In Her Backyard

She kept them in her backyard,
pretty ones, she had.
The twinkle in her eyes and...
her dimpled smile forever intact.
The pretty ones were of almost every colour...there were so many shades.
And there she was with her colourful tales...
of unheard music...of pirate ships n sails...
she spoke of fragnances of distant lands...
she spoke of hues unseen...
she spoke of walks down hilly roads...
she spoke of how the gold used to cover the greens...
she spoke of how bright light used to be...
her tales were as old as the lost kings n queens...
and...
i dreamt of a land...as pretty as the backyard...
i dreamt of all the shades she had...
i wanted to feel all that she spoke of...
the profound joy and love that she still has...

I sit here today...
as alone as i can ever be...
in a cradle rocked by agony...
in vain shall i search...forever and for more...
for in her backyard she would never let me go...
i shall search forever more...for a piece of Heaven
that i shall pray that it would be...
in my own backyard...for me.
sometimes you just need to feel...
sometimes u dont need to see...
At times what u see is how u feel...
And not how things are meant to be.
sometimes its all that u have ever had...
and...
at times its all that there can ever be.

composed in coorg...December 2012

The Smoke and the Hills

The cold wind blew through me...piercing me with its icy spears.... it didn't pain...not the way it used to. I thought ... perhaps its over...perhaps the wounds have finally healed.

I was walking through the rain... the saline drops tasted sweet...
I kept walking through the darkness...

Smoldering remains of a distant dream...the smoke, a mere puff of life...
i waited...still...

and then one morning the sun suddenly shone bright...the brilliance of its light almost blinded my eyes...
the overpowering...over whelming light broke through the darkness...the smoke dispersed...
the wind spoke in my ears...the greens smiled at me...and the birds sang lyrical poetry...
i could feel life rushing through my veins...i could feel my heartbeat once again...
the white cotton clouds floating in the sky.,,gave me wings...and then i felt free...yes, i could really fly...

but the clouds grew stronger...and stronger still... they turned gray...and then black....
they moved ominously across the sky...
the light grew weaker...and weaker still...
the force of life ceased...
the birds chirped...but softly....
the green grew dull against the gray...

the hills in the distance were covered by smokey clouds...the smoldering remains of my long lost dreams...the smoke, a mere puff of life...

Waking up

Waking up was different during different phases of my life!
As a child waking up meant either school, pending homework or exams! i grew up a bit and then waking up took up a whole new meaning...this was when i started waking up to dreams...!!
over the years, mom's shrill and high pitched scream of "wake up....or you'll be late for school" got replaced by a friend or roommate's sleepy "good morning..."...followed by..."mass bunk...and then movie...what say?!"

its been years...perhaps ages...feels like decades actually.... Waking up now means going to work...coding...debugging...more coding....getting frustrated...coding some more....taking mini tea breaks in between...n again coding...
weekends are the worst...you wake up late...have nothing to do...you feel lazy...you feel low...
friendship...fun...companionship...have all changed over the years...
there was a time when friendship meant Life to me! there was a time when  having friends around made me feel warm and happy... there was a time when living together with friends was the best thing that could happen to me!

and then...one morning...when i woke up...i realized...that everything had changed!

changes are a part of life...yes.
life is ever changing...yes.
change is the only constant...yes.

but when change walks hand in hand with indifference....it hurts!

i miss my hostel...i miss my home. i miss them for the simplicity of life that they offered. i miss them because they both served breakfast in the morning...irrespective of whether you wanted to eat or not!

a little bit of care is all that we humans crave for...
a bank account having 10K at month end...and still waking up hungry in an indifferent atmosphere with no provision for breakfast is not a life that anyone really cares for!

but then...in most cases...that is the life we end up living...and that too...indifferently.



Note: All in good humour! :)

The Truth

Integrate the moments you have lived...you will get your Life!

Differentiate Life...the moments of your Life flash before your eyes.

Tell me...What do you see?

expressing had always been my forte...until....i was convinced to believe that its best to remain silent. Silence is no longer golden. Today, Silence is Strength. 

