Immortals

We evolve. Trespassing spaces, ages, experiences, people and void, we have so little left to ourselves. The puniness of our existence and the adversity that accompanies separation, together, descend upon us unlike the smoothness of a child's skin. There have been a plethora of subconscious choices and untraceable footprints in our road to this moment. All these are, but, symbols of our ungratefulness to the past.

The First Hearing

In the summer of 2004, three things fell into synchronisation- me, the only single storeyed house in  Vigyan nagar Kota's main road, the 6 computers inside it. The cybercafé was called 'Heart to Heart'. I loved the people who stayed and who frequented the café. I had grown such an addiction for the place, I can spare the exaggeration and still say I spent 2-3 hours a day there. My friend Sumeet would often pose the proposal of hanging out there, and I would never say 'no'. Those were the summoning of my days of Counter-Strike, FIFA, Yahoo (and internet in general). I last visited 'Heart to Heart' on 29th April 2006, two days before evacuating my residence in Kota.

I have been to Kota five times after that, each time ensuring good food, hearty entertainment, but memories?  I am not fond of memories, specially good ones. They are the source of what poets often refer as 'blissful agony'. I had, each time, decided at the back of my mind that I would never wander near H2H, for it would only bring out memories that I cannot relive. In my last visit, while searching for an apt room for my brother, I hovered towards that familiar neighbourhood. I had made it a point to walk in the farther side of the road, so that Raju bhaiya and his family do not recognise me. I had my head covered although the weather did not demand it. I promised I wouldn't look any more than a faint glimpse towards the only single-storeyed house in Vigyan Nagar's main road. And when I did give the house that fatal look, I felt a chill conduct itself through my spine and a part of me shivered to death within my warm clothing. There was no Heart to Heart, but rubbles.

The Second Hearing

May 11, 2009. I have an assignment demonstration that would buy me a grade higher in Computer-Aided Design course. I have an ache in my neck that rebelled against every horizontal movement of my face. I have a precious overcast weather amid summer that would facilitate my meeting with the love of life after 4 months. Needless to say, I chose to meet. She was a goddess in all her charm, and an unspoken answer to all my doubts. After walking for half an hour, we found a lonesome bench beside an enclosure for deer in a park. Besides the blabbering, which I usually perform relentlessly, I was relishing the very fragrance she enveloped the ambience with. The world seemed such a better place to be living in and my heart had all the life to do so. With closed eyes, I could still feel the comforting rays of the sun dodging the leaves of a stout palm tree in front of our bench.

Months and seasons transcended before I made an impromptu visit to the park with my Aunt's family. The lake of the park had dried up, with the ducks stranded to the damp bed. The palm tree had grown a few metres leaving the ground below it a lost cause for the Sun. The bench, on which we sat and decided to change our lives forever, was demolished. Only rods, that were probably subject to mercy, weren't removed. A day of joy in my life has no memorial.

The Impeachment

When I reiterate the puniness of our existence, I do so with humility. It emphasises how I am slowly coming to terms with things I cannot alter. We are barely ourselves without our past. It makes up for so much of our present, conflicts with it are disturbing and destabilising. We are the providers of our own ignorance and commotion, shelled in an ever pliable self-realisation process. We never change. We evolve.

Sanctuary

Stay, where, there is no glimmer on my face,
It's quiet and you could build a sanctuary,
A cloud fighting rays for your escape.
Lakes,
Wake, up to a dream wide-eyed,
Roses will bear thorns, you'll know
For you too adorned sunset scenes.
Holy herds of grace race against my voice,
As I see lustre behind their silhouettes,
Towards the land behind me,
Seemed to be heaven,
None the time.
Stay, sway, from every road our fathers built,
Build a way, and I'll light its vigil lamps,
And you'll walk alone,
And you'll hide in your refuge,
And you'll call it home,
And you'll have a lesser world to lie to.

Calm

Guilty of the words, the same memories,
I felt forever lonely on a crowded Friday night.
I wish you'd be here, and I'd still hold you dear.
I wish I had learnt to pray when there was light.
Like an island, stuck within all I wanted,
Like a beach being haunted by waves,
With all the water, and but all salted,
The world I've known, I wonder if death saves.

Poisons stealing the breath of its fluency,
Blood plodding for strength and haste,
Fallen vows wait deeper than my sleep.
And without a shout that would seek help,
Or a noise that would announce the pain,
I let the shadow of your calm take over me.

