Oh if but my prayers were answered …..
The soul would be perched on the summit of your excellence.
I was in the sky, soaring across the sun,
The world was so far down,
I had wings of fire to top my heart’s spire.
I have run out of inspiration
In this cessation of beauty to my senses.
Its but a world now, small and naïve.
I have been grounded, forever.
I am a mortal again, with small worries
And smaller securities, and stronger bindings.
No longer would I see the stars so close
Or be blessed by a beauty so proud.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Birthday Contemplation
My Birthday Contemplation
Today is my birthday. So I decided to dedicate this little essay to myself, after all I have lived for a quarter of a century.
I was sitting in my balcony last night, and reading. Surprisingly, my music system was quiet, and the air was cool. I suddenly got this urge to listen to one song in particular. It was 11.55 pm.
It was a song by the master Jagjith Singh. I coolly lit a cigarette and sat down on the floor of my room. I started thinking. The moon was shining, unlike the season. And I was moved by a sensation so very new to me.
Here I was, born today, 25 years ago, in some strange place. I was created by love or rather by an act that symbolized love. I had grown in snug intervals, always breaking into the open to find a new path ahead. Sometimes I grew like a newly sprouted seed, and then sometimes I grew into a strong solitary tree, and then sometimes into a creeper that longs for support and will perish in the absence of it.
I was a man now, in every right of the word. I made a living on my own. I aspired for a family of my own. I longed to be loved by women. I longed to create, value and forms. I guess it is so much easier for women to create out of love. The most primitive and highest being bearing a child. But man has to love and explore and create to be satisfied.
In the course of the contemplation, I realized something. I had casually killed a fly that tried to bite me. And I saw many other flies too. The one that I had killed fell limply to the ground, while ants were gathering for a feast. Isn’t it a big cycle? Life feeding on death and death feeding on life. If the both can consume each other, then aren’t life and death the same? The creation of something, maybe love, joy, emotion….
When I live I will create what can be felt now. When I die I will be God. I would have created a new life for the world, by being absent from it. The world would be in a new dimension in the absence of one of its members. I would have reshaped its destiny, even by my death, just as I had altered it by my insignificant birth. I would have escaped from a thousand sorrows, missed a million joys and a multitude of illusions.
Life and death play parallels. Man kills a thousand animals during his lifetime and maybe even a few human beings. Man brings new men into this world, as death simultaneously takes them out of the physical dimension. But where do we all go? Where does death lead us? It cant be that a man dies and its just like a fuse that gets burnt and the electricity just vanishes, lost forever. Life will regenerate into life, even when death play the fiddle close to our ears. Pain will regenerate into pleasure, and pleasure into pain. It’s a big circle, with many concentric circles within, endless. And in the middle is the man, the Supreme Being, with the consciousness and the knowledge of life. He is the perfection towards which our souls move, till deaths do us apart from life. And man will be perfect after death, because death is perfection in our harried souls, the culmination of our strivings and supercilious consciousness
Today is my birthday. So I decided to dedicate this little essay to myself, after all I have lived for a quarter of a century.
I was sitting in my balcony last night, and reading. Surprisingly, my music system was quiet, and the air was cool. I suddenly got this urge to listen to one song in particular. It was 11.55 pm.
It was a song by the master Jagjith Singh. I coolly lit a cigarette and sat down on the floor of my room. I started thinking. The moon was shining, unlike the season. And I was moved by a sensation so very new to me.
Here I was, born today, 25 years ago, in some strange place. I was created by love or rather by an act that symbolized love. I had grown in snug intervals, always breaking into the open to find a new path ahead. Sometimes I grew like a newly sprouted seed, and then sometimes I grew into a strong solitary tree, and then sometimes into a creeper that longs for support and will perish in the absence of it.
I was a man now, in every right of the word. I made a living on my own. I aspired for a family of my own. I longed to be loved by women. I longed to create, value and forms. I guess it is so much easier for women to create out of love. The most primitive and highest being bearing a child. But man has to love and explore and create to be satisfied.
In the course of the contemplation, I realized something. I had casually killed a fly that tried to bite me. And I saw many other flies too. The one that I had killed fell limply to the ground, while ants were gathering for a feast. Isn’t it a big cycle? Life feeding on death and death feeding on life. If the both can consume each other, then aren’t life and death the same? The creation of something, maybe love, joy, emotion….
When I live I will create what can be felt now. When I die I will be God. I would have created a new life for the world, by being absent from it. The world would be in a new dimension in the absence of one of its members. I would have reshaped its destiny, even by my death, just as I had altered it by my insignificant birth. I would have escaped from a thousand sorrows, missed a million joys and a multitude of illusions.
Life and death play parallels. Man kills a thousand animals during his lifetime and maybe even a few human beings. Man brings new men into this world, as death simultaneously takes them out of the physical dimension. But where do we all go? Where does death lead us? It cant be that a man dies and its just like a fuse that gets burnt and the electricity just vanishes, lost forever. Life will regenerate into life, even when death play the fiddle close to our ears. Pain will regenerate into pleasure, and pleasure into pain. It’s a big circle, with many concentric circles within, endless. And in the middle is the man, the Supreme Being, with the consciousness and the knowledge of life. He is the perfection towards which our souls move, till deaths do us apart from life. And man will be perfect after death, because death is perfection in our harried souls, the culmination of our strivings and supercilious consciousness
Sunday, December 11, 2005
The Going Away
Last night, I was travelling from Chennai. I was sitting in the bogey, waiting for the train to move. It was late in the night, and there was the usual commotion that precedes a long distance train.
