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set sail to sea but pulled off course by the light of golden treasure.
was he the one causing pain with his careless dreaming?
been afraid, always afraid, of the things he's feeling.
and how can i blame you, when it's me I can't forgive?

the seas and the skies

the sea is not always labor,
it can be a medium which can take me to a beach,
a place where the sky reflects the seas and the white clouds look like breaking waves,
a calm sea merging smoothly with the curved sky
a turbulent one mirrored by the even more turbulent skies
with raging waves which break, and clouds which roll and crash.

waves born when they break out of exertion,
out of not being able to stand up to their own expectations;
clouds defined when they sink in their own gravity,

when the waters inside me calm down, so does my world outside,
and i follow.

anticipatory highs

Stepping out from a stream of sorrow - both wide and deep simultaneously,

following directions and routes joyously,

fueled by memories from a previous trek, memories which still cast a colorful shadow,

breathing now, from much more than muscle memory,

looking forward to breathtaking sights of the high and humbling hills,

as opposed to tall urban egotic monuments of greed,

sri aurobindo wrote beautifully that 'delightful things remain,but dead is their delight.'

but this is not true this time.

Definitly not, when anticipating and waiting for a journey.

unlike m.k.g.

my life is not my message.

Dudhsagar Falls - Scenes from a memory

A joy as pure rose as the water which fell,

that whistling bird whose echoes floated into me,

that gently lounging butterfly gliding in the breeze,

the hypnotic rythm of the waterfall,

the tiny gurgling streams joining hands with their louder elders,

stitching the green fabric with their silvery glistening threads;

the rickety yet sturdy bus carrying our brittle selves

the falls turning adults into kids,

the clouds opening , the rain pouring,

the falling water, seemingly powerful enough to destroy Matter,

the rocks holding their place and flinging the water away, not budging,

a spectacular perpetual battle,

the sky at its dullest gray but never feeling so.

we baby-stepped towards our destination,

through soil which looked squeezed out and became a water body,

streets which had turned into streams; open 'grounds' into lakes and potholes into beautiful puddles,

ego and urban fatigue flattened beyond recognition like the coin over which rolleth the train,

the 'I' in me humbled by the hills, silenced by the roar of water,

the illusions of control washed away by showers of rain;

a pair of red leaves in the green,

a contrast a thousand times brighter and livelier than old memories.

bred and surviving on flat lands,

the mighty showcase of gravity lifted my spirits,

defying my stagnating flat inertia and slow-but-certain fall,

an endless torrent of water breaking the endless spirals of thought.

scream

3 hours to commute 17 km,after waiting for a bus which did not turn up for half an hour,a flyover erected to ease the flow of traffic ending up being loaded with it. All the people everywhere - angry irritated furious zonked outraged bored cursing impatient.

my scream drowned out by those soothing rain drops and blown away by the cold monsoon breeze.

the train-centric model

The dark night was to be a constant, beautiful and featureless companion while the train slid past, leaving behind almost everything; something that i can do easily too when sitting in a window seat, looking opposite to the direction of travel. The trees flew backwards as I lay below a star studded blanket with pupils stretched out supine and relaxed.

The occasional light on a pole at a railway crossing streaked past like a bright comet, burning my eyes, and blinding me. As my eyesight returned, smaller and dimmer lights a little farther away from the track streaked slowly past.

The train took a turn, quite quickly. I propped myself up on my elbows and looked outside and caught a glimpse of the entire train 'behind' me. Being a completely air conditioned train, the symmetry was perfect - all rectangular windows with no people/objects silhouetted against them. Just several solid, regular rectangular boxes of light. While the train negotiated the turn, the lights of the tiny town floated away outside at different speeds depending on how far they were from the track.

In one joyously enriching vision, i saw the train as a giant skyscraper on its side, with me looking out of one of its windows, sliding across cities; a feeling that the train was at the centre of the world with smaller cities flashing across and revolving around it.

While the trees flew past, the stars appeared stationary, but also seemed to be guided by me, following me till day came.

It all became clear when i peeped above the stupid, hazy ceiling of light pollution that comes free these days.

concentric, confusing and intersecting circles

A walk - measured in degrees, while crossing and following lines drawn on the globe. Ambling across the land, maybe along the equator and across it? At a leisurely pace, dictated only by will and ability. Limited only by enthusiasm. Stopping, only to rest, recharge, rejoice and rejoin. A new horizon everyday? A new memory daily? A fresh summit, a self-defined one?
So little covered, and so much more to come. Until a rebirth and rescue – an endless circle of life halted by connecting with this oblate spheroid. Earth, this “beautiful decrepit debauched disintegrating paradise”.

charge - discharge

went in search for a matka (earthen water pot) so that i could have cool water without using the refrigerator, now that summer is here. Went till Marathalli bridge where i (believed, and was told) would find one. After searching through hundreds of street vendors selling socks, school/college bags (seriously, how does one lose a pair of socks so frequently??) and hundreds of acres of HAL-concrete-posing-as-parking-area later, i discovered a pile of earthen ware, but no one to sell them.

