doosron ko itna padha, khud ko likhna bhoola main// दूसरों को इतना पढ़ा, खुद को लिखना भूला मैं

दूसरों को इतना पढ़ा, खुद को लिखना भूला मैं
कभी तो घर आऊँगा, सुबह का भटका-भूला मैं

doosron ko itna padha, khud ko likhna bhoola main
kabhi to ghar aaoonga, subah ka bhatka-bhoola main

दुनिया के इस मेले में, रोज़ नए दोस्त बनते हैं
कितनों को मैं याद नहीं, कितनों को हूँ भूला मैं

duniya ke is mele mein, roz naye dost bante hain
kitno ko main yaad nahi, kitno ko hoon bhoola mein

रोज़ सुबह अख़बार उठाकर, दुनिया को मैं जलता देखूं
खुद की छोटी चोट बड़ी है, दुनिया भर को भूला मैं

roz subah akhbar uthakar, duniya ko main jalta dekhoon
khud ki chhoti chot badi hai, duniya bhar ko bhoola main

30 बरस के इस जीवन में, अपनों ने कई ज़ख्म दिए
तेरे प्यार के मलहम से, हर उस ज़ख्म को भूला मैं

30 baras ke is jeevan mein, apno ne kayi zakhm diye
tere pyaar ke malham se, har us zakhm to bhoola main

बाहर बारिश झूम रही है, कोयल तितली बच्चे भी
बड़े बड़े 'टारगेट्स' के पीछे, छोटी खुशियाँ भूला मैं

bahar barish jhoom rahi hai, koyal title bacche bhi
bade bade 'targets' ke peeche, choti khushiyan bhoola main

तूने ही गम दिए हैं, तू ही देगा खुशियाँ भी
छोटी-मोटी तेरी भूलें, मौला सारी भूला मैं

toone hi gum diye hain, tu hi dega khushiyan bhi
choti-choti teri bhoolein, maula sari bhoola main

Sometimes i wonder how i'll die

Sometimes i wonder how i'll die. Will it be something quick and painless, or something so drawn out that waiting for it'll become dreadful and i'll wish for the darkness to arrive early. What will i be doing at the time of my death. Will i get to know beforehand if my time is near. Cos' there is nothing more shameful than leaving a task incomplete and still i'm sure i'll have many tasks before me, incomplete while i leave. Will my family be around when it's time, will i be surrounded by friends or will i cease to exist in a distant land where nobody would know my name. I wonder if they'll cry or laugh after i'm gone. Will i go quietly like the passing out of a flame or will i rage and fight like a moth caught in that flame. Will i leave the world a better place than i found it or if i'll be amongst the nameless, faceless multitude who have lived and died inconspicuously throughout human history.

Sometimes, i really think that i don't want to die at all (but then who does) and even after death, i want to live in the memories of those who i've left behind. I think death is inevitable, and it is too early to think of death, but yeah, i would really like to be missed when i'm gone.

And oh, the fact that when i'm dying, i wouldn't like to wonder how i lived...

not a good way to start the week :) posted this last night here on the blog, after reading a bit piece by Neruda. but that doesn't mean, i haven't thought about this subject before. i guess, all of us think about death at one time or more in life. have you wondered about how it will be, when it will be :)

traveling 17,000 years back in time- meeting the first artists on Earth

would you like to meet the first ever artists on Earth? see what they created and how amazingly it takes us back in time? would you like to imagine how they lived and behaved. may be you would like to travel seventeen thousand years back in time :)

visit: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/fr/00.xml

from the writer's almanac: "On September 12 in 1940, four teenage boys and a dog named Robot stumbled upon Paleolithic drawings in a cave in Lascaux, France. The main cave is approximately 66 feet wide and 16 feet high, and is connected to a number of smaller chambers. There are about 2,000 drawings and engravings, mostly of animals: horses, bison, red deer, stags, cats, and aurochs — large, black cattle-like animals that are now extinct. Horses and stags are the most common subjects; there are also human figures, various geometric shapes, and the outlines of human hands — possibly the signatures of the artists. The chambers have been given evocative names: the Great Hall of the Bulls; the Chamber of Felines; and the Shaft of the Dead Man. In addition to the figures, there also appears to be an Ice Age star chart: clusters of stars that resemble known constellations like Taurus the Bull, the Summer Triangle, and the Pleiades.

Assigning a precise date to the art has been difficult. Scientists used carbon dating to estimate the age of some charcoal found in the caves, and according to that method, the drawings are about 17,000 years old. What's less certain is whether they were produced over a relatively brief period of a hundred years or whether they span a much longer period."

know more about the lascaux cave paintings here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux

and if you are interested, i'll tell you about a book which took me through this journey a few months back. may be you would like to read it :)

-adee

कल शाम मैं इक़बाल भाई से मिला

अजब शक्शियत हैं इक़बाल भाई भी. हिन्दू होते हुए भी मुसलमान सा नाम रखते हैं, मुफ़लिस होते हुए भी दिल बड़ा रखते हैं. कभी लन्दन में फ़ाकामस्ती, कभी कानपूर में जूते घिसाई, कभी हालीवुड की बेवेरली हिल्स के आलिशान बंगले में ऐश, कभी वहीँ के किसी होटल में वेटर की नौकरी, बड़ी दुनिया देखि है इक़बाल भाई ने.

