hitch...

my life is done, not realized
can't name my feelings, am not surprised.
there exists in me a grieved state
it defines my life, adorns my fate.

every day i see the birds on the roof
i see the sun, shining aloof
i wonder which is more dear
i wonder what is my greatest fear

i hate being loved, but love i will
could kill the parasites, but cannot kill
banalities of a civilized mind bind me
inflated ego of my celebrated mind haunts me

i have accepted i have nowhere to go
soothsayers may have other cards to show
i know all my castles are in the air
i know i need not 'breathe' with flair

i love, i care cannot say
i travel,i float cannot stay
my eyes betray my thoughts
i have sold off the pride i bought...

mi rage

Away from the crowd, away from the hype
Like a surfeited daguerreotype
I stand alone, beside my clone
The world is sinking but I am not prone

For in ‘water’ I stand
Rowing my life with an unsteady hand
For in water I have always stood
The monotony of ‘land’ I never understood

I float oblivious to all fate
I a lonely king of a lonely estate
I ‘mirror’ myself and think
I know after all these years, I won’t blink

I am humble in a lull, arrogant in a storm
Warmth makes me dull, wind gives me form
I ride the waves, but don’t get anywhere
I have no sense of direction, I no longer swear

I sit again and deliberate
I somehow can’t avoid those ‘eyes of hate’
He stares at me from down under
How many times have I tried to do us asunder?

His animosity burns me from inside
Our distance grows by the tide
It is unfortunate that ‘he’ is bound to ‘me’
Ironical, because I love being free

she will be loved

Time stands still, thinking aestivates
Love dominates, beauty captivates
Our eyes meet, I stare
She turns away…as if I care…I care…

We coincide…never cohere…
I follow her everywhere… find her nowhere
I feel fleeced…I lie bare…
Tell her…I don’t dare…

She shines…and a million cameras follow suit
She captures every imagination…every bruit
I stand alone…transfixed in my own admiration of her
And I solemnly decide… ignorance is my only saviour

The meretricious smile…the histrionic articulation
The bust so prominent…the effected emaciation
The false adulations…the libidinous sneers
Girl you deserve better than these peers…

I got her to turn…burn
I diminished her…made her yearn
But though I did everything to hide
My eyes…my infidel eyes…they lied

The dam fractured…the water did trespass
With the cleave in the façade…she didn’t need a pass
Our eyes met again…this time not to part
“Love’s a crime and I commit it everyday…for recidivism is a rare art…”

In a burst of verve I confess in élan
The cameras go still…lights switch to neon
She takes my hand…doesn’t say a word
Nothings said…though everything’s heard

We hold hands…we gyrate …she’s delighted
I remember the nights I had waited…letters I had secretly indited
By the pane a red Rose blooms
Reminding me of my adopted nom de plumes….

Father's Son

The ‘rain’ doused his cigarette…he knew it was his last. He looked up, cursed the minacious firmament, looked down, and cursed his hebetude. He felt like a misbegotten, a miscreated bastard left alone to misbeseem. He knew he was alone in an ocean of putrid mass, searching for purgation in Gehenna. He rummaged through the ‘accumulation’, searching desperately for beating hearts, breathing nostrils, warm hands, batting eyelids…. there were none…none.

He didn’t know if he’d survive this…though he felt a strong sense of déjà vu of having dreamt the proceedings…. only embarrassment was that he didn’t remember the end…or maybe he didn’t want to…or maybe he wasn’t supposed to…

He felt it…the obstreperous whisper…the discordant music…the still wind…dry saliva…it was inevitable…ineluctable…it spelt relinquishment…abandonment…resignation…desertion…DEATH.

He knew he had to relegate his thoughts…for he had no credence in time…only moments ago his greatest fear had been a bullet piercing his head…now it was to die without memories of his past life and dreams of what life could have been.
He would have to rethink those dreams, recall those memories…. prepare himself for expurgation… the final ‘expunge’.

