Easy is the path to wisdom for those not blinded by themselves...

--- Old Jedi Saying.

October Revolution (... edited)

The Autumn wind
Redistributes the golden leaves
In his quest for 'socialism'...

Blogspeak

Credit goes to this post for inspiring these lines... In fact this was written in the comment box of that post ....


Another year passeth by
We grow older: you and I

I am wisened
When words are penned

Saddened when
The Muse is spent

My frame - tis what your pen depicts
My mood - tis what your mind predicts

Each day this uncertain subsistence
Is a celebration of your kind indulgence

In your own words, asks 'my dependence'
If you ever empathise with my existence?

Doubts...

Tis a sudden spurt of inspiration
Words, meter and allusion

Don't mistake the smoldering desire
With a lucky breeze
That fanned the fire

Another Version

The wind whips away
The golden leaves
From my bare heart

Autumn Revelations

The wind blows away
The autumn leaves
Laying bare - the cold me

Happy Dussera

Akin to Lord Rama
On that tenth day
May we all conquer
Our own demons today.

Happy Dussera to all of you ...

Spring

The Sun streams past
The winter curtains
Into my heart

Resign to the mundane...

Let us make a pact
I said to my words
Let me find my friends
Before I look for strangers

Let us make a pact
I said to my thoughts
Lets think about the mundane
Before we look for visitors

So here are a few lines
That the rustiness permits
The dull edge of a knife
Yields a jagged verse at best

To write or not to write ?

Happy Diwali

May the lamps light up your life
And you of those around you
And in the light may you find
Joy, satisfaction and peace of mind ..

Happy Diwali

Old is gold?

Today I thought
I'd be narcissus.

Read my own lines
To slake the thirst

To read a decent word or two
That wasn't asking me to

Politely take some urgent action
To expedite some interaction,

Or ask some party to
Fulfill a clause they agreed to..

Even as my feeble words satisfy the drought
I am troubled by this peculiar thought

"Each line I write today
Seems duller than the one I wrote yesterday

Was I better at words earlier?
Or tis Posterity that makes it so appear?"

“Thank you for the words …”

That a troubled mind is the best muse, is something I have come to believe in strongly. When I am troubled and in unrest, words flow unhindered. Ideas struggle to find their way onto paper and the whole experience is so cathartic that it often leaves me feeling calmer and more at peace with myself.

This in itself is a dangerous situation. The flowing words do little to resolve the issues that had unsettled the mind in the first place. They act like anaesthetics – providing temporary relief till the dull ache returns as the anaesthetic wears off; till one realizes that the root cause still remains.

Those few moments of peace, though, help to soothe frayed nerves and allow the failing confidence to claw its way back, to reinstate that lost bit of self esteem and to be honest, to also provide a sense of superiority – that will sound funny I think!! But the gift of words is so often not given to all, and those that may, often secretly steal a moment of pride. Arrogance? Mostly no... I think its just a sense of happiness, that is known only to those who experience it. A sense of fulfillment that can only be experienced and is so difficult to describe, even by those who have a way with words!

So I say a la ABBA ….

“Thank you for the words
The lines I’m writing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it
I ask in all honesty.
What would I be?
Without the words we write
What are we?
So I say,
Thank you for the words….
For giving them to me!”

Mindless Meanders 1

Woods and Caterpillar

Twigs and leaves under his legs crackled as he slowly shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Sitting in the bush seeking exotic species was never going to be an easy job. He had known that, but he had never thought it would also involve cultivating skills like holding one's breath till one's lungs were about to give up just because there was a pack of wild cats sniffing at the strange scent that lay in the air or going for days on end in the woods without a bath till he himself couldn't bear his own scent or having to deal with more types of insect bites than he could count and perpetually sore feet and scratched hands and legs... All the same with the thorns came the moments of joy....

This one for example... the caterpillar slowly started spinning the silken thread around it, covering itself in a white glistening cocoon of silk, while on the branch above, an erstwhile caterpillar was discovering that the new wings it had could let it fly!!!

Disant lament .... (contd)

Tiny little fingers
All clenched tight
And ten tiny toes
All curled up tonight.
The soft warm flutters
That your breath creates
The soft hair
And the tiny face

I'd do anything
For that toothless smile
That spontaneous chuckle
And those beady eyes ...

The miles are certainly
Hard on me
Sleeping alone
When I should have
Been with thee ….

Distant lament ....

