Random

Tightened noose life is. They loosen it up till the threads mess up its simplicity. Life is what it is. Nothing more nothing less. They confuse it up with conditions. It is simple as a time bound presence. They want to force eternity into it. Timelessness they want. The equation becomes a sophisticated tale good to listen to difficult to impersonate. Life is forced to be a legend. Slowly it rots till the entrails too load themselves with stench- unbearable. All of a sudden it ends with a plop- sudden and sharp. Just as it was born. In a neat cut. It was never too early neither late. Life is what it is.

A page in the dustbin....and this is what it read

It is similar to a castle built on the sea shore....ephemeral but beautiful...as if to embrace time, and eternity perhaps, in the jubilant expression of hope.

She lay there spinning tales of life, as all of us do...same mundane routine, same events, merely replaced by the name of characters..no-nothing new to claim for. The name flashed across her mind as a lightening on a clear sky, all of a sudden- unplanned, unmitigated. The waves carried her beyond her present in the vast abyss of the past.

The coffee table on any Sunday evening awaited his regular presence.He settled his accounts on his laptop and she read beside him, sometimes looking at him with feline affection and sometimes drinking the words on the printed folds with full relish. Beyond that nothing existed. Eight cups of coffee replaced and replenished each other in due course of the time. Later in the evening, when the dusk began to appropriate the northern end of the table and when the last rays of the sinking sun began to gently retreat, he used to fold his papers, switch off his laptop neatly and begin to rise. She used to shed her spontaneous tears each of those times. And he used to lovingly wipe them every time too, sometimes kissing her and sometimes just murmuring those affectionate words. But this followed for ten long years....

Hmmmmm....dust hurts eyes. The calm of the beach began to blend with the graceful retreat of the sun. Yes, just ten more pages left before she could stash the book in her, "Read" section-neatly, just as he used to fold his laptop....

Hmmmm, long indeed life is.

It was a February Sunday. He came without any work. Just his own self. How carefree and 'himself' he was that day! They cooked together. Laughed and talked endlessly as if there was no sunset today, as if this time were to freeze them in this bliss. Her unfinished novel lay supine on the coffee table. The mugs awaited their first fill. But today they had no time to drink, to read, to work, perhaps to repeat. All was new, fresh- just as the fresh mango blossoms of the spring...

He got up to leave with the windowed sky announcing the onset of night. She asked him to stay. He smiled and bid her a goodbye. She cried again. He consoled her in effect. After all, this was the usual that happened amidst the newness that eve. He left. Perhaps he forgot to take his sweater. Or perhaps he left it on purpose. That was the one she knitted for him. Also the one that he loved the most. Turquoise bordering on a mauve...

Then there was no looking back. They settled comfortably in the individual lives that each of us strut along. She read and continues to read. No, she does not know of him now...in fact what is there left to know after ten years of association? Hmmmmm....he is complete as he always has been, without anyone except himself for company- engrossed in his world, absorbed in the rhythm of 'my plump life' as he called his..

Is she actually reading? Perhaps not. Better that she wrote back. Not that he sought an answer. But not that he denied either. But 'what ifs' surround her mental scape. It is not that they were not a happy, 'loving' couple. But perhaps love is never enough. There is much more to living than a mere emotion. He knew it. She had to realize it. And, hence, the present.

The sun had melted in the sea by now. A crimson blush enveloped the air. She got up, picked up her book and gazed at the sea. Perhaps, looking for an answer. Going back in her apartment, she mailed him- explained her job, her moves, her tentative plans. And asked him to meet her family for dinner. And voila! he was online.....:)

Random abandon

In the vast expanse of this desert
i kept walking.
The sun scorching-
scalding my throat.
The sands dry-
bruising my eyes.

I wanted to bleed
bleed to profusion
and soak the parched papery mess
of rudiments-
the reduced me.

What was to inhale was
a dry mouthful of arid dust,
sand, hot air-
enough to scar my heart
my soul
perhaps my inner core
and perhaps for-
forever.

