You and me

You have left behind your traces in my path. Wherever I go, I see people who had met you, words that you had read and poems you  had written. That’s too much for me, for I have always played along with you, as if I believed each and every word you had said. But here, when I look back, I feel that your love is nothing more than a big lie; for the great darkness has sure unveiled quite a number of shadows that existed and shown in clear light what every single moment of wavering cost. With each day, it was my nature than corroded and rusted, only to be discarded along with scrap. You have scattered your scents in the wide universe; and I now out of four walls of my alone self can resist loving your soul, who wandered with me throughout ages and all times. 

Part of Definitions 

Wayside view

This was taken on an impulse, on a day that I had stopped to stare at these lovely flowers on the road, with my friend!

Waterlily in our garden

This was a surprise on Saturday, when I found out that the pond in our garden has a new-comer other than the frogs, tadpoles and fish(officially it's Dad's fishpond). Beautiful, graceful and bright-shaded, this water-lily has changed the appearance of the entire place. I hope to get up early morning tomorrow to get a snap of it, with its petals opened. 

My alma mater

Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum

Veritas liberabit vos

Truth shall liberate you, 

My college for seven long years. 

April 22: Earth day

EARTH DAY 

Thank you, my beautiful earth,
For being my home and muse,
For sights, sounds, beings and life.

Work

Your work earns you respect and keeps your body and soul together. It fills your empty mind with thoughts of perfection and keeps you focused enough to face the mad words that the world slings at you. But most of us have known the joys and pains of hibernation, when you rested at home and proved the reverse of the rule of motion that a body in motion stays in motion by obeying the rule of inertia. 

Then one day when your words gather rust, you set out in search of greener pastures to rest your mind; for with no work to fill the empty spaces, life turns dull and monotonous; days close and open their eyes. When in such dreary states, the mind naturally longs for some puzzle to solve, some people to teach and some words to write. That's where you find your destination within your reach; to help you glaze like newly burnished metal; you know only to be a light and to shine and sparkle. 

Read more Definitions

Time

Words have lost their shine
And have faded and died,
Like the blossoms in my garden.

Rose

Rose

Five Favourite Songs

• Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver
• Illegal by Shakira
• Everything I do by Bryan Adams
• From this Moment On by Shania Twain
• Hero by Enrique Iglesias 

Perspective

Irony

You dab colours with a steady hand,
While mine shakes and shivers,
When putting colours on a blank face. 

Happy Vishu!

Yellow flowers of prosperity

Rain

A wall collapsed in rain,
That stood between us,
You and me, now one.

A tribute to Joy on his death anniversary

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Tall, dark and handsome, his smile radiates a serenity that is charming. From the stained photographs his smile reaches and touches my heart. A heart-warming smile. He is the man I have always loved. Wherever I have walked, I’ve carried his memory within me like a treasure. In the sad moments of life I have called out his name and cried. He's my father, who left shelves full of books, not even a grave to visit, for that went with renovations as general space.  

I know what books he liked to read and touch with care the books he had loved feeling the spirit reach out to me through other people’s words and by the words he had underlined. Every detail matters. I did not have the good fortune to know him personally though i have heard a lot about him from others.  

Looking at his photographs I see that I look like him and it makes me happy though at times I feel sad that I don’t take after my beautiful mother. 

Yet I have known deeply, intuitively like the song that I hear every day. He made me love him just by his absence and this loving heart has always loved him completely idealizing him and seeing him as my hero.

He’s still my hero whose presence lights up my path and accounts for a guardian-like presence in all trials and tribulations. He’s the spirit who walks with me wherever I go.

Bowing down before this amazing silence

Twenty Tenets

Though I’m only an apprentice of writing, these are some of the lessons I have ‘recognised’ as useful while trying to write .

• Use simple language.
• Use active verbs.
• Free write and edit.
• Write to music.
• Rewrite old writing. 
• Write daily at least a page.
• Write from the heart. 
• Use different words for variety.
• Dive into the eccentricities of imagination.
• Write for yourself, edit for others.
• Write about dreams, they are useful.
• Learn grammar and punctuation.
• Make good use of depression.
• Read about other art forms.
• Read poetry for inspiration.
• Experiment with forms.
• Listen to constructive criticism only.
• Love your writing
• Remember your inspirations.
• Some suggestions don’t work.
  
  

Writing

Words leaped out of neatly bound and well-written books a long time back and became miracles in dark nights. Some writer, whose heart dribbled with love for a beloved set these words on paper, wove them with silence, longing and infinite love. May be the life-spirit that runs in all, whispered these intuitive life-lessons, through you, through the rain or the bright blue sky. 

I never knew this magic until one day; you came at midnight and peeked  in my dreams, with your gracious smile. Awake from your dreams, I wanted to tell you, with words like focused arrows on what ate my heart when you were not here. All the sighs, the tears, the smiles on how you spoke, smiled, walked and talked were mulled over again and again in those quiet moments of aloneness. Like a child with a favourite toy, I try to form with words; different games that might give you back to me, at least in an imaginary realm.  

This heart wants not to please the mob; only to sing about what hurts the most. These songs of silence have no art; they speak of the loss in not having you beside me. They have neither rhyme nor rhythm but only a wild beat of words that are quaint to the ear, yet in their own way, fresh-faced.  

Words come, with its thousand limbs, entangled meanings and nuances, like a sudden burst of rain that creates ripples in still water, while the great green forest holds watch over with its mighty silent wombs of understanding, from that moment when you came in my midnight dreams.  

Though I know that you will never set your eyes on these; for we come from two different worlds of understanding, I set before them engraved in a lovely script.

Heart of a Rose

Lie still, though the night
May be long and dark
For when the muse comes to you,
Words make no sense
And if they cut a vein
Or punch an old pain
How will I mend,
How will I send,
My love to you?

But when your ache travels
As heartbeats from distant deserts,
They echo here and I cannot sleep
On any night or lull my restless mind

What else will I do,
When I have nothing else to do
But spin yarns and tall tales
To amuse you and lull myself
To sleep every night

For in one moment
A nameless feeling overruled
Every known feeling
You were looking at me
With surprise in your eyes

To answer that look
I must know the reason
And there is none
I can find except
That the feeling echoes
In some other place,
In the heart of this yellow rose.

Yellow Rose

You stand with your head high,
Smiling at tempests and winds,
Where was your mettle born,
From the sun, the earth or wind?

You have a lovely rival in love,
With a sceptre in her right hand,
Lovely foe, with eyes like a doe,
Who can but sing your praises?

A love that never was cannot fade,
Unlike one known and discarded,
From the fiery elements it was born,
From the ancient fire of ages.

Yellow rose, now sing me that song,
That you sing when you want to cry.