peace

Unhappy Endings

 I was only ten when I learnt about unhappy endings.

Like when I knew my grandmother had cancer,

I kneeled in churches, for God answers a kid’s prayers, they said.

She died and I didn’t meet her to say one goodbye.

She looked like a horrible nightmare,

Not the one you saw last, not the one you loved,

A swollen, ugly remnant of what was once beloved, they said.

Once botched goodbye, an unresolved parting for a little girl,

There were no tears for her, only numbness that didn’t feel real,

From that chirpy girl who never gave her a proper burial,

Who died a little that day, with prayers unanswered,

Full of questions but never with answers or resolutions,

Now, I’ve grown older with bungled muted loves,

Improper goodbyes, giving up too easily, too easily. 

Find that rainbow day

Love

practice

compassion

enjoyment

suffering

Tales of love

In the dark rainy nights,
She sang lullabies to us,
In a very sweet voice.

The stories lived before us,
Brave knights and lovely ladies,
All fighting for love.

Both of us, listened wide-eyed
Lying on each of her arms,
As truth and love ruled.

Little did she know of its truth,
As we grew older, we realised,
With pain and disillusionment.

How our childish hearts soaked up,
These unreal tales of happiness,
And real love, truth and honour.

She said, love makes us whole,
She sang, never forget your truth.
She sang you are special.

Now aged and crooked, she sits,
She has lost her sweetness
And we, our innocence.

For him, love is sad and lost,
For me, love is cruel and lost,
For her, life is lonely and gone.

Yet the old hope in tales flicker,
When we meet a smile,
Of understanding in her eyes.

Patience

Unending Love by Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spell-bound heart has made and re-made the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another
We have played alongside millions of lovers shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell – 
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours
And the song of every poet past and forever.

happiness

Loving others

self

I have a self that knows years of sense and more nonsense. I stand alone in crowds yet walk with you in green fields at the same time. I run in many new paths sitting at my armchair though I never leave my  world but for fresh signs or old paths.

You are my other self, whom I do not know for I have never seen you as you really are, for I was struck blind by your light. Yet I know you were with me in each and every circle round the holy fire and will find you near me in every dream. 

You are my favourite daydream that I return to time and again just to hold your hand in an unreal realm where rules don't matter and hearts speak only the truth. In another world, in a different circle of life, you and I will battle out our eternal game of love. 

meditation