What was to exhale was
a burdened air,
an ominous anticipation
of an exotic mirage-
choked with stench
profuse with pollutants.
Strong enough
to stifle and strangulate.

I chose to walk
just walk an innocent stroll
like you do when unperturbed
with perhaps no-nothing.
Waiting to collapse
with a defining thud.

Dry mist

It rained last night
soaking the dew
in absolute flood.
The rain washed off-
the leaves clean,
the bark fragrant.
It kissed the clay
to a careful abandon-
The rain moistened the night.

Waiting for the ashen sky to blush,
for the tulip buds to coyly smile.
The night lay
as if etherised across
the relentless march of time.

The timid sun refuses to yawn,
a misty halo surrounds the morning-
veiling the air
embracing the fragile fragrance.
It will perhaps-
soon enough
Prise open a thousand pearls,
a thousand words,
a thousand unsaid,
the miniml said...

Till then,
the night shall wait
caressing its abandon
straightening its curls and creases
refusing to hope
accepting to change.

Trampelled thought

February sun

smiles surreptitiously

each morn.

As if incumbent to defeat the

misty hangover of the receding winters...

Similar to the nascent fervor

of a lurking scheme to sabotage

the existing quiet of a system..

Mired in self confessed confidence

the sun stretches its limbs

gradually, slowly.

Just as the frosty kohl of the morn

melts with the progressing day-

Erasing the sharply defined,

carefully marked boundaries

of the dreams that rest

limply on the eyes each morn...

The sun conspires

to erase, to outshine, to perhaps flood

the night lost with itself.

Does it matter at all

to see its rapacious

beams scorch the

dewy fresh minty grass?

Perhaps no-

Because to defeat one is perhaps the greatest victory..

Smiling tryst

Is it okay to just let things be...

without holding or even trying to hold control

over the innumerable dreams and desires?

Those that you nourish over ages...

Carefully, with your

wandering, searching eyes

whispering endless motivations

in the tarred nights, in the scorching days.

Is it okay to be called a

loser by your own self?

Is it okay to erase and begin anew

as a novice perhaps?

To feign innocence and cry tear-less drops?

Is it okay to just dump the accumulated

grime and muck of ambitious lurches?

Is it?

Or may be just allow one's own apparition

to gradually melt

in the thickening soot of life?

Allowing oneself to be replaced by the other

willfully donning a new persona

without resistance, without an iota of regret?

Is it okay?

Is it okay to cheat on your own beloved

one that you have pampered and assured

of your lifetime commitment?

For betraying one you choose many smiles?

Is it okay to be an infidel?

Is it okay to just allow one self
a certain degree of numbness

so that one does not feel

love, hate, happiness, glum?

So that one grows

Calm and quiet

feigning grace, transcending engagements?

Kash

Kashmir burns. But well, there is nothing new about it. Since the valley acceded to the Union of India in 1947, violence and bloodshed have been a routinised ritual in and around the vicinity. As happens always in the case of a "state versus anti-state" debate, a range of polyphonous voices struggle to supercede the tonal pitch of parallel others. Kashmir, undoubtedly, has emerged as an albatross around the Indian government's neck. This blog is written to ascertain my own position regarding the issue which has till date travelled from being a militant Indian patriot to an extremely sceptic subject of the Indian state. This is definitely not to launch into a 'liberal' or 'neutral' stance because such claims, per se, are attempts seeped in overambition and self delusion.

First things first, Kashmir became a part of the Union of India as a temporarily placatory measure to contain the unrest in the valley owing to the rebellion against Hari singh's rule in 1947. Temporary, precisely because the invited intervention of the United Nations declared a need for plebscite in due course of time. However, the refusal of the Pakistani army to vacate the valley served as a major impediment to carry out the 'non-binding' 1948 Resolution proposed by the UN. The two neighbours have fought bloody battles in 1965, 1971 and 1999 over the disputed terrain. But much to add to the woes, the matter still stands still, seized in the ravages of time past and present.

