The beginning of an end

Interesting time is upon us. Jugglery of statistics obfuscates the line leading to the dusty cremation grounds outside the villages. One more farmer’s death or handful soldiers' sacrifices are not the point. What is, is the fact that we are growing at a stupendous rate beyond 7 percent. A beacon of stability we have become in the inhospitable economic landscape. Damn right. We have finally arrived. So what if a helpless in the custody of law is thrashed in court? After all, someone has to stand up for nationalism.

And what the hell is my problem? It is them, who are now getting the rough end of the stick, so richly deserve. After all, all these years they have only been appeased, right? Damn right.

Boom boom, goes the communists. Boom, there go the minority, booom bloody intellectuals, booooom …. Now who? queers? Boooooooom ……. Is it the Non-vegetarians? Not so bad. Boooom now …?

It wont boooom soon enough, but the whimper will only spell my end? Right?

Wrong!!!!

It will be your end too. 

#moveon

The days glide, one by one..soon crawls weeks and months and life, seasoned with downpours and dreariness, benevolence and malevolence goes forth. With each new day, sun glimmers and sometimes hides between the cloud curtains and we are made to carry the weight of the log of life with smiles and most often without wearing one. A pale languid eye shadow fluttering the eyelids like some moths in daylight caught unaware does the covering act.

Death shudders us all..there are but some we thank for,the others untimely, haunt us.

That believe 'we shall meet again' unambiguously lets us pull through the destined journey till we disembark. The journey will be long...it'll be tedious. We'll crack up with some, leave a corporate smile with few others.

And then 'life goes on' becomes our mantra after a long.. sigh of breath.


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To death, this year'2016, be not

Reeling under the debris of too many losses is not one of the most invigorating things in life.  And if that happens to be understood as the losses of human lives, it pains. Pains and they aren't visible or to their cruel best do not bleed anyone to death dizzying under.

From legends to very common man one must have either looked up to or have loved, admired,interacted with are one over the other catching their last buses. And yes, at times one is not getting enough room even to mourn their departure. Just a moment later another death smuggles the leftover breath.

It has gotten maddening out there, in the real life.

There is this inexplicable fear all the time. Fear of losing someone held upclose. And this does not happen overnight. It has built up over a short span of time.

This day i woke up only to brace up to face life, say hello to it before i too become a soon- to- be- forgotten mass. Nothing is absolute. Each of us go and will. No half-witted ifs and buts make way. The real game starts with those left behind to play around. Some holding on to the believe they could be immortals, some singing, "till our turn comes".

I guess sooner or later we end up figuring out where we fit in.

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wordsmiths & newsplumbers: Watchout, Modi Eating ‘States’ for Breakfast

wordsmiths & newsplumbers: Watchout, Modi Eating ‘States’ for Breakfast: BY RK MISRA Hope is a good breakfast but a bad dinner. And Congress realized this much to it’s chagrin when  an impatient India sent i...

#17 pain

Among the most frequent ways men have best tried to resist falling a prey to pain is by murmuring, “I have stopped expecting”. How does the statement pass the honest- to- god truth test? Very simply. One can discern that when one stands praying,submitting completely to that mightiest of all. And we stand there on the breadline. Distanced from all that ties us the moment eyes shut or the moment they look above. The above remains as it always does…without a god’s particle.

A fountain of burden freezes within. We are humans and we are made thus. Iceberg still melts, the mountain of an ogler doesn't. It stands hard solidifying all that we intend to marathon out of.

It is not sinful to expect. It does not penalize us. But a probable follow up of pain condenses the feeling of want. Expectations have stopped disembarking at our respective pre- decided destinations. Indeed it aches, but then piling up those needle pricks, we have not stopped in picking up the terminal bud and sipping a cup of tea as regularly as we do. Did we?

Between the good- bad, will be and not be, wish-wish not trajectories, what can be shies away in a diorama. 

The dominant mortals that we are, we take it on us to keep everything appear sans pareil. With or without probabilities, the morning still has its signature sun rise.

