Death of a Mulberry tree...

It had been standing in our courtyard ever since I could remember. The fragrance of its soft white flowers is still fresh in my memory. The carpet of white flowers in the driveway during spring always made me feel like a princess while walking on them. We both had matured together over the years. The years of familiarity had almost made it invisible.

But often it takes a tear in our fabric of life to realize the presence of fibers and the importance of each one of them.

Today it died. Or to be more specific, was brutally murdered. With every fall of the axe, a silent tear fell, mourning the death of a relation. The tenacious stump held on……long after the leaves and the branches were gone. Wounded and tired, its roots fighting to cling on to the ground, silently pleading to be left alone, to spend its remaining days in peace….

But what is a defenceless tree to do when faced with the collective and senseless wrath of the most dangerous species in the world?

Nothing, except feeling deeply betrayed. What do you do when the very hands that nurtured you conspire to kill you?

Amidst deep sighs from within….and collective cheers around me…the tree took its last shaky breath before it fell in an undignified heap on the ground…so much for the sanctity of life…how arrogant of us humans to believe pompously about the importance of ourselves and disregard anything that appears as a blemish to our perfect human-centric view of the world…

Now what remains is just a deep hole where the tree once stood.

When a relation dies, a deep void remains....

Numb....

I’m tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless lost under the surface
Don’t know what you’re expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(caught in the undertone just caught in the undertone)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(caught in the undertone just caught in the undertone)

I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
I’ve become so tired so much more aware
I’ve becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

Can’t you see that you’re smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
(caught in the undertone just caught in the undertone)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(caught in the undertone just caught in the undertone)
And every second I waste is more than I can take

I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
I’ve become so tired so much more aware
I’ve becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

And I know
I may end up failing too
But I know
You were just like me with someone disappointed in you

I’ve become so numb I can’t feel you there
I’ve become so tired so much more aware
I’ve becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you


- Linkin Park

.............

The passage of girlish fun, frolic, fantasies turning to soul deadening routine as parents and tradition and clan conspire to make a cardboardbox out of a tree.

Pre-package and close every possibility of life.

- Tarun Tejpal

Life is but a dream....

Eager eye and willing ear
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die,

Ever drifting down the stream
Lingering in the golden gleam,
Life - what is it but a dream?

Teardrops from Heaven.....

Its been raining continuously since last night….thunderstorms and lightening…the dark, dangerously overcast skies mirroring the somber brooding within…

Its strangely comforting though…as if someone up there knows…and understands…the whole cosmos standing in solidarity in anguish…

Hv always found something deeply comforting and peaceful about nature…probably becoz hv grown up around it…shared a million secrets with it over the years…the silent symphony of rain on tree tops help to calm the constant cacophony within…to rise above the petty grumbles and whimpers of everyday living and look at life, the world and everything in between from a detached, philosophical viewpoint… the expansive horizons of the sea probably generate capacious thought patterns within….

Standing by the windowsill, bathed in the diffused half-light of a cloudy morning, I brood over the state of constant anticipation I’ve been in for quite some time now….the pregnant promises of the future….the unborn dreams of the past…the need to belong becoming almost more powerful than the need to eat…or sleep…

But the world is a hard place; it has evolved on Darwinian principles; it does not help to be wooly headed about it…there is just no place for sentimentality…except perhaps in your private dreams…

Life is strange…but the stranger it gets, the more predictable it becomes in terms of unpredictability.. and then you wonder who is in control? You? Or life? Are my decisions right? Are they even mine? As for the ‘rightness’ of them, who is to say whose pain is greater…yours or mine?

……………………………………..

The tired rain kept pouring throughout the day…relentless and chilly…..went out on the terrace in the fading twilight….got drenched….stood soaking beneath the purple skies….empty and cold….strains of the Azaan from the mosque come drifting in my ears……Allah…ho Akbar….a litany from my heart….beseeching the heavens above….the last wisp of light fades away…the street lamps light up…one…by one…by one…and a temple bell starts ringing somewhere…

………………………………………

Pilgrimage...

Pilgrim, how you journey
On the road you chose
To find out why the winds die
And where the stories go.

All days come from one day
That much you must know,
You cannot change what's over
But only where you go.

One way leads to diamonds,
One way leads to gold,
Another leads you only
To everything you're told.

In your heart you wonder
Which of these is true;
The road that leads to nowhere,
The road that leads to you.

Will you find the answer
In all you say and do?
Will you find the answer
In you?

Each heart is a pilgrim,
Each one wants to know
The reason why the winds die
And where the stories go.

Pilgrim, in your journey
You may travel far,
For pilgrim it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Pilgrim, it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Pilgrim, it's a long way
To find out who you are...