He hadn’t been a soldier always…his recollection took him to days of his childhood…his parents…they looked happy…his mother combed his hair while his father read the Hamlet to him…”To be, or not to be: that is the question”…. he remembered his wife…she was to give birth to a baby…how he would have given anything to see his child…somehow he felt he could hear her screaming…how could she know…no she didn’t… his baby was being born…he knew it…he could feel it…he remembered the command on the radio…”PULL BACK…don’t indulge…you are too few…”, they had warned him…”staying there would mean certain death”…he hadn’t heeded the voice…”all death was certain”…he had replied… he had no choice…he had submitted himself to the good of his country…good of his people…he had held his position…he was still holding it…he had decided to be…


He could hear voices…familiar ones… though he couldn’t discriminate them. He felt great proximity to his family…he suddenly felt constricted…he felt forced…he felt all qualm receding…he felt hot…very hot…damn hot and damn wet…he could hear the voices clearly now…they said ”push harder…. HARDER”….

Somebody picked up his ensanguined body…he felt the eyes on him…he’d always loved attention…had the reinforcements arrived…he felt a womanly touch…he felt a kiss…he could have bet all his savings that the kiss was his wife's...it was sans the lover's affection though...he wondered why...he felt his comrades…he felt a salute…he felt respect…. he felt admiration… and then he felt nothing…he had arrived…no sooner than he had departed…he had been reborn…. a father’s son indeed…

last semester blues...

I swear…

By unseen faces and unheard places
By butts and buttresses
By demure dilettantes and their elaborate dresses…

By keen vigilantes and their stares
By the piano and musical chairs
By elevators and the bygone stairs

I swear…

By the parachutes and hot air balloons
By my friends and …buffoons
By the love letters and the different moons…

By the speed of light and summer heat
By the torn jeans and naked feet
By the kisses stolen down the ‘one way street’

I swear…

By the beer bottles and paathshalas
By the ‘angel eyes’ and late night galas
Let me not forget the so-called ‘madhubalas’…

By the classroom jokes and chocolate cakes
By the ‘people of fashion’ and the rakes
By the originals and the fakes

I swear…

By the times I felt alone
By the conversations on the phone
By my sweetheart and her finicky chaperone…

By the fast bikes and speedy cars
By the ‘body builders’ and ‘drug czars’
By the ‘hackers’ and my soccer ‘yaars’

I swear…

By the expeditions and the photos
By the ‘group leaders’ and their vetoes
By the ‘flirts’ and their false kudos…

By the slogans on the t shirt and the tattoos on the arm
By the teasers and taunts which meant no harm
By the skirts so hot and the smiles so warm


I shall never forget…these times I spent
I wish I could stay…buy time on rent
But I see moments disappear…as new ones take their place
I will collect all the beads I can…and then string myself a necklace…

zilch and then...hope

"yeh meetta meetta gana aapke liye leker aaye hain Mawana sugar....mithaas zindagi ki..." the static ended abruptly and the radio station buzzed again with a Himesh Reshammiya 'classic'. i looked outside the window....my eyes showed no surprise..it was as if they were accustomed to what they saw...they had about them the nonchalance of a sage...callousness of the owl and haughtiness of the eagle. i felt tension in my muscles, my memory ached from last night, i felt perturbed...i was in awe of telugu actress i saw on one of the rare posters publicising a film from the land of the nizams...inexplicabily.

i had never come to know and understand the infamous monday morning blues..but there was always a zilch which accompanied monday mornings...zilch of thoughts..zilch of memories and zilch of feelings. i felt robbed...every monday morning i would wake up a new man...a wanderer...a vagabond ....a peripatetic...

every monday morning brought with it another challenge...a journey so taxing that it could kill a milquetoast...i pride myself to be veteran of many such trials by fire...i found myself in the middle of another one....A DTC bus ride from delhi to noida...i suggest you donot laugh....

looking out through the stained glass provided me with distractions i relied upon to pass time...but today was different...it was as if i was i was watching a movie for the umptieth time over...the story, the cues, the dialogues, the sequence all seemed pedestrian....lousy-lemony...i knew it all...the screech of the tyre, the fuss on the rickshaw stand, the expletive of ladies, the keening and sniveling of little girls, the ruckus of the traffic, the clamor of bicycles, the hullabaloo of babus, the giggles and snickers of young boys....i felt the void again...the humdrum continued...

i looked at the book resting on my lap...'1984' the title read...i had picked up the book from my uncle's collection. 1984 had caught my attention...it incidently was the year i began the journey called life. I hadn't begun to read the book so i flipped over a couple of leaves and read arbitrarily...