#16 complex suite

Modern world tricks us all. If we are alone, we are on internet; if we have people around us, we are running away from them and stay logged in its virtual park. If nothing catches up with us, we catch up with addiction. To keep every aspect of life adhesive fixed we force ourselves to run around. Life puts on the complex suite. In weaving layers of simplicity, complexity is given the guest house.

Spider weaves its web and let us say it crafts it just too well for its survival. It is a home and a trap. Certain things in life pictures perfect with spread out conundrums while some with proper plaits and ribbons. It is in our choice to buy or not inner malaise and display an under weather look.A complex look certainly has very many buyers but not for too long.

Roped in our mini-web we jam our hand painted world with too many thoughts, too many knotty thoughts.

Catching up cold in a wintry night walk or picking up a new interest to play a music instrument have all been kept aside in the to do list. Those rarely get a tick mark till if not age, willingness withers us soon.

Caught in selfie..we gently disengage with self. We maroon the inner self in the quest for an out of line life. Complexity cackles.

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# 15 to Tendulkar

                                                                                                                                   

How often does it happen that everything is in place, everything is perfect but there is this ear blasting whisper telling us something is missing. Thoughts dip in worry to tap it down what it was that wasn’t around. And then gradually we are able to decipher what it was that went offshore. The icing of enthusiasm stayed away from the picture to make it perfect.

Each article moving at its pace has the Midas touch ones it gets to feel the heart, hand and heed hit it off.

Most lives sum up in parody. Since the birth to the last sleep in the berth, imitation remains constant. There can be changes in between and those changes with full heartedness let us survive our names long after we reduce to meaty memories. It is not in our offsprings we have our rebirths. Our beingness, our representation, our special touch twirls in the memories of others. “Oh, had he/s been here, there would have been ripples all over!” - is our touch.

Liveliness is in the pocket of our heart. At times more than frequent it must be let out for a game.

The legend signed off from what he loved most. He lived his childhood all through his adult life and god willing and he willing shall continue forever. If he hadn’t tossed and turned long with eager enjoyment could he become what has become of him between those 22 yards?

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# 14 on being different

 It takes not too much to understand that each thing we do,think and see isn't much different from what the next one does. It is in putting together of the two and the other digit which makes it different. We are very much alike in all that goes into the making of our world and still we never hold the reign in terming it unique.

Our wired belief in the world to be such and such sets a trap. Picking each straw and putting it the way we want to makes us drift apart from the prefixed queue. We are alone, but together in that. We are different but similar in kind.  

It has always been so.

Since the time we became two legged beast burdened with understanding. And then the quest of being different began to build its ground nest inside of us, brick by brick. We lose, win, set up for a draw..we walk,talk and race against all that tries to scream at us, “you are alike”. Our over the top amour propre resist all the knockings at the door of sensible hearings. We are the monsters with the I know it all  tag screaming aloud: “I stand -out”.

Indeed we do. From our respective pedestal we do, see and act according to the horizon visible to us.

Watching the sun set from a different side makes us different, and the sun sets smiling upon us…

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# 13 duality

There is too much of traffic in my CPU as I write now. A never ending flow of thought octopuses me. That perhaps is the only thing that’s on an endless job while everything else goes on a break.

There is burst of crackers outside, inside there is this detonation of thought. With warrant or without, thoughts beat each other to sound louder than the other.

Tongue out, long, curly open-hair, exotic goddess having her best time dancing in my mind. I remember those times when I resisted going out during Diwalis or the festival of Kali Puja( for Bengalis). There was this uncanny, unexplained fear about her gaze.The house gets its décor, it gets illumined but her Durbar still remains absent of the devotee in me. They say she is a mother like any other, both procreator and destroyer, beholding beauty and disaster, love and fear.

Does this then mean she evinces the dual faces of human life?!

She probably is us and we, she. She stands majestic uncovering the inside and we masquerade ourselves in the sheets of plastic.

Sometimes the dark knight in us roars aloud only to make us bite our tongue ( with our late realization!). We fall and we rise with each of it. And… what is life without any fall! (Newton had a universal law!)

