on her traveling away for a vacation

i can tolerate our daily distance

who is like a familiar stranger

(me in one city

you with her neighbour)

but today it is

a feeling unfamiliar

as if i'm at sea, in landlocked Delhi

while your are away, at the old kala pani

this distance is a bridge i cannot cross

this pain, too aching to be sweet

a thousand miles is too far a distance

for my heart to go and beat

sometimes at the edge of a day i sit and... write

The day is a road which ends at the cliff of the night. From the edge of it we all take a leap and drown in its unfathomable waters, only to emerge unharmed, renewed, and ready for the next day.

Sometimes at the end of a day I sit on its edge and reminisce how my journey was. I think we all do this knowingly, unknowingly. (In matters like these, we’ve not been given much choice.) And sometimes at the end of the road we are propelled with such great momentum that our only moment of reminiscing is just before hitting the warm, inky depths of the night.

We writers are generally not blessed with such a swift end to our journeys. By our very nature, we are addicted to trying and prolonging this leap, that epiphany between jumping from the cliff and hitting the waters. Though this rarely happens, the road ends sooner than expected, the precipice beckons and we’ve but no choice to end it all, then and there.

But sometimes, by some opportunistic sleight, we do manage to pause the wheels of time. On days like these, we sit on the edge of the cliff and look back at the road, trying to derive meaning out of this needless traveling and jumping and re-emerging dripping the dreams of the night.

…
This life is also a road which ends at the cliff of death. From its edge too we take the leap and drown in its unforgiving waters, only to emerge unharmed, renewed and dripping with the karmas of our previous journey.

…
Sometimes at the end of a day like today, I just wish that when my journey finally ends, I’ll be given more than a moment of recollection, that in the moment when I look back, I’ll see a life well spent and a love well earned.

Sometimes at the edge of a day like today, I just wish her to be beside me and the day… to never end.

At the IGA: Franklin, New Hampshire

This is where I would shop

if my husband worked felling trees

for the mill, hurting himself badly

from time to time; where I would bring

my three kids; where I would push

one basket and pull another

because the boxes of diapers and cereal 

and gallon milk jugs take so much room.

I would already have put the clothes

in the two largest washers next door

at the Norge Laundry Village. Done shopping,

I'd pile the wet wash in trash bags

and take it home to dry on the line.

And I would think, hanging out the baby's

shirts and sleepers, and cranking the pulley

away from me, how it would be

to change lives with someone,

like the woman who came after us

in the checkout, thin, with lots of rings

on her hands, who looked us over openly.

Things would have been different

if I hadn't let Bob climb on top of me

for ninety seconds in 1979.

It was raining lightly in the state park

and so we were alone. The charcoal fire

hissed as the first drops fell....

In ninety seconds we made this life—

a trailer on a windy hill, dangerous jobs

in the woods or night work at the packing plant;

Roy, Kimberly, Bobby; too much in the hamper,

never enough in the bank.

by Jane Kenyon, from Collected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005.

'what if', the biggest question in our lives. i guess a perfect life would be without any 'what if' moments. and i'm so far away from a perfect life! so many things that i wish i could change, say if i'd a time machine, i would definitely have done things differently, prevented many events before they affected me for ever.

but then i pause and think. whatever has happened has made me what i'm today. so if i do change the past, it'll definitely affect my present. and there is one aspect that i would never want to change in this present life. the fact that i've her with me, calms down my mind everytime i've this fantastical urge of going back and changing things.

and this is why i shared this poem with you all today. yes, things could have been different, maybe even better, but then they wouldn't have been what they are today. and all said and done, if you've love in your life today, you've survived all that your past could do. 

because i've love, because i've her, i will live with all the 'what if' moments of the past. what i've is, is so many times more important that what i could have.

'cos i'm never gonna stop falling in love with her

man its 13 years! i fell in love with The Corrs, their music and of course the lead singer Andrea when i first saw this song :) how time flies! am sure i would have shared this with dee if i'd known her then.



i remember waiting for love to come to me, spending almost my entire early life in this desperate search, making many false starts, stumbling through love that i felt (then) was true, and finally when i did find her... it was as if my whole life was meant for that one moment, to be shared with her, no more searching, no more aching... just living every moment filled knowing that there is somebody whose heart sings to the same tune as mine. and if there is one song by The Corrs that i would have dedicated her then, that i want to dedicate now, it is this one... 'cos i'm never gonna stop falling in love with her

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped 

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again. We were all watching —

passengers waiting for the delayed flight 

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, 

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could 

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after — if she beat you or left you or

you're lonely now — you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up. 

Poem: "Gate C22" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line

posted by a dear and erudite girl who also collects poetry and prose in her blog here: http://whilethereisstilltime.blogspot.com/

this is love, this is pure love when someone completes you like no one else does. i've felt this and believe me, it is the most amazing feeling in the world. just to cup her face in my hands when we meet... looking at her, but still not looking at her, because eyes are only one of the many sense organs, this is a feeling that goes beyond merely the physical. this completeness is heavenly and wherever there is a love like this, it makes the world a much better, wholesome place. and this is why i wanted to share this poem with you. because love like this lights-up the world, even when it is between only two.

for life

शीशे के सामने बैठीं तुम
और तुम्हारे बाल बनाता मैं
बातें करते
कुछ नया सीखते
ज़िन्दगी बांटते
कितना कुछ, सुलझाते जाते हम

little, simple, everyday things are much more important than yearly celebrations and shopping trips to the mall. sadly, we don't realise this often. this poem saves one such moment about life, for life...

in front of the mirror you sit

a comb through your hair i flit

talking

learning

sharing

untangling life, bit by bit

image copyright Chandrasekhar Acharya

Feb 16th 2009

Last night, I was going through my old files and found this in my diary. So many things have happened in a year and yet it seems nothing has changed. It seems like a beautiful thought, but perhaps it is not.
.
.
.
21:57 Monday, February 16, 2009

(I’ve missed writing here, these 10 odd days.) Lots of things swirling in my mind. Just finished Murakami’s ‘Dance Dance Dance’. You gotta dance baby, follow the rhythm, go with the flow, the world will take care of itself. When reading a good writer or a poet, I feel connected to the world. To the soul of the world. This happened with ‘Snow’. With this one too. I was barren without words. And these writer’s, writing about their world, were like silent rain falling on my parched surface. I wanted more, to be drenched, to be alive once more. Perhaps I am. Last night, a poem came to me. And I knew it from heart. Two more, half complete, three more, yet to start.