उनसे किसी का दर्द सहा नहीं जाता, तभी तो चौथी मंज़िल से कूदी और साल भर तक प्लास्टर ऑफ़ पैरिस के सांचे में जकड़ी उस अनजान गोरी महिला से रोज़ एक घंटा निकाल कर मिलने जाते हैं. कभी अपना पेट काट कर किसी के लिए दवाई लाते हैं, तो कभी अपमान सहने के बाद भी किसी की दिली-तमन्ना पूरी करते हैं. पैसे से उन्हें कोई लगाव नहीं, झूठ बोलने से कतराते हैं, पर फिर भी गुरु-बाबा बन लोगों को रिझाते हैं!

अजब शख्स हैं इक़बाल भाई भी. मेरे अपने न होते हुए भी बेहद अपने नज़र आते हैं. कल शाम मैं उन्हीं इक़बाल भाई से मिला.
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...
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इक़बाल भाई, कुर्रतुलें हैदर की कहानी 'कलंदर' के मुख्य किरदार हैं. कभी-कभी किसी किरदार से मिलकर ऐसा ही लगता है न कि सच में किसी शख्स से मिलें हो हम?

reading, remembering, writing on a sleep deprived night

These days, am reading 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter', one chapter at a time. I started it quite a few days back and maybe by chapter count, it should have been over by now. But due to my usual 'advertising career' timings, have skipped a few days in-between. Then there are also days when i don't feel like reading prose, so i pour through gazals and poems.

I'd bought this book a couple of years ago from the Sunday book bazaar at Daryaganj. It was in good shape, maybe only 'secondhand' and i got a very good bargain on it and others combined. I think i even wrote a blog post about the day with pics and all. Perhaps that was also the last time we'd gone to book bazaar!

And how i'm missing her now. Haven't talked to her since evening. It is our custom to speak to each other before going off to sleep. But i guess i was too late today and she already dozed off. It has been happening a bit frequently these days and it makes me sad. This and the memories of that day in Daryaganj are making me miss her even more and sleep is eluding me so well. That too despite the fact that i haven't taken my full quota of rest for past two days now.Anyways, i digress again.

Why i felt the urge to write now was that i found the first signs of this book's previous owner while reading it tonight. S/he had scribbled exactly those words that i would have if i'd a pen/pencil with me now. I wondered who the person would be, a man or a woman? Of what age and country? May be this book traveled half the world to reach me or may be it was sold to a 'kabadi wallah' in my own part of Delhi. Who knows, but what i know is that person has/had a heart similar to me. How rare this bond is!

I'm writing this post on my mobile, as i also wanted to share this with you:

And then one weekend he came home from school to find the cabin empty, still, a washrag hanging over the side of the tub and a chill in the air. He sat on the porch, hungry and cold, waiting. Very much later, near dusk, he glimpsed his mother walking down the hill with her arms folded. She did not speak until she reached the steps, and then she looked up at him and said, "David, your sister died. June died." His mother's hair was pulled back tautly and a vein was pulsing in her temple and eyes were red rimmed from crying. She wore a thin gray sweater, pulled close, and she said, "David, she's gone." And when he stood and hugged her she broke down, weeping, and he said, "When," and she said, "Three days ago, on Tuesday, it was early in the morning and i went outside to get some water, and when i came back the house was quite and i knew right away. She was gone. Stopped breathing." He held his mother, and he could not think of anything more to say. The pain he felt was deep inside him, and above that was a numbness and he could not cry. He put a blanket around his mother's shoulders. He made her a cup of tea and went out to the hens and found the eggs she had not collected, and he gathered them. He fed the chickens and milked the cow. He did these ordinary things, but when he went inside the house was still dim, the air still silent, and June was still gone.

Scrapbook of Memories

Dear Word lovers,

A few days ago, i posted this thought from John Berendt on my facebook page (here):

“Keep a diary, but don’t just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It’s great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.”

I thought it was good advice for me and all those who want to write and keep a diary as a starting point in their disciplined journey towards being a writer. We all know the routine, we start by promising ourselves that we'll write daily, then it changes to weekly and sooner or later these diaries make way to a hidden storage or an obscure corner of the bookshelf with many others like them.

A reader-friend of the page had other thoughts though. She read the post out to her daughters "and one of them got so inspired she started writing straight away. Result ...2 haiku poems!!" I was excited by the sheer joy and spontaniety the child showed. How quickly children come to the task at hand while we adults continue to sit and debate! The next day she wrote her first 'stoem' (her word for story poem)!

Yesterday, the proud mom shared another wonderful thought with me. And it is so good that i want to share it with you all. I think we all can learn a lot from it:

"The art of diary writing my grandfather possessed had missed me completely. I tried my best to revive it and bought new diaries for my girls every year and they invariably ended up hidden/lost after couple of months. Now I can safely say I will not be buying diaries for them ..instead we started a new tradition ...a scrapbook of memories ...the best thing about it is you can write at any time of day...and we also changed the submission requirements so it can be poems, stoems, stories, or even drawings!!! ....which suit us to the ground!!!"

Now i'm going to start my very own 'scrapbook of memories.' And i'll try to be as regulalr as possible. Maybe it'll lead me to my own published book someday!

Would you like to join me in this journey? :)

-adee