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#12 on facing criticism

When I think of the things that my mother didn't teach me while I was growing up, the first to make it to the list is how to handle sour criticism. And for the records, criticism is no stranger to none.

More often than not, the thin red line between appreciation and criticism is obfuscated. And like any other form of art, criticism too demands its share of appreciation.

But is it so easy?

Why is criticism so sour? It is because of the way it arrests our flow. Those who bare their teeth often do so on the weak, who rarely are equipped to bare the sight let alone respond to it. What starts as criticism fast descends to ridicule and derision generating some perverse pleasure for the so called critic.

Sleigh riding on someone else at his/her loss has been an ancient game of the world. This in no way says that everyone puts on the critics’ hat. It is just few who are at large with their lose tongue wanting to celebrate the rainbow while the sun sets upon us (not often).

A constructive editing receives a thumb up but the one with the absence of get up &get going approach certainly zips up the spirit with which a bird begins its day.

The real editor up there chuckles and leaves a deafening silence.

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#11 smiles

                     The clock ticks and it ticks on its pace. Modern world is no longer walking with time, it is 24x7± racing. And as it races, human life in its transitional phase is going through the constant “sear and yellow leaf” (ref. Macbeth).There are challenges, there are demands. Each wanting from a modern man the result based deadline job done. Period. Spending quality time with family members, investing good loading time in the library or a soft pedaled walk in a less crowded no PDA ( public display of affection) garden, springing for some ‘me time’ becomes a luxury.

Look at this, the entire definition of luxury goes through a paradigm shift.

These days a walk into familiar, unfamiliar places is throwing upon light on strange long standing faces. Each time I offer myself feeling my oats, I come back lost like a ghoul in a seemingly never ending hurricane …Who took away their smiles!!??? What is it that buys them that peace of believing, life loses nothing as one wears those moisturizer? Smile moisturizes struggles,the life in Toto. It warms up others life, in return theirs. The luxury of giving doesn't end in buying materialistic twenty-first century accessories for the receiver. It multiplies, adds on when it dabbles back immeasurable happiness from unaccountable corners.  “What sunshine is to flowers smiles are to humanity.”

Humanity hasn't come to an age where it stands alone,orphaned. It still has a home and the door has to be left ajar.

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# 10 beginning

It is time to nail the end, end of a beginning. A new 365 will be up again the next time weekend weaves its way out in words.

Every beginning has a mosey walk: jellylike, unsteady…yet the joy in taking the walk resounds with cackle. That sums up joy. A beginning baskets trepidation, anticipation and stands on watchful grounds but nevertheless it leaps out cracking its shell.

To remain the coxswain from the alpha to omega becomes the mantra.

There might not be over our face new lights flickering right at a time when the world declares it to be a new day, a new beginning. Numerators change people do not, nor do the linking moments. A journey that begins in warm lap toddles out meandering on two feet. Time plays the mediator between change and events. And we wait. There are times when sorry feeling overwhelms us at the slightest pop of saying goodbye and then again there are times when we wait indefatigably for an end to happen. A monochrome voyage of impermanence in the undulant layers of life stretches out.

 The old escorts the new to its throne. With dead foliages the coming becomes sacred: pristine, puerile, worry jammed, worry free. A yesterday molts ushering today and tomorrow thereafter.

Twenty thirteen thus winds up waiting for a fresh bloom in the pot less than half filled and the rest well, not full; or with space.

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#9 exile

Most of us love to create little gardens in our ports.Unearthing little plants and giving them a whole new place to expand in a selected area. They are ‘given’ the small pots as their settlements.

Green and brown make a great couple.

When the wanderer in me navigate my way through hosts of heads yearning to catch up with one smiling face, I must share: I return cold more than often. Everybody in an unfamiliar pot is robbed off their state of belongingness. ‘I don’t know you’ becomes the wear of community togetherness. From a distance the drums beat, the conches do not blow…the priest performs his time tabled ritual, Goddess of strength with her children look for it.

