दोस्त है मेरे

PC: http://www.harleydavidsonoceancounty.com

लगता होगा तन्हा हूँ मै, लेकिन बहुत दोस्त है मेरे;

अब धूप निकल आया है, बहार में साथ ही तो थे। 

(It might seem that I am alone;

But, I do have a lot of friends.

It is just that the Sun has come out,

They were all here in the spring.)

Reality vs Morality

PC: http://www.doodlerblog.com/

At times the angel and the devil discover their spirit of questioning and it was another of such instance on a breezy moonlit night.

"How is it that at times one among us is the angel and the other devil?"

"Is it because we at times succumb to the raw fervour of reality and at times manage to stand up to the high echelons of ethics and morality?"

"Then how is God always God and Satan always Satan?"

"Have we ever seen them together?"

Thin line?

Tears and Laughters (PC: Myself)

  "This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness."

                                                        - Fyodor Dostoevsky 

                                                            ("Brother's Karamazov")

The devil and the angel were in moods at extreme ends of the spectrum. One was overwhelmed with joy, while the other seemed deep in sorrow.
"You look sad, What happened?"
"I am not very sure. But maybe it is because I got all that I wished for."
"Oh, but that is precisely the reason I am so happy. I too got all that I wished for."
"Happy for you!"
"But how does it make you sad?"
"The way it makes you happy."
"Is it a very thin line?"
"Maybe. I don't know."

Remains of the other

Pic Credit: favim.com

 
ये इल्म का सौदा, ये रिसाले, ये किताबें

इक शख्स की यादों को भुलाने के लिए हैं। 

                                               - Jaan Nisar Akhtar

(This frenzy for knowledge, these magazines, these books,

All are to help me get rid of the memory of one person)

I loved the moon, I loved the night.

I loved silence, I loved darkness.

I loved mountains, I loved oceans.

I loved the woods, I loved solitude.

I was not sure you loved any of these, And

I was afraid we disagree on a lot of things.

Our tastes seemed more than a world apart.

While you were willing to take a leap of faith, 

I chose not to walk along, but to walk out.

Now that I had shared all that I love with you,
I am not able to love them the way I did then.
The moon and the night remind me of the light,
The silence and the darkness of your breeziness,
The mountains and oceans of my lack of patience,
The woods and the solitude of life's thin rectitude.
Neither am I what I was, nor do I think you are.

Perhaps after crossing paths once, the old streams

Are never the same; In one are remains of the other.

ಸ್ವರ್ಗದ ಸುಪ್ಪತ್ತಿಗೆ!

ಕನಸಲಿ ನಾ ಕಂಡಿರುವೆ ಚೆಲುವೆ
ನಿನ್ನ ಸಂಗಡವಿರುವುದದೇ
ಸ್ವರ್ಗದ ಸುಖ ಸುಪ್ಪತ್ತಿಗೆ!

ಆದರೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಕೊಂದಿದೆ,
ನಾ ಬಾಳ್ವೆಗೆ ಮನಸೋತಿರುವೆ.
ಸಾವಿನಾಚೆಗಿನ ಸ್ವರ್ಗದಿ ಹೇಗೆ ಬಾಳುವೆ?

(I have visualized in dreams, my love,
That to be in your company itself
Is the joy of being in heaven!

But here in also lies a problem
I have lost myself to the beauty of life
How can I make it in heaven, the after-life?)

A tap's predicament

     

Is there a tap that doesn't ever leak?

     I am a tap which believes it is leak proof in a system where I perceive it is pertinent to plug the leaks. I look at other taps and I understand there are two kinds of taps. One - the closed taps and the second - the open taps.

     As time passes by, I notice it is not all as black and white as I supposed it to be. There are these taps too which are neither closed nor open! They leak!! And a good number of us leak. Some are made to leak I am told. Some are applied with leak proof solutions and yet they refuse to mend their leaking habits. 

     Years on, I understand not all taps leak in the same way. The leakage pattern varies on their position in the pipeline. And I gradually realize no observation is a rule but has many shades and exceptions to it. I also get to see that if a tap is stubbornly leak proof, it is either broken or removed. If that is not feasible, the flow is so strong that the pipeline itself develops cracks through which it leaks.

      The leakage seems to be inevitable. I wonder why no tap can last its life without ever leaking. Years, decades and centuries go by and one day I suddenly realize if the goal of the system was to plug leaks, why on earth were we made taps!?

      As my existential crisis haunts me further, I wonder if we are all something else in the garb of taps or are we simply a design engineer's blunder? Or is it that the goal of the system is not to plug leaks but something else and we have wrongly assumed for ourselves a role of absurd importance? As I entangle myself more into the complexity, I am suddenly dismantled and the new generation electronic water plugs are put in place to prevent the leakage of what they think is water!

Difficulty

The heart is crowded with desires;

The soul is in love with solitude.

The choices leave me indecisive,

Why is it so difficult being human?

ना गिले - ना शिकवे

No qualms and no complaints!

Serene silence during Sunrise at Chitrakote falls, Chattisgarh (PC: Myself!)

अब अगर आप नहीं करतें हैं मुझपे यक़ीन,

तो ना है मुझे आप से कोई गिले - शिकवे |

आखिर कब तक ऐसे ही चलेंगे ये सिलसिले,

वक़्त के सित्तम में बेज़ुबान सी हो जाते हैं रिश्तें |

Now if thou can't repose any trust in me,

I have no qualms and no complaints about it.

After all, how long will these affairs go as such?

