I am in prison... (Love is the only way)

Love is the only way.

I am in prison.
I can move my fingers but this deep valley in my palm is a mesh of wires gone rusty. Clearly, the lines in my palm are distressed, they say.
My eyes can roll and jump left and hop right but I can’t bat their lids. And the eyes that can’t bat their lids forget many things. Like shedding tears. Because they never know. Because they never feel the pain or ecstasy enough to shut under the lids and stamp the moment.
My arms can move and move well to coil themselves around the world, and feel One that the Masters talk about. But my shoulders ache under a cold mountain. A cold cold mountain that lost its river to a landslide. The river is Me. The mountain is You.
I, inside me, have a fresh new pair of wings, especially after some pilgrimages… but its feet are tied with your wrist and I can’t simply leave ground because the sky is calling….
I am in prison… Loosen the tangles. Give me birth. Only you can release me. Only You.

PAINTING COURTESY www.1st-art-gallery.com. By John Gabrile Stedman. A reproduction of a female Negro slave with a weight chained to her ankle, from the Naraative of a Fiver Years Expedition Against The Revolted Negroes of Surinam 1772-77, 1796.

To hell with words.... From Kanatal Resorts

To hell with words.

To hell wth words.

The meditative Himalayas in whose arms I am right now are the most dwarfing. They are a strong hint of what His presence would do to us...
Whenever you, I and us have a mind that seems to have lost its centre, let's just come away to the Himalayas. The roads gulping the massivenes of it all, the trees singing to the winds, the clouds at a game of see-saw over the cutting sliver of a mountain, a valley that returns your song wrapped in a generous rate of interest... and Faces - ah.... all Smile, all Us, all One with no strangeness of distance... Where everything comes together, we are softly lulled back into His Lap... Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that. Just like that......

The Question Mark waits to sliver

When
you sleep,
and walk tunnels of sleeplessness;

When
you talk
and the words splinter away like orphans;

When
you look into the mirror and
meet an undisclosed island from lost memory;

When
a smile rolls on your lips and
a scream begins to scratch the walls of your gut;

When you say a ‘hello’ and ‘am doing fine’,
and blood goes sour
and drips into your tongue;

When in the fever of your morning rush
you freeze in the kitchen…
like a blackening, blackening shadow,
silent, so screaming….

When,
the whole of TV is stirred and spent
and the whole of the day is slugged out and smoked,
when all the clothes are washed and dried,
and all the meal is sobered and swallowed,
When all the bills are panicked over and paid
and all the shopping is stuffed into our walls,
and all the medicines bought and beaten,
and all the diseases cut and cured,

When all of life is worn and worn out,
and all of us are masked and hidden…
…It still finds us,
Like that germ of the air…

It always nooses over,
The Question….

(Written at 3.43 pm, April 20, 2009)

Painting courtesy: http://www.superstock.com/

एक और बसंत (Spring, once more)

एक और बसंत

एक पत्ता,
अटका सा है कहीं
गिरने को है,
बस अभी… बस अभी…
फिर भी जुदा है अपनी डाल से…
एक पत्ता.

हवा सन्न-सन्न कर डरा जाती है,
कई पड़ोसी पत्तों को बुझा जाती है,
सूखा सा यह एक पत्ता
हड्डियों का सिकुरा सा ढांचा,
भयभीत और भुझा,
फिर भी साँस बुन लेता है,
किसी आर्शीवाद से माँगा हुआ…

एक पत्ता,
पतझड़ का,
यूँ ही साँस बटोरा करता है,
एक और बसंत की आस में.
(Came wafting in, like its own leaf, 5 minutes back... April 19, 2009, 12.55)

Breeze through the eye....

Mountain Wildflowers
Landscape by Connie Tom
Courtesy marketplace-daily-art.blogspot.com

Don't hang me off the clock

Don’t hang me off the clock,
Don’t let the pendulum toss me around….
And bruise my within,
And bleed my edges
And string up my nerves
And puncture my pause…
From left to right
From here to there,
From now to then….
Is not just a rolled up packet of minutes…


Don’t hang me off the clock,
As I crawl towards a pause…
Flowing,
by the bed of a river
where the earth is drunk on sweet peas and damp leaves,
I lick wounds as the waters sing…
And when the sun filters to find my face,
I hide it under my eyes…
and flow away awake.
Don’t wear the watch
don’t blink on my cell
don’t ride up and down the dates
I like the sway of things….
But never of the clock.

