Guru Granth Sahib Ji - english

For others who don't know Punjabi, this is one of the okay ones, but if you look at what Sahib Singh ji and others his level have done, you may be getting into misinterpretation here. But not bad to begin with.

http://www.srigranth.org/servlet/gurbani.gurbani?Action=Page&Param=1&g=1&h=1&r=1&t=1&p=0&k=0

Painting Courtesy: globaljudgements.com

Guru Granth Sahib - interpreted

http://www.gurugranthdarpan.com/darpan2/darpan_pdf.html

Known to be one of the best interpretations of Guru Granth Sahib ji - by Late Sahib Singh ji. Those who know Punjabi, you have a treasure at your fingertips. God bless such sewa.

http://www.gurugranthdarpan.com/darpan2/darpan_pdf.html

The familiar life... in 2000

http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/20000215/ied15073.html


The familiar life

My head felt like a knot. Many knots. A headache, a numb head, a dumb head... anything else sounded so much better and the best of all would have been an empty one. It seemed wise to bang this bundle against the wall, fling it into the water tank, scrub it good, pull it out, dry and clean of all the grey that had been glued on to it. Only if.
Nodding for the nth time, I realised for the nth time that this grey on the top didn't always bring the brightest of smiles, the breeziest of breezes. This grey up there lives such a square life, breathes such calculated breaths, saves, stashes, finances feelings... a well-worked-out equation that always promises a remainder called `smooth life'. Only if the rest of me could live that way.
The head felt even more knotted as I lay it down on the pillow. Of course, it makes sense, I deliberated, to live a familiar life. Walk the streets that have been long cleared of all the wayward green. Friendly and safe. ``That's my sensible..." I almost heard Mom exclaim. And Iwent to bed, stretching my lips to a smile. The knots stayed, but.
BUT! I woke up drenched in sweat. How do I live half dreams? ``Don't dream,'' Mom said. ``It's like forest fire, it burns you, it burns the ones around you, it burns all night and day. Water is so much more calm. It flows along that trail, never makes a noise and it doesn't burn. Be like water, darling, flow demure. Be like water, my daughter....''
But doesn't water spill over sometimes, Mom? Doesn't it dive from a cliff, hit against the rock, gush down, frothing all over. So noisily, so noisily that you jerk your head back to see it live, and breathe. So loudly. So fearlessly. And that, Mom, isn't noise, is it? I love listening to waterfalls. Don't you, Mom?
She wiped the sweat off my face, closed my eyes with her ever balmy hands. ``Sleep my darling, and dream as much. But dream only in dreams.'' The lullaby did put the sleep back on the lids but the head knotted up again.And then, in slumber, I was flying, drifting, floating... allthat makes a feather. The feeling felt familiar. And my own. There have been times earlier too, when I've tried stretching my arms as wide as they can be, filling in the breeze. And an equal number of times have I tried stretching them above my head, raising my heels to get them as far up as they can get. And then I've also tried to breathe as deeply as I can, so that my lungs swell to the brink of a burst, to take in the spring sprayed all over. The dew also comes along, wrapped in sweet peas and gulmohar. And I've never had enough of it. And it's in this not having enough that I have found the desire to try again, for more. And I've gone on stretching my arms, breathing ever so deeply, just to get there. And it's never left me tired.
The morning, and I walked out with a spring in every step. They picked up pace as the ground beneath left them. ``Don't forget darling,'' Mom called, ``don't forget the way back home...''
Where's home, Mom? I walked, tickled at the crisp brown of the leaves floating about.Spring had begun to show as the dream cradled back into my eyes. And I moved, like the river that overflows, breeding new rivulets, then streams, and a pond and, who knows, some day, even a sea.
I want to dream, Mom, and not only at night. I'd be the stream that froths on to the rocks and flows. And then someday reaches home, suddenly out of the meadows. Then the knots would come off. Just like that. Who knows!And I won't forget the way back, Mom. I promise.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

