Even though it was clear-
She was dressed to impress
And to re-write more authoritatively
The tattered script
And the battered role
That was her story,
I remember not
How she looked;
Or how she felt;
Or what she said
Or what in essence
Was her sartorial sensibility
I remember only
An abstract arrest…
A loss of contact…
After touching upon
Her pathetic and desperate need
To impress and redress.
Over Time
Will you care
To feel
Even for a moment
All that I have felt?
Over time
Will you be curious
Wanting to know
What fashioned
My mind, my space, my thoughts?
Over time
Will it matter
To you
What words composed
My concerns, my beliefs, my angst?
Over time
Will you be interested
In knowing
What seduced me to live my life
My way?
Over time
Will you see
Non- judgmentally
My reasons
For war, for strife, for dying?
Over time
Will you be accepting
Of my ideas, my visions, my dreams
And more importantly
Will you be living them?
Over time
Will you understand
My motivations
For leaving behind a legacy
Different ( a little better)
From the one left behind for me?
Yes…
I would’ve liked better teacups
But here you are
Nevertheless
Forsaken or gifted
Standing before me every morning
And so…
Despite a petulant will
Everyday I grow to love you
And everyday
I get acquainted
With your unexpected beauty
Love and Beauty
You’ve taught me
Are not mere affections
They are the gifts of our attention
Joys that we receive
Not in our hours of need or merit
But in the generosity of our receptiveness
They’re never destinations
But journeys of long, slow acquaintance
Of discovering
And getting to know.
Another day in the life of thought
Sieving
Separating
What is
What is not
And as thought thinks
That INTELLIGENCE must have a form, a purpose, a design
Its own purpose
Is to structure my mind
Thought knows not what it can’t apprehend
It understands the finite
And not things that have no end
Discontent with accepting things just as they are
It looks over the near, in search of the far
And so as thought must
So thought does
Structuring my life with lofty bricks of beliefs and values
It fates its own end
By empowering my acumen to choose
And finally
When all that is something
Will eventually wither away
Infinite INTELLIGENCE will come my way.
I woke up with a sigh
To meet today
Today is what
Today has always been…
Unpredictable and moody.
It’s a child of the seasons
A fickle temper is coded
Into its DNA.
And so, it will provoke me
(Like it always does)
With something or the other…
With the memory of a lover
Who it swallowed up
Insidiously on one such today
That I can’t recall having seen or lived
It must have slipped by me…
And who now remains with me
Partly because he’s a committed man
Who’s met and lived through
Many todays
And like me
Has endured the weight of every today
With its accompanying aches and pains.
We’re here now
Still together
Because we saw through
It’s whimsical ways
And chose to ignore its treachery
This today is no longer mine or yours
It belongs to Us.
This gift of a conquered Today
This gift of familiarity,
Friendship and forgiveness
Is really the gift of having met
And survived
Without escape, without excuse
Every Today
Everyday.
When the lights go out
So do all differentiations
Everything gets absorbed
In a rich velvety darkness
The night is a great leveler
It swallows up all distinctions
The day’s convictions dissolve in the night’s cabernet
And everything that was something loses its grip
The expectation of the night is total surrender
It claims from you your all
All the sparkling acquisitions of your day
Stand shrouded by an austere night
And it doesn’t seem to care
About all the things that decorate your existence
As it falls like an ink blot
On the script of your life
So while the day adds to your life
Things for the mind and things that matter
The night subtracts
Reducing your prized possessions to mere amusements.
I stand in the darkness of the night
Strangely redeemed…
As light exits and things lose their ‘edge’
I find that ‘I’- am still there…
In and through the absences, I prevail…
My only gain… my total loss
My only strength… my vulnerability
My only society… my solitude
To possess requires so much effort
To enjoy all that there is-
none.
To become rich requires so much effort
To be enriched-
none.
To solve a problem requires so much effort
To watch its passing-
None.
You asked me why I ask
So many questions
When the answers are so few
What purpose could it serve
Asking so many questions
And will new answers
Stop me from asking
The same old questions?!?!
Why can’t I accept
The answers already given (or perhaps hidden)
For centuries…for eons…since eternity…
Aren’t willful ignorance
and elusive enlightenment
riding on the same adventure?
I don’t know…
I guess I find no silence, no repose
In the posers
you call answers
For the same twisted reason
You get so disturbed, so diverted
By the posers
that are my questions.
So there we are
All gesture paused
By an exasperated silence
Thought defeated, we now just are…
Sitting vis-à-vis
Sailing together, I realize,
In the same clichéd boat
To a destination known only to silent destiny.
Pen, book and intention
A haiku seems like a good idea
I need to know even though I know
Is this temporary, fleeting?
How must I apprehend it
This totality in existence?
How do I classify it
For the sake of memory?
‘Contemplation?’
‘Boredom?’
‘Living out my purpose?’
‘Existence?’
‘Being?’
‘Becoming?’
‘….none of the above…?’
And now I know
Acceptance is active and creative
And now I am
Excited, happy, alive!
Free of all lofty intention…
I sat still in my car
Incapacitated by the traffic jam
Unable to inch forward
My eyes moved up…
I saw the metro crawl…
Above it, a plane flew past
In an open sky
My mind travelled
I visited a childhood memory…
And then a book shop in California…
And then to a time when Kiara would be vaguely older…
And then…
” Door na ja-o… Door na ja-o… (don’t go far away from me, don’t go far away from me…)”
My traveling mind was arrested by this voice crooning on my car stereo
I paused…
Cut short my mental journey through time
And listened out of a sense of obligation
(after all, I had turned on the car stereo to listen to music…)
I brought my mind back to where I was in the traffic jam
With the metro crawling above
And yet another airplane flying above in a vast open sky.
In that moment I knew
My mind was vaster
than the vast open sky.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 