The ever-helpful-neighbouring-storekeeper said the pot-owner would be selling only the next day. So, back to home it was, wading through the above-mentioned sights and 'stores' and through a few thousand cigarette shops..

I decided to walk down 5+ km at 2.30 pm..and it turned out to be a good decision. The non-circulating stale air i am forced to breathe in office and the buses had stifled me. An hour walking in the sun and breeze (with little traffic, thanks to it being a saturday and probably since there is some cricket match with india involved going on), i am alive again.

Now, one of the joys of a summer saturday - a quick siesta. :-)

realisations - again and again.

Imagining people walking for kilometres to fetch water or sell their produce or just go to school, and then recognising myself cursing when i don't get a seat on the way to office. Why do i get angry? Knowing that traffic is erratic and irritating, and being aware that grumbling under the helmet is of no use, why do i still suffer from road rage?

Then, imagining everything that we're exposed to in a city, at work, in a big, goal-driven society; crudely cocooned there.

Of what 'use' is this frantic hurry and want, when you're eventually going to lose? why not enjoy each moment? is being relaxed or is taking one's time being unproductive? or unambitious?

time to get a 'grip' on myself.

Bengaluru -> Bangalore -> Jamgalore -> Bengaluru -> Jamgaluru

that about sums up the various changes that i've felt for this city. Well, Jamgalore is the appelation i gave it. Once upon a time. very recently.

It may have people playing tetris on the road, in the way they drive their vehicles, and in the way they park and walk and cross the road and fill in the gaps in traffic jams; it may be the only game of tetris which is played with those blocks coming in from all directions at varying rates; blocks of all sizes and shapes. It may not be the best city around, but it has been home and it feels nice, enough number of times and with enough severity to 'forgive' it when it doesn't.

Hereby, I mean it when i call Jamgaluru home.

Clarity.

Leadership proactively encourages seamless building of hand-holding-team-members using continual innovation arising as a result of leading through initiatives and passion and developing global leaders from local talent pools sustainably while providing equal opportunities to enhance consistently the capability of competency at optimized expenditures to cement position across universal vertical, horizontal and diagonal paradigms with increasing efficiency following process-oriented-processes of tracking, estimation and utilization through system specific generic tools budgeted through architectures in all flavors with necessary and sufficient metrics with bottom end output.

Of course.

Peace.

Peace? In the midst of a city? In a city which looks like a lot of chaotic noise on a huge oscilloscope??

the joy of small joys.

It's a funny mapping of small joys to satisfactions..funny, but welcome..the smallest of the pleasures,sometimes,gives greater satisfaction than what is thought possible. Waking up without an alarm clock, self-prepared tea with your favorite biscuits, reading yourself to sleep, the list is far from small!

Light and shadows

These writings sketch my shadows, which although fleeting and composite ones, will be at their longest at twilight and the sharpest during mid-day. They will also be the haziest and the most amorphous when the sun eventually sets, when ‘It’ wins its daily race against time for the final time. At my expense. This crumbling self fills my ink-pot, and the dust gets shaped into alphabets; some to be blown away and some which might harden,stay and maybe cast other shadows.

Mutter

Die Tränen greiser Kinderschar
Ich zieh sie auf ein weisses Haar
werf in die Luft die nasse Kette
und wünsch mir dass ich eine Mutter hätte

Keine Sonne die mir scheint
keine Brust hat Milch geweint
in meiner Kehle steckt ein Schlauch
hab keinen Nabel auf dem Bauch

Mutter...

Ich durfte keine Nippel lecken
und keine Falte zum verstecken
niemand gab mir einen Namen
gezeugt in Hast und ohne Samen

Der Mutter die mich nie geboren
hab ich heute Nacht geschworen
ich werd ihr eine Krankheit schenken
und sie danach im Fluss versenken

Mutter...

In ihren Lungen wohnt ein Aal
auf meiner Stirn ein Muttermal
entferne es mit Messers Kuss
auch wenn ich daran sterben muss

Mutter...

In ihren Lungen wohnt ein Aal
auf meiner Stirn ein Muttermal
entferne es mit Messers Kuss
auch wenn ich verbluten muss

Mutter...
oh gib mir Kraft.

As said before, "That old saying, you always kill the one you love, well look, it works both ways."