From A Bird's Eye View

A piece written 11 years back. But it continues to stay a truth for me in context of my God and the perspective of HIM. For the sharing :)
http://www.indianexpress.com/ie/daily/19980504/12451824.html

From A Bird's Eye View
The same old moon above ...it didn't hold ME. There were millions below. And stars too which didn't float in space. They moved, they blinked and they didn't fall. They were squares, triangles, circles of stars that moved along a pale orange trail. A trail that seemed to be lighted from beneath. And it took me back to my days of the mud houses I had shaped with my hands -- puny little mud houses with lamps lighted in. And of toy trains and toy buses.
The sky below moved as I sat mid air. Static in space. Not moving. But I was. And fast. This was my first brush with wings. And that too at night. (Night flying comes to the privileged few, the captain had said). I had suddenly grown wings right above my head that evening when my friend had pressed my hand and whispered:"We are flying!"
Minutes later, looking through the copter window, it was a sight too spread out. And it took a dimension to catch my eye. The lake... a bucketful of water spilled out, the roundabouts ...ride on a maypole, sector-17 ...blocks and moving dots ...I could play Chinese checkers. My eyes couldn't get huge enough, nor my mouth even as I kept making bigger circles with it to keep the ears from bursting. The neons blinked below ...I could recognise them, not by reading but by making out the locations. Identifying marks down there was like... I am still groping for a word. Comfortably familiar? Yes, this comes close. And so was the moon besides me.
I lived a world somewhere in between. A lifetime in the air. And the one below looked like a shred.. on a joy ride.. mapped out..in a circle. It was on a move. I had felt it before. Now I knew it... it took me a flight to see. For there had been times when the world down there had stopped suddenly as if someone had pressed a `stop' button somewhere. But it never did. Same as it was here ...mid air. The wings above my head had ceased making noise. And a lot other noises too went. For now I saw...Nothing is too big. Nothing is too much. Nothing is the ONLY ONE ....From a distance.
I landed with a smile. Thanks Captain.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

I will wait... forever

When clouds begin to gather
yarns of night from the rainforest;
when the wind roams drunk
at the promise of a wet storm;
when mountains wake up
even closer to my window;
when it has rained all night
and the moon is too drenched to walk home;
when the trees by the Lake
paint their nails pale and pink;
and when all of my life’s decision have been taken
in black and white ink…
…..there still remains a drive up the mountains,
a fight over a pastry,
seventeen hundred and seven songs,
and one sleep on your shoulder
Awaited….
forever.

Paintings courtesy: 1. In The Pink, courtesy http://www.ldianejohnson.com/

2. The Palma Collection; Getty Images

He says talk of the miracles...

He says,
speak of...
the yellow butterfly
and the freshly spotted purple;
the Golden Shower tree,
pregnant with a windy May;
the road that loses its feet to the mountain peak,
and that wretched shack with shocking momos;
the blackbirds that eavesdropped.
and the fog that hugged us that day.

He says,
speak of…
that song that rose from black & white
and brush-swept our willing faces;
the two children we stole from our family albums,
wore their faces and hopped all day;
that snake swimming in the lake
and that quiet walk by the highway.

He says,
speak of...
dreams and wishes and songs that came true
He says,
speak of...
the miracles - when you were me and I were you.
But then…
miracles are for keeping,
so utterly ahead of speaking.

