Turn!

Turn once, I say

As I pass by,

Your bustling day.

Turn, when your work is over,

As my skin is burning,

In your scarlet fever.

Turn, when your mood swings,

To lay your face

On my tepid wings.

Turn, as I move

To meander and flow,

In our moony groove.

Turn, when your peace is around

For a day lost, or a day found.

Turn today,

As moments are passing,

Don’t fret me 'way,

Why art thou shunning?

Turn, for once

For am still here.

Thirsty my dear,

For just a glance.

Turn, still there is time

My days are drying,

I fail to hear day's chime

Turn for me

So I can see.

Those benign eyes,

To set me free.

Sit!

Now I can hear your voice,

Breaching all shades

Piercing all noise.

You sit there still.

With your gathered will,

Your knowledge vast,

With a spell cast

A vision for me.

I see your eyes.

Benign and gentle,

Kindly enough,

You pour!

A drop of manna in thy grail.

But you speak heedless,

Of our present,

And all I wish,

Is to cease your pace.

You are the toughest hue to hold.

An antidote to me, as they told.

You are a road to me, I cannot take.

You are a poem, I cannot forsake.

So you sit for time,

Rhyme on rhyme,

Weaving narrations

For me, sublime!

Triumph!

Blessed with a leaf of life

Initiate a walk,

And speak to some soul

And some we mock!

Crowned by knowledge in every bend

Some original, some just lent

Progress in crafting our perspective

Building us differently, as we live

Thriving further, we crave for power

In diurnal course, in our earthly hour

Flaunting our sword

We slay some unkind

The potion of triumph

Makes us blind

We incline to think

That our present is brink

Hence cradle our measured step

To form a policy and give it shape

We manipulate life

Making the subaltern a passé and strife

As we are charmed to win

Encompassed by ruckus and din

Breaking down somewhere inside

Something weeps bitterly in fright

Where is the conscience?

Where is soul?

All we see, is a big hole!

It is deserted,

And stands alone

Drinking the potion of triumph

Displaying our talents finely honed

What is this potion of triumph?

Breeding in the mental lump

It's a half-hearted grain

That has no self-restrain

O my world of angel souls!

Why do you feed this pungent roles?

If triumph is a immortal potion

Let me see it fight the death's ration

Let me see it take the food of life

It brings no cure

It drives no purpose

It is a mirage

A potion of daze!

Utsab!

There are innumerable connotations of this multifaceted word. I hold on to just one of the many. We are hued in so many colors that in the end, it becomes a tumultuous task to decipher the original. Like Magi, Utsab savors happiness. If you sit to think what is all hue and cry about happiness, one might fall back to consider its just Utsab. When I ponder on my thoughts of last fortnight, I feel nauseated. How many of us do adhere to the fact of incest relation. However, though we deny the unacceptable and the unknown, it doesn’t cease its existence.

There is a heart that smiles at morality, ethics, social constructs, and so forth even sans acknowledgement. No rule, no binding can tame it. It remains untamed. It is wild and ruthless and young as a spring out from the womb of an over bearing mountain. It is just a replica of my words. They fleet and float in wilderness. Utsab too! As they said, there was a time when I was drugged with inertia. I slept through the entire week of Utsab. In the midst of the sound of music, there was a novel Utsab that was gathering its pace inside me. From the other corner of the world, an illusion drenched in Khayyam opened his mouth to pour some ideals in my vessel. What it was? It just came and went, I didn’t even realize until I bagged some wisdom.

The blanket of nausea that had overcast my sky then will be lost in translation. On materializing, I can only say that it tranquilized my nerves. It seemed to me like the dotted lines that were never quite in a mood to reveal fancy.

Now when I sit cupping my chin with a mug of "strong" filter coffee, I find it was necessary for Utsab to come, play its part, act a duel, win and then, silently leave. We can page through innumerable notations after they have penned a "period". And at last, when things end (metaphorically), it leaves a feel good factor. I find they bestowed me with some knowledge and thereby increasing an ounce of corruption in me, yet again!

The revolutionaries!

If we don’t live our dreams, if we become part of a passé, if we stop loving; in doing the previously mentioned acts, will we be able to curb ourselves from life? The revolutionary road, a struggle that unfolded itself through the life of few characters, most significantly, April.

Can we all have the courage to be April? To smile and defy, to walk a change, to brush new laws in life. I still cannot decipher one thing, whether defying the laws of nature means that we are being courageous or coward?

Who are we?

Are we just the way we act?

Or, there is a more subtle, more benign, more unknown power that forms our identity? We learn to accommodate, we learn to survive, we learn to deny, and at last we learn to defy; and most poignantly, we learn to be selfish. In this walk of life, I am reminded of Machiavelli and Kautilya. However, there is always scope for moderation in theories and philosophies.

Can we incorporate the scope for life too?

April is a character who lives in her mind, overlooking the complex mechanism of the society. The social constructions would not have offered her the road to escape. The tantamount pressure of social discourses would have succumbed her. She would have continued living lifeless, giving birth, bringing up her children, meeting the desires of her husband, but in doing so she would have ultimately died. Here, I am not being a feminist, criticizing the mental block that men have.

Nature has not provided men enough courage, I guess. Somewhere, I feel he is just lost in a staccato or a tautology. He has build countries, won wars, travelled far and wide. Yet he has failed to understand April, and therefore continues to live a life of Ulysses. Frank could never satiate her mind. Probably, he was too mundane or he was too happy being part of mundane. Status quo brought him a sense of security and peace.

While April craved for newer pastures, the longing kept on growing in every fold of her life. She fought, she lost. She lost in her words, but she did win in her deed — in being a revolutionary!

Thoughts

Have you ever thought of thoughts?

They tickle your brain and make you smile.

When thoughts swim past,

Your mind so vast

You grab them quick and make them sit

For a cup of tea.

So the thoughts can see

When you lift your thoughts

From your plate,

You think of them sitting late.

Then you wonder what thoughts can mean

Some just laugh and make a scene,

You web your thoughts

You paint them mild.

But thoughts just wonder in their wild

You watch thoughts walk

To and fro

Never compromising,

In their row,

You speak to thoughts

You fight with them

But you just fail to make them tame.

Thought just shares what it wants

It never ears to your rants.

It masters your mind,

It wins to bind,

But, here I am listening to thoughts again,

To drive me mad or keep me sane.

Little Prince

Hey grown ups! Try to see the world through my Little Prince’s eyes. His world is a terrain of fantasy topped with the manna of reason. He brushed a boa constrictor, and we mistook it to be a hat and then an elephant. He travelled far and wide, while some grown ups saved their fortune and the rest spent life in calculating them. He saw the secret land of tears, while we let it part from us. The narration of Exupéry through the vision of my Little Prince is so simple that we often fail to comprehend the crux. He met so many people in every planet he landed, and each symbolized the characters that play their acts in our lives. While turning the pages of Little Prince some of us realize and the rest find it petty. Even the most trivial things on earth have its significance. The grown ups have never appreciated desert. Have we ever imagined that even deserts can be striking? "What makes the desert beautiful is somewhere it hides a well." In the similar lines, what makes the life worth living is it cocoons small happiness in its folds. It is more like flowers with thorns for spite.

my little prince