RUPA

I had heard her name whispered.
Among ladies of good 'culture',
In hushed tones it was said....
She was of easy morale!!!
Often at social do's,She would be spite upon.
Away from all these,I wondered what she longed for?
Leaving alone a family of three,Husband,daughter and son of eight,
How could a mother set herself free?
At daybreak,didnt her heart ache,to see her baby's face?
Men may be from Mars,And a wife may get tired,
But a mother?Didnt her heart bleed,
At evenings,whenever she missed her daughter?
Oblivious to my musings,I heard she lives,
In solitary confinement.Away from prying eyes,
Nestled in her mothers care,with the love-child she had,by her lover!
Her lover,a man younger in years,had finally left her.
Its said,inspite of her husbands entreaties,
She had left,her home and children,
Privileges of a blessed life,she had forsaken............
But why?Why does a woman choose to defy?
Known to be a gentile woman,And yet today she is despised!
Does it ever cross her mind,At what cost and why,did she buy this ignominy?Happiness,future,power,position.
She left it all behind!!!!
I fail to gather,how and why did she decide,
To throw it all away,for a whimsical fanciful fly?
Unbeknown to her,I try to find,
The frailities of a human-life,
That often tends to put us on our worst side.
But is it worth a try?
Is she happy,at peace with her love-child?
And the son-daughter she left behind?
They say for them she has all but died!
Will they ever understand,forgive her intrigue?
What she wanted and what she has,
I know not,having never met her,i can hardly justify.
But Rupa,I do think of you,And of your travails too.
At times when I am at the end of my patience,
I close my eyes and remember you.
I have chosen silence,so have you.
And remain ignoramus,no matter whats said by who.

My Grand-Mother

The earliest memories that i've of her..............
A septugenarian bend over a stove in the kitchen....
Tirelessly taking care of a clan of thirty!
A mother of not less than twelve.............
A dimunitive figure,bent with age,
Constantly smilling an indulgent grandparent.
Never thought of her as an independent entity!
She was just there,would always be.
The same way,it was taken for granted!
And she still is,taken for granted!!!
She lost her partner of seventy years,
And with him,she lost all coherence.
Today she is lost among her myriad worlds,
Walls and roofs around her make no sense.
She belongs to none,a mother of living ten!
Often i find our worlds interconnected,
Drawing inspiration and strength.
To accept the unexpected with as much grace.
At ninety-three almost a cabbage,dependent on others,
Sorrow n joy to whom are same!
The Gen-X have no time for trivials,
To nurture its roots and take care!
Wrapped-up in their own fake world,
Lost in individual rummages!

Freedom

While u think of mankind,issues larger than life,
I continue to live in bondage!
The luxury to stand on my own feet,
To run,to embrace my longings..........
To feel the azure blue sky,
Inhale the morning breeze at my hearts desire,to fly.............
To exhale without,without having to watch my back,
To laugh,to smile,without being called unmaidenly!
To be able to make friends,without being termed,available!
To be free with freedom,is but a rare dream for me!
While you think of humanity,And matters more important in life,
I still wait,for free air,to fill my bonded lungs and survive.

LIFE

LIFE!
Around the plains,under the trees;
there lie my remains,near the sea;
I lay there bare among the meadows;
All the hills n streams are my shadows!
Buried in angst and gorged in hate,
burns my soul in deep regret,
not a hand to hold on to,
not a face to call my own.
where existence is but a pittance.
an agony,a mere cry of pain!
an ache that was never felt;
a scream,a single despairing strain.
left among the dead,
furnished with stale breath,
to carry on a meagre,sum of glances!
tired eyes fail to find,a glow of light in the furnace of life.......

DISHARMONY

Of jarring speeches and soulless voices
Of barefoot travails and painful cries
Ears of silence and speaking time.
Unending paths of winding chaos
Of lost spaces and forever long eons
Of dead carcasses lost in sea of inhuman faces.
The dragging,stumping feet of unthinking masses
The story of all mundane lives
The loss of innocence and songless tribes.
Tears of morbidity in sleepless eyes
Scentless flowers in burning pyres
Islands of destitutions and insipid relations!
Despairing thoughts and stunted dialogues
Sacred blessings and patched histories
Departed values and never ending queues.
The list is long and overdue,
The mind is numb and forever accrue
Times have come and eons gone through,

yet mankind awaits solitude.

THE LOST CROWN

When the heart is spent n only the aches remain,
Like mute spectators to mass destruction,
Anarchy prevails where monarchy reigned!
Loss of the crown,costs no bounds,
But then whoever spent trinkets on tearlets,
A silent tear awaits its death.

In my search of solemnity and serenity,
I gave-up my identity and piety,

Only to be reimbursed with hostility.
Lost in the sea of inhumanity,
My soul awaits a divinity!
An intervention,Seeking intently!!!

RUBLINGS.

The deep rumblings of loneliness,the souls longings of existence.
washed away by the tears of sadness,i find etched in your presence!
the echoes of my unhappiness,pour out of your breathlessness,
when i try and touch you,theres only numbness!
the ache,the hurt,the burnt scents,all remind me of the fakeness
of roads traversed off-beaten!
dreams unseen,energies unspent,false pretenses and lost senses
,miles travelled and yet goals remain!
the faint sounds of tear drops,like a babys wailling sob
,searching for her final resting place!

