As the rain falls all around me
In a mildly feverish drizzle
Wetting the skin, but not quite soaking it
As if a parable of our love.

It is raining, and it is, perhaps, natural
That I should be thinking of you
After these many years, again-
Of the windy walk that night
Sand and pebbles against bare feet,
Only the breaths of the wind and the sighs of the sea
Keeping us company, hand in hand,
You hair blowing in the wind, brushing my face
Together, and drifting apart, perhaps blown in the wind,
The soft touch of fingers intertwined,
Belying the desperate grip of two hearts floating away,
The surf blew a familiar drizzle on our faces-
That night as you went-

I still wonder; the salty taste on my lips
Was it the taste of the sea, tears-
Or the last kiss?
One last salty, wet warmth that stayed on the lips for so long-
After I had no longer the sea, the wind, the tears,
Or you.

And today, I am there again,
Walking barefoot on wet sand,
The drizzling rain is mingled with the spray of the sea,
And you are no longer there.
It is just the wind blowing in my face,
The sea is still my lips,
But they are salty, wet-
And cold.Similar Posts:

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***

chand se mujhko
bas itni shikayat hai
tumhe raaton ko jagata hai,
kabhi, chupke se tumhe chhuu ke
hamara dil jalata hai.

keh do us se,rat me
yuun ladkiyon ko
chhedna accha nahi.
yun bhola ab na bane
wo reh gaya baccha nahi.Similar Posts:

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perhaps i should have spoken to you more,
or more often,
there is so much i could say,
(or maybe, not so much really?)
i keep wondering-
what comes in, when you go out the door?

i stand, in a house of mirrors,
every morning, staring in cold glass,
at your image in a trickery of light,
which dissolves on touch-
and melts all around me-
as if there is a garden of words,
forming around me- leading
me down spiral paths, to a set of
chiaroscuro patterns in a bower of imagination,
i look for you, in sudden moon-shadows,
and stumble on my own identity.

i wake up.Similar Posts:

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talk to me in different voices,

speak to me of a million different things

in the million different lands you visited,

tell me amazing stories, astoundingly tall

tales of unbelievable derring-do,

tell me of a million wonders, stories to

last a thousand nights,

and let us live together in those stories,

tell me of the wonders of the human mind,

let us through these stories dicsover the

joy of a baby’s smile, the sorrow of a bud

blooming, the loneliness of a migratory

bird, the savagery of sunset, or the

sudden brutality of a crimson dawn

dazzling the eye.

speak to me in voices of colours, speak of

a violet sorrow, of blue honesty and

beige grief, speak to me in the rough

sandy gray of advancing age, and in the

crispy, linen-white soft and warm voice

of a new birth, tell me tales in the

screaming black noise of pain and in

the brilliant yellow of a vibrant life-

storyteller, leave no colour unpainted on the

canvas of my mind, leave no music

out of your words, however

cacophonous, leave no small detail

untouched- shake me to the core of

being with your stories, devastate me,

raze my existence to the ground with your

stories and build me again. kill me,

storyteller, and give me life.

PS: even though posted under poetry, this is not really a poem.Similar Posts:

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in the far distance,
covered
under diaphnous eyelids,
a relieved melancholy sleeps.Similar Posts:

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I am surrounded by all the paraphernalia of the modern work environment, white formica coated desks arranged in neat little fake wood cubicles, fixed with their own desktops/laptops with people sitting in front of them, working, or pretending to, or worrying over their own personal troubles like I am- this whole thing, the adrenaline rush which came from work, the joy of doing something and actually knowing that it was producing results, and not just destined for some filing cabinet, reminds me of a bad dream today.

It seems like I am an ant in an anthill, one of a zillion ants who together carry grains, sugar, crumbs, the equivalent of three hundred times of my bodyweight, to be stored in some hoard, some larder, the fruits of back breaking labour, to be seen and never touched- destiny just seems to be a cosmic joke played by an unkind God who fulfils the wishes you have only to make them your worst nightmares. I think it is time I switched jobs. I think it is time I switched homes. I think it is time I switched lives. But probably the grass is always greener. In which case, I think it is time I died.Similar Posts:

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i sometimes imagine freedom-
substitute skies above me,
and ersatz ground on which i stand,
fake spray from a make-believe sea-
drizzling salty on my lips,
and a lying wind,running fingers through my hair.

she is my mistress,
this leprechaun wind,
staying with me,in my mind,always,
she never goes away-not in the mornings,
whe wakes me up,
caressing my face with her imaginary fingers,
running lines on my lips,
sometimes,falling asleep in my embrace,
as i watch her face.

we converse,in half-syllables,
sometimes,communicating in silences,
i understand,her laughter,
and those shy half-smiles,
sometimes-i take her hand in mine,
just to reassure myself (in imagination),
that she is there,
and her eyes comfort me,
knowing what i mean.

she will never go away,
leaving me alone,
will be there through my silences,
never impatient,
comforting me,carrying me-
through this grief of being alive,
she will never let me go,
in my mind-
she will always be my lover.Similar Posts:

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to live,to lie,to unconsciously die,
and dream of dreams in dreams inlaid,
windows in the minds of men of straw,
chinese boxes of words never said.

more like disjointed lines really.

