Unfortunate ?

To be worthy of self loathe is also

worth something : 

I learnt this today

as I did the day before,

To be worthy of nothing,

is truly unfortunate.

To end once existence

by choice, is sad indeed

not just for the dead

but for the dying around them.

But to have no will to die or not,

is truly unfortunate. 

Truly unfortunate it is, 

to possess such a beautiful thing :

as life, and pass it by

as you would

the beggar on the street

across your house. 

Truly unfortunate is

this drudgery in spite of 

privileges,

much worthy beings would, perhaps

do justice to 

my worthless being. 

Not there, not here

I went to many places and many

places

came to me

but none as lasting

upon my mind

as the dark corners

where I heard what

I could see.

Much far have I roamed

within the sphere of

my mind,

yet I have not reached

there, where lies

what I seek or 

here, where lies

what I have.

This curse, 

and blessing

at once

is maddening;

to be here 

and not

to be there 

and not.

Image Courtesy : Google Images

Once upon a time

I was once a happy man;

and then I found a mirror

that taught me how to hate.

~

I could once talk to people;

and then I spoke to me

and learnt the art of guilt.

~

I enjoyed looking around;

and then I looked within

and learnt the depth of darkness.

~

I could once hear the birds that sing;

and then I heard my heart

and learnt what deafness means.

~

I could once smile unknowingly;

and then I saw them laugh

and learnt how to compare.

~

I could once just be me;

and then I saw them all

and forgot who I am.

~

Courtesy Wikipedia

Hahaha! You wretched fool !!!

Hahaha, I was walking fast, I was running, I was dashing
Hahaha, I was a fool, I am a fool, I will be wiser

Hahaha, I kept running, across the meadows
across the farms, high above and beneath
left and right, always scared.

Looking over the shoulder,
that belonged to me :
looking at them , who were mine :
but never belonged to me ?

Hahaha, what a grand fool !
Splendid ! Atrocious !
Hahaha, madmen ! wretched soul !

So far am I ,
I look back and see :
darkness and darker-ness:

Hahaha! What a fool !
Wretched soul !

Look now. Stop.
Stop and look.
Where are u ?
Where are they ?
What is this ?
Who are you ?

Hahaha! You fool !
You thought you knew it all !

Running away from black orbs
encircling your to be tombstone :
sucked into the beautiful nothingness of your -
forever numbed soul !

Hahaha ! You wretched fool !

Bricks

You lay a brick. And another. And another. Ad infinitum. 

you get a wall, a room, a castle, an empire.

but, do you, if you break brick by brick ?

bring down a barrier, a cage, a lifetime ?

The Unnamed Lady

She was sitting all by herself by the traffic light. What did her eyes see ? They were cast down upon the road. Her fragile body was oscillating and the motions seemed to rise to a crescendo. Her hair was undone, big visible layers of dirt had made their texture like that of a jute rope. Her frame was bent in a squat and her overall demeanor was that of a frenzied stupor. She had big eyes, but they were cast down on to the road. Even as big vehicles darted across, her eyes did not seem to register the events. On her arm was a bangle. It was a set of glass bangle, red in color. But she had it only on her left hand. Her right hand was empty. 

I do not know why i was inexplicably drawn to her. I had just had dinner with a couple of my colleagues. We spoke about a lot of things. About how the politicians are making a mess of the country, about how the education system in India does not promote knowledge, about how the disparity between the rich and the poor exists, no matter what. All of them seemed very distant now. All that my mind could register was this fragile frame moving to and fro, ignorant about whatever was happening around her. 

Does she have a name ? Should I go up to her and ask her her name ? Would that be appropriate ? On retrospect, when you consider the questions that enters your mind, you realize how far we have come as a race and how far I have come as a person. The requirement of permission to initiate a conversation is symbolic of the mental leap that it represents. Would it be the same if it was a pretty girl at the bar ? Or a friend of a colleague who I was meeting for the first time. Definitely not, I think.