Mahesh Bhatt, on U G Krishnamurti

Mahesh Bhatt, since his guru's going...

Shatrughan Sinha - surprisingly friendly

The man who talks too much? Not always...

Vijay Raaz ... remember the marigold-eater in Monsoon Wedding?

Interesting actor

Hema Malini

Meeting the Dream Girl

Ruskin Bond - profile

Meeting a man who can hook with spook

Meeting Irrfan

Under the intrigue... Irrfan Khan

Meeting Sir - Mr Bachchan

When Amitabh Bachchan decided to smile and gift us a bit of pondering.

Meeting Rekha... a loving journey

When it got lucky... to share notes with the mystique...

Chatting up the 'Dirty Old Man' - a generous delight

Meeting Khushwant Singh, at Kasauli...

Profiling Sanjay Dutt (HT)

Meeting Sanjay Dutt

SOULITUDE (column, HT City) - Life Out Of Gere

When poor Richard Gere expressed himself...

Notes From The Underground (my column), HT City

Indian Ocean's 'Kandisa' is a pearl, still hidden away from so many...

Notes From The Underground (my column), HT City

Revisiting Pink Floyd's biggest gem - Dark Side Of The Moon

Notes From The Underground (my column), HT City

Revisiting melody of the film- Jahaan Tum Le Chalo

(Notes From The Underground - HT City column)

Soulitude, Column (Many dawns, dusks & a death)

Soulitude, HT City, November 1, 2005.

Remembering Amrita Pritam...

Soulitude, Column (Die Another Day)

Soulitude (My Column, HT City)

My ever-there haven...

Soulitude (My column, HT City, Jan 17, 2006)

Dear Man In The Skies,
Give us some Fog.
You know, this winter, has been not good enough. This winter has just about frozen over from 2005 to 2006. The chill’s gone dead cold and swung on the other side of zero. But, it’s chosen not to be generous. It hasn’t brought us the Fog. And all those messages from the Mist.
Just a few nights of the Fog, please? So that, after the muddle of a commonplace routine that pours heaps of knotted fungi all over and inside of us, let the Fog bullet a trial into our face. Just when we think it’s time to go Home, and we push the ‘Start’ buttons of all the technology that will deliver us, the Fog comes and mountains itself bang in front of us. Blocking all sight, like the film we can see but cannot see beyond. But since Home, we think, is the destination, we’re left with no choice, but to cut through. So we, riding the blare of technology, all the wheels and all the horns, with no safe options, make way into the thick of nothingness. Have you ever driven through thick blankets of Fog, God? Then, nothing else matters. Everything leaves. The past – the most distant, the most recent. Because we, in all absoluteness, are too bloody ‘taken over’ by sightlessness, just about sniffing our way down the road & not fall out of line, into some abyss. The next minute, day, month… the-next-anything stops mattering. Making way through No Sight, only vision works - that the End could be a second away. But since we’ve nothing to do but move, so we do. When the End lurks ‘that’ close, it stops frightening. It becomes one hell or heaven of a game and well, we love to play. Despite ourselves. Despite anything. Despite everything. Despite nothing. Driving through the fog, the streetlights hang like many suns from the heaven and the trees become a network of another world. Driving through like that, we can smell you, God, that musk and cloud and sun and stars. We can hear your words better - you sound so quiet in the rustle of leaves breaking away from their umbilical cords and in the rise and fall of dew. Something in your quietness tells us, God, that we will come through if we have to. And if we don’t have to, then Cheers to the last game.
Listen God, give us some Fog, at least once in a while. So that we learn to take a plunge, without looking. So that we learn to journey, and to hell with Home. So that we play the game for ‘now’, to hell with all ‘that was’ and ‘will be'. Give us some Fog, so that we learn to live in the possibility of death. Give us some Fog, so that we learn to play dangerously.

Your child, who could be much more.

