The Final Flight of the Feathers

Quickly Alma opened the window

A little rain bird flew in and perched itself on the palm of the widow

“What message have you got for me, my bird

through the thunderstorm you have flown to my place

I’ll always take care of you little bird, I give you my word

Just let me know if my son’s alive under grace….!!”

The bird fluttered its white wings till a Golden Feather fell

She held it with her dampening heart and for a while she went pale

Impetuously her eyes, scurried through the words inscribed

Reading which, the life in her revived

True tears of joy streamed down her cheeks, she ardently proclaimed, “He’s Alive!!”

And As I watched her down from here, I was exulted………………………….

She dozed off into her chair, after the bout of forlorn days

She now atleast knew that both she and her son were kissed by the Golden sun rays

As the morning blossomed with the fragrance of sunlight

The rain bird chirped incessantly like a child till she arrived

Alma fed the bird with grains and water

She pampered the bird as if it were her own daughter

She wanted to reap the overgrown past and grow her future

But how could she do it…after all she was a mother…!!!

As I watched her down from here, I missed her warmth, and I shuddered…………………..

Years went by, with her each day, spent on the wings of the bird

Alma recited lullabies to it at nights, she went on living like this unperturbed

And then one day the news of the war stumbled upon her doorway

“The War is Over..!!”, she chirped like a bird..just like the rain bird

She was to meet her son, the twinkle of her eyes

She sewed the future events of his life, for him she had to find a lovely bride

The innocuous bird panicked caged in the incongruous sight

The now fledged bird couldn’t grasp the meaning of Alma’s behaviour

As I watched her down from here , I too feared…………………………!!!

One day it thundered and the tumescent clouds outbursted, as if failed to feign the pain,

Amidst the angst, the bird was caught yet again…!!

Alma this time awaited her daughter, she sat near the window praying

Till the bird flew in , and this time another feather, but a White One, fell out of its vest,

And Alma intuitively picked it up in a haste

It read, “I love you, my mother, and I miss you more than ever

But I want to make you aware, of the fact that my scars have now become fade

The rain outside your window has wet me, but don’t worry, I won’t catch cold

and I can see the sun winning over the sky, and forming the rainbow, it looks just  beautiful from here

but let me confess a lie, that I can no more wear

I had to lie, as you and your daughter were alone and needed to be taken care of ,

When you had met it at first, when the golden feather it had doffed

I had sent it, to you, for you, my Mother..

I was avowed that you would love it the way you would love your daughter

You’ve waited for me for a long time and now that the war is over

Now’s the  time for you to confront the inevitable truth….

the truth of the feathers…………………”

As I watched my mother down from the heaven, I missed her rebukes more than anything else in that world…

She wept helplessly deluged in her grief,

Which I had anticipated earlier and so to save her, I had sent the bird, the little nymph..

Who roosted on my mother’s thin shoulders

The bird chirruped a tune, which it had learnt while crossing the heaven’s borders

As I watched her, down from here, I too hymned the song…

That night I tried to sleep, but grief had thorned my pillow

I then heard a familiar lullaby, soothing me, gliding high from underneath the sky,  from under a willow

I got up and saw the mother’s beautiful face cupped on her palm, looking out of the window

She didn’t drag the grief anymore, she had learnt to bid farewell to the yore

She was singing the lullaby, for me, like always she had in my childhood

She knew, that she alone had the power to heal my scars

And so, As my mother watched me, up from her house, her eyes shone

I was freed from the heaven, freed from the insatiable heart borne

I then finally winged my Golden Feathers, to Fly Higher… to diffuse into the White Dawn…….

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

                                                              Flames to dust ,Past to existence

                                                                 Iron to rust, gold to pretense

                                                                Time to haste, love to revenge

                                                             Glut to waste, glory to demotion

                                          In my mind all of it piles up to clog the drainage

                                                      Dull isn’t it, is this what you wanted?

                                         To see the nasty peril taking you into its bondage??

I drag my feet against the ground

I dance for the devil anonymous, unaware, like a clown

How many times would you give the devil a chance

It makes a mockery out of your life and you still take it as a prank

Can you not see the face, of course you can’t, you’re blindfolded

A rigid shaft in which your life has already been molded

You cannot see the unseen with your naked eyes wide open

But I see it through my twitched eyes,through the convoluted fiber woven

It is the destiny that arrogates everything we ever own

It is the devil that binds us to our life in this world, whether idyllic or forlorn….

