Showing posts with label short prose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short prose. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Music



Music

Here's a thought.

Music ain't supposed to mean a thing. Infact it isn't supposed to mean at all.

Imagine.

An early morning breeze over Juhu beach; grains of sands sprinkling – following your steps and the breeze does hum…

Even the thought of sweltering Mumbai summer fails, emerging din and bustles of the 'maximum' city fades, eyes dilate onto an invisible speck on the southern horizon of the extended bay - where the palm trees arise like brushes kissing across the sky lilting from darkness of night to twilight of dawn and all possible words fail to explain. What?

That. A catchy little humming on your lips… ho, hum, hmm…

Music is nothing, dear. Maybe it's more the moment - maybe it's not.

It's good that I never got to know the technicalities.
*****
(Dedicated to the 'one who sits aglow, amidst yellow' ... for music's sake.)

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Catapulted

Catapulted into an Unending Storm
Mirages are deceptive. So are distant blur of late night smog on the neon lit streets of Mumbai. Mirages are dreams. Dreams swim on the waves of constant undulating plains – of emotions, of sensibilities. Down into the dark blue depths one moment and cresting through the glistening froth afloat on the moonlit ocean in the next.

I let go of my heavy, laden body. I let go of my burdened shoulders. I let go of my loneliness, my fears, my pleasures, my symphonies, noises crowding around in mind. I see myself over and above, floating – a charmed existence amidst such plentiful, unbound world full of life.

My picture becomes clearer; the edges grow sharper as it dissolves in the dream. The dream of a dark blue ocean that envelops, embalms me under the shroud of a full moon night. I feel warm in the cold confines of the unfathomable ocean. I feel cared for, I feel safe.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Heavens Long, Short


Heavens Long, Short


There are times you run on mad, perspiring, glistening unruly hair, thinning horizon, emerging roads and more beyond, pushing, pumping blood full of fresh air, rushing forward – your mind utterly blank. And then you stop. You look around – over the rugged extend of sandstones looming large over you like your cenotaph. You look back in the direction you thought you came from and you cannot make out. You turn back again to try understanding where your intent lies and you know your present has passed into eternity in that blink – your intent has simply vanished into thin, hot air on which the dissolving mirage on the horizon seethes.


You look around, tired for a rock to sit upon. Few yard away a boulder. Slowly the legs drag onwards to the rock which bears an uncanny appearance of an out-of-proportion throne with armrests. You stop awhile and smile upon the satire of time and even then proceed onwards to be a part of it. A relenting sigh and you drop on the throne in the middle of nothing, which no one gave to you, which was never meant for you or anyone, which needed not succession, no reign, no eras, no countries nor empires. Whatever was is the throne. Whatever you are now is the ‘master of what you survey’ – barren fields of eroded sandstone.


When you sit what do you see? A vast desert stretched out or a vast ocean, have you traveled through water or sea or your emotions. What are you - an ocean of thought or a desert of ideas? Winds blow around whirling thoughts and churning the ocean and forming dunes. The rock doesn’t move and do you? Do you take refuge in the rock from your ideas or do you let your tired self trudge again towards that unknown? Is it your victory or is it your defeat?
You part the parched, dry lips of yours in thirst of life – or answers?


