.

Unbelong

I belong
nowhere.
That is my freedom.

Aham Brahmasmi

The Broken Mirror

Make a wish

Action

Like the Plague

When all else fails some people are survived only by love and faith.

The averageness of our lives is dictated by the limits we are taught in our childhood. Teach yourself otherwise.

Another Life

I dream,

I wake up,

& I tune into the stream of a different consciousness.

The Mind's Window

I breathe…

I listen…

I learn…

There’s 

purpose in the violence,

solace in the grief,

meaning in the chaos,

silence in the rage,

and harmony in the passion.

I close my eyes

and swallow the darkness.

I evaporate.

The Mirror

War

The streets vomit violence,
and propaganda spews poison.  
The will to survive
is stabbed with rage, scheme, and debauchery.

Crimson pours at the other side of the sky.

The Girl Who Loves Rain

You are my reality,
You are my every living breath,
You are my sleep, you are my dream.

You are my addiction,
You are my breathlessness,
You are my zen, you are my bliss.

You are my mirror,
You are my conscience,
You are my madness, you are my sensibility.

You are my fuel,
You are my instinct,
You are the flame, and all the elements.

You are my ego,
You are my pride,
You are the confession that expels the shame.

You are my rage, you are my agony;
You are the hand that leads me to faith,
You are the scent that drives my passion.

You are my push,
You are my delight,
You are my art, you are my colors.

You are my roots, you are my wings,
You are my thirst, you are the ocean,
You are the cause, you are the consequence.

You are my philosophy,
You are my ambiguity,
You are my absolute.  

In life - we are the dreamers, the wanderers, and the possessed.
In death - we are eternity.

It’s an age of strangeness –
unexpressed love, ‘unsaid’ goodbyes, unheard melodies, unexplored territories,
random journeys, flickering lights, opaque souls, and forced smiles.

Beauty lies frozen in the magic of some rare moments.
Time stands still.

What keeps us alive...

To chase small dreams, and to see them come true, is the essence of a happy life.

On the other hand, the pursuit of larger dreams is what keeps the fire burning. Such pursuit defines the hunger of the giants of mankind. In the end all of us are remembered for our dreams, passions, and more importantly, for the chase.

Is death the final answer?

Consider suicide only if the happiness rendered by death outweighs the joy of living itself.

The Grip

Nature reaches out.

In autumn, the dry leaves slap against my face.
It’s the downpour in the monsoons, the bitterness in winters,
and the scorching heat in summers.

The sands of time slip through my fingers,
and nature reaches out
with a firmer grip.

Inflated

Even the giants of mankind,
in the shadow of praise,
become the children of vanity.

In prayer we listen to the voice of hope, and in despair we rise to the voice of life.

There has to be just enough fear to keep us alive,
there has to be just enough faith to show us the way,
there has to be just enough pain to make the happiness significant,
and there has to be just enough love to make us look stupid.

Monster

It's on nights like these
that the weary traveler
becomes the forbidden pilgrim.

The masses have sacrificed enough lives for the personal gain of the politician. When will the politician shed at least one 'honest' tear for the cause of the masses?

Killer Conscience

For most of us, what we do for a living & what we do to keep us ‘alive’ are two different things. At one end of the spectrum there are people who never feel the need to explore something (a purpose) that keeps them ‘alive’. They just tag along with the monotony of existence. At the other end, there are people who would stop at nothing to do stuff that keeps them ‘alive’. This breed will even kill for what keeps them ‘alive’. They have the usual day-to-day confrontations with conscience. But they fight it out...& they emerge!
In the end, nothing else would matter…but to kill.

When in dust, we all shall be equal

Mirror

Convergence

Creation is nouns & verbs; evolution is adjectives & adverbs. (Doc Searls inspired)

Blue Tooth

HELL

I
don’t see the fallen angels anymore.

My existence,
or the lack of it, knows
no hatred, no pain, no memories,
no torture, no ill humor…
I just linger pointlessly
scavenging between the hands of eternity.
At least, the vermin
that runs across the kitchen floor
is squished out of repulsion.
What am I?

Heavy

Thunder,
or the footsteps of the drifting clouds
-the evening shadows
flicker
in anticipation of the approaching storm.

Bad seed:

The Enlightenment

It was the most violent awakening.

I was burning with high fever - & yet
my instincts were sweating profusely.
Parts of me were still raging
with an unknown emotion:
which is nothing like fear nor anger.
It took all my senses a long time,
& a soul-sapping effort ,
to realize that I had abandoned
my ego along the way.

On mediocrity

On a clear day like today,
when the rush of the maddening hours has been subdued,
when the alarm of the bedside clock has been hushed,
and when the 'fight for survival' is a distant call of the memory,
I would let the music bask in my head
until it lasts.

And when tomorrow comes
I wouldn’t want the genius to raise the bar once again.
(Like today, let the average run the show.)

from, may be, some place far away

The past never happened
& the future never will.
Look closer,
the present
might just be a dream.