Have you ever wondered?

Have you ever wondered,what would it be like,to die?

I don't know,if I understand what death is,leave alone anything about life.

What is life really?

Just a game of dice, one keeps on rolling the dice and someone somewhere strategising, decides what one comes up with every time.

If nothing is permanent,then nothing is important.

If nothing is important,what's all the drama about?

I know,I am nothing but a half cooked grain of rice,full of ego and craving every material delight.

Still I am searching for ways to silence these thoughts running amok inside my head,making a clown of me,trying to teach me how futile this living is.

Tantrums I throw,the attentions I crave,how to get these over and find some rest.

Where do I exchange the physical-biological part of me and retain only the chemistry-the atoms in their gaseous state,who can glide away light years away to galaxies far away,experience the universe,talk to stars and play their stellar games,far from the maddening crowd of this rat race.

I wish,I wish,I wish I knew the way...

Shadows

Shadows have stories to tell,

Behind the darkness,that created them,

Craving for a ray of light,

Wishing it would end a trail...

I just played a game with myself and randomly picked a number to see when I might be blessed with death.

The number that came up was 2039,my 69th year on earth!

Seriously?Another 15years of this trek,for what-for whom,wish I had an answer to those,but can't argue if that's God's plan!

But if I don't wake up tomorrow, what lies ahead?

Bythe end of the next day,my belongings would be cast away most probably,spaces cleared,may be cupboards emptied.

Little things that I hold on to today,will become trash.

Some will heave a sigh of relief,finally she is dead!

The man might like to get back to where he belonged,the kids happy to break the apron strings that tied them down every now and then.

Words will travel through the social media,a few friends might 'tchk-tchk', that's all that remains.

Will You miss me,remember me that I left without knowing why you stopped speaking to me,just one fine day?

I wonder for whom I live or leave?

Looking Back.

Come this May and I will complete forty six revolutions around the sun.It feels great,the feeling is overwhelming! I look back today to those days,when I used to feel bad,as every year my birth day came during the school holidays and I could never share my candies with my classmates and friends.Every time a classmate celebrated their birthday,I would feel a tinge of jealousy.But one cant change their birthday,right! So I had the consolation prize of being a day elder to the great Nobel Laureate,Rabindranath Tagore!!!My parents discovered this novel idea to keep me happy and content!

More or Less

The more one shouts,
The less one becomes in others eyes.
The more one accuses,
The less others trust.
The more one insults,
The less others love.
Yet they dont grow up.
They cant control,

They never understand...
One just ends up breaking every little shred of sanity.
You dont loose,

You just cease relevancy.

Sleepless nights!

Its almost midnight,
In a few hours,the sky will turn crimson red,
Welcoming a new day.....
My sleep eludes me tonight again.
Lying awake I listen to the songs of silence...
The ever awake city,too finally gives in to drowsiness!
As the stars begin to whisper their secrets...
I strain my ears to catch some phrases...
The land I am in snores away.
The gentle night breeze on its unfinished business,
Drags me and drugs me to a lifeless peaceful rest.
Tomorrow will be another day,new battles await.
Till then my muse I pray,take a break,
Recuperate,come to me tomorrow with a replished vow to conquer n avenge.

The Bohemian(in) Me!

The early sun was never her best friend!
The more he called her name,the lesser her responses grew...
Only the night owl knew her dreams,
The moon saw her fears,

The stars kept her company,

The waves spoke to her,

Loneliness wasn't bad,

Nature had her back,

She sang a Bohemian rhapsody.

Fight

Its a daily fight,a war to keep the sanity intact.
To put a mask and not complain.
To just be and not exist at all.
To die so that you dont have to live.
Living costs breaths,air that one cant afford to have.
To keep smilling is a luxury that i indulge in.
To defy  authority ,before it breaks my entity,

And vaporize.

Autumn

I have laid to rest for forever,
My unfinished Bohemian Rhapsody.
The music that haunted my soul,
I was searching for its echo...
Finally realization struck,
It was a fantasy!
Love was never meant to be,
How could it grow unto thee?
Of all the choices that lay abundant...
Why did This have to be?
Love was always the stardust of yeasteryears,
A shadow,an yearning...
But the cold fingers of reality woke,
As autumn swept away all the glow.

Encounters of a different kind!

Almost fifty and yet not there.
Still have a lot more to grow up!
Along comes the horse whisperer,
Smilling through,pushing boundaries,
And challenging every known notions put up untill,
You change the course of an inland bound river,
Throw out the barricades,nudge out the river,
As the ocean engulfs,
The horse whisperer stands a mute spectator..

Are you still there?

A short story-an anecdote.

Two friends chatting for more than two hours now,of childhood-of school-of Life.When one of them reminds the other of next days chore,to sleep for sometime-take rest,but the other one insists its more important to talk!Still the friend persuades the other one to sleep-which is accepted only after extracting a promise to be woken up so that they can catchup before getting busy for the day...thats how the midsummer nights dream was that season.

But then dreams are meant to be forgotten and broken when the sunrays hit them.