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.