I am sometimes
Scared that
My weary words
May not traverse
The long silences
That this distance
Adds, and
The weariness that
Spans time zones
Only aggravates this
Pain, and
Reminds me of
The fact that we
Both know so
Well. And
Tis time alone
That will
Turn its wheel
And turn this
Sordid vacuity
Into a warm
Welcome propinquity...

Another year passeth by ..

Another year passeth by ...
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Slower movements
On unsure legs

You hide it
An elegant walk
Measured pace!

---

Last year's lines..

Another year passeth by,
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Grave looks
And taciturn ways

You hide it
A pensive front
Cloaking vacuous days.

---

This started it....

Another year passeth by,
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Stray wrinkles
And wisps of grey

You hide it.
Maturity
On ponderous display...

---

To clear the air...

The Me is me
The You is too
Two sides of a coin
Or just a different view ...

The fountain dries out .... ??

Why is it
When words beckon
Time decides to fly

Why is it
When time lingers
Words abruptly turn shy

Happy Diwali

Like the crackers and lamps
That burn tonight
May you also light up the lives
Of those around you ...


Happy Diwali!

Welcome ....

Last few days have been an overwhelming experience.... Too overwhelming I think for my words to be able to capture them (at least for now). Maybe a few days down the line I will give it a try...

In the meanwhile, please welcome our new alien...

Hiatus

Busy days, unfinished work
No time and Impending news
Demand a hiatus

Adieu...

Mindless Meandering .......

There was just this vague urge to write. The words were not there, not even an idea, just the plain urge and I thought , lets write. Let’s let the hands for once be wilful obedient slaves to the wishes of the mind. Let them not like always cast aspersions, hesitate and ‘backspace’ their way through.

And so these words come to you… with a simple request… let for once your eyes read them. Not each one of them separately, but all together. Let the sum of their parts find the way to your heart without letting the ‘mindful’ watchdogs interpret , translate, transpose and find meanings even for spaces between the words (much like we often do with the silences, when we talk!)

Let these mindless meandering words paint a picture unique . One where each word silently adds a stroke to the canvas . One where you can only see the canvas once all my words are exhausted. For once let my only words talk to you, not their meanings or not even their mindless meanderings..

-----------------------------------------


And then I thought, this would sound great as a blank verse....

There was just this vague urge to write.
Absent were words,
Leave alone ideas,
Just the plain urge and I thought,
Let’s write.

Let’s let the hands for once
Be wilful obedient slaves to the wishes of the mind.
Let them not, like always, cast aspersions,
Hesitate and ‘backspace’ their way through.

And so these words come to you
With a simple request
Let for once your eyes read them
Letting them find
The way to your heart
Without letting the ‘mindful’ watchdogs
Interpret, translate, transpose
Without letting them find meanings
Even for the spaces between words
(Just like we do, so often,
with the silences, when we talk!)

Let these mindless meandering words
Paint a picture unique .
One where each word
silently adds a stroke to the canvas .
One where you can only see the canvas
Once all my words are exhausted.
For once let only my words talk to you,
Not their meanings
Not even these mindless meanderings.....

Distances

Unfinished and an ill-executed idea.... all the same....

Distant conversations on telephone calls
Emotions bridged by Yahoo Emoticons
How can few minutes of connectivity
Help bridge the absence of propinquity

When I want to mask the pain writ large on my face
The distant conversation is often a matter of solace
When deep hidden pain I however must show
The distance hides my face, not my silence though …

Implied ..

From a comment I left on Gulnaz's blog

Sometimes we assign more subtelties
To words than they can carry
And heartfelt emotions
Are drowned in the flood
Of implied implicitness

Thank you

An uninispired blogger –
Words have eluded me
For many a day
And inspiring thoughts
Refuse to stay

They flash past
With little remorse
And memory fails
When I try it to coerce

These words thus owe
Their frail existence to
Many a word written by
Inspired bloggers like you

Thank you for the words ....

In flight (contd)....

Clouds, roads and myriad greens
A family, career, wants and dreams
A Jigsaw puzzle – In flight!

Packing

Leaving a home for a new one is a heart breaking experience. The vibes/implicit suggestions of an impending movement begin quite early. In fact, contrary to what follows they are actually quite exciting – which place, what sort of work awaits, is it better if I was transferred to some other place instead of this one , what about accommodation and most importantly – maids to do the housework!! The questions are endless and many a waking hour is spent answering them, thinking, speculating and even gossiping to some extent. It then becomes time to start packing and procrastinating. Somehow I guess both go hand in hand, eventually getting to the stage where tension begins to build and the realisation that there may not be enough time at hand looms large. And so we begin...