Your fears, your anguish...your tears... if you express yourself...expressions label you W-E-A-K. 

Funnily enough...even your joy should remain confined within you. Your joy is your's...alone. Why bother others with it!

So what do we do... do we become a social recluse?

No.

We socialise selectively, closely adhering to social protocols.

We behave the way we are expected to behave. We say what is wished to be heard. We do what we are supposed to do. We pretend. 

We are forever confined within our self-imposed norms of expectations. We harness our emotional energy to give birth to a social paradigm which enforces the Law of Lifelessness in living entities.

An expressionless existence...punctured in the heart with a silent silver bullet...

We are doomed to be alone...an individual trapped within his/her own self. We are prisoners of our existence...waiting to be set free from the shackles of Life.

A Divine Gift...we have turned into a self-inflicted curse.

and then...

I close my eyes and differentiate my Life....darkness closes in on me.

The Search...

Perhaps its human to search for the Old in the New. New places, new people, new emotions...we always try to look for familiarities. Memories are like set-points in our life's system and we keep adjusting our life's variables to somehow attain this pre-assigned set-point. 
I know not if this is right or wrong....i don't know if our past should be given so much power...so much power that it can influence our present...i confess i do not know. then again, i presume that this influence varies from person to person.


Perhaps when we search for familiarity in the New we do so to adjust ourselves easily and fit into the New. The New often comes accompanied with the Unknown...so maybe our attempt to fit in and be comfortable is aided by searching for something familiar, something known in the unfamiliar surroundings. This search is perhaps primarily for comfort.


The following is a short note that i'd written in December last year....in a somewhat unfamiliar environment whilst missing a similar place far away in time and place.


A new place...strange familiarity...
As if the old had never left...just changed.
Miles away...
Yet the same feeling...
Familiarity knocks on my door.
Winter winds...a cup of stale coffee...
Miles apart yet similar...
As if the old had never ceased to be... Just changed...




A different junction...a new place...
Yet emotions remain the same...
Eyes search for the same faces, the same voices... But none of them remain...
A change...yes... Only of time n place...
Emotions....they still remain the same.


an attempt at translating the above into bengali (first attempt ever)


sob e natun...natun lagche aj sob
tao jeno sob e lage chena...
jeno purono kichui sesh hoyni...
bodleche, kintu chole jayni...
dur theke durante chole geche...
tobu onubhuti gulor rong paltayeni ajo...
chena sriti jeno aj dakche amay.
sei ek e thanda batash...sei ek e purono coffee...
tobu koto dure...onek dure...
jeno purono kichui sesh hoyni...palteche sudhu...


ek natun more...ek natun jayga...
onubhuti...chetona...ajo sei ek e rokhom...
ami khuje cholechi sei purono sob kichu...sei sob chena mukh...
ja chilo chena seta hariye geche aj...
palte geche onek kichu...
jayga palteche...somoy palteche...
tobu paltayeni sei mon....paltayeni sei onubhutir sporsho.

A New Me

Life is about changes...so much so that people often say that "change is the only constant"...

Its that time again...
Its time to change.
Darkness beckons me...
and all Light is in vain.

There may be no return...I shall not sway.
I choose to take this path.
The other road, i have travelled much
but have never found a way.

I shall be that part of me...
That which lies somewhere deep.
I'll let my heart unleash its wrath.
yes, I shall take the Dark Path.

Through the viewfinder

Glimpses of Kolkata through my viewfinder....

After the winter rain on a New Year morning...

P.S. Victoria was a woman, n hence the pink theme :P

A thousand words...innumerable thoughts...and some memories...all rushed through my mind when my eyes captured this frame through my cam's viewfinder....

Sharing with you some moments, stolen from my mind.

I was never fond of flowers....but this, somehow, changed my mind!

A bunch of flowers...love and joy galore...

and a precious smile in return!

Sharing in itself makes one feel good...n happy inside...

and sharing what i see with the world is an even better feeling... :-)