• questions?
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• two old poems..

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busy SV Road. Now who would have figured THAT!

# A ‘gaggle’ of geese. Ain’t that a beautiful term now, for a flock of animals. right up there

with a ’school’ of fish.

# I think that if I am quitting cigarettes or alcohol for the Rs 5-6K it would save me per

month, I am starting down the wrong track. I had originally planned to quit around the time I

become 30 or when I marry, and right now both are a long ways off. Besides, from smoking or

drinking, the pleasure derived cannot be monetarily evaluated, else I would not be spending

some 600-800 bucks in auto/taxi fares every couple of weekends, travelling to C’s home to

enjoy three beers, which after all, cost only 240 bucks (that, of course, is apart from the

killer chicken C makes). Besides, being stubborn as a mule, I have never had any problems with

addictions- I dont smoke or drink or want to when I am home, and figure that I don’t have any

problems with quitting. When ever I have resumed after breaks, it has never been because the

old body demanded things.

# One reason I have not quit my job despite all the uncertainties is that inspite of

everything, I look forward to going to work in the mornings. After the ritual cribbing for

five minutes, at having to wake up at six in the mornings (which, I still hold, is beneath

contempt for a person who seven months ago, used to go to sleep at that time), around seven

thirty when I leave for work, mostly I am looking forward to the day ahead. Of course its a

different story in the evening when I come back, but still… To think that one of my friends

called me a workaholic, and is probably right- who would have thought it a year ago? I guess

we learn new things as we go along, even about ourselves.

# I really like the song Thoda Thoda Pyar from Love Aaj Kal, and cannot listen to it enough. I

think it is because it seems obvious that everyone involved in the making of the song was so

enjoying the song, themselves. Same is the case with Twist. I think involvement with your

creation is very important, in producing good work- and that applies everywhere. Mind you, I

am not going so far as to call it art-I am just saying I enjoyed it. And contrary to all

expectations, I remember even enjoying the movie. But then, I did not have to pay 500 bucks to

go watch it in a multiplex.

P.S. : The blog has a new look, which (so far) seems to be more navigable and easy on the

eyes. I was wondering about shifting to Joomla or Drupal, but if this serves the purpose, it

will save so much time and effort. Your feedback is eagerly awaited.Similar Posts:

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stories are read,in colour,
not through the straw coloured liquid in beer bottles
voices do not hum the head,not really,
they exist,years ago,and come-
alive at least provocations,
but nice,memories,alternate realities,
past and present,paradoxes,
playfully wrapping their wings around-
unambiguous stati-quo.

new poems,with old subjects,
are being written,to confuse
lives being lost in alphabets,
mazes drawn with excessive attention to detail,
to forget the happenings,
glass fortresses,built with dark lights,
to create illusions of safety,
semi-lives lived in illusions of you,
are being forgotten,and remembered,
in partial recognition of lives possible-
alternate universes,
where life is infeasible,
and death-
impossible.

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• thought
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1) Any salesman who has his shoes dust-free at the end of the day, either not in front-line sales or a dandy (he may well be in B2B, but that is not sales sales, if you know what i mean).

2) Time has probably the worst book reviewers in the entire shantytown-I was reading the original reviews of their top 100 books of the 20th century, and across decades, their reviews unformly sucked- I could have written better. I mean, wake up,guys. Summarizing the plot in twenty sentences is not reviewing it, its telling stories to idiots, and even Wikipedia knows better. And calling Infinite Jest just a maximalist novel, and stopping there is like calling SRT a diminutive fellow with a bat, and stopping there. On the other hand, The Guardian’s and The NewYorker’s book reviews are beyond awesome.Similar Posts:

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There is this constant headache that refuses to go away,suffocating me from the inside,as if there were a thousand million little children inside my head,all gasping for breath,caught inside this shrink-wrap of existence,knocking to be released from the inside of my skull,a thousand million painful grimaces on a thousand million faces which should have been pretty,innocent and unknowing of pain. Instead there are a thousand million old men inside my head,masquerading like little children,old men who are beyond exhaustion now,tired of collectively gasping for breath, of staring with wide white eyes into the dull pale blue glow of computer monitors in pitch black nights,of staring at the real or imaginary deeds of other real or imaginary men and women,and of not thinking about them,a thousand million old men masquerading as a thousand million little children who have seen either too much of the world,or too little of it.