Take me to the first dew, to an early morning rain

The life poured into our bodies cannot be now changed

We can at least adulterate the poison with antidote forced into our veins

Take me to the freshwater of the free spirited river

 flowing ahead of fixated constellations, in an aplomb manner

Our ears benumbed by the blaring sounds of horns

 popping out of the world’s cloak’s every invisible hole

Take me to a sky where chirpy birds glide Higher Heights

away from the black hole, free after scraping the ugly witch’s face full of black moles

Take me to the land shining soothingly with reflection of the moon

We may not live, although we can sojourn in a celestial world,

A terrain no one ever reigned, beautiful with flowers and leaves

We’ll make it true with our efforts solid with determination and soft with dreams

At least, I do get success every time I shut my eyelids when heavy with the burden

I can open them feeling light  in my perfect world which in the real world is seldom

And this perfect world on the other side of my eyes,

slips away from the shackles of my life,

and so I walk into this  PARALLEL UNIVERSE  that I’ve designed,

in which the flame of love lives throughout the time and

Where gold is only the nature of heart of every person here

Where destiny is interdicted and time flows like a perennial river…….

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

The cloying Sip- a blissful memory

“TA TARUPTUP TA-AN RA RA 

TA TARUPTUP TA-AN RA RA 

NESCAFE…”

 I remember when I first saw the add, I loved it; coz the model it showed looked independent and free-spirited. And immediately I had imagined myself to be living in my own flat with a coffee-machine in the kitchen. It gave me that sense of independence. So, I started loving coffee, not just because of the advertisement, but also because of its life-like taste; bitter, yet to be consumed, where you can add a little sweetness to it in just a right amount.

And then god bestowed us (coffee lovers) with CCD(Cafe coffee day) and Barista Lavazza. I used to go the outlets of CCD in metro walk (the most visited place during my college days!) where I usually had ‘kaapi-nirvana’ or ‘tropical ice-berg’.

So one day, I went to metro-walk with my best friend; both of us being coffee lovers, decided to go to then hallowed CCD. Also I wanted to have a ‘garden sandwich’ which is served grilled with mayonnaise in between, there in CCD.

So we went to the CCD and somehow got an ill feeling. It was a bad omen. We should have understood it. But, we didn’t…..!!!!!

 We sat there and soon we found out that the air conditioner was not working(max temp:40̊C) and so I felt suffocated and found it hard to maintain my composure in that nauseating hall,  overcrowded with families with air stuffed with loud noises made by blabbering customers. We felt as if we were seated in McDonald’s rather than in CCD. That was just not our usual CCD….!! So we dropped the idea of the ‘garden salad’ and ordered just the ‘kaapi nirvana’… It felt like hell sitting in there but I hoped gallantly that I would soon feel better once the coffee arrives. But it was seriously suffocating so we decided to change our seats and occupied the ones where apparently the air conditioner was stronger (our observation as regular customers!!). But the coffee didn’t arrive. We ordered once again. We waited with my hope diminishing in direct proportion to the time elapsing.

The coffee finally arrived.

We first decided to have the whipped cream but couldn’t have much of it as it was saccharinely sweet. We mixed it with the rest of the coffee. We then had the first sip of the coffee and it reminded us of a sugar syrup. We realized that something was terribly wrong with the coffee. This is not how our coffee tastes like!! And it wasn’t worth some 93 rupees!! I then complained saying, “I told you I can have coffee from McDonald's and that too for just Re 30 and it’s not bad…!!”.  We couldn’t have it and wondered if one of us could complain them regarding the ‘sugar-syrup’. We couldn’t complain. So to relieve our frustration we decided to write a note on the napkin. But none of us had a pen or a marker and were again realized of our bad luck. But we had to write a note and could not have given up that easily and so we did write,

                                  :(

                       BAD COFFEE
                                  :(

                                  

                                        , with coffee using a straw on the napkin and kept it on the coffee mug and went to the counter for the payment. But then with an askance I saw the waiter crumpling the note carelessly indifferently without reading it, above of which we had to pay the service charges which further escalated my saturation level and made me furious and so I blurted out our complaints….!!!

We were then given another mug of coffee and were asked to taste it. It tasted the same but we didn’t complain. Instead we went out and threw it in a dustbin… We could simply not have it; it tasted awful………………..!!

