Once an ocean...

PC: http://psalmoines.com

और भी दुःख हैं ज़माने में मुहब्बत के सिवा

राहतें और भी हैं वस्ल की राहत के सिवा
मुझ से पहली सी मुहब्बत मेरे महबूब न माँग !

                                            - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

(Other pains too exist in the world, beyond love.

Pleasures too than that of the union of lovers.
Ask me not, my Beloved, for that love, I once had.)

     Once upon a time, like in those classic fairy tales, "love" happened. And then as in the stark reality of human existence, "life" happened.

     Years later when we both met, she stared into my eyes. She told me though there were traces of love, she could not find that ocean of love that I once had in me for her.

     I told her the ocean of love was for what she then was and not for what she now is.

     She corrected me when she said her concern was not if the ocean of love is still there for her, but that she could not find the ocean at all.

     I told her the ocean of love was in him who I then was and not in him who I now am.

     She asked me what happened to the ocean which was so vast and majestic.

     I told her the traces that she found now in me were what was back then the ocean.

     She was surprised and asked me how was it possible that the vast ocean of those days now seemed to be only traces.

     I told her maybe like me, she too had drowned in that ocean of life, the awareness of whose infiniteness shakes our perspectives so much so that what seemed oceans then, seem to be mere traces now.

Beautiful flower?

PC: Myself!!

Neither am I what I look, nor am I what you see!!

"The red flower looks so beautiful."

"The flower which emits red color looks so beautiful."

"It is a red flower."

"It is a flower which emits red color."

"It is because I see it in red, I call it a red flower."

"It is because it rejects red and absorbs all other colors, I call it a flower that emits red."

............

As the angel and the devil were obsessed in associating the identity of the flower to the red they perceived in different senses, a bee listening to their conversation laughed at how blind they were in calling a flower, devoid of patterns as beautiful!!

____________________________

 

Bees are red-blind. The visible spectrum, for a bee, stretches from 650 mu to 300 mu, so it can distinguish only four different colors in the visible spectrum: yellow, blue-green, blue, and ultraviolet. #

The patterns of flowers are thought to attract bees to flowers. *

#http://www.sewanee.edu/Chem/Chem%26Art/Detail_Pages/ColorProjects_2003/Crone/index.htm

*http://www.rit-mcsl.org/fairchild/WhyIsColor/Questions/5-3.html 

Spade call!!

Original Picture: Paul Reynolds (Flickr: Reflection) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

When a spade calls a spade a spade, does it realize it can possibly be staring into the mirror?

A daughter in confusion.

Picture Credit: http://wp.production.patheos.com/

Mom,
      I write this to you in a state of confusion. You have always been my never failing support system - always there for me. Especially after Dad expired, you have been both Mom and Dad to me.
      Now that I am 25 and as most Indian moms in this situation, you are busy looking at marriage alliances for me. But a thought haunts me deep down in my heart. Despite the optimism you have imbibed in me, I am cynical in this matter.

     I know most of the alliances you have looked till now have rejected us because in most cases either I am more qualified than the guy or I am professionally better placed than him. Despite all the claims of modernity of our society, we still expect the wife to be inferior to the husband in certain parameters as such. To generalize one profession to be better than another totally unrelated profession is at best ignorance. How fair to compare a doctor and a teacher and conclude all doctors are professionally better placed than teachers? Or is it actually true in a society which values professions on subjective perspectives and social opinions?
      Well, though that does trouble me, it is not the cause of the trauma that I undergo. These perspectives I hope will gradually change with the society realizing that qualifications and professions are not true measures to assess a person. Well for that matter, nothing is a precise measure to assess a person!
      The larger contradiction that haunts me is why is that only a girl has to worry about leaving behind her family and going to her husband's place? Do boys ever undergo the trauma of this thought whenever the issue of their marriage is raised? To say this is how it works in a patrilineal society is no cure to the agony of my heart.
       Every time you talk of my marriage, it haunts within me that I have to leave you - my mom, the house I grew up in - my home.... Can't I get married and yet stay back with you? Or still better, can't two entire families, as the circumstance be, come together in a marriage instead of two individuals coming together and only one of them sacrificing a lot? I agree such things do happen today, but only if the guy and the family are considerate enough. But how do we girls know if they are considerate enough? Talk to them, ask them, put your point across, communicate... Hahaha!!!
      Mom, will there ever be a day when girls like me staring into the entanglement of uncertainty will be spared of the trauma of the thought of leaving behind their families just because a decision made them part of another family? A decision that very subtly deprives girls of a lot of what is inexplicable.
Or Mom, am I just being a frustrated girl whose marriage has not happened yet and who unnecessarily thinks too much?

Yours loving,
A daughter in confusion.

A river am I

PC: Myself!!

A river am I.

I flow, I fall.

Am on pursuit.

Not of the safe shores,

But of the majestic ocean -

The womb of the unknown!

To the darkness..

To the majestic darkness of the towering mountains        
PC: Kotresh H R

To the darkness*....

To the dusty darkness of the countryside, where
Mothers saddened by the pains of separation,
Curse their fate for being born into poverty and
Lack of opportunity that drove their children away.

To the haunting darkness of secluded valleys,
Where girls widowed by the tyranny of time,
Trust darkness alone with all their emotions
Since it blames not the living for the dead.

To the rich darkness of lonely nights, where
Virgins intoxicated by the touch of first love,
Bury the shy of daylight to discover themselves,
Knit dreams, fantasize & let reason to the winds!

To the dim darkness of metro underbellies, where
Idealists disillusioned by the refusal for reforms,
Contemplate the relevance of adhering to ideals
In a despotic system that rewards the miscreants.

To the brilliant darkness of the citadels of wisdom,
Where poets of progress decry darkness so as to
Elevate light to Utopian heights, create metaphors
And distance themselves from undeniable dark truths.

To the melancholy darkness of tangled streets,
Where Youths rendered rebellious by stark injustice
Raise their voice in protest against the opaque
Only to be silenced deep within their own darkness.

To the majestic darkness of the towering mountains,
Where travelers caught off guard on any dark night
Confess all their deep secrets and vulnerabilities to
Strangers who in the dark gain a mystic intimacy.

To the betraying darkness of broken promises,
Where theists and atheists alike bewildered by life
Beyond the reach of either reason or rationality
Seek solace in a meaningless chaotic universe.

* Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz's incomplete poem 'Intisaab' (Dedication), and Rekha Bharadwaj's soulful rendition of a part of it as 'Aaj ke naam' for the movie 'Haider'

मंज़िल-ए-मौत

PC: Myself!!

मंज़िल तो मौत की होती हैं,

ज़िन्दगी के बस मोड होते हैं |

(Destination is for death to bother about,

Life is just filled with twists and turns.)