She had no name after all. She remembered nothing about herself. She did not know who her parents were, or where she was from , or how she was where she is now, or what her name is. For me, it was something incomprehensible. How does a person not know what their name is ? How does a person not know where they are from ? How does a person not know anything about their past ? I break my head about what my purpose in life is. I break my head over the question of who I am or who do I want to be. I break my head over the meaning of my life. I break my head about the events in the past. And I could not believe her. Here was someone, so completely oblivious about themselves that they hardly knew they existed. It was the culmination of her life that she had grown so alien to herself. 

Two hours had passed by. I was still sitting beside her. I do not know why. Am I exploiting her ? Am I using her to find my answers ? Am I trying to get into her head and explain my troubles with her solution. Her mind would be an interesting place to be. What would it have ? What does my mind have ? Whatever my mind has, I know for sure it starts with an 'I' most, if not all, of the times. Can you imagine a blank mind ? Subdued by years and years of substance abuse. Can you imagine a hollow soul ? Sucked up of life by years and years and physical abuse and violence. Can you feel it ? You cannot. I was trying to understand something that was beyond my capacity to understand. 

There are concepts. There are words. There are equations. None of them so difficult to understand as a single simple thing as an emotion. No word can convey an emotion that you have never felt. It can only create in you an illusion of having felt that emotion. I was trying to induce in myself those emotions by sitting besides the unnamed lady.  I was in search of self-pity. It was a desperate attempt to feel what I thought she would be feeling. These were not ideas conveyed through words, but by senses. 

I could not leave the place because I had found a part of me. And i wanted to run away from it no more. Fear made me stay there frozen. I was in that dreaded intersection of purpose where you do not know whether to plunge or to withdraw. Such a petty fool I am ! I thought. Half hoping that the lady would finally get up and leave or at least turn around, curse me, spit at me, hurl abuses and leave me laughing to myself. I guess that is what I wanted to do and I was projecting it onto her. So weak a man. 

I slept there at the pavement. When i woke up, it was 5 in the morning. For a few seconds, i had to scan the location to find out where I was. As i got up from the previous position, which was being stretched out dangerously on the road, i had a funny feeling that all those people who must have seen me, must have thought of me as a hopeless drunkard. 

She was not there. It gave me an inexplicable joy to be rid of her. It was like the clearing of shadow for warm rays to come in. Was she the shadow ? Or was my soul a shadow to my self ? I care not. I felt free. 

Maybe, someday you too will meet her. If you happen to, ask her name, please do let me know. Her face is stuck to my mind, but i have no label to put on her. 

Maybe if we stop labeling everyone, we will know everyone better because then we will not be concerned about details fabricated in complicated words but about the message that each soul carries within. Maybe, then we will be able to feel the joy in each others laughter and maybe then we can think of each other as same, as branching from the same tree of life. Maybe, then can we be unconditionally happy. 

The experience helped me a lot. I look up to the unnamed lady in times of despair.

If you meet her, say her I said "Thank You"

White Dove

Mindful wastage of time, it is:

this tiring passage of breaths-

now in , now out.

~

A deep gorge lies in wait,

for your dainty feet may bless it:

and lift this dreariness that blankets my soul.

~

Sweet pain it is, that sears my heart,

plunging into my soul, your smile

hangs tantalizingly in my memory.

~

Eyes, now dreary, droop : the mind

escapes to dash across the meadows, until

it somehow rests upon your gaze.

~

Like the swaying dandelions,

my heart plays with its beats:

now slow, now fast, now slow, now fast.

~

The sweet breeze that strikes

the closed eyelids of my soul:

does douse the fire within it.

~

Like a stray feather, plucked

off a dove by the wind, you make me fly

freely, until upon your brow I rest

~

and when you close your eyes,

this feather, which is me

rolls gently down your face: and falls

~

like petals on the altars of God,

I lie in peace, smiling silently

besides the soft toes of you, my angel.