We then decided to have ‘aloo-tikki’ from the food–court there as we wanted to have something spicy(edible) and sit in an air-conditioned place. We got the coupon for it from inside the food-court and were asked to go out of the court, to the stalls situated outside it. We realized it was one of our bad days as we stood helplessly in the hot stream of air coming from the hot pan of ‘aloo tikkis’ and even they tasted unusually vapid……. It was indeed our bad day…!!...I then decided to get cold coffee from McDonald's which brought me some respite and he got noodles’ box from Bercos (a Chinese restaurant)takeaway in which noodles were rare. They were bad.

So we couldn’t get either a good coffee or a good air conditioned place.

But what had really disappointed us was the ‘BAD COFFEE’!!!...which of course did distort the musical image of the NESCAFE ad in my mind for sometime…!!!!

Albeit, I still love coffee and the likes of Barista Lavazza as most of the coffee lovers would…

And yes...................HAVE A NICE COFFEE…!!!

                     

The World of Reflectors

Selected as Blogadda's "Spicy Saturday Pick" on July 9, 2011

Nowadays , many companies adopt the idea of hiring employees under a certain bond wherein if the employees leave while under the bond, are enforced to pay the bond amount by the company. I know, you guys know all that; there’s nothing new about it. I was in fact, some time back, working in a company under a bond. And of course after being acknowledged with the bond deal, the peripatetic mind of mine started exploring new areas then, in order to establish new settlements of thoughts and ideas…

“What if I die before time during the bond period………..

 What the company would do then??...

 How would it affect it…??”

Not that I was some sort of an indispensable possession for the company, it was just that, this thought came to me after I went through various explanations as to why a company makes her employees sign bonds.

And then the nomad in my head went ahead in order to reach something stupendous.

And a loop of an array of axiomatic facts started running. I once again came across a fact known to me ab ovo that NOTHING IS CERTAIN…….These three words stood, tall, dark and firm, stealing the shadow from the sun, in front of me. What followed was an insurrection of the world of reflectors….

What is it that you staunchly believe in?

Is it you yourself or something that you  have never seen?

Do you believe in idol worship?

it is a polemical topic indeed…!!

I consider this world  to be full of reflectors and one ultimate source of energy. I believe that whatever we believe in gets stregthened with our faith. Whether we consider Shiva as our god or Jesus as the son of god, the fact is we have not seen them and that we derive strength from them by having faith in them. In fact, it’s a reversible reaction. Not just we, but the idols themselves seek strength from our devotion. And it’s more than just a self fulfilling prophecy…!!

We empower our idols by showering faith on them. And where does that faith come from?..Something or someone must have reflected it on us. It’s upon us whether we derive it or not!!

Those who are atheists could derive strength from a person or any other tangible or intangible entity. When one is in a relationship, one derives the strength from the person he or she loves. We all reflect an assortment of emotions to people around us. We derive confidence from different things and then reflect them onto somebody else!!

We talk about steep inflation, economic meltdown, recession and the list of unanticipated perturbing stuff goes on. We talk about end of the world and create a brouhaha and then we get indifferent towards it. And this apathy we then reflect around us. Well we say that there is a surging wave of a cause celebre cutting through the city because we ourselves help that wave spread across the whole place.

We move around with the reflectors.

We’re always able to see the reflection of any kind of maelstrom or harmony that resides within us, in our outer world. That’s why the pithy, The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.....-Mark Twain

I can find immense joy on seeing a few rain drops splashing on a leaf which collects the drops in its palm just like we do by stretching out our arms out in the rain. I can also feel all desolated and gloomy looking at the rain by personifying the crying sky!!

This is because I see the reflection of  those soft emotions in this carapace like world. We all do that.

I still try to hold on to my beliefs with all of my strength. Some of my beliefs are a priori and those which do not have firm grounds are provided with one, which is again my faith. And I’ll defy them ad infinitum………..

 

Living on the Crossroads of Time Travel

“I saw a feather so light, away from its source, god knows for how long did it fly,

I stretched my arm to its full length and it came to rest on my palm, peacefully there it lied,

For a moment it kept still, till it wandered away outside the window leaving my hand empty,

and me with just a melancholy sigh…………………………………”

Sincerely speaking, I abstain from all bad habits…..but one…..one big one….and that is demoralising myself…

Have you ever felt the balloning tranquility fill in yourself so completely that would simply make you fly into the transcendence? Have you felt your psyche so light, not from the burdens, but from the uncertainties; not from the failures, but from the fear of the failures; not because it weighs nothing, but because you don’t tense your muscles to hold it back?

Have you ever looked around and felt petrified when met with the few glaringly hideous images of lives of those little children at traffic signals, who have got nothing to lose and got nothing to live with, not even hope.

