Diary Excerpt of John Keats

31^st October 1819

It must be three hours past midnight and though I have been trying hard to sleep, I am wide awake as I am so excited and so possessed by a writing spree that I decided to get up from my bed and write by the light of this burning candle. For today is no ordinary day but my twenty fourth birthday and I find that I am too tired to write yet too excited to sleep. I have no other option but to get up from my bed and pour my thoughts into the blank sheets of paper before me. This has been my habit since my young days when I fell in love with the realms of imagination created by the pens of great writers such as Horace, Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray and Collins. I have tried my best to create a world of beauty like they have done though how much I have succeeded as a writer only my posterity can answer. For when this mortal body perishes and nothing will be left behind to say that such a spirit lived and died, my poetry would speak for me to the rest of the world.

I am too excited tonight that I cannot sleep a wink for my thoughts begin and end with my beautiful minx Fanny. Before I met her, I was just a plain young lad contented with solitude and the beauty of this natural world. The verses that I wrote extolled the virtues of a solitary life. However, the moment I saw her, my heart was seized with love and I experienced its beauty as sung by the poets. From the very first week at the house of Mr. Dilke, I realised to my surprise that my life was full of longing to be in her sweet presence and this foolish heart had become an absolute slave to her. Though she was stubborn and distant at first, later she became friendly with me when I discussed books with her. I love the way she wins arguments with me and her love is like opium to my miserable life.

For my life has always been a mixture of joys and sorrows with sorrows dominating the balance. I was miserable from an early age as my parents died quite early. The last year has been troublesome with Tom’s sickness and his untimely death. When I look back upon this last year, I think how Fanny has been a constant support to me through my personal troubles. If it were not or her, I would have died of grief! It was this last year that she turned from a beautiful minx to my only love and her sweet letters are on my table talking of her loyal love. For me, she is like a goddess, full of perfections and sweetness, to be remembered constantly as a source of loyalty and affection. Her presence in life helped me tide over the grief of Tom’s death and it inspired to compose some of the poems that I have scribbled this year. Sometimes, I wonder if I can whisk her away on a beautiful winter night like Porphyro does his Madeline and live with her till we turn old and bent.

I was reading Spenser last night and like always I want to write like him. His imagination is so powerful that he can paint pictures with words and I still remember my twenty second year when I first read him after borrowing Clarke’s copy of the Faerie Queen. I was just glancing through his copy, when I was struck by the loveliness of the diction and the images that went with it. I begged him to lend me his copy to read. That night, I was like a young horse that tasted the charms of a spring meadow. Just like the flower draws its nourishment from the soil that surrounds it, a good writer must be inspired by beautiful poetry.  When thinking of the art of poetry, one must draw inspiration from the works of great poets and create worlds of beauty where a stranger can inhabit with wonder. Writing poetry has to be natural; for one does not write for the sake of fame but because one is inspired to create a world of beauty through words. Every reader must create a beautiful world of his own so that one is guarded against the miseries of daily life that can turn the spirit weary.

It is much later that I became acquainted with the Greek epics through Chapman’s translation. Clarke recommended the book and I knew that I had to read it for his recommendations are always worthy of reading. My perspective of the world has never been the same since then as I have seen this world of delight from the ancient times. For me, the natural world is a land of comfort that can experienced through the five senses- touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. This Earth that we inhabit is so full of mysteries and it beckons man to indulge in the pleasures that it offers. Its seasons are a delight -full of sights, smells and sounds that are inviting to me. I remember these gifts to the senses with pleasure, just like a night spent amid the intoxicating smells of flowering plants and try to recreate them with words when I sit down to write. Often, when I sit and dream, I recall the smells of ripening fruits in autumn or the glorious tints of the setting sun or the beautiful song of the nightingale and I am pleased that I have a power with words that I can bring these pictures alive to my readers as well. When I first started writing, I was just a lover of beauty but with time I have learnt that art needs to be about human sorrows and suffering too. Like a drop of water to the wearied traveller, poetry should offer solace to the humans worn out by the daily toils of life.

What worries me is whether I will live to realise my dreams as I have the same illness that my mother and Tom had. During my walks, I have been thinking seriously death. What if I were to die like my mother and Tom, sick with tuberculosis? Usually my thoughts are fully occupied by my lovely Fanny and the place she holds as a goddess in my religion of love. But in the last few days, I am preoccupied with the end of this life. How will that end come? I ask myself as my future stares me in my face and though I am fully conscious of the beauty of nature around me, my mind is beset with gloom as I wonder what will happen to Fanny!  For the last few days, I am feeling tired after a few minutes of exertion. From the signs of it, my hour of death approaches fast and I hope that I will remain brave till the last and not succumb to the despair that overpowers one when struck with the possibility of impending death. Will my words survive my death and live forever?