Wanderer, The

A pinch of humour & an ounce of chagrin

The storyboard: An irked employee is doodling some terms of socially loathed qualities and all the arrows of angst are directed to the nemesis of the story who is remembered as the most popular name in corporate India. Hari Sadu returns in Naukri’s new campaign with a climax that teases the gun-smoke of the much dreaded months of recession. The punch-line reads ‘Jobs are back!’(The diagonal strokes of the letter ‘k’, in the word ‘back’, are cleverly inverted to emphasize the meaning – forward movement.)

The billboard: As you cruise over one of the flyovers in Secunderabad, and when Parade grounds come into full view, the cityscape is donned with a large hoarding that promotes a restaurant with humorous punch-lines like ‘taste even Rajni can’t beat’ & ‘six-pack ya family pack’. The term family pack has since caught on with the local parlance so much that it is frequently used in social circles to substitute the term obesity.

The springboard: If the public recognizes your logo, style or color, the value of the communication is obviously doubled. Combine this instant recognition with a touch of wit that resonates with the target market and your brand sells. Humor is one of advertising’s most volatile tools. Good humor wins friends. It attracts the eye, engages the mind and restores the soul. Humor is everywhere. You will find it in a maverick’s histrionics, you will find it in the comic strips about the adventures of a small kid, be it Dennis or Calvin, and you will find it yet again in the cheeky one-liners mouthed by Ian Fleming’s debonair spy. Yet humor is surrounded by banana skins. It can try too hard and fall flat or not hard enough and go unnoticed. But still, ads that make us laugh might make us buy.

The dartboard (or when humor goes astray): 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 tearjerker soaps and “pre-scripted”, and yet very lucrative talent shows. Pondering over the hackneyed path that a segment of Indian advertising is treading these days, we can observe that as we flip channels across the tube-space we jump into some really stupid commercials that make us wonder why the ad-makers are grossly underestimating the acumen of the average Indian viewer (and you will thank your stars for the invention of the remote).
I guess, on a meager shoestring budget, even a local school team can come up with better, fresher ideas.

The Union (of Kali & Bhairava)

From the frenzy rises a passion,
From the passion rises a life force.


Her beauty
contrasts with her violent awakening.
Her ferocity – raw & unmatched,
Her flowing heat –  terrible & untamed,
Her spirit – chaotic & unrestrained,
Her anger
has the force of a thousand thunders.
Her wrath
rivals the doom of the darkest forces.

His presence
dissolves the roaring vermillion sky.
His shadow
whiffs with a phallic urge.
His desire
engulfs the radiance of her sultry torso.
His grip
tightens on her fuming posture.
His vitality
pours into her like gushing lava.
His defiance
unlocks a feminine splendour.

Bound
by the shackles of love,
Released
by the harmony of the union,
she reveals
& she surrenders.

The boulder

Weather-beaten, immobile & lifeless:
I lift the stone
From the veil of its deceit.

I could, with awe, see dozens
Wriggling in the damp soil.

Warmth

To tune into the desire for Togetherness
Is to unlock Nature’s deepest secrets.

They played like children on a beach,
They hungered like beasts in the wilderness,
They sparkled like blossoms in a spring garden.
They fulfilled like a mother’s yielding breast.

They soared. They swam. They embraced.
They laughed. They loved. They lived.

Reflecting on the documentary film: Deliver us from evil

The subdued voices squirm in the domes of imposed silence.

Physical abuse
is faith - shattered;
spiritual abuse
is faith - erased!



Man’s journey of civilization from the dearth of his savage past is far from complete.

For the inherent solace of societal bonding, we tend to associate ourselves with a specific faith. As a consequence, we indulge in the oblivious surrender of the self as we place all our fears and beliefs on the strength of a concept called ‘God’. For matters of hypothetical convenience let us keep the petty issue of religion out of the discussion. However, as we retract and examine the horrors committed by mankind in the name of God, the list is excruciating: the Crusades, the Holocaust, the endless bloody riots, the religious sacrifices and the recent exposés of child abuse committed by none other than the guardians of faith. From these illustrations the dynamics of the Supreme Conscience are very clear. The choice for God, or let us uncomplicate the term & just settle on ‘Supreme force’, is never between good & evil. In higher realms, absolute functioning is rather about deciding a time for either progress or regress, to fine-tune a balance between both, and thereby regulate the eternal order of the universe.

Naught

Void in the mind,
A hole in the heart,
-Grim, surreal, unsettling, choking…
Like the numbness before a blackout.

Insomnia

Strangeness
Haunts in familiar territories.
A semblance
Reveals itself in queer worlds.
Reflections
in broken mirrors,
Mirages
in blinding lights,
Phantoms
In the surrounding void.
Sometimes like a dream,
And at other times like a hallucination.

Nightwalk

It's midnight.
Three or four miles away from the shack
and walking...

Hands in my pockets,
Cigarette in my mouth,
And icy breeze slapping against my face.

Mindless
Of the roaring dark skies near the horizon,
Of the waves that gently strike my bare feet,
I walk on the shoreline,
Along the path of the burrowing crabs.

I pause
And my eyes
Narrow upon a distant, solitary light.
Is it the ritual dance of a glowworm
Or the blink of a lighthouse?
My head spins,
My legs give away,
And my mind hits a blank.

I should have stopped at the ninth beer.