The Promise of Darkness

I heard a promise;
Promise for a blazing blue dawn,
song of birds,
fierce sunshine
and hustle called life.
I held tight to the promise.

But soon the sun died
and promises were forgotten.
I sat there in a grave-like silence
Floating on the gentle breeze
Blowing onto my face,
a scent of untold love-
love for self

When lights burnt out 
and the moon and stars hid
behind the dark, heavy clouds,
when all was gone
I chose to hold on, just a little longer
for darkness is here
with a brighter promise

My eyes began to see through the darkness
and heard it say,
"People will move away and move on
leaving room for more of you
be born again.
Flowers belong to the morning;
Thankfully not the roots.
You are the root,
penetrating into a mystery called depth.
May not be seen
nevertheless, its existence none deny"

Darkness and solitude
both have certain sameness.
In here is where you exist, my friend
you exist in all honesty.
Darkness is here!
Show to it
Every fear, every thought
and every tear.
Shed those layers of masks
that you still think shields you
from judgments, questions and reality

When lights are out, darkness exists.
But not forever!
Morning will dawn
with a newer promise for you

To dad, with love

Back then was a time when

A 8 letter word was enough a nightmare

My little fingers struggled 

To place the letters in the right order

'To' - 'Get' - 'Her', 'to-get-her', 'together'

You taught me to take one step at a time

'Ask and you may receive',

I was quite sure of.

But in twists and disappointments

You taught me to say,

'Not my will Lord, but let yours be done'

'In moments life turns in ways

You never wanted it to,

If your mind is beyond the ability to reason 

And all you can do is trust,

Then do what you can', you said

This became my faith of life!

When cynicism and defeat left my feet cold

When dreams of distant destinations haunted me

You woke me up to sunshine

And let me make a new mistake each time

And when the sky fell down,

You taught me to say 'Thank You'

For the newer horizons I saw

You made me believe 

In Santa Claus and tooth fairies 

And that, fictions are ever so real

You taught me to trust 

But not be too naive

I'm stronger now

But even today and always,

Your gentle kiss the sparkle in your eyes

Awakens my spirits and 

Reassures that I'm enough!

THE MOUNTAIN TOP

●●● Through the road that led to nowhere; Through the sharp turns and narrow, steep course I went to the mountain top to witness...

To witness the wind's sharp breath filling my lungs
and the loud song of wind swishing to every corner 

and carrying me along
Maybe this is what they called 

' freedom from the mountain side'

Nature is what I saw; I remember well! The tall unending array of trees,  the silver stream, shades of green                                     and lashing rain like bullets on the window pane No, it’s what I heard; the stillness, chirp of birds,  and sound of crickets and whisper of offered love Maybe it’s what I felt;  the moist, mist and dew drops And fell in love with it all

I shouted into the emptiness The little brook, every gathering cloud,  every sky scraping tree gently said 'thanks for remembering' 'thanks for reminding' said I No better poetry then nature No better bliss than losing yourself in its abundance ●●●

'

THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND AN END

Every story has a beginning middle and an end. But not necessarily in the same order\

Chapter 24: The girl is now 7 years old. Like the Power-puff, like the super-woman, she walked with her chin up like one day she would save the world. Building little sand castles and swings that flew her high and low became her favourite games. Her mother was already proud to see her princess grow. Her world was the size of her playhouse. Still too young for worries, heartaches or to bother about being old, she scribbled on every wall up to where her tiny hands could reach. ‘Masterpiece’ her father would call it.

Chapter 69:  The girl is little older now. She knew the world was watching her closely. She felt important. She was spoken about in different corners of the world by people she never knew existed. But somehow she didn’t like the feeling. She wanted to go back to the time when the world was nothing beyond her playhouse.

Chapter 55: The girl turns 10. The princess is a year older. There was so much laughter, her favourite double chocolate cake, friends, party hats, music and games. This is life she called it. Life can any day change a 360 around, she didn’t realize. That moment, that day was what mattered to her 

Chapter 62: The girl is into her teens. Even now, the sudden explosions at night gave her shrills. She buried herself into the several layers of blankets to live through the illusion that when the sun rises the next day it would all be over. She shut her eyes tight to make herself blind to the everyday happenings.

Chapter 30: One day, the headlines read ‘Plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria’. She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t like the sound of it and she began hating the colour red. All she knew was that Syria is the place where she belonged to and she is her little house was the safest haven. Every disaster, every death, every blast will only be outside the compound wall of her house. She runs to her dad with questions flooding her brain. But to most of it, her dad didn’t have answers to.

Chapter 77: She along with many others were moved to a far off; place unknown. Kids almost her age had the same cluelessness in their eyes. She wanted to go the place where her parents were. She longed for the safety of her home. The unfamiliarity was something she never wished for.

Chapter 70: It was a fatal day that she has been fearful about. The blast was so loud that it made her deaf. The roof of her house was pulled down. Beneath her house (she still didn’t want to call it ruins) were her mother, father, her favourite toy and her playhouse. She could sense a hollow in her throat. She felt helpless and lost.