 

 

Book Donation Drive

Make Everyday Earth Day

Sacred Spaces

In times of despair and darkness, your soul lingers on a favourite memory for a second and without knowing how or why, there is shift in thinking that realign you to the present. This memory could be a place near the River Green, where you grew up or could be the verdant campus where you studied or your favourite space in your house.

The spaces you love, the view that your balcony offers, your favourite reading space in the drawing room or the serene space you have made for your gods-all become memories to be visited in the mind's eye.

However, my favourite space was my armchair from where I visited many imaginary lands and learnt the magic of written words. The view that this room offered was lovely, with the blue skies and the sight of tall buildings etched across. During the rains, this is the space from where I sang my favourite songs.

Yet my love, you are my favourite sacred space, the one I visit every day, whenever I think of our days of togetherness, the one secret haven where I rest when in strife and where my soul might come back when the body loses its breath. 

You are that sacred space that I will inhabit in the realms of dreams where the bonds of this world don't matter any longer. 

The Unsent Letters

Sacred Literature of the World: Chosen for Daily Meditation

Last week on my library hunt, I came across an amazing book, a treasure in fact. Sacred Literature of the World: Chosen for Daily Meditation by Eknath Easwaran. The book complies spiritual writing from different traditions, countries, religions and scriptures such as Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Native American. The book is a guide to meditation as well as a collection of wonderful food for the soul.

Happiness

An evening

In the midst of this summer tedium,we meet again,
In the same old park where we used to sit around, 
Reading books and chatting for hours altogether, 
While the ancient tabeubia trees bore us witness. 

Once again, the carpet of pink blossoms is made, 
For you and me to sit and doodle with lifelessons-
The serious thoughts about the angst of this life , 
The trivial thoughts about the colours in the world. 

You are a strong shoulder that I had let go earlier, 
Your few words fill me with so much of happiness, 
I am the mighty wordsmith in whom you believe, 
The one who can conjure up new worlds in verse.

You and I talk of the serious and trivial meet again, 
In our old hang-out under the same ancient trees.

Ships that pass in the night

I thought you were here to stay always
With the kind of love-light in your eyes,
With that bounce in your quick steps
Or the well-measured choice of words.

I thought you were the kind of true love
That could make a princess out of me,
The one that could make a day magical
Out of the countless songs that you croon.

I thought may be it was a soul connection
To make a bond like this to form so soon
Though from a stranger to my everything
You took hardly a few days to become.

Looking back, I see that you were nothing
But a ship that pass in the night, in real.

You and Me

What brought you back to my mind, I do not know
But I do not like the surges of tears that rise,
That still rise though it’s been so many years
Since we walked away from our future happiness.

Words, reasons, explanations I cannot find at all,
But the heart wants to scrawl a few more words,
In that curious hieroglyphic that we had invented,
To encode a secret message just for your eyes.

But then the years have made us so apart
For so long that I do not know you anymore,
Nor the heart’s language or its silences,
Even my own self I hardly recognise anymore.

You have a mirror to look in; so do I have,
What we’ve is more than what could have been

Easter Greetings

Easter Greetings

Easter Greetings

Eternal Togetherness

You are my want, my need, my desire, my everything,
My one addiction that I never want to give up ever,
May be time- the years, the months and the days-
Might bring about a change in this feeling for you.

But I want you to know that after all these years,
I want yours to be the shoulder where I return to
With the broken scattered pieces to be held close,
And put together with a few words of consolation.

I want yours to be the eyes that hold my bold gaze,
To give in without holding anything back from me;
I want yours to be lips that greet me in surprise
To give ecstasy when most desired without saying so.

While you and I enjoy our days of mutual togetherness,
I want your love to be the kind that stays around forever.

Meera and Akash

Where were you all this time? These months?” asked Meera. Akash said with a smile, “I was travelling in many lands, through deserts, over seas and oceans and learning more of life. “Did you ever think of me?” Meera persisted.

“All the time. You were with me every moment with every beat of this heart. When I crossed the rivers I took you in my arms so as not to wet you. When I traveled through deserts I kept you hidden in my heart away from the scorching heat. When I slept I dreamt of your soft hands caressing my face tenderly. Meera, you were with me every day and every moment.”

“You sweet talker! All the butter that you ate has gone into your words”. Akash burst out laughing. Meera pouted her lips. He was amused by her anger and kissed her. Then he took out his flute and played a melody she loved the most.

The evening sky was bright with a red light. The huge banyan tree they sat under was filled with chirping birds who were settling down in the evening. His melody calmed her and she sat near him with her arms around his dark body. Then she was strangely silent. “Why are silent today, Meera? Why are you looking at me like this?” She said nothing and went on looking at his face as tenderly as a mother would look at her baby.