***
The love, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…

Oh well, blood does bind. And shared history, too. The last few days, many cells have been ringing to ‘private numbers’. From the across the barbed wire, hands & hearts have been reaching out. Many new friends and some strangers too, have been inviting “just anyone” to be their guests. A story that we recently carried – on cricket being just incidental for those visits to Pakistan - is just a small fragment of the fragrance. Do you feel the unrest, the desperation to bind again? We do. Many others too... It’s amazing how extreme hatred wombs extreme love!

***

When Ishmeet died... and the TV lost its soul

Breaking news? Absolutely

They've stir-fried, garnished and hung national TV on sale. They keep wrapping it in these ugly yellow ribbons in some sort of self-certification. News-telling? Tch, tch… 'remote' chances. News-selling? Sure, buddy, all the time. After all, hijacker's dangerously at hand – hidden inside the hollows of the harmless remote. One finger-shift, and there's always a better news-seller out there. And bigger breaks. And the biggest bucks.
And there she is – our anchor, smile widened permanently from everyday expanding. The smile. It is such a bloody job essential, and the news on the telly-prompter changes so rapidly, there's never enough time to pick from these options: Paste Smile, Strip It Off, or simply, Pull All Plugs And Just Break Open. And in all this chaos, she breaks news of the 19-yr-old Ishmeet Singh drowning, with her safe-to-smile face. On this side of the screen, the parents and friends are barely surviving the shock. From the news-storming on all channels, between volcanoes of anguish, they're probably gathering little crumbs of information on how they lost their only son to a faraway island. And our girl on TV here? She's in prime time ecstasy - too busy matching smiles with different colours of news.
And then, on another channel, if they wear the right expression while breaking news, a worse mockery 'breaks' in. In the middle of a Lata Mangeshkar or an Abhijeet struggling with words over the loss of the unassuming, promising talent, and Farah Khan shuddering over how the boy's mother would be coping, there's this desperate break to be taken. Like, it's now or never. And not before announcing the 'promising' bit 'coming up': on how the kid lost his life and how his mother lost her mind somewhere. "But all that, after this short little break. Don't go away": the promise spits enthusiasm and you wonder if the anchor actually said that!
As 24 hours turn into Prime Time and 'breaking news' becomes how 'Sallu and Kat stare at Splitsville' or how an alien stares at us earthly-beings from somewhere on Mars or how a lizard and a cockroach found love or something like that, Death dies of cold neglect. Or worse, it turns a reality show with a popcorn interval.
Reality bites… Ouch, it does! But hey, let me go grab my dinner before I catch the footage on Ishmeet's cremation. While I bite into my cucumber, chances are I may not taste blood after all.

Soulitude column (Jan 2008)

While this one reaches you riding on your strong cup of morning beans, it’d already be a few hours since 2008. Okay, so hold on, turn your neck to catch the goings-on with your bedside alarm clock. So have the seconds-hand washed and worn new clothes? Or did you see the pendulum on that wall clock tick itself happy at the prospect of a brand new Time?
Or is it your head?
Is it your head with that tick-tock - first working up a rhyme, then a song, then a tedium, then a noise, and then, the same chaos of routine. Waking up, walking 45 minutes (or 4 kms – whichever explains your health or absence of it, best), the bath-breakfast-work-lunch-friends-dinner-cell sessions-and-back to bed rigmarole… So where went Time? Or does it matter…
It didn’t matter to one man. The Time. So he flowed, in an unlearning, wise sort of way, a twig in the rivulet, dashing against rocks, down the waterfalls, into whirlpools, dipping, slipping, losing, finding and then back in the flow… It didn’t matter to him – The Time. And so the tick tock was never music to his ears. In fact it was nothing to his ears. He didn’t live by the years. Or days. Or deadlines. He lived by NOW. Now, ‘now’ was a problem. Even as all the masters spoke of ‘now’ and only ‘now’, nobody was listening. They were being born, and what next was suddenly ruling their lives. Now what next? School. Which and where. What next? College. Which career and what for? What next? Job? What next? Marriage. What next? Kids. How many in how many years? What next? Them. All about them. What next? House. When and where? What next? Kids’ marriages.. What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next? What next?
And our man, who lived by completing full circles of experiences, sniffing his way through with his soul as the radar, the words turned deafening and then they all started sounding like alarm bells. The folks said they wanted him to do this and do that by this and that time so that they could be ‘liberated’. Liberated of responsibility, they added. Responsibility they had themselves created.
And this man of ours was buried under alarm clocks, transgressing his own lines of destiny and just about short-cutting to destinations at the ‘right’ time as they decided.
Today as this reaches you, riding on your morning cup of beans, strain your senses a bit and you’d listen to the cries of that man buried under time clocks. Pierced by a seconds-hand, knocked down by the pendulum, hanged to death at 12 o’ clock. Time killed him. Because he defied it, to live by the soft song of surrender to the river.
Happy New Year. It’s 32 minutes past 8 and it’s time for meditation.
Jan 1, 2008