The first to go are the knick knacks lying easily at hand. Each wrapped in crushed newspapers or old clothes or other things like bubble wrap. The newspapers have their own story to tell; saved out in a corner over the last few months, waiting, waiting and waiting. For what? Waiting to be crushed and stuffed into cardboard boxes – funny one might be tempted to say, but so it is with a lot of other things around us...

The next to go are the curtains and the guest linen, towels et al ... Wash, dry, fold and store or maybe seal first in plastic bags to keep away the dust and store thereafter. The next in line are the extra sheets followed by the curtains. Its when the hanging curtains begin to come down that the first waves of nostalgia begin to creep up. Silently they lie behind innocuous cupboard doors and small scraps of paper... awaiting atop a familiar shelf or in a dusty corner and even a quick look or a passing glance is enough to awaken them.... sights, sounds and images flood into mind's eye often causing a tear to well up and blur vision. Then one stops and wonders at the futility of it all... before pragmatism invades the private counsel and one realises its time to move on again.

Were it not an inanimate object wouldn't we owe our house immense gratitude? We are truly indebted to it for life – to have provided shelter in times good and bad, in times when were right or wrong, in times of happiness and in times of sorrow; and all that without even uttering a single word or rendering unwanted advice or even expressing an opinion about our actions, however wrong they might be. Its a service few living people would render and certainly a debt that most of us would find difficult to repay... and if repay one must then how does one repay one's debt to a home?

In my opinion, just like one would repay one's debt to a sentient being... by doing it some good.... by leaving it in a state better than it was when one moved in and also by being conscious of the debt... the consciousness itself dictates a lot of our actions... ensuring that we return a bit of the 'social obligation' .

In flight ....

From nagging bosses and unending work
To fluffy clouds and blue skies
In flight!

---

Pull down the window shade
Shut out the light
'Tis best to catch some sleep
Whilst still
In flight!

Paternal Haiku

Immersed in my world
Travel n work ...
And my unborn one in his

Alien ahgain ... ?? ah...

Life has this funny way
Of getting back..
When you think
You had it figured out...
You realise you couldnt
Have even imagined
What it
Holds in store

Storms at Sea

Storms at sea are a humbling experience...

Frail lives in a tin can
The might of nature
Barely withstand
And realisation
Dawns on sensitive few
Through the fog of fear
Our insignificance shines through...

Master of Technology

Phew...
So I am done
Jack of all
Master of one?

gcc

Oh I see
its the gcc

It needs one older
Else its a goner

4.1's too new
and 3.4 wont do

32 works like a charm
but where's the rpm? Darn..

So its time FC4 to reload
FC6 wont take the load .....

;-)

Awake alone...

As I watch
Your breath rise and fall

I despair
At the futility, et al

Of trying
Rhyming lines to write

When all I want
Is to sleep, tonight!

Beside Me

The stuffed toys
Are lined up
Beside Me

The warm blankets
Are tossed away
Beside Me

The fluffy pillows
Are stacked up
Beside Me

The half-read books
Are piled up
Beside Me

And all I wish for:
That you were there
Curled up
Beside Me

An old piece....

An apprehensive knock
On a friendly door
A contrived smile
Breaks on frigid shore

No sign of that which
Brings us to this fateful day
When old friends must meet
As strangers may

The food
It tastes nostalgically hot
Long since I ate here
Long since we fought

Our words carefully
Uncomfortable references mask.
To prevent the pain
Is an arduous task

And so we hide
Our pain and thought
Cloaking them with
Niceties and nought

And exchange things
That we did
While our lives
From the other were hid

The experienced scars
Caution induce
Lest fresh blood purges
The delicate truce.

I think we must allow
The scars to bleed
Catharsize our souls
Nourish friendship’s seed

Till then silently
We'll bleed in compromise
Scared to expose
What our scars disguise

Another Year Passeth By ...

I was trying to add onto the lines for last year ...

Another year passeth by,
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Grave looks
And taciturn ways

You hide it
A pensive front
Cloaking vacuous days.

---

Wrote this last year...

Another year passeth by,
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Stray wrinkles
And wisps of grey

You hide it.
Maturity
On ponderous display...

---

To clear the air...

The Me is me
The You is too
Two sides of a coin
Or just a different view ...

Morbid Post!!

Sorry for the morbid thoughts..

I'm not trying to prove a point
At least not to you
One doesn't risk ones head on a rock
When the rock is sure to hurt you

No time ...