_____*****_____

Monday, February 19, 2007

I Justify


Mercurial Mentations
Something never changes – like realization. It is always an on going process that observes, deciphers, hypothesizes, reasons, deduces, believes, rechecks, recalculates and then again begins the whole cycle all over again. It is a mysticism borne in restless spirits which refuses to die out on a single whiff of time. It is a struggle – a struggle to relieve the passion of deconstructions and rebuilding towers of faith on basis of proof.
Whoever uttered the line, “a bird in hand is worth more than two in a bush”, then stands corrected. For, of what use is the bird in hand, if the other two are birds he will never get to know? What is the use of living then? You might as well live a whole life in diapers. However, this is not an inspiring argument. It is rather a truthful documentation of obvious reality. So, the writing stands justified on its, own stead.
Now that I have my point, there remains apparently nothing to be discussed. Discussed? How can I say I am discussing? In this darkened room, my friend lying in peaceful midnight slumber, two eyes of mine trying hard to argue my senses to sleep, effect of late night nicotine, incessant, unyielding rain pit pattering on the glass panes, Colonial Cousins softly crooning ‘Krishna’ through the precariously hung headphones and a glaring screen, what devil does beseech me to seek whatever I know not?
Maybe it is my prime need. Need? Need for what – a constructive deduction to a certain culmination of this writing? Or do I seek acclaim? Ah! Dear me, you should have known by now. Since, the very first cry you strained through your throat, smeared in remains of origins, naked, lay bare before the whole wide world – you clenched your fists, to prove your existence. There you are then. It is the pure need of being accepted as an existent being that you do the entire thing you do. I guess my very existence depends on these black scratches on the whites of time.
These days, in fact these sleepless nights, which I spend regurgitating on the facts and fiction of my existence I find a peculiar resemblance of me to a rhododendron for whatever existed has passed eons by and whatever remains, are decomposed fossils of a self I have left behind in time. In a sense we all are serpents – crawling on our chests, sniffing traces of life to consume on the vast desolate parched extent of a desert. Here, the oasis' have their waters muddied. Yet, no regret at all, for the willingness is ours.
The need basically is of freedom which unfailingly eludes the Ulysses within. It is only for the ones who have already known that from the blithe moment of our conception we have been put into this framework of existentialism, which as frameworks should be, are limited in themselves. We refuse even then. But facts require justification and so I justify. So, you think senses are the routes to emancipation – to freedom? Well you are already there my dear friend – in a web of deceit, which your senses have so cleverly knit around you. You think it is ground you are walking upon? I see you crawling my dear and that too comparable to that of a slug.
All the world’s libraries are not enough for you and you travel places – ‘places’, and yet you know not how far. Knowing knowledge can be dangerous propositions my dear. It is not knowledge you are after, you are after the rat race of knowledge – it is the race that matters, unfortunately always far, far ahead of you as your sixth sense perennially picks up the scent of probability. You think you create? Hardly there son, you are putting things, already there, into place for your comfort. And then you say you create matter, anti-matter, super-matter and what not. Feel not ashamed for that is what, the framework of your existence, has been put to use; and yet, by whom or what?
Questions fly here, questions fly there, not a single answer to be found. Why answers? Why not only questions? Questioning questions is a way of life for us after all. All that matters is a way of life and not life itself. If you haven’t had a way about your life you are never the ‘good’ man, no matter how well you have lived your life. We all are butterflies here. All wearing different colors – or is it camouflage? Either way it smacks of sweet deceit. So, enjoy.
Whosoever discovered or accidentally thought of a whisky on rocks is the omnipresent god in my eyes. Here the working thought is somewhat convoluted, somewhat like this – “All fluids look good when splashed on rocks.” The interpretation can be varied in distinctness and emotional quotient accordingly as the phase of psychological limitation the reader is into at the time of reading the sentence.
Metaphors are no accidental discoveries but natural consequences of a typical human’s inherent preference for privacy. This exists not only in concrete forms of lifestyle but also in intangibles of emoting. Secondary self is one’s tryst with existent entities beyond the outer boundaries of his primary limited self. For, if not that, why must I and you be here? The inner boundary draws the area of reprise for ‘everybody is his own, best consolation, confidante’ and et al’. Questions arise from the bases of answers to them. We lesser mortals, travel far and wide, tracing a round about route, back to the point where our quest originated from. Everything we do we judge more than we believe and there lies the satire of fate.
Enmity is frivolous and as well fictional for whatever happens has got a lot to do with backward aggregating expectations. Expectations in themselves are flawed and hence incorrigible. Misdirected thought stimulation leads to the final leap of faith which finally often ends dumped and caught obsolete in the fleet of time. Doing away with expectations, however, does not help the cause – mind you. What it does is to imbibe cynicism.
I do not allow, for I have known since my conscience has spoken to me, that we all are picking random hearts in our way of life. It does not matter if it is a pitiable bunch of a-day-old violets in a roadside bin or a – “What was that, a fairy in red?” It always that split second which determines the deliciousness of the next experience we relish. Whatever we eat is experience. Prove me salt tastes salty and I will say you are asking only from a human who is taught the language which is a code for communicating amongst them. Metaphorically speaking, there are in fact many – in fact everybody, who knows salt can taste sweet and sweet, bitter. Did you hear me chuckle?
Nomads were ramblers. Rambling is nomadic. We all were nomads. We are all rambling nomadic. No wonder I have much to write and yet, more than a universe to express. Maybe universe is a throbbing heart of some larger form. How would that living be like? Well I guess much like us. With good and bad ‘cells’ sharing the body in a precarious equilibrium, it can only be only as much human as we are. Thoughts are horses and wild ones too. Nomads ride wild horses. Nomadic thoughts saddle my dream horse. I will ride the horse.