Haunting words coming back to me as I started a last silent, lonely round around NID Paldi campus….biding my farewells…

to the walkway from the main gate remembering when I had first come here with Papa to check out NID….

to the ruins in the garden…where I and Sappu sat on my first day here…

to the Foyer where we spent countless evenings, waiting, chatting, presenting…

to the Amphitheater where I had posed as a dancer for animation…

to the BMW with its stone benches and charged up conversations….

to the KMC….where many a hot afternoons were spent lazily reading Tufte in the cool AC comfort…

to the BBC and that unforgettable night of ice-breaking…

to the Audi with its vibrant rainbow of movies and presentations watched within…

to the…

to the…

to the…

Can the weak crutches of words really provide support to a heavy heart?

I will my legs to move slower and slower….in the misguided hope that somehow time gets slower…..trying to look at everything as if for the first time….trying to get rid of the indifference which creeps in as a result of a long time spent amidst familiarity…

I enter the small stationary shop bursting to the seams with a designer’s tools…

“Do you want something?” I saw the stationer looking at me strangely…and I realized I had been standing stock still for quite some time…

“Err….ya, I was looking for a few colored sheets of paper….” I mumbled vaguely and stumbled out..

( I don’t even know the guy’s name….so much for the attachment to this place….)

My untimely presence at the mess….where I had cut my fingers cooking dinner for 30 people and serving it in shit pots during Niels Peter Flints course...sweet, sweet Ajay….eating and dancing with the slum dwellers next door…aaah….crazy days and crazier nights…. the trauma of monotony threatens to engulf…

The names have already become difficult to recall… conversations beginning to fade away….the mind has been crowded with too many people in the last 2 years…competing for space, attention, memory….

And that is the reason for me making this feeble attempt to make feelings a prisoner of words…the feelings for this place being too precious to allow them to escape….

The infamous backfields….where I had hoped I would be spending some beautiful moments with someone special….I laugh mirthlessly…the NID garba did make it almost worthwhile though…

The imposing Speaking Tree....working for days and nights to make it happen….Rajan and that turning point…

DCC….Primary Education….schools and slums and NGOs…..working throughout the night….

The magical Dating weeks….the romance and the tingling anticipation….

Aaah…..the list could go on and on…..each word apologetically trying to do justice to the memory it represents…this place a testimonial to probably the only decision in my life so far which was not a compromise…and that’s why its so close to the heart….because it is completely, unapologetically, irrevocably, MINE…

Probably I’ll come back, probably I never will..
The memories will warm the heart still
And when I’ll look back on these years
The eyes will only brim with joyful tears…

something remains...

“ long after everything is over we might not remember exactly what was said and what was done.... but we would always remember what we felt”

i hope so...it wud be be a pity to forget.

Only Time....

Who can say where the road goes,
Where the day flows, only time?
And who can say if your love grows,
As your heart chose, only time?

Who can say why your heart sighs,
As your live flies, only time?
And who can say why your heart cries
when your love lies, only time?

Who can say when the roads meet,
That love might be ,in your heart?
and who can say when the day sleeps,
and the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart.....

Who can say if your love groves,
As your heart chose, only time?
And who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows, only time?

Who knows? Only time
Who knows? Only time

When words are not enough….

My last night at gandhinagar.

Listening quietly to the stillness of the night, silence has never been more eloquent…every pore of my body alive with awareness…faint strains of music drift in….giving company to the omnipresent sounds of nature….the natural and the man-made harmonizing in perfect symphony…my nerve endings straining to absorb as much as they can…struggling to fill my cup of memories…to last a lifetime…

People pass by….carefree and irreverent….in stark contrast to the flood of emotions threatening to engulf within…none caring for me, me caring for none.

There is something magical about night…probably the concealment provided by the darkness highlights the dark recesses of the mind…and the heart…the subdued activity outside calls for a heightened activity within…to maintain a balance..

Have never felt compelled to be a part of a network for prolonged periods….probably the fear of forever being trapped in tht network being too strong….have come to think of myelf as an electron belonging to the last orbit of an atom…on which the nucleus exerts the minimum force and thus they hv the highest momentum and the ability to jump from one atom to another….because the nucleus has changed…aah….the lonliness of that electron….

Of course the atom doesn’t take too kindly to it…..it becomes unhappy with the renegade electron…which dared to disturb its stability….and swiftly, the electron is replaced…with a lesser ambitious one which is willing to be a part of the network unquestionably….

And once in a while the renegade electron meets its former mates….and it realizes its ambition has been touted as its curse….the insecure and wary mates defending their atomic network zealously….secure and comfortable in each other’s harmless unambitiousness…

And then it realizes…that it shud leave immediately….if it wants to preserve its beautiful memories…of connections once strong…of suspicions unborn….