Opposite me was a young chap, with crew cut hair and tough built body. He was having a loud farewell from his friends. When the train left, he was kissing their hands, and the scene was emotional for the observer and for the man too.
I learnt from him later that he was a new recruit to the BSF, leaving Chennai for training. He was going away from home, his girl friend and his childhood friends….all that for the first time in his life.
I told him that not everyone gets such a wonderful farewell, and that he was a lucky guy. He disclosed that all the friends who were with him are army aspirants too, and only he among them had gotten selected.
We all grow up after the first time we go away from home. Till then there are traces of the boy, who keeps showing up once in a while, in a playful moment. After that, its all the man stuff all the way. The friends’ circle, the kind of conversations you have, the kind of jokes you crack, your wardrobe, your language, and all your perceptions. For some, this happens at a very early stage, and for these people there is no major adjustment needed in their attitudes. But for people like the guy I am talking about, and for me too, it would take a very major change that will and has happened.
It is amazing this life thing. It makes you go through so many things, and yet people change always for the better for themselves, this is my own opinion.
Opposite me was a young chap, with crew cut hair and tough built body. He was having a loud farewell from his friends. When the train left, he was kissing their hands, and the scene was emotional for the observer and for the man too.
I learnt from him later that he was a new recruit to the BSF, leaving Chennai for training. He was going away from home, his girl friend and his childhood friends….all that for the first time in his life.
I told him that not everyone gets such a wonderful farewell, and that he was a lucky guy. He disclosed that all the friends who were with him are army aspirants too, and only he among them had gotten selected.
We all grow up after the first time we go away from home. Till then there are traces of the boy, who keeps showing up once in a while, in a playful moment. After that, its all the man stuff all the way. The friends’ circle, the kind of conversations you have, the kind of jokes you crack, your wardrobe, your language, and all your perceptions. For some, this happens at a very early stage, and for these people there is no major adjustment needed in their attitudes. But for people like the guy I am talking about, and for me too, it would take a very major change that will and has happened.
It is amazing this life thing. It makes you go through so many things, and yet people change always for the better for themselves, this is my own opinion.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Pleasure.....
Yesterday, I decided to buy a water heater, and I did just that. After that I went home and heated up some water and soaked my feet in it. I was listening to some music and what indulgence! It felt like warmth was entering through my soles and permeating throughout my body. Then I cut my toenails and massaged my feet with oil. Oh what pleasure! Oh what pleasure!
Then a real hot shower, in candle light. Farida Khannum was glorifying my hedonism with her fleeting voice and wonderful lyrics…. Jab us zulf ki bath chali…the water was steaming, like my senses at that time.
We are all hedonists. We will all the time seek pleasure over pain, not because pleasure is good to feel rather than pain, but because pleasure is such a convenient allegory to the assurance of existence. Pleasure creates a stratum where pain seems too remote to be able to affect us. It is like a veil that hides the undesirable from us, though not fully, but enough to assure us the permanence of its expression.
The expression of pleasure is infinitely more complex than the experiencing of it. More difficult is giving pleasure, i.e., making pleasure happen. That is because, in my opinion, pleasure seeks a finer niche than pain, a finer point to converge upon. Pleasure always occurs in multiple planes, with each plane that is surpassed leading to a higher level and higher sensitivity.
Pleasure seeks a gratification of a sense or a need to fulfill, like water that must flow down, if there is a downgrade. So pleasure exists as an object, shapeless and expressionless, till it finds a channel. Then it flows into the spirit, and starts ruling it while it can, till reality steps in rudely. When reality comes into the picture, we realize that we had been put to sleep by pleasure and this creates guilt and moroseness.
Then a real hot shower, in candle light. Farida Khannum was glorifying my hedonism with her fleeting voice and wonderful lyrics…. Jab us zulf ki bath chali…the water was steaming, like my senses at that time.
We are all hedonists. We will all the time seek pleasure over pain, not because pleasure is good to feel rather than pain, but because pleasure is such a convenient allegory to the assurance of existence. Pleasure creates a stratum where pain seems too remote to be able to affect us. It is like a veil that hides the undesirable from us, though not fully, but enough to assure us the permanence of its expression.
The expression of pleasure is infinitely more complex than the experiencing of it. More difficult is giving pleasure, i.e., making pleasure happen. That is because, in my opinion, pleasure seeks a finer niche than pain, a finer point to converge upon. Pleasure always occurs in multiple planes, with each plane that is surpassed leading to a higher level and higher sensitivity.
Pleasure seeks a gratification of a sense or a need to fulfill, like water that must flow down, if there is a downgrade. So pleasure exists as an object, shapeless and expressionless, till it finds a channel. Then it flows into the spirit, and starts ruling it while it can, till reality steps in rudely. When reality comes into the picture, we realize that we had been put to sleep by pleasure and this creates guilt and moroseness.
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