Beloved

If I call you my beloved …

… Will you promise to open the window wide

and let me hear your melancholy notes?

Will you make a collage

of the restless stretch

between that coffee cup

and the steering wheel

 and the

desert flower?

 

If I call you my beloved …

… Will you let me live

even when I am dead and gone?

Ageless ageing ...

 

A few days ago it has been my birthday and among the warm wishes, I have realised that it’s really okay to age  :-D.

Until recently, it was exceedingly annoying to me to even hear the word ‘ageing gracefully’! The primary instinct has been to grind my teeth and yell, “Who the hell wants to age in the first place? I definitely want to stand up and be counted, look good, feel fit, be admired and wanted – especially after I have hit and crossed that significant number 40!”

But now when I look back on my years, I feel so very grateful to have lived the life I’ve lived. Whatever I have done, I have been sincere and genuine. When I loved I went overboard; when I didn’t, that too has been with equal depth of aloofness and dispassion. It definitely has never been a perfect life; there have been painful freeze structures, scenes and episodes that I would prefer to clip out yet they are the one who made me.  And so, now, I love the mirror and all its appendages like the wrinkles, the sag, the flab and the scowl.

One more great thing that has happened to me is my blog. A few years ago I started blogging with vengence! I pampered my blog like my baby. I wrote fast and furious. I wrote about everything - my reality, my imagination, my life - things that happened, things that might have happened, things that I longed to happen ... and as I write this it's bringing a smile to me ... I survived because I wrote, because I had my blog. My blog has done more to me. It has given me friends who never expected anything in return. Isn't that something wonderful that can happen to one?

And as for ageing gracefully, now I have realized, healthy aging requires an internal shift. Because you know in your heart of hearts, that your true value lies within. Age has given us wisdom, experiences and freedom from the superficial and I am sure we wouldn’t like to trade that in for anything. Age is more about giving and less about receiving so it has made us better people. Now I know I can tell age – “bring it on! I plan to live you even more fully, vigorously, arrogantly until the day I take my last breath.”

Stray thoughts ...

Independence Day – I would like to know about it; I mean more than its history I would like to know more about its relevance and significance today! What is Independence? Is it that tri-colour cloth fluttering high at the traffic signal near my house? Or is it those patriotic songs that are going on since early dawn in the by lane? Or maybe it is the usual glory of the parade show and those national awards – which nobody will remember or care who won what even one day after the announcements. Every year when it comes around, I look for a reason to celebrate. Every time, it’s more and more difficult to find one. This time I was only thinking of Nirbhaya, the fearless one, my dearest younger sister – I wanted to reach out to you, I wanted to find out where you are, now. The more I thought of you I was getting so sure that you are the wind beneath our wings and you will surely never die. The poison that you have taken little sister, we all have experienced that in some measure or the other. And it controls our lives. So where is our Independence? We are elephants now – who never forget … we could never forget! 

( Shaista in her blog Lupus In Flight mentioned us being elephants. )

Did you notice 'soil' carefully? To me it looks like a huge antique trunk; with bruises and scratches here and there, its hinges rusted and stained.Footfalls of history are stored in it. River beds are neatly piled in the corners; also minerals, nitrogen and phosphorous are carelessly kept here and there. On top of everything you will find a handful of sobs and sighs with a distant echo of a long lost laughter. There is also a huge colorful garden in it. All these are stacked inside the trunk for years together. And you can also keep dead bodies in it. Many of them!

How do you escape your anguish? 

Do you spread it thin like butter on bread
and keep waiting that someday it would soothe away the sting?
Or do you fling it like a chit of a sun ray under your half willing lover’s door
and keep hoping that it would churn out a rainbow sometime?
I bury them among my half-baked dreams
and in between those half-finished poems.
Among those hidden alleys of rhyme and metaphor
I scream soundlessly
or unleash a ferocious maddening stream.
Do you want to know how to escape grief?

desire

The dreaming desires of life
I am looking for you again
after very many years
in the same old places;
and I have found you
... same old desires of life,
life’s dancing delight,
dancing around
a day
a night
like a butterfly
my indigo blue butterfly
flutter by
float and fly ….

And then
I let go of you
like the sand off my fist
like the stars in the dawn
like a dream in the morning wakefulness
I let go of you.

Wait …. Wait ….

Re read my lines …;

Before you read

feel the space in between...

they are filled with the depth of a river…

Let your eyes listen to those prayers

that reverberates with the birth of each word.

Close your eyes and repeat after me …

Begin slowly …  

And then let me know

if you have liked it …

 

 

What do I do with so much love?
They are of no use in my everyday life.
Sometimes, I use them in poetry
for it leaps, I don’t know from where!
Or at times, I bury it below the Gulmohar tree
... And keep expecting burgundy red flowers…
My pitiful waiting!

 

 

This beautiful painting was the inspiration for these lines ... I actually wanted to write a happy note, especially as it is a new year ... but it just came like this ...

She does not have a sorrow;
If she had, she would have dipped her pen
in its velvety darkness and
... written those saddest lines, tonight.

Tears were not there a few years ago,
tears were not there yesterday,
even now they are not there.
Those tears, they just wouldn’t go away!

..... Baishali
(inspiration - poet Hughes Mearns)