We move on, but where do they go?

So what do I demoralise myself with? Well, I do it with the concealed probable mishappenings that might take in my future; ie, sequestering from my loved ones and not making a success in my professional life. Uptill now it was my past that used to shadow me, so if I allow the future to further blur me then all that will be left with me will be darkness and I won’t reach anywhere but just stumbling upon anything with no light greeting me or guiding me.

Our lives are never immaculately blissful but we’ve enough to be happy and at times we’re really happy….aren’t we?..

But we do allow the time travelling of worries from the future and the past to meet us on the crossroads of our present more than often at various stops of our lives. And above all, we are always ready to arrange the rendezvous with them…. aren’t we?

"And to live on the crossroads, 

is more dangerous than children living on the side of the roads...

the crossroads of time travelling of fears in hurly burly

of our worries so surly…!!

So as I get up soaked in the fresh morning light

I race with it once again, to reach the night

In between, in the evening, when the light rejuvenates with rains

I too take a break and sip coffee for a while in return of alms

And when it seems that the light is too fast to compete with

I pray god to give me the strength to break free

Of the burden, of the meetings with my qualms

I cancel them all, piercing the clouds hovering around me, with my might

I then, start to fly high on the wings of the light….”

The Ineluctable JOKE

“Listen to me, would you listen to me…”
He turns back and sees her sleeping
He turns back again and thinks may be he’s hallucinating
“Listen to me, would you listen to me...”
This time he swirls around but in vain sees her in slumber and nothing
So he scurries away to his office and mulls over the incident
“my grandmom was sleeping and she’s in no position to banter..”
after a lot of excogitating, he procures his mind which still wants to wander
and then in the evening he gets a call from his home
anxiety, fear altogether in his eyes glumly shone
“it’s a bad news dear, grandmom has passed away……..”

he darts back to his home, his mind’s now siphoned,
his cherubic grand-mo had once decorated his life with colorful ribbons,
now that she’s gone , the ribbons seem incongruous in his life,
(for time being he forgets a dress of colorful ribbons he bought for his lovely wife!!
well this is how it is when you have a cheerful adorable grandmom die)
so his grandmom’s to be interred and his mom fighting with contrived tears, about which he knows,
asks him to listen to a joke…..a joke …yes I repeat a joke..his feelings of disgust, very deep he burrows,
his mom clears her throat as if clearing the mordant thoughts of his son
“her last wish was to share with you a joke..”
he bays grappling with the words he hears, his feet off the ground as if kicked in shin,
as he feels weird coz whether you’re sad or not, weird is weird.

He then recalls the episode that had occurred in the morning and deciphers the meaning of the conjured event. His grandmom had always felt immense joy in making people laugh. He knew he had heard his grandmo speaking and that too whilst she was sleeping. He had witnessed it.
I’m sure all you’ve must gone through times when you felt the connection between your loved ones.
For instance, when you want to talk to someone from the depth of your heart and the person calls you at the same instant or when you’re dialing the number of the person you want to talk to but get disappointed, when his/hers call is engaged , only to get elated again upon knowing the fact that the same person had been calling you then… “see there’s another connection apart from the Vodafone and all sundry”, is something that you then vauntly say!!
One can put it as Telepathy or sixth sense as some of us will acknowledge it like.

At the funeral, he is expected to give a eulogy
With serene disposition he commences with the speech
“for those who don’t know me, I’m Sam Walmart
I want to say a few words in the memory of my grandmo…”
He quotes beautiful memories of him with his gramdmo and then before ending, he decides to share the joke.
It obviously makes the imperturbable audience twitch their bottoms a bit………………….
But soon their whole bodies are restraining from shaking after they hear the hilarious joke. But the fact that the joke was actually directed from the grandmo with of course Sam as the intermediary, deluges their eyes with tears. Even those people who might had belittled grandmo in her life, have their hearts enthused with immense respect and love for her. Grandmo has posthumously cheered a group of people who otherwise don’t have enough time to take out a few minutes to share a joke and laugh whole heartedly even with their loved ones.

“Well now a little joke from my side
that i had shared once with grandmo which goes like...
My brave childhood history:
I kicked lion’s face
I pulled tiger’s tail
I broke cheeta’s leg
I threw elephants

Then the toy shop owner kicked me out…!!!"