Autumn festivals are a great unwinding times bringing under their umbrella a prism of life. But with every move from one ground to another the gregarious creature in us dies a silent oblivion death. Doesn't it knock us all, a vertical ascend lets us lose…it tears into pieces the essential cords which make us a social being. The connection...the entanglements, the share of pranks and laughter,the coming together in pain, in grief gets squashed under the wheel of never at halt city traffic.

Yearning for a home not in a page, but a real mother,father, siblings and furthered home never leaves us alone. 

Our life in exile continues from where it all began. 

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# 8 season of mist

We all want to tell our stories. Warm, tender, twinkling moments we all want to share. 

When I opened the door this morning, thick mist blanketed the open field that greets me lush green every morning. This morning the open lay had some other share to do. It wanted to conceal, it wanted toplay hide and seek, it wanted to play the lamb. The mist was joyfully all over playing prank.

This is how autumn mist tenderly put her feet on my arid land.

White, moist sky and pasture land just in preferable sync.It is time to get frenzy in festive color. It is the time drum beatings and sticks would reverberate from the thick forests of human habitat. It is the time when most are packing for their bracketed homegoings.

My home in the hills must be raining. It must be cold. It waits for my autumn appearance and each time… I have atrocious narrative as an excuse knocking at the door, convincing those yearning, those waiting arms, “not this time, next year for sure.”

I wait for the next autumn, the “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness” every year. And each year the mist of a make up conceals the shadow underneath my eyes.

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#7 surprises

Books are never worth bartered treasures. They are worth every sink, every musty smell they leave as age catches up with them. Life breathes in the pages as a butterfly in the wide open.  

 Each of the pages hold rich texture. The blanks between the lines too hold a lot more than the fast racing eyes can catch up with. It gives us space to store our thoughts and images the text helps us to develop.

                                        

In each pages the search for meeting an assumed moment becomes a pulsating process. As the eyes ferrets out through the lines, our mind begins to travel through the similar tracks. There is this uncanny symmetry of peace, of getting carried away, of distancing from the present to the kingdom the book leads us to. It introduces us to new world encompassing,overwhelming, worth every escape.

There are twists and turns too. But who doesn't like surprises? Surprises are everywhere and they never leave without any teaching tips.Surprises make texts and life both worth every wait.

Surprises leave us smiles and tears alike. I am not strong enough to admit that they let us grow, but for sure they let us flow, like a brook that goes on forever.

                                        Aha... "Men may come and men may go

                                                             but I go on forever."

Life goes on filling each pages: flowing, splashing, augmenting.

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In Memoriam

A flower plucked too soon...

One long year. My cell phone still has his numbers. There are times they get dialed by chance. I know I shall never get to hear from him. Never. Strong are his family members and an inspiration is his sister. I haven’t met people such as them who are living each day with sheer strength. 

pic courtesy:google

Every time I have felt loss of hope, loss of so many other things which he alone was privy to, I have read, re-read texts written by him, messages, mails sent for keeping alive his words, “ It’s a challenge, take it!” I am now left with those alone and those are my treasures for the journey i must take all by myself to meet him again. A visit to his Facebook page.. no longer frequent. IT PAINS!!

I have lost someone who was watchful enough to see I wasn’t crumbling within, many others he knew would end up saying the same. He had been a true confidant. Everybody’s listener, guide and a one to one at that. 

It has been hard for all of us to accept his absence. It certainly is difficult to stay composed and wish wherever our buddy is to be in peace if that’s what death gifts. But we do.


                              “ If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane,
                               I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.”

~ On one of my best friends’ first death anniversary :the 26th of Nov’2013****************************************************************************

#6 key

If we see the moon coming to its full size, we also get to see it gradually disappearing…Its appearance changes and with it changes the view of all that is visible in the open. Sometimes, there is a need of artificial light to see the street we are on and the other times it’s otherwise.

Alignment of grief, happiness and nothingness bring life to full view.