i try to get my emotions away from these children who are old,or maybe i am wrong,these are just old people who are really children,caught inside my mind,stuck in a web of a milllion stupid facts,some required,some not-jostling for space. The old man who would like to play hide and seek getting elbowed into a corner by the side-effects of caffeine;the one who wants to eat chocolate being shoved around by the role of low-density-lipids in arteriosclerosis,the one one who would play tag peeking from behind the fat bum of the amount of water suspected to be present on europa…it is a mellee inside-and all of them are just scrambling,madly madly,crying for help which will not arrive,for a release which is beyond my powers to grant.

OF COURSE,i am fine- inside my head there is music being created the likes of which mozart wouldn’t even dream of, inside my head is being written the masterpiece trying to write which took the life of wallace, inside my head is being painted a face that would launch a million ships,inside my head is being carved a sculpture that would make Pygmalion go green.of course,i am fine.

i dream dreams,mad,crazy,noisy dreams in full technicolor-i dream dreams of white spaces,and a white vaccum in which white statues stand covered by white wrappers of noisy polyethylene inside cupolas of whitishly translucent perxpex, and all around the hall in which they stand is also made of a dazzling white stone which seems to me too white to be real white marble,and too solid to be fake,and i can almost imagine children with translucent fingers drawing lines on these walls-lines in brilliant crimson shining in the whiteness like fate-and all across,the hall is filled with music,loud,pealing music of mammoth organs rising to crescendos and crashing to silence and repeating the whole cycle again and again with a violence which is almost like the white hot anger of God,but not quite.

i dream dreams of being lost in this hall and running from one end to another of this hall between these white cupolae ensconsing these white marble statues covered in noisy white polyethylene wrappers, only there is no end of the hall, no walls and no roof and no stairs and no doors or windows, till the end of vision,there is only a deafening white light, filled with tiny white domes filled with white marble statues covered with noisy white polyethylene wrappers. and this noise is cold. i lie down on the white floor and sleep.

i am fine.
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so why bodhitree,all of a sudden?just because i copied some music into my player today,and going out to office,the first song it plays randomly is-you guessed it-GMD!

Now, I make no bones about the fact that the prime attraction of BodhiTree fo me-and perhaps,most of us- lies in their nostalgia value and the feeling of ourness. good or bad,popular or unpopular,hyped or obscure,they were OURS!they make us feel a common-ness,as if we own a bit of everyone of their songs,being successors of what they left those many years ago-maybe the XL of today is a bit different from what it was in their time,but it is still XL.we all have eaten too many potatoes and cribbed about the mess,suffered at the hands of Gango,some of us even have written horrible disserts,lots of us have batted for IR girls (and BM ones,too)…batch after batch,year after year.so,it is as if we feel what they are singing about.and there in lies their USP,which has sustained there popularity,across batches,among XLers, and this earthy campus feeling,manifested across different songs is what sustains their popularity across other campuses.after all,which campus does not have its own version of Gango,Dadu,JLT and IR girls? (for some unfortunates,it could be any females on campus :P ).

and yet,while i was listening to GMD, i could not help but wonder how things have changed. the song says about pappu-”gaon me saabun bech raha hai,jhooth hai uska hans.na”- and yet it says about pappu earlier that “CQ bhi uski khaas nahi thi,day 2 tak pad gaya rukna”…now look at it from a b-schoolers perspective…today if pappu gets placed on day 2,he would not get to sell soap in a village-that privilege is now reserved for day 1 studs,or those who get left on day 3…similarly…a bike waala would have a difficult time now.the times have changed-and that is another thing about these songs…they are the products of a past,simpler era.

i wonder what bodhitree (the original band) would have sung about,has they been on campus last year or this year-the recession?rakhi sawant and reality shows?sherlyn chopra and silicon valleys?the deflation of the Great Indian MBA dream?or could they still afford to sing of frivolous and unimportant things in life-like a professor who gives bad grades,a mess which offers too many potatoes and affairs stillborn due to lack of bikes?

PS: Regarding Pappu…  Shrik says its PPO, not Pappu. These people on the web say its Pappu. Either ways, i initially thought it was Pappu, now ain’t sure. No definitive version of the lyrics seems to be available on the web, but mostly people seem to agree that its Pappu.    *shrugs*  does it matter?

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