Hearing the joke, the audience softly laughs.
Sam then does a wonderful task following footsteps of his now late granny and utters the last commensurate words of his eulogy,

"and so I would like all of you to take out a minute or two of silence
and think of a joke that would cheer up someone and definitely my grandmo…”

So, do you have a joke that you would like to share with someone close to you?
If not, then search for it now, before time runs out of your life. Coz they would always like to hear it from you, directly…and even you would also always want to share it directly with them, without an intermediary…!!!

A LIFE FAILED BY GOD

Time is not what is short, It’s you who is late
Thorns were not what I brought, It’s you who chose it as your fate
This was the hour that surmounted you
But you chose to name it as bane
Willingly you abandoned your powers
You immolated yourself by trapping yourself in a bait
I gave you all the happiness at your birth
But you parsimonious, saved it all, and spent nothing till date
I never asked you to become a hedonist
But what prompted you to adopt such extreme philanthropy
I gave you your freedom tightly clutched in your closed fists
Then why did you let it slip through your fingers unquestioningly?
I gave you your senses for all sundry to be perceived
It were you, not me, who abandoned every element of this world
I gave you your right to cry at your birth
It was not me but you by whom your voice was deceived
I gave you so much that even a single life of yours would not have everything relished
 
But look at you, it seems such a waste, 
as not one thing you want for yourself to be accomplished
I gave you the blue of sky, the brown of hills
The red of your blood running through the green of your veins
But you painted all with the color of colorless
Your days and nights void of the passion and dreams
Why did you let yourself drown in the ocean of indifference?
When you could swim through it with passion or float on your penance
Your wish to live is your only lifeline, but your insipid heart doesn’t support your spine
A life not lived is rendered as useless; you have to live it as it’s like a writ of mandamus
I want you to be a doer, to stand up straight and fight; 
I created ugly and beautiful but not this grotesque sight
I want you to write poems and prose and pump life into others’ hearts as you recite
Then what made you give up so early my son?
There are so many lessons of life yet to be learned
What happened to that soul inside that had asked once for its embodiment?
Have you shrouded it or is it no more extant?
What conviction have you followed that has zeroed you down to nothing
This is the last statement that is being uttered by me until you confess all your misdoings..

“My lord, now that this stifling colorless space I’m stuck in,
that you have made for me inescapable,
I’ll tell you what it is that has made me, in your words, so miserable
I do not yell, I do not seek, I do not avenge nor do I ditch
I’m not strong, I’m not weak, I’m not a king, nor do I preach
I do not have breadth or length, I do not have apprehensions, nor do I have the strength
My will is not broken because it was never made, there's no pride so I do not feel chagrined
You laid for me a path to walk on but it should have been upon me to decide
I neither cry nor laugh; I’m neither asleep nor am I sleep-deprived
You asked me to swim but I’ve nothing to lose and so I don’t fight
There is no way I need to follow, no road where I can get lost, so I need no lessons, no guide
You preach humanity and teach reason and passion as a way to live life
But haven’t you made mockery out of it when not a single being knows why one dies?

But I cannot die when I live no more for a single moment now
I indulge in no action against which you might act
 You can give me no mercy, I ask you for none
You can give me no wish, I don’t ask for your benison
You can give me no curse; it can do no harm to an inanimate
You can’t pursue me; i live in no pursuit of happiness
What will you do with this world when we refuse it and your heaven?
What will you destroy when nothing ever lives in your creation?
How will you ever endow pain on me and push me down to hell when I never acknowledged any kind of bliss, heaven or elation?
What can you stop when I’ve already ceased to live?
What can you start when the soul has already left the body?
My life is a battle of neither power nor love ,
my movement consists of neither circles nor lines
I’m not human like nor a brute, I cannot be murdered when I’m not even alive
I’ve given identity to nothingness; I’ve taken out the red intoxication from wine
I’m devoid of both success and failure, but this is now your failure I believe
I’m devoid of all the black and so white doesn’t soothe me
I’m devoid of all kinds of luck, and so muck doesn’t bother me
I’m not outrageous as all your actions I nullify
I’m devoid of all sense of death, life and immortality

In short I would sum up with the last chain of breaths that I uncoil beleaguering me
I asked you for this body, not for you but for my soul,
I asked you for this big world when I could've easily swam freely in a fish bowl
Yes you got me right, my lord that this life I had asked you was not for you to live

My voice was to sing freely, not in your concert, but for me

My freedom that you heavily chained was mine and so I never sought it
And so this night adopted by me, with daylight will not be lit
I who was not given the power to live in your world but to merely fit in
This world in which I’ve not lived your life, by me, with me, will now be perished…..!!!!”