~

I wait for you to wake,

for I can't bear not seeing you:and there

you smile coyly in your sleep like a content child.

~

When you wake with the sun, 

you give flight to the birds,

to which my heart is akin.

~

The chirping of the hurried birds,

is silenced as soon as your lips part

to produce unheard symphonies.

~

The days are dreary, they repeat

like mindless parroting of hollow words:

but your presence : forever new.

~

White dove:

go fly. I am not caging you

so I can soothe my soul looking at you.

Letting you go is the best I can do.

~ 

Jealousy

I look at the little boy 

running around naked in the rain

And I think why can't I ?

I look at the old wrinkled

face that cracks into a smile

And I think why can't I ?

I look at the mother brimming

with love for her child

And I think why can't I ?

And he tells me,

of the stifled laughter

and dammed tears:

Of quivering hands

that were never spread

and frozen lips, pursed and dead.

I look back and wail:

Trembling, ahead I glance

And forget Where I am !

Image Courtesy : http://www.taoareyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/jealousy-green-eyes.jpg

Had I

"I was born on the 13th of May, which means that roughly sometime during the second week of august the year before, had my father pulled out in time, I would never have been born. Again, had I refused to be born as a living,crying child and instead been pulled out a stillborn, like the ones that shatter the spirits and wrench the hearts of parents around the world even as I speak, I would not have grown up to know the love of my parents, my sister and my friends. Ten years later, roughly in the month of December, had a good Samaritan not taken me to the hospital when he saw me lying concussed on the road in a fit, I would not be alive to realize how arrogant I had become and to understand that love is in helping someone in need. Had I been among the 13 who were killed in a freak shootout in my school, I would never have known the girl I was to fall in love for the first time and live to see the day when, on being dumped and rejected, I accepted to take my first puff of cigarette, thus beginning a life long dependence on the wretched being. Had I never smoked that cigarette, I would never have come to live among men who thought of women as objects which were made for the sole purpose of the fulfillment of their desire, and, immature as I was, become one of them    and lure an innocent soul into believing I loved her. Had I had the courage to go and tell the girl I was actually in love with how much I cared for her and how much I regretted my past and how much I wanted to be better, I  would probably not have had to see her in someone else's arm and crest-fallen start a multiple affair with Rum,Gin and Whisky. Had I not kept going back to my triad to fill my hollow cocoon with more emptiness, I would not have met the person who introduced me to a new world:- of dreams, possibilities and excitement, he said : of smuggled medicines, syringes and brown boiling liquid, it was. Had I not told my parents to leave me alone and my sister to not continuously bug me with her concern for me, which I wrongly interpreted as her interference into my life, I would probably have had my sister to cry along on all those lonely nights, when those whom i called friends disappeared like smoke does upon lingering awhile, or my mother to hug me and my father to hold me and tell me everything could be set right. Instead, I hugged the ghostly apparition of myself, tangible and tenacious, and listened to the walls whispering into my ear-'It's over '.Had the shopkeeper been, as the law in my country requires, responsible enough to ask of me a police permission instead of happily handing over a .32 Colt by accepting a few thousand rupees over the price, I would not have found myself in my room alone, at least a thousand kilometers from my family which was frantically searching for me thinking what mistake they had made, wondering whether i should shoot from the right or the left. Had i grown up, like most kids do, as either right handed or left handed, I would probably have shot myself then and there. Had I not been ambidextrous, I would not have had to taste the metal on the barrel as I thrust it into my mouth, sweating, swearing and shivering. Had I not been brave and stupid enough to pull that trigger thinking it was the only solution left, I would not have become this floating consciousness staring at my own body now gushing thick red blood like spring breaking through barren land." - he thought as he looked up unto the sky and said  - 
"I may have died but my regret lives on."
"It was not me that was to be killed. It was the regret."
Amen.