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…..!!!!”

Rendezvous with DIL HAI CHHOTA SA

I was two months old when my parents took me to a saint we have tremendous faith in. “Teach her music, she has good voice...” she had said then….!
I was in class 2nd in my school, when a musical movie, ‘roja’, was released. A song from the movie, ‘dil hai chhota sa’, was my favourite and I used to sing it. My dad was impressed with my singing and remembered the saint’s words and so he got a music system for me. “Beta, sing that song. She sings really well…..”, my dad used to say it in front of almost all the guests we used to have and I as an obedient daughter used to sing it. I started singing because of the joy I used to get with the music. But little did I know what there was to be followed, in the future……………………………

I was about to enter class 3rd in my school that a tutor was appointed to teach me classical music. I despised him. I hated learning the music. They were like extra lessons to be learnt. At the end of the year, I was required to give an on-stage performance of classical singing in co-ordination with two musical instruments, in front of around a thousand people. I was the youngest amongst all the performers. The crowd applauded. My parents were happy. It didn’t matter to me at all then. But then for few days I was blissful as my tutor defected me while he was appointed by another family who apparently paid him a hefty amount of tuition fee after seeing my performance. Though my mother kept making me do 'riyaaz' for hours and I had then despised her too. And soon my dad appointed another teacher and then I detested him too. My new teacher didn’t look scary unlike the earlier one. Infact, he was young and I liked his looks then. He taught me to play harmonium. Initially I loathed him for putting that extra burden on poor little me and I thought that he was just trying to get away from his work of playing the harmonium (playing it was too hard for my then little hands) . So I hated everyone then. I was made to sing ‘ragas’, in front of my cousins who now make fun of me regarding that, while muttering few lines from those ‘ragas’, which even I don’t remember now. The new teacher was young, single, independent and was in need of money and so once, he took the fee in advance.
He fled.
I was happy….once again…!!!

My parents were tired of hiring new teachers and so they gave up. My mom, though, made me do ‘the riyaaz’ for a while, but then eventually, even she gave up!!
I was happier. And that was the end of the era of the teachings of the classical music while I was in 5th standard, in my school.

Year:2007 time: 13:00 hrs on some insignificant day
It was second semester in college and I was still suffering from the trauma of my seniors which was incurred upon me by their consistent ragging. Yes I never took ragging in a sporty way as it always used to put me in an awkward position when asked to sing in front of groups of some guys whom I could never categorise in a definite way…I was once made to stand up amongst the same uncharacterised groups of guys and asked to sing in OAT(open air theatre)…I sang then ‘dil hai chhota sa’, as this was the only song I could remember which was no where close to usual, kind of raunchy numbers (jaban pe laaga re, namak ishq ka was a song on everyones’ lips then). Well in response I got, “ dil hai chhota sa, achcha gaati hai, per ab badi ho ja..!!”….

So Yesterday, after a long time, I listened to the song from ‘roja’. And all those buried feelings of innocent odium came to the surface of the present. The sound of slow drums along with each sound of fresh water drop falling back onto a water pool made me smile and resuscitated those childhood moments. One by one, little incidents following the trail of others that had taken place in that innocent era, tickled me like a little child inside me.

I was reminded of an incident that took place when I was in second standard. It were winters and I was wearing a maroon scarf that my mom used to make me wear against my will to protect me from the cold. A boy in my class was teasing me regarding the scarf. So I ran after him with the scarf in my hand calling it, “kutte ki poonch, kutte ki poonch” and I don’t know what fun I was getting then by doing it and why that boy got teased with such idiotic thing and what exactly made him push me.
I hit my face onto an iron pillar and broke half of my front tooth. Though some of my seniors thought that I looked cuter than before with that broken tooth which had made me feel exulted for fugitive hours; the next day my mom came to punish both the boy and me and so I got slapped on my face by my mom in front of the whole class. I cried and cried and again I don’t know what exactly occurred in my mom’s mind that she made me sing dil hai chhota sa, my favorite song, at that ghastly moment. So I sang it while crying and yes I sounded real funny; I know that.

My friends from that class used to recall that incident and have a good laugh in front of me. The good part is that I no more feel ashamed of that incident, instead it is my mom who feels chagrined while recalling the incident just makes me laugh..!!
And I know, that even you guys definitely have childhood stances to be recalled and relished..!!

Also you can enjoy the song "dil hai chhota sa.."

Us and The Seven Dwarfs

Selected as Blogadda's "Spicy Saturday Pick" on May 21, 2011

In the woods under the white grey sky, I found a lane with the twist of trees it aligned

As the light followed the curve and got lost, to see the sinuous way that light had crossed

as if pulled by the paunch of the trees, I stepped onto the path

on which barefooted I walked

I still remember what my eyes then saw…….

In the hoods under the black grey tin

Stood the uncanny seven miniatures of men

I stood gasped by the baffled expressions they held

On their faces that stood three feet from the ground

After an hour of unconsciousness I saw dizzily a brown belt

It took me few moments to realize that there were 14 long feet around

I then recollected the story of 'Snow-white and the seven dwarfs'

I still remember what my eyes then saw………

I pinched myself hard as I suffered influx of mysticism

But then the dwarfs spoke and I was clawed by the prowess of reality

Soon I heard the sound of another pair of footsteps from a distance

The dwarfs then uttered in chorus, “wait…you have to sign a treaty..

because you followed the light unaware of the fact that it was following you,

As you’re the chosen one by us to make your wish come true

You carry the heart with the ability to contain pure love

You wish to be with your loved one till your last breath

But before that you need to kill now with this arrow and bow, one of us

Or get lost again till you find your loved one”

I still remember what my eyes then saw………

I sat there sweltering swallowed in my thoughts

The dwarfs were gone and I was lost

Now I had to either find my love or find one of them and plan an assassination

But first I had to resolve the ethical issue drowning me into perdition

I wasn’t able to understand the purpose of their condition

Was I cursed or blessed, I doubted their veiled benediction

My memory then placed the picture of the long trail of brown feet

I then rushed scrambling through the forest searching for their foot impressions

On the third dawn after my search had began

I realized that there were other footsteps that ran

Behind me and I still remember what my eyes then saw……

The seven dwarfs reappeared and I felt relieved for some reason

The leader looked at me and asked if I had found my loved one

I said gallantly, “I love him with the purest emotions my heart dwells,

And I would not despoil them by killing one of your dwarf men,

So I would keep searching him in these magical woods of yours

because in the real world, I know, I’ll live with him till I’m here..”

