iNspirations

Bismillah

Its a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how could you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?

Be wide as the air, to learn the secret.
Right now you are equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.

Abraham learned how the sun, the moon, the stars all set.
He said, No longer will I try to assign partners to God.

You are so weak. Give up to grace.
the ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to the shore.

You need more help than you know.
You are trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers the animal.

Bismillah, your old self
to find your real name.

I am looking for solace midst the greyy days and soulmate sent this.
I was talking to Sen and we realized sustaining the forever available inspiration is the real challenge and Soulmate again came to help row the boat midst the stormy sea.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all !
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

the dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi Lives on.

Below the Belt

I love new york
Just like the t-shirt says
The streets the shops the subways
The unimaginable meld of people in constant motion
Rushrushrush
Expressions colours opulence style
Grungeandgarbage glassandsteel
Old brownstones
Parks museums fire escapes
Wailing sirens stern faced cops
Warm greetings in elevators smiles and nods
Greasyfoul smelling restaurant basements
Brightlights brighteyes
Miniskirts and motorised skateboards
Office hour energy on the 4 train
Twilightzones on the latenight shift
Greysuits and blackdresses
Drunks on sidewalks
Open forthright resilient
Ambitions and aspirations sprawled in the sun
In centralpark
Streetcorner jazz packed pubs lonely alleys
Black net stockings and lipstick gashes
Uncanny weather forecasts
Yong lust groping in the shadows
Fifthavenuefashion and fuckfoul language
Spanking new sneakers on the way to timessquare
Hi! Howyadoin….getoffmyface you m….f…..
I just love it all.

An evening spent demystifying not so good photography but perfect packaging in Seagull Resource Centre while the weather was perfect for anything and everything.
Us, the 'small fry' s in the photography world constructively criticized the photographs at our heartiest content.
But definitely one could not miss the sleek presentation. We mused over the blurbs,the very first one is the one with which the post starts.
For me the shots were absolutely random,often raising the questions of limits to intrusions into privacy. Maybe it comes from the social side that limits my perspective with certain kind of photography but the feeling of the collection not having a story meant a difference.
It was elitist which is not something that an ad photographer can really help.

The photographer goes on to say how the black humour of NY made him fall for it instantly. He is an instant sucker for black humour! While on the other hand he goes on to say that its the excitement of NY that led to such shots where the concept of frames and composition ceased to exist. And it was his homage to the city.(And not to mention my love for Mumbai was at the peak all over again :) )
The fact that he acknowledged the shots were too random but since there is a need for 'artspeak' and every artist must have a statement,was NY below the belt, born!

And thats called presentation, the perfect blend of words and look.....kudos to the strategy of marketing-obvious cliches, as random emotions and love for the city.
Who says theres nothing around? Theres an element to learn from everything...always!
The photographer is Pradeep Dasgupta.
While I go and check the rest of his work to get an understanding of the man's work,
if interested you could also check pradeep dasgupta's work.




The image is courtesy Dear Sidd!

I Bleed

And I bled
I bled timelessly
You stood there, still. Far away
And stared at me with steel in your eyes……

I saw the gaze
And I saw I bled
You gnawed me with your gaze
But no one heard my silent scream
I bled
As I surrender
I barely hold my last breathe
Barely breathing
You watch me bleed
You gnaw me with your eyes

Frozen Time
Frozen thoughts
Frozen Feelings
And Frozen blood…..
I have learnt to live with it
The dark red clots, almost black
Cringed, damp, dead
I saw my old self
It has lost its voice
But it stands tall
Like the way you stand still and smirk
Like time never knew how to tick away

And I bleed; Its not red anymore
Its black, and the serpent is basking in the stream of the black, cold blood
Colours have lost their lives
But now I own the pain, n I still bleed
You will never see it
I have travelled to hell and I am still alive
Have felt how it feels to die
When you left me all broken
I have sat and watched you cry behind the sky

You hold the earth to live for a little more
But your craving is voiceless
Your soul is mindless
The love has gone deaf
And the lust has lost its way into shrouds of dormant corpses

Its my turn now
Frozen Blood
Frozen Thoughts
Frozen Time
My liberation has come with your treacherous death
My suffering has finally seen daylight!
My liberation has arrived
I lay bare
And I bleed, Beyond Time.

