WISTFUL MEMORIES

A PROLOGUE

Phew! What a year it has been…I am not talking about the big things--- the big successes and failures, the reasons to fear and cheer, the sights that blurred and left many more clear. I am talking about a much more mundane and ordinary concoction of thoughts from a nobody’s point of view.

2008 began with a Tuesday and ended with a Wednesday; 2009 begins on a Thursday and ends on a Tuesday. So what’s the big deal? Nothing. The sun rose from the east like an oversized orange on that one Tuesday a year ago and this year round it has no chance to look like a pear or a jackfruit. It will still be an oversized orange with a flair of ruddy streaks across the horizon wrapped in a cloak of rich mist. Nature remains unaltered…but the revolutions of the earth has seen shocking changes… from glory to ignominy, from tilt-down to meltdown, from overriding passion to carnage and of course from Osama to Obama. So what! It’s a new year and for me and you its just another 24 hours.

But even then, no matter how insignificant it is, it’s just not a new calendar on the wall and few good pictures to admire. It means another chest-ful of memories for you and me. Soft linens of fondness, moments of laughter, a stolen smile, a silent tear, moments of kindling and re-kindling of the sagging morale and the undying spirit to remain afloat at the end of it all. I am talking about the little gifts wrapped in cheap wrappers laden with love, I am talking about the bus you missed and missed with it the face you thought was only meant for you, I am talking about green blades of grasses that tickled into the ear as you lay on your side watching a lazy sun take a dip into the western waters and about the sprinklings of dreams that made the journey easier.

I am talking about me…Someone you won’t notice in the teeming millions. Nothing to remember about me…so ordinary yet so myself. The year began on a jet when I decided to call quits to my career with the pen for a new avenue with the boom-microphones. It was a dream start…I filled my lonely moments with new yearnings and new learnings…the urge to perfect the trade I am plying. The chemistry was just making sense when I went back to my regular quagmire and uncertainty…and it lingers on like a long faithful friend who won’t just give up on me…

I will remember this year going by for many reasons, but a few will be special. The year has taught me never to lose touch with the ground I walk on… for it takes just a scissor from reality to clip the wings of fancy you ride on. I have learnt that love is a word that forever will be the arch I chase along the winding corridor of life. I have understood that I am as good as my power to overcome my worries. I have learnt endocarp forms the inner shelf of my heart and down its bogs walks a miry way still yearning for someone you call your own.

This has been a year of special gains…have gained some friends whom I like to keep for life. And have lost some who I guess were never mine. So as the year falls through my clenched fist grain by grain…what remains are memories of some good time, some tingling smiles, some melodies and lots of lonely moments of sighs.

But never mind I am determined to peel off the giant orange and bask in its glow. Feel happy and be a better human being. Open my gates to new aspirations, lift the veils from my desires and taste life like licking clean the last dregs of hot chocolate flowing like a guerrilla river from the brim of my cup.

No matter what comes, I will stand by those who matter, will dip my heels in the cool water of hoogly and whistle a wistful tune to the memories of the years gone by. Get up brush the dust and pains of my dress and walk ahead…

THE STORY IS 2009….

IF I WERE A RAIN


If I were a rain
I would have washed away the stains of brutality
From your walls and
Filled the empty minarets with water pleasant.

If I were a rain
I would have watered your thirsting hands for peace
And hid the moist eyelids in my veil
Till long after the spiraling smoke rose to my chambers.

If I were a rain
I would have swelled the waves of your ocean to such heights
That pirates of humanity
Would not have reached this shore lapping along the tranquil sea.

If I were a rain
I would have poured to fill your broken souls
With hope and life
And soothed the foreheads with an eternal balm of love.

A quiet storm is brewing inside me
It’s rising and gathering cloud
I can feel lightnings of emotions rip through me
Maybe soon I will be rain.

Terror Terror Burning Bright!

The war has just begun. Make no mistake about it.

As the last layers of smouldering ashes and half-burnt wooden panels are doused by the fire-fighters…and happy relieved faces walk back to the embrace of their near and dear ones or head for the quickest exit route from the country I can’t but feel helpless sitting before the television set and wondering what is wrong with us…us as Indians…us as a nation … unputdownable, unwilling to be pushed around and poked about….where did the founding fathers of this nation go wrong…when they etched the thoughts of unity in diversity…a million questions keep pounding my head and a million answers swim about a sea of hopelessness.

There have been attacks on us with sickening regularity…and we prefer to talk of the spirit of Mumbai and sleep under its safety hood…but for how long? For how long will a city continue to be crippled and stand up as if nothing happened…for how long do we want to hide its wounds before the one last time…after which there will be no next. 14th march 2003, 11th July 2006 and now 26th November 2008…”How many times must a man turn his face…pretending he just doesn’t see?” The answer is sadly blowing in the wind for the last several years and we care not about it.