April 4th, 1984.

He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.

For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

something stopped me from going on...i felt i was not alone..it was as if a hundred eyes were zeroing on me. i felt the drops of perspiration flow down my back...the flow was smooth as smooth as jagjit singh's ghazal...as irritating as well...i looked up at the 'bystanders'...they all looked away...i tried to read again...and the vagabond pupils rested on me again...i could not read...i noticed a pink turban in the crowd...it brought a smile to my face...i stretched accepting the pain in my leg, the moisture on my back and my helplessness in the present situation.

i got myself to read again...

April 4th, 1984.

Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never --

i felt a sense of deja vu...suddenly i realized i empathized with the fat man, the child...there fated destiny...i looked up from what i was reading...i rejected my feelings as if they were not mine...there's a lot those people could have done to save themselves...there's a lot i go through everyday but i am guided by hope...hope that tomorrow would be a better day...that i would profit from every journey i undertake...i closed my eyes...i closed the book...i am not a fatalist i told myself...and i would not let me become one...

do I know me...

There ain’t no sound, or maybe I’m deaf. There ain’t any light or maybe I’m blind. I’m bruised maybe I’ve been in a fight, but these bruises are different…I can’t feel them. I can’t taste my perspiration, I don’t even know if there is any sweat. I can smell everything though… that in other words means I can smell nothing. I have never been in such proximity to myself, I feel estranged. I search for distractions, but there are none…I have been robbed of them. I am alone with myself, and I don’t know how to start a conversation…

Its like being in front of a mirror in a dark room, you expect to see yourself, but don’t expect to meet yourself. These nuances are important because they define the thin line between knowing what you are and what you think you are.

I still can’t decide what to say. I feel insignificant… I don’t feel a thing… I assume I am insignificant… I feel my solitude…twenty years he’s been my tenant and I haven’t got myself to know him…
I can’t recall anything else I have accomplished…my memory escapes me…
Everything in this life is futile…I conclude…I don’t know myself…
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, who had once deceived the gods and cheated death, was condemned for eternity to roll a stone up a hill. Every time he was about to complete his task, the stone would roll free back down to the bottom of the hill. Sisyphus would then have to start over again, even though the same thing would just happen again. Thus, the punishment of Sisyphus is a punishment just because it is an endless exercise in futility. Sisyphus is stuck in an eternally pointless task. Now, if the world and everything in it are also pointless, the lesson is that the task of Sisyphus is identical to every thing that we will ever be doing in life. We are no different from Sisyphus; and if his punishment makes the afterlife a hell for him, we are already living in that hell.
What can Sisyphus do to make his life endurable? Well, he can just decide that it is meaningful. The value and purpose that objectively don't exist in the world can be restored by an act of will. Just going along with conventional values and forgetting about the absurdity of the world is not authentic. Authenticity is to exercise one's free will and to choose the activities and goals that will be meaningful for one's self. With this approach, even Sisyphus can be engaged and satisfied with what he is doing.
To live one's life, one must exercise the freedom to create a life. To create a life one must know what one wants. The sad part is I still don’t know what I want…the happy part is I don’t want to know…

What then was the point of writing the article you will ask… let me ask: Why should you care…

I don't want to dream

I have begun to dream…don’t know if its true
For I dream in my dreams…haven’t a clue
It’s a dilemma… I’ve been trying to fight this enchanting plight
Culling emotions these ethereal manifestations expedite

Why me…I ask of them…let my mind be free
Cluttered with spikes…it has lost all its symmetry
Why ask us they say…your mind is your own
Why blame us if its imagination prone

I could swear I met Alice in wonderland
I have crossed the Rubicon, even surfed on the Arabian sand
I have been in Pele’s shoes, in Presley’s grooves
Forget it…start afresh the morning behooves….