Such are the ways life poses divided: happy, sad, piece by piece sad and piece by piece (in modern language) “okay”. Each of these orbital phases help us evolve, become humble and receptive/ rejective in more than accepted believable terms. With time we learn to train our emotions. There are times when grief overwhelms our friends and family. We see them break through different layers of sunkenness and we find ourselves positioned in a firmer place: coaxing, coalescing, combating a situation hard for the self to retain the sang froid. But we do it,nevertheless. Just letting them know, “I am here”. It is just “I” that can be offered at a time when the waning period strikes the other. It doesn't establish our detachment but our strong steering ability.

Such moments come to us in bulk. And strange enough for us to believe we need no crash course to upgrade ourselves…the steering ability just happens. 

                                                  

With both the lock and the key in our hands we are an amazing piece of creation. There are times we are hemmed in locking our abilities, our emotion, our nature and there are times we are to flung open the doors.

The key unlocks when the judge in us turns it the way we think is right.

©p.db

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#5 baby pink times

A lot walks to and fro when one sits down to brain out all that our childhood stay put. In its warmth, in its soft breezy fragrant arms the memories of the houses we grow up in, the fingers we held firm while toddling around the larger world breathes fresh. Those talks of the “big people” always kept us curious. What did they talk all the time? Such and more childish questions prowled into our little minds. Any older kid trying to rough us into his/her arms and dishonoured we felt, saying and sometimes murmuring too, “I am big enough now.”

Today when we position big enough, all that we have walked past seem so pleasant. A walk into the houses we grew up in, we breathed our first, the people who wiped our drools and loved to hear us utter the incognizant babbles…Everything, I mean everything seems so dear.

Childhood holds the treasure no treasure box packed with the riches of the world locks. It holds our baby pink times. Times of pure,unquestioned, undefined belongingness.

                                                “till the heart of me weeps to belong
                                 To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside”

To be loved. To be loved unconditionally is what we grow up wanting from life. And lets believe we already have it around us…It is there sitting pretty tight letting us accept, want, glorify our failures our successes, our good and not so good times. And thus we are… taking a walk around the planet earth, overwhelmed, questioning, bookmarking...tagging all that comes and does not with us.

And suddenly the world opens wide...

#4 lump

Since long the clouds have lumped together and are in full sight. They seem to have grown fond of this place. Its dark, its teary, its there hanging high!!! Just staring, guardianing each unique pieces of Creation. They are heavy with promises, thick with hopes.When a month or two back it was blistering and we all had boiled in the agony of light, complain became our constant company. Now it is pouring and pouring quite unknockingly.... The sentient species that we are, we love to puzzle ourselves with ifs and buts, thises and thats. Nothing halcyon excites.

Such is the plight of our mind. The dark and the light seemingly bonded but we choose to look the other side.

I choose to sketch the ear to ear smile all the time. And pass it on to the next. Smiles tear away the woven walls between you and me, between each thread. And let me share with you a secret: the clouds most often drop in the laughter while I  pass in thunder. They are the friends we look for when drops from seas and ocean surge in our eyes. And... we are left never alone.

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#3 belles-lettres

“Gormi Jokhon tutlo na aar pakhar haowa Sarbote – thandahote daure elum – Shillong namak porbote” (When the heat of summer could not bemet even with fans and soft drinks, I rushed to the hills of Shillong)

You have been here not ones but thrice! O great bard! Under those pine trees your words blossomed. Clouds here come blanketing fast, pretty fast, just the way your verses pace into the hearts of your readers….pouring life to breezy, hazy thoughts..As I strolled in and out of a rich, fertile piece of plot, the richness of it made me walk opulent of scheming prose. Jeetbhumi* laden with belles-lettres hasn't as yet shown signs of molting when all others around have. It stands somber,emanating pedantry holding the beacon of wisdom. The pine trees still fans the pillars ones which lent its shoulders to the ageless bard. 

Even the alphabets must have had their share of joy in coming together for you...

A hundred bow and a plenty more…

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*Indian Nobel laureate Tagore stayed in this house in Shillong( capital of Meghalaya, India)during his second visit in the year 1921 owned then by his niece, Manisha Debi.