This time I have learnt a few new names for terror. Before I could get a grip over my emotions and come to terms with the developments through the night…I learnt that foyers, lounges, ballrooms, porches, balconies, corridors, freight elevators and dark staircases had become new names for horror. For stuck in these places unsuspecting guests and visitors at the rich and famous hotels of Mumbai were living their worst nightmare. Face to face with staccato gunfires, blinding noise of hand-grenades, blinding lights of torches and nauseating fumes of gunpowder, explosives and human flesh they babeled in the veritable urban hell.

I felt for the first time my home has been invaded…the private places have been broken into and my bubble of safety molested by perverse acts of barbarity. Its not an act of terror…its an invasion…a city under siege…emotions of an entire nation held hostage and an entire generation of people left to live with the traumatic scars of a dark night when the ballrooms of festivity turned into a dance of death.

My heart goes out to those dead. If I could I would replace the mother of the little baby who lay close to his father’s heart. If I could I would obliterate the word ‘fidayeen’ from the urdu dictionary. If I could I would have done so much to undo just those 60 hours of mindless violence. But then I am…what I am. And that makes me like a crippled, crawling piece of insignificant nothing left to despair at the happenings of the day and feel a numbness make a hole in my heart. There is a gall of anger rolling up my guts and wanting to erupt…. “arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh”

I stand up and salute the ATS, Police and armed jawans who laid their lives for my sleep today. I pray for their families. I am that son every mother lost in the last three days as I cant help wondering at the faces of bravery unheard of before. They were not in the armed forces or were not compelled to get involved in such acts of bravado. But they did. And today bravery has a new addresses…a laundry boy at taj, a taxi driver at villa parley, a hotel manager at the heritage, a ballroom manager at oberoi, the NSG jawan who took the bullets, an English tourist who refuses to leave Mumbai and let terror win, the lawyer from Calcutta who promises to go back to Oberoi and check on those who helped him and many more.

It is perhaps because of these selfless, innocuous, unsuspecting faces of bravery that we survive. My salute to them. I have never felt that tears could be so salty till I realized I was when a channel flickered the image of an old hand folded for help.

But after all these…we will go on back to our normal lives. And the radio will hum out “Zara Hatke Zara Bachke Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan” … but please don’t forget that the war has just begun. God bless my people. God bless India.

Poetry Pulp

Quis his locus, quae regio, quae mundio plaga?


I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.


"Is ANYBODY there?" said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence chomped the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor.
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the traveler's head,
And he smote upon the door a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.


Whose WOODS these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.


What SEAS what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the brow
And scent of pine and woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
And WHEN all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutt
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands

The WOODS are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Farewell

Farewell to you all

Yellow butterflies on pink violets
Charcoal prints of supple fingers on old walls
Long balcony, broken panes, pitter-pattering rain
Farewell mother's lap, father's shoulders
Farewell the first toddling
Farewell to you red lips



Adieu to you all
My first A B C...Broken slate, three chalks, one red,
Jack, Jill and Peter, black sheep and spidy
White bip, a spoon of honey lullaby
Adieu my first crayon, mud house
Adieu my little boat that i sailed in the gushing lane
Adieu the dark night of ghosts, goblins and princess


Goodbye to you all
Grey clouds on blue skies,
Sunset and sunrise,
Rippling river, simmering waves, gentle breeze
Goodbye the first colours of spring
Goodbye my first class room,
Goodbye Mrs Charles, Mary and D'Souza


Sciao to you all
My first school cap, sweaty gloves and boots
Catecism classes and debates
Assembly and chorus
Sciao jana gana mana
Sciao all the way to heaven
Sciao my singing sir, first crush and rose


Agur to you all
Board exams and college
Love and Love lost mostly, some gained
Grass, cigarettes and broken bottles
Agur to the brawls with friends
Agur my first prize on a college podium
Agur craetivity, inspiration and feeling the high


Massalama to you all
The pale pillars of darbhanga
Damp walls, broken benches, intellectuality
Coffee House, smoke screen and revolutions in tea cups
Massalama to the riots of religion
Massalama to the books in College Street
Massalama to all that reeks of myself and being mine


So Bidai to you all
To my room, thoughts treasured and names etched in corners
To my blue blossoms
To the universe, meteors and all heavenly bodies
Bidai to the million volcanoes and tremors deep in my heart
Bidai all that I ever dreamt of
Bidai to life itself...


....For I severed my chord with you at the last stop
So farewell, massalama, bidai last stop of life