मार्च का पत्ता (आखिरी क्षण)

काँपता सा,
हवा की सरसरी से सहमा,
बिन हाड मांस, बीमार सा
अचानक की बौछार
और कभी बे-तुके ओलों से झेंपता,
ज़रा जिंदा रहता सा
तपती दोपहरों की राह बटोरता... जब न तो हवा चले न सड़कें,
हवा की सरसरी से सहमा
वोह बिन हाड मांस का पत्ता…
आज पाँच बजने के बारह ‘मिनट’ पहले
हल्का सा हिला
और टूट गिरा अपने एक बरस के पेड़ से…
वोह ‘मार्च’ का पत्ता,
सूखा, सिंकुरा, मुर्दा सा
छोड़ आया आज आसमान की ऊंचाई.

(March 19, 2007 1.48 am)

चाँद उजड़ा सा

आसमान से दूर
ज़मीन के बहुत करीब
एक भूला भटका सा,
चाँद लटका सा...
कभी पेड़ की आड़ लेता,
तो कभी टीन की छत से छिपता
कभी चलती गाड़ी की खिड़की से चढ आता
तो कभी घर के पिछवारे में जा गिरता
पानी में तैरता
साथ साथ चलता
तो कभी जम जाता रात की उनींदी आंखों में...
कभी यूँ ही झांकता मस्ताया बच्चा सा,
आसमान के उस छोर से.
सब अथ्केली और उजाली रातों के बाद,
आज का चाँद है चुप, अकेला, पिघला सा....
जैसे रंग भर कर उस में
हाथ से मिटा दिया हो किसी ने.

April 4, 2007, 12.08 am

चुप (SILENCE)

चुप (SILENCE)

तुम, मैं और हमें कोसों दूर करते शब्द

गुच्छों में,

कभी अकेले,

बिर्हबान जंगल की रात से,

अधूरे, कटे से, मीठे, खट्टे, करारे और कड़वे…

और उनके बहुत से गुच्छे

हमें कोसों दूर करती बातें

बहुत सी बातें...

सुबह सुबह की धीमी, ओसी बातें

रात की दबी दबी सी चुपकी सी बातें

और सारे दिन और पहरों को भरती बातें

हमें कोसों दूर करतीं हजारों हजारों बातें.

घड़ी, दौड़ और काम

रोटी, पैसा और नाम

और न जाने... तुम्हें और मुझे दूर करतीं कितनी बातें.

चलो आज सब को पार कर जाएँ

तुम और मैं चुप हो जाएँ.

March 19, 2007, 12.56 am

'Word'ict

On April 13, 2009


You are just a word.
And in a regular sort of magic,
in a daily round of musical chairs,
you meet in symphony,
and marry into an idea.

You are just an idea,
You romp under my cells,
you skip around my eyeballs
shoot through my lips,
and you soar over my skull,
and smash me against these keys.
When you are all done,
I fold you into steadiness
and sober you into a story.

You are just a story,
sometimes you sit under storms,
sometimes you come down with the rain,
sometimes the sun shines behind your End
and sends me to slumber of easy illusion.

In my easy illusion,
Words fetch me flowers,
Sentences get me more,
And I could fall in the trap,
more words,
yet more.

You are just a word,
Some orphaned idea,
Or a roving story.

But can I hug you to sleep?