So, am I back with, amongst words again? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not feeling quite right. Something within, I want to work, but so many things are held up at the office that working seems a distant possibility. We all are just going through the motions. There is a wait lingering in the atmosphere these days. Something is going to happen. But nothing happens. “Nothing never moves”, she says.

All the things are one, all the ones are multiple things.

Don’t know what to write, what to say, what to think.

Yesterday was Sunday. Seems so far off now. Had a very good day with her. We roamed around in Kamla Nagar, did little bit of shopping, had lunch at the new Subway, then I went to see her off near her place. After that, emptiness.

I was standing near the ground level window, beside the Media Mart outlet at the Kashmere Gate metro station. There is a window overlooking a little green patch of turf and then the metro premises boundary cuts off the mayhem of Kashmere Gate bus adda. I could see a whole world of people moving about on the other, far side of the window. Going on with their lives, buses to catch, things to sell, talks to talk, and I, with a cup of coffee in my hand observing them, from behind a window. Closer to me, on the glass surface of the window, another lot of people were going on with their lives. Trains to catch, things to buy, talks to talk. But these were ghosts, moving about on a piece of glass.

Or was I the ghost, standing there between the worlds, one real, one unreal and one very real world behind the unreal. I didn’t matter for anybody. Everybody mattered to me. Only she makes me feel alive. When she is around, nobody matters to me. The world is then, as unreal as a phantasm wandering amongst the many alternate worlds.
.
.
.
And then, she has to leave again. The cycle continues.

22:19
…

the book / किताब

आकाश और कुछ नहीं
समुद्र है गहरा सा
और पंछी तैरते हैं उसमें
पंख फैलाये

चाँद नीला है
आकाश में डूबे किसी लंगर की तरह
और मेरा वादा है उस से, जब मिलूंगा अगली बार
तो अपनी सबसे प्यारी किताब से कुछ पढ़कर सुनाऊंगा उसे

श श श

अभी मत बताना उसे
की आकाश और समुद्र दोनों से गहरी
और नीले चाँद से ज्यादा रूपहली उसकी आँखों को पढना ही
मुझे सबसे अच्छा लगता है


sky is nothing
but an ocean deep
and birds swim in it
with wings spread out

blue is the moon
like an anchor dropped in this heavenly sea
and i've promised, when i meet her next
will read her some passages from my favorite book

shshsh

don't tell her yet
that deeper than the sky and the sea
and more beautiful than the shimmering moon
it is her eyes, that i love reading most

a song, एक गीत

एक दिन,
मैंने तुम्हारे लिए
एक गीत लिखा

पूरा होते ही
वो स्वतः जीवंत हो उठा
और उसने ख़ुद को
कई भागों में बाँट लिया

एक टुकड़ा दिन बना
एक टुकड़ा रात बना
एक ने धरती का रूप धरा
एक अनंत आकाश बना

एक टुकड़ा धूप बना
एक टुकड़ा छाँव बना
एक ने जीवन जिया
और एक ने मृत्यु को सच किया

देखते देखते,
मेरे उस गीत ने,
पूरा ब्रह्माण्ड रच दिया

एक दिन मैंने,
तुम्हारे लिए
एक गीत लिखा

और उस गीत को
प्यार का नाम दिया


those who can read Hindi, please do not read the English translation :)


one day,
i wrote
a song for you

when completed
it came to life
and divided itself
into many parts

one part turned into day
one became night
one part formed earth
and one unfolded as endless sky

one part became light
one became shadow
one lived a fruitful life
and one made death a reality

in no time
that song of mine
created this whole universe

one day i,
wrote a song
for you

and gave that song
the name of 'love'

for you & for me

it'll be a home full of books.
apart from a roomful, there'll be books on the center tables, gorgeous coffee table tomes, she'll relish with endless cups of ginger teas; on writing desks, acting as mirrors to souls and giving bookmarks their reason for existence; on childrens' bookshelves, winking them goodnights and waking them up with goodmornings; in the kitchen preparing him for lessons never ending, as he tries to figure how much salt to put in the dish he is cooking for the fifteenth time; and on the balcony settees facing the street where they'll see the world pass by and when it rains the first thing they'll rush for are the books rather than the clothes put out to dry...

this delhi book fair, as i thought of the last year's affair, where she must have had entered my heart firmly, i remembered a dream long forgotten. of a home made of words & wisdom, of stories & spices, of her and of me.

and some evening, when the sun has gone away to light a distant world, we'll write a story about a home full of books, life and love.

tum padhoge na, hamari woh kahani?
(you'll read, that story of ours, won't you?)

the love that binds

no more updates today, except this little poem

and the time flies by...

this is something i recently tried in Urdu...

of beauty & love

...and beauty asked,
"you act so strange, why do you call yourself my worshipper"

with a heart, that skipped a beat and eyes, that smiled at her eyes

love chuckled, took a pen & opened his heart

Sardiyaan aa gayi hain...