“Don't ever go away from me, my dearest. Being away from you is death for me”, she thought of telling him. Her mind formed many more words but never said it aloud: “I love you. I need you. I promise you that I will love you, respect you and cherish you till the end of my life”.

“I am always with you, my beloved and I can hear your each thought, each sigh, feel your each tear too”, he whispered in her ears. “Then why do you go away from me?

He rested on her lap and played his flute. She moved her face close to his and kissed his eyes. Strands of her long hair were falling on his ecstatic face. His eyes were still like a calm lake. Then suddenly it started to rain.

The earth was dancing under the touch of rain. So was she dancing under Akash's touch. Neither of them moved and they sat under the banyan tree with the rain dripping through the branches and soaking them.

Akash got up to go and as he was about to go she ran to him. “Don't go away from me again” and started crying. His head was wet from the rain and she felt a strange desire to hold him close to her heart and never let him go any where.

 

After they made love, they rested together underneath the canopy of the huge banyan tree and dozed off.

But when she woke up, she saw that her beloved had left her and she was alone beneath that huge banyan tree. She sobbed “I am always yours Akash. Never to be touched by another”. Tears ran down her cheeks and in the twilight, her face looked so forlorn. Then, she recognised that it was just a dream and that her Akash was right there near her fast asleep. She snuggled against him and kissed the stubble on his face.

Lost Love

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.  Berthold Auerbach

What could I do then, the singer croons delicately,
While tears fill my eyes, as I think of a life gone by,  
For I knew you never were mine; but another's
Yet this foolish heart worshipped you like a God.

You were the one whom my heart searched for years,
But when I loved you, it was only existing in my fantasy;
For it was not your fault that this love could never be;
Only mine that I knew it well and loved you more for it.

It was my own folly that made me love you so much,
To wreck all chances of happiness in your name,
Then wander in strange places looking for your face,
And write songs about you read by strange eyes.

I wish I had told you how much I adored you then, 

So that you could have become my only love forever. 

Word Addiction

I think during my childhood and growing years, I have had this strange habit of reading while having food. It was an interesting habit especially of savouring the food and the words at the same time. At times, this was a way of getting past the reality of bland food during Lent times. Staying vegetarian for around fifty-six long days was unbearable in childhood though one had to do it out of obedience. However, on growing up, this religious habit of staying away from non-vegetarian food became completely out of fashion.

Even in my twenties, I would reach out for pickle jars on the dining table just for reading the print so that I keep myself occupied while eating. It's not that I don't know what's in the pickle; I guess it's a habit or rather an addiction to printed words. This might extend to the information on creams, food products, cleaning solutions, toothpastes and so on. There are some curious instances where one might encounter an error and burst out laughing just like when I read the label on a face cleanser: Apply on a cotton pad every morning. Or boards on the road like the one for the Dry-Cleaning Shop that reads Dying, Cleaning and others. 

Then there are some days of reading spree, when one might abandon connections with the external world so that one might step into the magical world of books. After buying a kindle reader in 2017, this habit of reading spree has become so addictive as one can read whenever you want whatever you want. One looks with pride at the verbal worlds explored and the journeys made, all sitting at your favourite armchair.

This act of stepping into the unknown can bring unexpected delights, such as feeling the touch of earth on your feet, remembering the feel of how the bark of a tree or your lover's limbs felt like on your soft hands or relishing the game of lovemaking with the one you love. It might bring unexpected delights from nature such as the pleasant full moonlight night or cascades of flowing water or the fresh life-giving air of verdant canopies. But the memory of a world full of adventure that you read in a book beckons you  to a world similar to the one  Lucy stepped into right from her wardrobe. 

Us

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 win our eternal game of love. 

Togetherness

It was good to see them together after their scars faded away. It was forever, she thought when she had etched his name on her heart, the palms of her hands in a mehndi design or on every scrap of paper that she came across. 

Destiny said otherwise and the one that smiled with love at her was even more smitten. In the meantime, this first love was forgotten. But after a lapse of a few years,  look at their chemistry, it looks magical, like out of a dream. 

In her eyes that look up to him, in his smile slightly older but contented, in their perfect blend together, there is this miracle that after a battle of egos, the magic that makes a breakup look unreal. 

Forgetfulness

We have sang so many songs of silence
Though all our hopes were lost and gone,
While time has erased whatever we sang
With new memories and quiet forgetfulness. 

Like the earth that celebrates the monsoon
With fresh green sprouts of pulsating life
That peek through the tiny little spaces
Found on walls, chinks, floors and ground. 

You are like the monsoon that fed the earth,
With plenty of positive thoughts and beliefs,
With rare dreams and fantasies of being alive,
Though they were never said aloud or revealed. 

May be it's the meeting of the earth and rain,
That retrieves an era erased by forgetfulness.