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
-- WH Davies

Here's more on WH Davies and here you can read the complete pome...

A quick tale: One ring to fool them all ..

'One ring to fool them all...', she thought, as her fingers slipped over the smooth cold metal and a smile escaped the controlled mask she wore. Resolutely, she suppressed the smile, though conceding grudgingly that it had been a brilliant stroke of genius; just like the book that had inspired it. She had not wanted to let go of her life so easily, "Or maybe I am addicted to procrastination!", she thought.

With half an hour to spare, the finished book lying beside her, she had made the decision. mumbling an incomprehensible excuse to her bewildered room-mate, she rushed out of the room to the Cartier store that lay on the way....

"The ring was beautiful", she acknowledged to herself. It was white and radiant, slender and strong. The strength came from platinum and the radiance from the small diamond that was set in the centre, flush with the metal. One look at it and she had known that it was what she had thought of. It was just the kind of ring she would have wanted him to give, when she was ready.

But the number of people, who were poised to take control of her life, had suddenly seemed too large to her; too large for her to handle each one separately. Of course, they all loved and adored her. She did too and it was this that made matters worse. "Had I not got here I would have probably been already living a decision... Would it have been mine?"... Or would it have been an implicit one thrust upon her by the culture and the unwritten code that she had grown up in and also, at some sub conscious level, grown to like ... She was not sure.

Her fingers brushed the ring again and she realised that it was easier this way... She pictured the questioning look she would get from Pappaji, her grandfather; the sweetest 70-year old she knew. She cringed subconsciously at the tirade of questions that her brave single mother would direct at her, at the first opportunity she got... "Maybe she would see through it...". She silently hoped she would. It amused her, to her surprise, when she imagined the angry look that would escape Arun's controlled countenance. "We are so alike".. but thats what made it insipid and unimaginable! And she silently thought about and pitied the trace of melancholy Arijit would quietly betray, totally unnoticed by others...

".. your attention please. All passengers travelling by flight AI 714 from Los Angeles to Mumbai are requested to proceed to Gate 3A for boarding...". The announcement broke her chain of thoughts... She lifted her hand and turned the ring around on her finger. She peered at the reflections the foyer lighting threw off the intricate cuts of the diamond and for a passing moment an inner voice debated with her about her decision, before it was drowned by a louder one that marveled at the beauty of the diamond. "A thorn for a thorn...!", she pondered and she smiled at the irony of it. Turning the diamond inwards, she clenched her hand. She shut out the doubtful voices in her head with a shrug of her shoulders and gave her bag a tug. It was going to be a long and imaginative flight ...

One ring to fool them all ...

@AirJaldi

I'm sitting at this new auditorium in the Tibetan Children Village, McLeodganj, attending the Air Jaldi summit. And the most important thought that I think I am going to take back from here is:

It is not important to just push technology into rural areas. The most important thing is the final application and the model to make the deployment of the technology economically viable. If we do not have a model for that, once the brain behind the project disappears, the project and the technology dies. The blame then, I believe, is fixed on technology!! What a shame that is... The failure of human foresight blamed on the laws of science!!!

I do believe in the bottom-up approach that a lot of people here are advocating.. However, the research community often uses the bottom approach to come up with novel observations for research papers and in the process the finished application just gets forgotten... And more often than not, one success story covers up for hundreds that were not done right (of course I exclude those that didnt work right.. beacuse if everything worked, it wouldn't be called research, right??? )

Happy Diwali..

As night descends
On waning day
The little lamps burn,
Keep darkness at bay

So let us decide
This diwali night
To emulate the lamps..
"Let there be light..!"

Here's an earlier one...

Let the lamps light
Up your life
And you
Of those around you

And in that light
May you find
Joy and Prosperity
Of every kind..

Shubh Deepawali...!!

Happy Dussera

As we burn Ravana tonight
May the consuming flames
Give us the light
To find and burn
The Ravanas, we carry
Hidden deep inside

Happy Dussera ...!!

Sleep Away

An off-the-cuff, blank verse.. pardon me if it breaks all norms..

Wrapped in a sheet
Your hair flutters
In your gentle breath
A foot away
I wrestle with 'System design'
And the temptation
Of joining you!!

Death of a Maestro

"The world comes to die here. It would be a pity if I died somewhere else.." And so, today the sun will set on a Benares void of one of its greatest sons.