Empty Curse

Voices ring, like horses in
A shelter from the world.
A word to be heard wasn't said.
Branches swing, kites of spring
With winds against flight,
In a sky otherwise dead.
Greens bloom, like painter's loom
Out of the nothing one could see,
Passing stories never read.
Wrinkles spread, like it would they said,
Carry the truth on your face someday,
A death which life led.
Far from life,
On some hill,
Far away,
Its all so great, and all so brave,
All the cheer and plight.

Aftermath, the first

Darkness' retention lazed, in wait of my dreams,
And I lay in emptiness, within and without.
Across trenches that my mind barely swept,
I now bear the rot of yesterday's doubts.
In adherence to perception though, I will
Drink that wine, I remember its land.
A place to forget, in lieu of solace, I drink
To the world and lessons learned first hand.
Daylight hazed, amid the night it seems.
I wouldn't know, I wouldn't tell lies.
It tastes longer, now with the wine's betrayal,
I still recall being lost in your eyes.

Creepy Fog

On the note of dawn, the leaves were struck by dew.
Not quite the smog, the song that bled in the air,
White fog  and pure, whining over Creepy Bog,
Her sombre waves, her motionless crust.
A sword for greens that would face the day,
The drips that fell from the thickness of morn,
Feeding life for tomorrow's dream, while
Sun and its owners plan to rankle who reside,
Proclaim itself the bog's only morning bride.
The oak in the southern marsh though would still smile,
For it has heard  the ballad of pollens flown,
Once when it first learned, then again every May.
True, life bred itself amid death's promise and trust,
As it's seeds of hope ply unnoticed in fog.
Chirps of the sparrows  amass in spring's annual fair.
In stealth of the summer, of course, pollens are few.

Froth

I crossed the road in a boat,
When the levies were drowning in asphalt.
You may want your life in parables,
Or take my problems if you want some.
And, like a wage too high,
I see the morning bride,
Boasting of shine through the day,
Toasting to none but itself.
Alike the froth over snow,
Within winter's wicked lore,
The light through sunset will fade away,
As daylight calls it a day.
The night and its mermaids will remain,
As memory of a life kept in pain.
A furrow in the face of my dreams,
A boat I bought last birthday,
But needed a river too, not today.

Lurker

It would have descended upon the conscience of some as a seemingly  deceptive memorabilia , a tyrannical artifact breaching history of it's ability to evade truth, a hoax treasure demeaning  the glory off the deserved. It would have appealed the protests of the anguished, the cynical, the suspicious, for it bore nothing that would prove justice reigned in yesteryears . It would have crawled into the undiscovered lanes of history without a trail of appreciation or a trace of greatness, lying orphaned by the patrons of everything against what it stood for. It would have freed light years of angst and leagues of despair had it not earned itself an inspiration, the massacres and tortures that widowed and warred with impartial agility and brutality. It could have also succumbed to some disaster, decayed from within , led an unnoticed life in some forgotten corner of existence. It could have, had we not been so helpless and perplexed in avenues of bemoaning the unrighteous, berating the unforgiven, betraying the attractive, for our conscious is so truly deserted when we are basking in the magnificent.

Neural Weed

Ponds, water's sold, not a soul,
Who'd bathe in them for
Greeting a new sun.
They'd take a second snore.
Wet, feelings get, but forget,
A door would cease its day,
Their day's else for.
Clouds aren't bred , aren't flown.
Dead, in their ways, in their bed,
While preachers praise their Lords,
They gaze through halos.
Dead in their own ways, I suppose.
Ask, who fake, cared and masked,
If they'd spare , a second for a sky,
Blue , brilliant, shy.
I get it. Third snore? Aye.

An ode through the night

Jingles and jollies when Christmas was far,
Carols of a time God forbade each avatar,
A road through the oceans my sailor then led,
Alone through the night,with an ode to the day.

Fingers and fortunes fought to go back,
And sailor of May knew these he won't lack,
For the grace of men who sought to care,
He bore a thought, and thoughts he'd bare.

They would all say something.
They would all think for best.
They would all think they think
And think you don't unless
They find themselves in you
Or a mirror to gaze.
All they'd look for in me,
A pinch of similarity
And what grace, he couldn't guess
When only thyself thee praise.

Hope will breathe with each luring fray
And my sailor razed the seas through weeks in May,
The doldrums and storms, the realms of the blue
The sharks below his raft,fables of fishes too.

Every next emotion twitched a muscle less,
And those that twitched hailed no witness.
A road without trails, my sailor thus traced,
An ode through the night, alone to the day.