It is worth noting that in the official and governmental discourses on Kashmir, the focus is, more often than not, on the condition and fate of the coveted geographical, strategic, economic, political, sometimes cultural(though it is majorly a constucted entity) importance of the state. What these discourses have done and tend to do is to dessicate the inhabitants of Kashmir entirely from the interactions. Today when the myriad bandwagons with all sorts of political colours appropriate themselves as custodians and guardians to protect the interests of the people of Kashmir, one is left wondering as to which is the "kashmiri" voice? Was there any to begin with? When official handshakes and documents define peoples' faith and fate, is it not absurd to even think of using such a language of cajole and appeal infront of the masses settled there? Getting back to the Kashmir question specifically, who are the Kasmiris whose interests are claimed to be defended? And against whom? Those protesting voices against Hari Singh's economic policies who were left aghast at his decision to accede the land of Kashmir and its governance to India? Or those millions who migrated from the valley to settle abroad within and outside India? Or those who are at the mercy and beckon of the Indian Army's special powers? Or those who are forced to feed the clandestine guests and proprieters of their 'well being'?

The situation has been made increasingly complex and convulated with the wheels of time traversed from the state lived then in 1947 and now. Therefore, to arrive at an all or none solution by any group might be convenient to ease the burden of history but definitely not the 'correct' position to espouse. For affirmed believers like me, who invest unwavering respect in democratic credentials, self determination by the Kashmiri populace is an ideal position one dreams of. However, this idealism is well suited to air seemingly revolutionary, intellectually sound and politically concerned statements in a magazine or conference once in a while to grab sensational limelight for a requsite time period. To be able to meet the logistical and ethical requirements of the 'solution' proposed is an exercise laced with myriad defeats and rival antithetical concerns at the same time.

The question is when the Kashmiri self, per se, is divided, how can one allow self determination? It is a disgraceful but unfortunately an indisputable, given fact that Kashmir is an integral part of the Indian Union at present. Hence, one can not possibly isolate the burden of the technicalities of a working and existing nation state, India, to go for a toss and allow poetic diction to decide a future. At the same time, an emotional rhetoric which is often pornographically appealing and surrounds the 'touchy' issue of the Kashmir question, needs to be replaced by a much open and more sensitive outlook to discuss the same. Therefore, Arundhati Roy's views aired some time ago are as appaling as BJP's mission to unfurl the tricolour on Lal Chowk today. The individual weight of both the ideologically conceptualised positions are flawless in their own right, but given the politically unstable and volatile situation in the valley today, they are extremely callous and irresponsible responses.

As one among the many Indians who has sadly not even visited the valley once till date, i confess that i am sentimental about Kashmir in my patriotic zeal. However, also, as one among the many who is not blind to accept all that the states manufacture with a glutton's appetite, i am concerned about the fate and future of the millions of Kashmiri brethren alike. Within the annals of history and the winding corridors of the present (French Revolution, Ivory Coast etc..), it is apparent that a coercive regime of political repression- be it in the face of misuse of AFSPA or cross border terrorism or state sponsered atrocities-that peoples' voices and concerns cannot be contained for long. It would not be extravagant to presume that the professionally qualified and educated youth (as against malleable mass of humanity) who can pelt stones and throw shoes at the leaders can resort to infinite other creative modes to channelise their dissent. Let us not allow the vast pool of this intellectual capital to get lost in the mires of gun toting politics.

Through this blog i propose multilogues as against dialogues on the Kashmir issue to successfully resolve the dispute at hand. The reference to dialogue that assumes the right of the two 'mights' of the Government of India and Government of Pakistan needs to be modified for a comprehensive assessment. On the prior eve of this republic day, i retire for this day with a faint glimmer of hope that chosen words like cautiously implemented actions can perhaps help heal the bleeding wound of the white valley. If only the world was a little more sensitive..........

Jai Hind!