Chapter 100: She begins to wonder if every ending has a beginning, if life really is a circle where the bad times will turn over and good, happy phase will reappear, if her loved ones will come back and if her family will ever be able to reunite. It all happened so quickly that she was only left with memories. Photos of their vacation at the beaches and her birthday parties were no longer her keepsake.

Chapter 1: The mother shed happy tears when her new born princess cried. She held her close to her chest, “I promise” she said “to show you the world and all that is good, let you explore, be you and when you fall, when you feel like there is no tomorrow, when you want to cry like you are crying now, I will sit beside you and remind you once again that every ending has a new beginning’. 

The Lone Flower

You may appear out of nowhere;
you’ll be allowed to break the layers of green sepal,
Gently blossom and kiss the sun.
You may spread vibrancy and fill lives with ecstasy.
You will become brighter through rains and

Flutter each day in the mildness of the gentle breeze;
YOU, lone flower!

Remember though, the storm is not far away
and when it comes, you will initially toss;

You’ll try to stand with head upright.
But one day, you will be plucked away from where you belong,
torn apart and trampled upon.

Remember then, you aren't the lone flower you thought you were;
You weren't meant to survive the storm
You've just walked through a raging fire
You were burnt completely; to ashes
Remember then, to rise
like the Phoenix were YOU!

Where are we heading to?

Not all books we read can leave us questioning, wondering and instill in us a feeling of living through the times and in situations that we’ve personally not experienced.

‘Freedom At Midnight’

 This is not a book review per se but thoughts that engulfed my mind as I walked through the pages of this book.  Read on!

It is a generally human tendency to build our perception with the author’s notions and ideas as the base. Everything we know is only the interpretation of our senses. The contents of this book are no different. Through the eyes of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, the book portrays certain officials as leaders and role models whom we’ve never imagined to be. It looks like back then, the greater part of the struggle was to propagandize the feeling of oneness in every Indian. The description on the diversity in India once again articulates the grandeur of this place.

Think about it! For some of us, worship means to chant prayers in unison while for some it’s a personal conversation guided only the sound of temple bells and glow of the fire. For few, God has no form while for some, Nature with all its elements are God.  The language of a person in the south is not understood by one from the North or for that matter even by those who are little less than 100 miles away. What is considered clean by one is ritually clean for another.  Contrasting beliefs and practices across the length and breadth of the country. Think again- would you have imagined a place like this to remain as one piece till date and its people to be called citizens of one nation above anything else?

The struggle for Freedom meant fight our own land back but also to keep alive its diversity. We have come a long way indeed. So long that we now question without reason, argue illogically and determined to lose identity. Maybe the roots are deeper and the problem what we think is the problem is actually not the one.

When I read this book, chapter one to two and on, the incidents that were part of our fight for Independence described in this book sounded familiar but the experience was new. We grow up learning about Quit India, the partition, communal riot, the perseverance it took to raise the tricolor that represents not a region or religion but the then 400 million and now 1.2 billion. But our textbooks failed to tell us that its result is what we are now and questioning this is questioning our existence.

Let’s try telling the next generation that certain things are beyond doubts and choices, teach them when to argue and when not to and pick battles consciously so that next time when someone says “Love your parents” or “Respect your elders”, they will not say “This cannot be enforced on us or made a mandate”.

“Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Into that Heaven of Freedom…”

-Tagore

Just Introvert's Things

When it’s a meet up or a party I constantly bombard against someone who has a hundred questions for me and my mind voice, “Again??!!”. My answers are never more than a phrase long. The conversation usually ends with “Why don’t you talk?” To this I do not have a reply. I smile, nod and my answer- only I will hear. If you are an introvert it’s highly probable that you’ve witnessed this day in and day out.

Sometimes I wonder what we’ve made our place to be. Its’ fast and competitive and it’s too quick to prejudice people.  Here, you are perfectly normal if you can have hour long conversation with anybody, have yourself surrounded by a crowd, go loud on social media, hang out whenever a chance, party hard and repeat. We’ll it is not wrong but not my preference

“Why aren’t you talking?” It’s because I do not want to share every detail of my life. The whats, whens, whys, hows etcetera. Sometimes, it becomes hard to explain to people that my thoughts are just too complex for them to understand and hence I might as will have it to myself. I’m an introvert and I belong to a different archetype and it’s not well understood by others. I still embrace the philosophy of living life once. In a world where extroverts are celebrated, introverts are looked down like we have a chronic sickness. 

On behalf of all introverts, No, we are not shy, we are not insecure, we prefer to be among friends with whom we can have ear-long conversations and share all we want to. We do not force ourselves to be introverts in order to spend time effectively or to use the resources efficiently or to get creative and create a dent in the universe. Out of the million options, we choose what interests us which might not be the same as yours. We enjoy going to café and enjoy a book over a coffee, think before we speak, sit under a tree and stare aimlessly, walk in solitude, melody it is for us over metal heavy, rock and bass.

 

Dear extroverts, we do agree sometimes we’ve wished to be like you but at the end of the day we are happy being us. No, we are not depressed or abnormal or sociopaths and we are not your enemies.