They then smiled at me and vanished in the thin air

For years I kept looking for him striving against starvation

And fighting for defending myself from myriad little creatures

Intermittently I would hear the footsteps running behind me

Hearing which I ran for my life and my love and the deal

One day in the old woods under the white grey sky

I again heard the footsteps and an anguished cry

For the first time in all those tormented years behind

I perceived those footsteps on a different line

I was always running away from that sound

that had crossed my way so many times

not once had I ever cared to turn around

my feet soon halted, for the first time I was not bound

I felt free and a sense of sweet contentment encircled me

I turned to see what my fearful misty eyes had always missed to see

And I truly remember what I then saw………..

I saw him, my love, in front of me standing straight but in a weary state

There were tears in my eyes that my aching heart had sent onto my face

As I felt his pain and understood that he too was followed and had followed the magical path

And was confronted with the same condition kept by the dwarfs

Like me he had chosen to find me

He too had endured the pain in his journey

He then walked to me and held me into his arms

And swore to never ever leave me whatever may come

Then swiftly the wind around us took the shape of the seven dwarf men

They colored the woods green and sky blue as they sang

Their hymns echoed the surroundings that whirled back

carrying us To the lane that we had followed few years back

We stood there for sometime facing the woods holding hands

We then turned and I remember what we saw…………

I truly remember, together we saw a light following the straight path

The unsullied path was softly lit and was carpeted with fresh green grass

We then walked onto it knowing this time towards what we were heading

We saw a life to be lived together in the world that was eagerly awaiting….Us..!!

THE LITTLE SOLDIERS

It was 6:30 am..the 'auto-wala'(a driver), who was hired by my parents among many other helpless parents, had parked the auto-rickshaw nearby a paan–wala (tobacco shopkeeper) and my sister and I sat in the auto, relaxed for a while, in our warm sweaters and scarves, which otherwise flew whenever the engine boiled to run that sleepy auto towards our school.

“Chapter one, chapter two, yes I guess I remember all of them…oh god what was the name of the niece of Aunt Polly in chapter ten??...will I remember everything during the exam??...”

I could feel the weight of the stuffed mind I was carrying and felt a desperate need of unloading that weight from little me. I entered the classroom, but instead of shedding the weight, I added a few pounds more of my classmates’ and my teachers’ unnerving expectations to the stack of the expectations of my parents , embodied with fear, as, those were the days when I always used to come first in my class.. “what if I come second in these exams…!!”..

Some song from one of those old idiotic movies of Govinda( an Indian comedy actor) in 1990s was being played from one of the houses behind the walls of my exam-room and it seemed as if the fresh new stream of erotic words from the song flew in, forcibly displacing the data(syllabus) captured in the tank of my mind. It seemed there was a fight going on between the two data in my mind for the shelter in my big head. I wondered how hard I had tried to imprint those slippy chapters on my butter paper like mind and still those invaders had managed to find place in my mind when I had never bothered to listen to those songs. I was in class 5 then.

The question papers and the answer sheets were distributed among tiny fifty soldiers of my class. Our fight began. We were being invigilated by ‘Tara’- a monster like teacher and I again remembered an innovative song sung that morning itself, “TARA ra ra ra, TARA ra in the morning…”, by a funny boy in my class. And I felt like banging my head against the bench in hope to rearrange my head components in case something had gone wrong!! 

Ten minutes were left…and the monster started collecting the sheets. I still had to attempt a two mark question and revision was to be done. My roll number was 33 and I thought of resuming my fight till the monster could reach my desk to snatch my answer sheets...and all of a sudden, the shortest girl in my class, but the bravest of all young soldiers I had known till then, begged in front of the monster to let her complete the paper. But the monster didn’t move. 

She again begged but went in vain..the monster roared, tried to snatch the paper from her but the soldier resisted and folded her hand away and got slapped on her face by the monster. 

The soldier didn’t move and got slapped again. A stream of tears emanated from her anguish and made itself visible to the whole world (at that time my world limited its boundaries within that classroom)..another slap came striking her face and I spoke……….

I feared another slap, but on my cheek this time, and soon the funny friend of my mine spoke in our favor and following him the whole army stood up. Finally, the hearts of the little soldiers boiled and together they spoke as if attacking the monster with the only shells they had,  “ma’am the time is not over yet, we should be given ten minutes more to complete our paper, you may ask the invigilators in other rooms."...

We were asked to show up in front of the vice-principal and explain. I was the monitor of my class then and held a good reputation and with the first rank which somehow I had always managed to get then, bailed us out of that attack.

We never got those ten minutes. I scored 97 marks out of 100 in that paper and the brave soldier who had stood for her right, got 95 marks in that paper…We must have been nerds then!!

But we did get the ten minutes of the inglorious war we had fought bravely against the monster…the monster had not moved in the war, but afterwards , I am sure something inside her had moved.

The little soldiers had permanently printed the war and the fear in the monster’s head…

I’m sure all of us, at some stage of our lives, must have been some kind of soldiers in our ways and still feel our chests exalted with those memories!!