Somehow I know I cannot create poetry anymore….that hurts. This piece almost resembles stuff I would write in school! Sad but true, poetry is lost…..

17th September 2007

Dear Sam

Dear Sam,

Was wondering how do I write to you, where do I begin?

The earliest memories that I have of you is one specky woman in Pyjamas n T-shirt walking about the campus. I always thought of you as one of those types who would get to the library and not share notes with classmates. The stick conversation seems funny when I look back. I mean why would I get sticks for you; but there was a tinge somewhere that you were weird ;) that I guess was it.
Finally the lovestory began, by the sunset point at Kanyakumari. The smoke, the air and of course of our eternal favourite TQ! And how in the train we were actually like estranged lovers and then onwards there was no looking back.



With you I saw through the most intense companionship with Passionate Trust. From SBI and how we stood bare infront of each other, to the best Diwali gift ever to the tears of another woman in our lives…..n the sweet-salt tears that is here to stay because it reminds me everytime of the journey we had begun in the strangest of circumstances.

Then the next calamity stuck of 26th July. From Nagraj to B the string of incidents flashes by and I can see myself smiling. Strange things happen over disasters. Each day I have spent with you have been special. I have learnt to look at life differently. I have built a control over the rebel child. From Daman to “our gang” to Jinx to the hours of spending seconds and they getting the senti-sam signature….I guess words were/are/will be never enough.
From one Festival to Fiery Red Flower and finally coaxing me to believe in love and creating Calvin in my psyche to educating me to Rumi, Manto or History, Architecture, Religion or being with me to raise the toast to my first job or being the radar of the boat when the sea is storm struck, I do not know how did I live without you all these years.

In the last two years I have travelled and captured the country with you. There was only Goa without you and you saw how badly I captured it; I would not say I did not enjoy the moments that you were not around but in each of those times I have smiled secretly thinking how special would it been with you around  and you know what sometimes I feel it is just not about physical proximity, there is so much more to it. The moon outstretching its arms over the snow clad mountains in Kashmir, the riot of colours in the sky in Kovalam beach or letting the mystic clouds play with thoughts from the hostel windows. I never thought that conversations through all five senses and believing in someone even with the sixth sense could have been possible had you not been in my life.

I also wouldn’t have known one Shazz or one Shadan and most importantly found another Ammi. She has been another dimension of a parent to me. For that matter I would not actually have also accepted the huge mass on which I eventually rode in my life with the advent of a new year. I wouldn’t have not been able to get over the nuisances of Shalimar Bagh; I would have never been able to deal with the never ending restlessness etc etc….gawd please I have not become so good. I am still trying. 
From late night Bawaara Mann to TP by bandstand; it seems spooky how we have lived people together. I can never imagine making sense of two years of TISS and life after that had you not been around.
You keep telling me how I have changed your life but lil princess it is you who has changed mine, from one rebel I have learned to take a deep breathe and appreciate life as if it has so much to offer.

It is a phase where role reversals cannot get more accurate and we both know how everything seems to be trapped how the highs and lows leave their impressions and we keep sailing in our aimless destination. The parallels seem uncanny but the comfort zone makes every hurdle look worthwhile. The perfect combination as we said “u, me n Bombay” or maybe Kashmir, Kerela, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan but I just hope and pray every day maybe it will someday be different continents but one Gayatri 702 or a Miami penthouse will be waiting for newer stories to unfold.
So the resultant factor is every time the comrade–in-arms are together every aspect of life seems to be easy to deal with.
Often when I had been reading about Calvin and Hobbes I realized each time I read it each time their relationship is evolved and that is precisely what has helped me over time to atleast give shape in my alter-ego about the relationship we share.

The more I try the more I see myself getting carried away in precision of moments lived/not lived together. It seems a neverending saga and I wish to keep it as a never ending saga, coz some stories must not have an ending, what s awaiting next is where the mystery lies, and then there is of course the element of never having enough, of dreams and reality and the eventful unwrapping of incidents, people, emotions, and silences.
I remember how the other day I told you how I wish I would have met you in school. Then I do not know what else would have changed but we would have created another epic!

Anyways, it is crazy, how you have been the single point of constant relevance in my life and how I sit by the window teary eyed and smiling lips only to wait for time to give me yet another set of experiences that cannot be captured in words yet creates ripples in minds of two souls whose happiness and serenity lies in each others beings!
Love you and it has been long when these two words were not enough.