I am not a great proponent of Indian classical music, nor do i claim to understand it's nuances. Ustaad Bismillah Khan, however, has always been synonomous with the 'shehnai' ever since I remember.

As a tribute to the maestro, NDTV replayed an episode of the series "Walk the Talk" featuring him. What brought tears to my eyes, was not the news of the death, but the humble simplicity of the man. Clad in a 'ganji' and 'dhoti' seated on a charpai, a 90-year old man in the span of half an hour showed me 'how to live'.

The man who swayed millions to the enchanting sound of the shehnai, who elevated the 'shehnai' from an accompanying instrument to a solo instrument in its own right, felt that all was not lost for this country.

His frank and honest words he showed how greatness and simplicity can coexist, how attitude is not necessary to prove superiority; it showed me how I wanted to lead my life!!!

Words

Its still me
But its not
How can that be
Maybe I've changed a lot!!

I have been yearning to write for a long time and I have kept postponing it every now and then and suddenly it seems to me as if I never wrote at all. Nostalgia grips me as I leaf through my old lines and I wonder how I had managed to write them all. Silently a yearning takes hold of me, but the frustrating combination of lack of time and inspiration that have killed the Michaelangelo in many a soul, dulls the sharp edges of want and I give up. "Maybe another time", "Maybe another place" ... more often its never... The feelings and emotions that have been jostling to make themselves heard sink back into the morasses of rigmarole and routine.

So you might wonder if this is an effort to break the shackles... an amateurish effort to rise against the professional prowess of "Paucity of Time". It is, but it would be wrong to miss the duality.

The pen is an anasthetic, it hides behind the facade of ink, the wounds; that are their Muse and the kind words of agreement and praise are the balm that unknowingly soothes the hidden wounds. Contorted ways of drawing solace, but I think thats the way the mind often works.

The written Word is also cathartic... it cleanses the mind of baggage that becomes too heavy to bear. It plays on the oft repeated psychological phenomena that sharing pain helps to reduce it. I have still not realised how it works. Maybe there is solace in shared knowledge.

Thats a good start i think. But...

The woods are lovely dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep...

Slip...

An old piece...07 Jun 05

Muted words
On a cell phone screen
Mark moments
Unheard Unseen

A careless moment
Is to blame
For disregard
And a reaction lame

Tis true that
Apologies cant
Wrest back time
However much we want.

Facade

जब जिस वक्त किसीका हाल बुरा होता है
कुछ ना पूछो यारों दिल का हाल बुरा होता है
दिल पे यादों के जैसे तीर चलते हैं ...

I had thought
"I" could make it work
I know
I was wrong
"We" could have...

Now only the facade remains...

What are words...

What are words
Reusable emotions...

Flawed efforts to grasp
In tangibles
Intricate intangibles

Efforts to shackle
In meter and rhyme
Amorphous thoughts
That can never
Fit on a line...

If our love, was
Bound by words
It wouldnt last so long

Words are forgotten
Words wither
But our love
Just seems to go on..

Musings

What we have is special
My words
Try to say so
And in the bargain
Accept,
Their complete
Inadequacy to do so...

Another year passeth by ...

Another year passeth by,
We grow older
You and I

I betray it
Stray wrinkles
And wisps of grey

You hide it
Maturity
On ponderous display...

----------------

The Me is me
The You is too
Two sides of a coin
Or just a different view..

the joy of learning...

Among the multitude of questions
That tested our ignorance
Were few that sneered
And scorned at our existence

There were few
Who stood by us smiling
Cloaked in their guile
Silently misleading

And then a band
Of those elite few
That led us seductively
To explore our imagination
And stretch the envelope

Of knowledge and perception.
Helping us unveil
Through reason and application
Joyous paths drawing out that ephemeral realisation
"Ah.. that's how the damn thing works..."

Well, today I took a trip down memory lane...

So to say I didnt really wander down trails that have grown misty, while lying lost in my mind, but I decided to visit a different set of memories... those of others. Those that lay trapped on pages such as these in the bits and bytes of the cyber world... I followed the links on my own blog page... links to people and thoughts that I liked, loved, found interseting or intriguing... and I often ended up on blind alleys.. found that the memories I was trying to refresh had disappeared....

Will that be the fate of these lines as well?... who knows...

Picture Perfect




Beady, innocent eyes
That seemingly
Know no lies.

A stray errant tress
That falls
From the mess

Of a tousled mop
And a face
That makes me stop.

Stare and tacitly long
For seclusion
In this throng.

Just ‘Musings’ all
Evoked by
A face on the wall....