dirge of a rebel

you fight your way out of that thick social marshland and grit your teeth in the agony of rebellion..you refuse to align, kicking and damning the invisible frameworks that claim you. but the bog that it is, it will bog you down..chewing you till your granules dissolve and you become agreeable slush, till the current of mainstream smoothens your jagged edges into faceless, rounded pebbles..everyone revels in the death of a rebel.

a mouthful of sky..

... a pendulum stretching itself too far, trying to break loose from the forces that contain its sanity, swinging deliriously on a reckless wind, pushing the limits of the routine motion it is predestined to perform..one moment shooting up beyond the purview of gravity and next, sinking to the depths where it begins..taking flights with wings it can never have, thumping back on the ground with a dejection it can never overcome..biting dust, yet rising from the ashes everytime- it was doomed to be skybound.

the end of fall..

It’s that time of the year again. This season’s open-end, of uncertain shadows, fleeting evenings and a lingering wait for winter to conclude its restless ambivalence.. sunrays have started rolling up their woolen warmth earlier and my stone floor feels a little colder. Broken colours in the low sky and the faint heat under my feet, an aching memory of all that’s about to leave..new fragrances hang somewhere in mid-air, unsure of themselves, mild and hesitant.. Here, crouched up in my corner, I feel like a primeval rock on the face of earth, elemental in composition, vulnerable to the subtlest of influences, sensing another quivering transition in the air around.. .desperate to recede into the darkest recesses of earth.

swept off my feet..

'waqt ke kaid me zindagi hai magar,
chand ghadiyaan yehi hai jo azaad hai..
inko khokar mere jaaneja,
umrabhar na taraste raho..'

fell in love with this beautiful rendition..some melodies have the power to carry you beyond the temporal moment into timelessness, set you free from the clutches of clock-bound reality and take you to the molten core of experience-heady and sensuous. totally surreal, like real 'time' diamonds..if you don't have the capacity to surrender to it, to willingly suspend disbelief,you've just missed out on a world of beauty..

anchorlessness..

so one day, you throw off that compliant mask and show your middle finger to those who say 'what next'?..you believe you know what you are looking for..what if you can't jot down that concrete path, you know how the larger picture looks like in your escapist day-dreams..your ambition has outgrown your home, your city..you pack your baggage and leave in search of more promise, more freedom..year after year, you fill up your resume with job-fetching achievements while your personal diary fills up with confessions of a wandering mind on sleepless nights..you stop sometimes, look around and hold your head high, steady your shaking feet..so you're at pace with the world, talking of short term goals, long term plans over pizzas and booze-you drift from place to place, advancing in tandem with an unsentimental world..
then somewhere in those in-between journeys, your focussed gaze is disturbed by blurring landscapes..you look beyond and lose yourself to distant horizons saddened with twilight.. all the while, inside your head, you hear- 'dislocation is in the mind'..that's the price you've paid for boarding the bus.

sell me some freedom...

A professor in our advertising class, once told us about how admakers really are selling you a lot more than just their product.. a shrewd study of the consumer psychology and there they are - capturing your complexes, cajoling them, offering you a better (even if commercial) option, playing on your emotions, working on your desires et all..
i think i'll give it to the advertising industry after all..they know it dont they..how utterly hypothetical this utopia called freedom is..atleast wise fellas are raking in big time moolah with that knowledge. for the majority, it belongs to that media-created neverland of fairies with flawless skin, gorgeous manes and perfect close-up smiles..as long as we sit in drawing rooms worrying about which 'conform or perish' trap awaits them the next day, 'unbelong' and 'let's go' catchlines will sure grab eyeballs and a lot more.

old, old love

This poem by Yeats, i truly love..especially the second stanza..


When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars

On loneliness..

it's perhaps one of the most common themes in literature..loneliness(or 'alone'ness??). yet, book after book, you feel like you've just discovered a new insight into it, a shade or a tint different.. only goes to confirm how universal yet how uniquely individual this experience can be. .and just when you think you've had enough, trying to grapple with the inarticulacy and profundity of your loneliness, you come across a passage that describes it so effortlessly..that's it's comforting and distressing at the same time. here're two passages that've done a great job-

.."He realized obscurely that the sense of loneliness was too precious to be shared, and finally incommunicable, that men were, ultimately islands; each had his own universe, immense only to himself, far beyond the grasp and interest of others. for them the pettiness of the ordeal was unrecordable, worthy, at best, only of a flicker of empathy"..(English, August)

.."it seems to me i'm trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation...no it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence- that which makes its truth, its meaning- its subtle and penetrating essence. it is impossible. we live, as we dream-alone..."...(Heart of darkness)

nightrain..

in the black outside my window,
nightrain..like..
molten silver from the deep slate,
cold ashdrops on my skin,
at once, goosebumps and iceburn.

in memorium

Stamped on my sole,
smeared, smudged and soiled,
signed in silence
a sentence it survived
i sing in sibilance
for the moss will mind..

for someone

You- the rock standing upon my ruins
by nature, by love
I destroy you, bit by bit
unto my sands

for starters

For a technophobic like me, this shall be a red-letter day..so!!!here's hitting the blogosphere with a knock(bang would be a loud hyperbole!)..well, this is just going to be one of those swinging-in-the-hammock kinda blogging..content might not be the USP here..who cares..i love this feeling..writing from the top-of-my-head while my heels enjoy all the cool air..hey this is cozy!