Happiness is being free…
Free to come
Free to go
Free to dream
Free to love
Free to sing
Free to create
Free to try
Free to fail
Free to belong
…and yet free to be.
Assert your freedom.
My City Has a Heart
My city has a heart you know
It holds my silences
It keeps my secrets
Its highways are my memory lanes
On them I travel back
To past moments…
To the smiles, kisses and tears
I left behind.
My city has a heart you know
I can feel its beat
Even as sirens and
Impatient drivers and busy people
With somewhere to go
And somewhere to be
Move on an endless loop
As if in a time-lapse video.
My city has a heart you know
Arterial to the highways
Forgotten, slow by-lanes
Await your return…
In my cab, the Bollywood film song
Strums our collective ache…
It touches a chord.
A tear drops.
Loss is Always Less Than What You Gain
Deprived
Defeated
Robbed
Disadvantaged
Negated.
Diminished
Wasted
Impoverished
Lessened
Subtracted….
Yet here you are
Within an expanse
Reminded that this wholeness
Was never defined
By what you lost.
Embrace then
This completeness…
This ocean of life
That is forever brimming
And you stand immersed in it.
You cannot see it
Even though it surrounds you
The things that you lost
The things that you now cling to
Cloud your vision.
See with a new understanding
Your newness.
Your loss by virtue
Will always be less than
What you gain.
Learn to Live
The problem with inertia
Is that there is no recourse
Life moves on…
Undeterred by your paralysis
You move with it-
A lifeless being.
It makes everything redundant
Relationships, emotions,
Celebrations, plans and projects
Life continues
It’s very hard to deal with
The fact that you don’t matter.
And yet here you are
In the grand scheme of things
Partial, but essential to the whole
To flow with life then
Must mean being
In a ‘whole’ new way.
Without contest,
Without ambition,
Without separation
Free of machinations
Reclaim your individuality
And fear not the future.
Don’t avoid the end
But embrace it
Keep your mind lean,
Attentive, responsive
Not loaded with
The unnecessary.
Travel lightly
There’s nothing to arrive to
Apart from the moment
Take away important lessons
From your state of inertia
Things will happen as they should.
Align yourself to life
Step away from ideas
Wake up
After enjoying your sleep
Know the difference
Between perception and reality.
From wherever you go to
Return…
Abide in a space
Where all life abides
In that space
Make your home.
Perception
The seen is meaning
That superimposes itself
On the unseen.
Look carefully.
Look beyond the edges
And the boundaries of meaning…
See how it extends itself
How it negotiates
Its freedom from finitude.
Positivity is illusion.
Possibility is promise.
All forms transform.
After you’ve understood
The meaning of a thing
Perceive its meaningfulness.
Creativity
The truth
does not conform
to clichés
It cannot
be apprehended in
fixed forms
To create
is to render
a challenge
To ideas
that masqueraded as
the truth.
Watching
I look at the darkness without
From a lit room within
Reflections appear before me
Creating interesting collages…
The world isn’t reality
It’s yet another layer…
Outside, the wind seduces the trees
The rain quenches their thirst
And the trees dance in ecstasy.
I’m riveted to my window.
I’m the spectator, the enjoyer
I’m the one watching.
Contained
There is a perpetual war within…
A war between
Hopes and circumstances
Between confinement
And the beckoning of freedom
Between the lower
And the higher
Between what is
And what could be.
I saunter into the kitchen
Look at all the jars lined up
Standing as if under a command.
Inanimate, still ready to serve
Like soldiers in a rank
Also in a war?
Contained, silent, closed…
Human civility demands
That we fight our battles in silence.
The Biggest Failing
The biggest failing
Is the inability
To see things as they are
To understand them
For how they are
To accept them
The way they are
And to appreciate them
For what they are.
Do You Have Any Idea?
Can you see that ideas
Make up our world?
Can you see that you have
The power to reject ideas…
To give them no attention?
Can you see that you can
Offer your own for every idea
That feels wrong, unjust and diminishing?
Give your ideas a voice,
Give them a shape, a form…
Give them expression.
Prepare them for the stage
That is life…
Create your own setting
Tell your own story…
But first live life well
Live fully. Expose yourself to
The world’s ideas
But neither borrow nor steal
You are the sovereign of your world
The centre around which
Your world revolves.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 