Relationships get silenced in the tyranny of time.

ना साथ, ना तन्हा

At Table Land, Panchgani, Maharashtra
PC: Myself

-1-

 

ना वो बिताते है चंद लम्हे अब हमारे साथ,
ना उनके साथ बिताये लम्हे तन्हा रहने देते है हमें।

(Neither do they keep my company any more,

Nor do their lingering memories let me stay alone.)

-2- 

शायद भूल हमारी ही थी, ख्वाब जो बुन बैठे थे,

बस अमावास की रात में जलती चिंगारी बन बैठे थे। 

(Probably the mistake was all mine to have knit dreams,
I had only been the burning flame on a moonless night.)

Discover new lands

Bellary Fort, (PC: Myself)

They have all said -

If one knows not where she is headed,

No wind shall ever aid her voyage.

But I simply wonder -

If all knew where they were headed,

No explorer would ever discover new lands.

बादलों से शर्त

Picture Courtesy: Google Image Search

ना हैं कभी लगाना बादलों से शर्त मुझे 

रोते हैं वो रंग-ए-मौसम बदलने तक ।

बस गुज़रे हुए उनके यादों में रोना हैं मुझे

रंग-ए-दिल मेरे खून-ए-जिगर होने तक । 

(Never would I want to bet with the clouds
They cry till the colours of the season change.
I only have to cry in the memory of those gone by
Till my heart is coloured by the bleeding of the liver.)

I am and I am not

PC: mpmuseum.org

I am not the uniform that I am made to wear.

I am not the tie that hangs around my neck.
I am not the blazer that sweats me in summer.
I am not the nameplate that boasts my rank.

I am neither the wrinkles on my attire,
Nor am I the scars on my wooden face.
I am neither how upright I stand and stare,
Nor am I how mild or aggressive I sound.

There is more to me than that meets the eye,
Like all, I too am human and have emotions,

Thoughts and feelings, beliefs and prejudices,

Strengths and weaknesses, instincts and reasons.

I could be a refined gentleman, a savage beast,
An impractical idealist, an intellectual nihilist,
A reasonable realist, shrewd strategist, neo-narcissist
I could be none of these, yet more than their aggregate.
To fit me into groups, classify into classes is futility;
For, I am no exception away from this eternal evolution.

Gift of democracy!

   

Whom to curse as I am made to wait?? (PC: Myself)

  

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." - Charles Bukowski

     The citizen looked blank because he knew not whom to curse. He was waiting for change and reform since the day they were promised to him.  When he explained his predicament, I too was perplexed and shared his confusion. If it was an autocracy or an anarchy or something of that sort, we could have cursed someone specific. But damn it, this was democracy!!

     He clearly knew he was a citizen, a part of the public; he had to find a public servant in a public office to attend to his problems. Irrespective of being part of a major or minor socio-religious group from which he derived a sense of identity, his existence as an individual citizen had bestowed on him the right to demand for the redressal of his grievances.

    But all that the much hyped and promised democracy offered was a government with its ministers and officers. The guarded government spaces, the rigid bureaucratic structures and the erudite officer elite who manned them! Among these government officers where were the public servants the citizen had to approach? Whom was he to fight with for justice? Whom was he to curse for his plight? Had the public sphere vanished into thin air as the reach and spread of the government had widened by leaps and bounds?

        Has it always been a struggle for the survival of the 'public' at the mercy of the 'government'? Or is it the modern 'gift of democracy'!?

Remains of love

PC: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs10/i/2006/136/a/f/Walking_away____by_alikafaythe.jpg

Never are you only my own, 

                                 never a mere possession.
If ever has it troubled you, 

                                  do pardon the obsession.
I shall work on the subtleties 

                              to groom the emotion.
But what remains of love, 

                       if not for passion?

To and not to.

PC: Myself

 

To strive not to let emotions blind reason.
To know my strengths and respect my limitations.
To understand from the mistakes of the past,
To remember the truths that time has taught.

Not to blindly follow the crowd or yield to my peer,
Not to get carried away by the lure of the moment,
Not to have an opinion without adequate knowledge,
Not to grandstand at the slightest chance to do so.

Melody: Kiss of silence.

PC: www.toddmckimmey.com

 

 

 

These days, I strum the strings

Yet silence refuses to be romanced.

What if she smiles and stares?

Not every note is the magic of music.

Melody is only when deep in her soul,

Silence wills, all by herself, to get kissed.

Agreed.... Yet....?

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation" 
- Rainer Maria Rilke

The secret of the setting Sun or the secret of the scheming spider? 

(PC: Myself)

अगर आख़िर में तुझे राज़ ही बनके रहना था 

तो बाँटके दर्द, बनाया क्यों मुझे राज़दार?

(If in the end, you had to remain a secret

Why did you share thy pain and

trust me with secrets?)

Agreed, you intend not to invoke 
     ever again those incomplete words.
Agreed, you intend not to knit 
     any further those incomplete dreams.
Agreed, all beautiful things 
     must at some point come to an end.
Yet, why does this incomplete craving 
     of the heart refuse to cease?
Yet, why does this chaos of emotion
     refuse to surrender to the logic of reason?
Yet, why do I have so many complaints
     when I accept all that has happened?

Faith in humanity

 

 Reason and logic are my Gods,
Instincts and intuition my angels.
Doubt my guiding torch,
Ideas my inspiration.
Yet, I shall trust men and women,
Value relationships, Reciprocate love.
And place my ultimate faith
In humanity alone.