9th Sept 2007

The Beautiful Meaning of Meaningless-ness

I had been leading a flustered life and it makes me sick.
Beyond a point I also know it is not possible to talk, I mean how much can one keep saying when life has been taken over by wrong kind of restrictions and keeps me quite confined where headspace s also most sought after (beyond several other things)

On such a day I went out to meet an old friend who made lotza sense and it was good to see him expressing himself full throttle.
He imbibed a lot of enthusiasm about carving the niche and having the patience to do the same. All charged I knew there was no dearth of opportunities but at the same time the truth of stagnation and having the worst challenge in life to keep thee patience.
Then I met another friend whose life is also fairly screwed, over apparent and not so apparent reasons and then I began my journey of demystifying the beauty of meaninglessness.
We had nothing to talk about because we did know exactly each others state of mind, at the same time when we got to talking about other people we figured they were also screwed at some level whereas the tragedy lies in the fact that those ignorant ones little realized their weaknesses (please pardon if I am sounding atrociously judgemental)!
And then we started smiling, often breaking into illogical bouts of laughter. It was like overstating the obvious. And after a point it slowly started sinking into me that though we did not have anything to talk about, neither did we feel the need nor the obligation. It was not even remotely uncomfortable; it was like two souls we knew about their endangered existence as a species and inspite of that they kept wandering into nameless vistas. As time passed by we realized the meaninglessness that had created a halo around us. Gradually quite unaware of what it was we began to enjoy it.

Time passed by and in a café in Park Street we sat over almost three hours trying to unravel the meaninglessness which un-knowingly we both took a lot of solace in. When we try to argue (atleast I do) that communication is the best source to avoid confusion but often I was tongue tied because there was nothing more to communicate except for meaninglessness. In some form or the other at the highest level of frustration I often exclaim how meaningless life is! But as per all the maestros are concerned say from one Melville and Hawthorne, Nietzsche and Marx or very dear friend Kafka they all saw meaninglessness coming into their lives. The existence of this phenomenon has been described by many poets, writers, philosophers but largely there has been a morbid tone to it. It is said that meaninglessness creeps in when life is confronted with the ultimate question of about its importance, about its existence and pondering over the question leads to a no answer situation, or maybe it is very arbid to believe. Life at that point seems very pointless, cruel and a little mad! But what we do not consciously realize is the fact that it is this state of madness at different level of consciousness that inspires us to create.

While I was doing something as vague as a desk research on meaninglessness I discovered that most definitions would want to look at meaningless as lose of aim, or goals in life-over work, family, love, marriage or religion or maybe several other things.
The even more interesting part is to look at the philosophy of meaninglessness; and the way it is explained in several of the philosophical narratives; A sneak peek to the same follows –


Relative Meaninglessness

1. Disappointed expectations;failure to fulfill accepted criteria.
2. Discrepancy between established criteria and observable actualities;
based on intellectual information;existentially disclosed.
3. Temporary—lasts only until the discrepancy is corrected
4. Limited to a specific realm of meaning.
5. We know what to change to bring meaning.

Existential Meaninglessness

1. Frameworks of meaning collapse; lack of ultimate purpose in life.
2. Uncaused; discovered as a fundamental condition-of-being;
3. Permanent—no matter what we change, meaninglessness continues.
4. Pervades every dimension of life.
5. Nothing we can do will make life ultimately meaningful.

But to me the beauty of meaninglessness lies in the fact that it does not follow it a protocol, it does not have boundaries, or it has no restrictions. I therefore join the bandwagon of Satre and Camus who urge us to embrace our meaninglessness. They claim that life is better because it is meaningless and absurd. If there is no given purpose to which we must conform to gain meaning, then we can create our own meanings in the midst of meaninglessness. By rebelling against our Predicament, we create our own Authenticity.

So here I am, cheering away to the new discovery I made that meaninglessness is a very meaningful phenomenon and the fact that it challenges the logic of meanings and even probably illusions makes it another experience that has its sweet charm!
Till I walk the lanes of finding solace in meaninglessness of being occupied and enjoy such innovative evenings, Trublu, cheers once again.

31st August-11th Sept 2007