That essentially captures it…my pain…the strain
What is that I dreamt…ladies and gentlemen did you know…ABEL slew CAIN!
I still don’t know if this development would benefit me
I have resorted though to a great dreamer’s autobiography…

This is what he says…it’s like walking on a thousand shattered pieces of glass
Doesn’t take people long to realize you belong to the fools’ class
There are few though who polish the glass under there feet
They are then admired and placed in the elite…

Inspiring words…sans motivation though
I could do without dreams I know
I could do without being the emperor or a superhero
I could do without starting every time on zero…


I am therefore I think…..

MBAed!!!

Closing walls and ticking clocks…………I stand here keeping time on a watch without calibrations. There exists a bothering sense of urgency… unrecognizable, incomprehensible yet undeniable. Don’t know if its fear but what is there to be afraid of. Maybe its ambition but what is there to want. Maybe it is failure but what is it that never did fail? No it is not success for success isn’t complete without more success. It has to be something else that drives me, thrives in me, loves me and makes me love…aspire…fear…fail…succeed.

I find myself on the platform … staring … waiting. I feel my pockets for a cigarette…don’t find one…I remember I don’t smoke… I look around for somebody to speak to, don’t see anyone…or maybe I don’t want to see anyone. I speak to myself…try to read lips…

Passing time shows no arrogance only apathy… it passes noiselessly for sound is free…passing windows catch my attention now and then… I see beauty… admire it secretly… then turn away…can’t decide whether she eyes me too…can’t decide whether I could get myself to want her… she gets off…I get off…

I am still speaking…I am the only one listening…I am destined to appear for an interview…MBA interview…I consciously walk straight…wear a meretricious smile…there are other guys like me…I hate their ties…I love mine…I feel hollowed…inside out… there are friends around…some from same college…most of them better than me…but these people are ‘modest’…complements attract complements…don’t they? …There is a lot of sugar around… I feel lonely…if there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans; it's having the swans pretend there's no difference… I feel saturated…I hate interviews…I don’t know why do I want to do an MBA…

They don’t care what I tell them… I don’t care too… its called mutual cooperation…they understand… I understand too… I feel sad though…I want to go home…

I am home…I feel relaxed…I strip down for a shower…let the cold water douse me…I like myself in the mirror…regular exercise pays…it does…I like the roughness of the towel…I finally have a smile on my face…

Mom calls…she wants to know how the interview went…I give her my account of it…she cannot believe I said what I did…I reassure her…she gives way…never mind she says you can always go to Harvard…oh I love my mother…my sister calls too…speaks of everything except the interview…I love her too…I can’t tell her that though…saying that would be hara-kiri…my spirits are up and running again…

I have five missed calls on my cell…Kalyan wants to know how my interview went…even Pallav is curious…Vaibhav desperately wants the bad news…lol…somebody else is also concerned…I call her up…she’s at all ears to my story…she has her own too…I listen to it reluctantly…I am in no mood for another one on shopping discounts…it turns out to be interesting though…a covert invitation to a dinner party…now I feel I have a life…fortunate one…I accept…

I had to lie…I would be visiting friends in Noida I told my mother…but its ok…didn’t want to handle too many questions…Kanika looks like a diva…we dance…I am pathetic at dance…she’s tolerant though…I step on her foot a couple of times…she steps on mine…I am happy I came…Sid is there too…even Kapil…we have an amazing dinner…first time in the day I feel satiated…Mom calls…she knows…I am guessing…its for saying good night…our night though has just begun …I finally feel I am among equals…I am smiling…I am happy…I live for people around me…I love them…I don’t care if I make it to an B school…at least not until tomorrow…