IMAGE COURTESY: A painting by Bheem Malhotra, www.tribuneindia.com

I rise, yet again…

Sometimes, everything fits.
Sometimes everything looks easy…
Sometimes, impossible mountains collapse.
Sometimes, scalding suns turn moons.
Sometimes, everything is only as far as stretching out - with arms, with gentle words, with a heart full of love and yearning, and then…! Swi….sssssh - a magical magical flash of cards just rises, finds ground and begins to roll back into a neat pack. A pack that just gathers itself in a stash that defies all permutations of spill-over.
Sometimes, the insides suddenly shed all garbage. All anger, all lust, all greed, all obsession, all ego… and turn Love. As if the chanting sun stole in through the pores of our skin at some point and bathed the insides, the morning ablutions for the prayers ahead. At such times, the insides - rinsed, hallowed and perfumed - suddenly float over the flesh, five feet over, or maybe five feet under, and become happy slaves of Him. In easy surrender. Just like that.
At such times, words don’t hurt. At such times, weapons don’t hurt. At such times, nothing hurts. Nothing can hurt.
Yes, sometimes, it all looks so easy.
Sometimes everything dreamlike and heaven-like and loving and kind is a possibility.
Sometimes everything is dreamlike and heaven-like and loving and kind.
Such times come after I have closed my eyes and touched His Lotus Feet under my morning trance.
Such times come after I have closed my eyes and bowed to Him and Her on that Himalayan peak.
Such times come on mornings when, my hands folded, I have washed my face with the spring from my eyes, while staring into the feet of the Formless Somebody in my room.
Such times come when I pour some white light from There Far Above, over my family, my home, my city, my country, my globe, trees, grass, flowers, rivers, mountains, and me.
Such times come when I turn so boneless from agony that the only limbs that can move are my hands - in a folded Wail of pardon.
At such times, everything fits.
At such times, you become I, and I reach out for you, with only love. Yet again.
Such times. Oh such times.

Painting courtesy: www.lcmb.org
May 7, 2009; 3.56 pm.

SomeOne

Someone is trapped in my body.
Or I am trapped in a body.
This Someone, trapped in, keeps growing new wings every secret flash. And when I am not watching, it keeps breaking and sprouting out of the skin and cells to breathe lungfuls of trees and flowers and leaves and rivers and mist and forests and waves and temple bells and eyes and faces and prayers and more and more and all of more and more of all and keeps filling the lungs. And then, some mad moment, it stops even rationing it all and just harvests all of that by the armfuls, and keeps bringing it home and of course, it all spills over and begins to tiptoe in, finding nooks and crannies and clefts in my cells and pores and skin and vessels and nerves and bones and all of me.
And soon, I become the Wings.
Sometimes, when it’s not wings, Someone grows new antennae. The kinds that bees have. Or butterflies have. So glassy, so glassy that even I can’t see them. So I easily refuse that they are there. But oh, these antennae have a strange network. So crystal, that the human in me wants to call it hogwash. Maya? But then, the stories never end. My eyes look at a face and my antennae transmit me the saline lumped behind them. They look at a stranger and they telecast my story with him from a past life. I dream of a child and my ‘satellite dish’ tells me he is going to grow into my Master. I look at any face and I know, ‘I know him, her, them….. I look at all and they all look like me. I look at them and they all are me. I know they are me and my antennae are broadcasting it from the Unknown Somewhere.
The Unknown Somewhere is not so unknown too.
It looks white. Cottony white. Suds of milky, melting cloudy cotton walking on No-Ground. But the ground beneath my feet is yet so solid. So grassy. So mountains, so much a carpet of flowers. So sea, air, sky, and even fire at some times. Nothing hurts. Nothing thrills. All fits. Just fits. Into Love.
This Someone, knows only love.
With all arms, fingers, nails stretching, stretching towards love… For this tiny white flower that grows a smile on its face as it bends from the side of a mountain faraway along the aridness of Chamba.
Or that unwrapping peepul tree that stands in the middle of an unnamed road in the heart of Dehradun.
Or that lost little girl staring through my car window.
Or that little monk in a Rahul Bose movie.
This and that,
and that and this
and many more things…
This Someone, knows only love. And no anger. And no hatred, and no jealousy. It knows no money and no silken clothes and no diamonds.
And Someone knows no big houses. Someone knows Home. And home is Love. And love is home. And when love is home, all the world is one.
This Someone knows only One.
And I have a feeling, that despite this body refusing to let Someone in, Someone lives here. And I have a feeling, the body is not me. And I am not body.

PAINTING COURTESY: Winged Aureole - David Hicks; www.fineartamerica.com