Long time, no see
God knows, most thankfully

A year gone by and still cobwebs
clutter my brain terribly

Have been carrying this numb numb feeling ever since that night
don't really know why though,
things between us either ways were never so fucking bright.

Incidents, instances etc etc I always thought
would help me forget that exchange,
why my brain is still stuck and why anything ugly
just reminds me of it all is simply strange.

You lied. Not once not twice but all along
God still loves you and you know what that does to me,
it takes away from me my heart's song.

It is not right, cannot possibly be.
But then that is how it is and who can question thee.

Fly high, like you always have.
Just try not to set your
eyes on a brightly feathered bird
only to take away the wind from beneath her wings.
Just as you do so allow the others as well to sing.

And if not for me or anyone else...
do it for the sake of a drunken god's first sonnet.

Blues

If there is one thing you can take away...one thing I can certainly do without in this year that is fast approaching...take away that feeling...the 'shit i was so stupid...so silly I din't see it coming'...one. I have had enough. You have known me long enough to know that this one stupid line has so haunted me over the years....This perennial disease of seeing right before the eyes but still not seeing, cure me of it.

No I din't know it was not meant to be, I din't that it was a wrong move, neither that it did not exist all along, nor that the magnitude was just for the happy times.  I saw the tell tale signs and did not read the fine print. I thought every story is unique and to draw parallels is plain simple wrong, a sin that does not allow the story to develop according to its own lines. Guess I was terribly wrong...almost all along....

But now that I know...could you please be a bit more kind.

:) Ummmmmmm

What's warm, fuzzy, feels great and makes life happy, instantly....will try to list a few...being curled up in a warm blanket in winters, sunrays coming in from the window directly on the face, that gush of wind when you walk outside, a sudden spurt of rain, a carpet of dry leaves that crackle beneath the feet, post card winters with a lonesome hut in a land under the thick cover of ice and the sureity of being there one day...a tiny lil star that seems to be peeping from behind the clouds just for you...songs that make you feel like you are floating on a distant land in total oblivion... an unexpected cup of coffee ur flatmate/pg mate walks in with.Kishore Kumar's voice at any time of the day. Your best friends calling you and baby talking on the phone. Receiving an unexpected but oh-so-thoughtful gift from an old friend. Talking to your crush and getting crushed by sweet nothings....cuddly grandparents, hand picked, polished and packaged by god himself, parents that fuss over you over the smallest things..things we thought we were old enough to not even bother contemplate. Having a long conversation with your younger sibling and realizing you are no longer the 'elder smarter cooler' one of the two...remembering long forgotten songs that you sang, rhymes that you drove people crazy with as little goblins.  

Being able to find just that right shoe or dress, better still to be able to find it in the sale. Lonnngg sessions of gossip that run into the wee hours of the morning, cooking sessions post 12 AM and then between spoonfulls of the delicacy gulped down the promises to follow 'the' strict diet regime from the next day itself and yeah not to for forget the jogging/walking session.

Songs that remind you of people and people that remind you of certain songs. Finding a stranger and then going on and on with...you too oh God me too, you also, oh boy I thought I was the only one. Old dresses that smell of long lost memories and the cherished times they were worn at. Undated greeting cards with kiddy quotes and handwriting from siblings, peers, people.

A breathtakingly beautiful landscape and the imaginary patting god on his back for the commendable job he has done. Watching a small kid somewhere taking care of another even smaller kid will all the earnestness. Random acts of kindness that just make the heart go oooohhh!!!

A warm hug, a bright hello, an earnest ''yuhoooo-i-am-there'', a motherly/fatherly ''It's too late, go home'', a best friend, sibling type, ''shit i was lucky else I would have been in the same mess, so what now''...these are what life is all about.....

(psst - I am sure there are many more..and thank God for that, just that at this very moment these were the only ones my mushy wishy heart could think about...by the by feel free to add any others that come into your mind....Season's Greetings)

Delete

One lil button on your keyboard....one uninspiring button...but it is amazing the kind of strength that you feel because of it. You press it and hey you have things sorted out....good for you...may you be able to live in your wonderland of buttons that you can press and get rid of things....

3 Idiots

No, don't worry, I did not manage to see the movie before its release and am not trying to give my review about the same. No. Aamir ain't my favourite actor and this is not a promotional trip either. I just happened to decode something and this very moment happens to be a eureka moment and here I am telling you about it.

The book Five Point Someone was one that I enjoyed thoroughly during my growing up years. I kept it with me at most places because I really believed in its powers of instant levitation of my mood. The language, the anecdotes,  the visualisations, the comparisons all just bowled me over again and again and again. It is only recently that I have grown out of ''Five-point-someone-is the-most-fun-book'' phase. (Yes it ain't something you admit publicly and sound retarded, but secretly you believe in it with all your heart). Now frankly I am not too fond of books being transformed into movies at least in Bollywood...have not seen too many examples I can be proud of...So when it was announced that Raj Kumar Hirani had decided upon ''Three Idiots'' I was disappointed but keeping the man's credentials in mind I did not really raise a hue and cry, but something that kept my mind in a tizzy for a long long time was why take such an adorable name and transform it into ''Three Idiots''. Yes we do understand that a silver screen adaptation means a lot of transformation will inevitably take place but then why on earth idiots???

I guess I know the answer, well maybe. ''God I feel like such an Idiot'' is a feeling that all of us, each one are so so familiar with. That one time you went out of your way and did all that you could only to receive indifference that kept you so astonished for a long time, that another time when you allowed your pre conceived notions to get the better of you and you did not rise up to the occasion. Only to regret at a later date your indifference and inaction. That another time when you felt so little and feeble, so immature, so childish because someone else was so grown up and said 'U idiot!!!' mebbe not literally but yeah....The time when you flunked and you knew it was not really the bad marking that caused it. The time when you lost out on something that you really wanted and knew it for sure that you were somewhere so so responsible for it.  When you said something unnecessary and hurt the people who love you most and matter most. Or that classic occasion when you were in love but what you din't know that it was just 'you' who was in love and not the other dude or dudette. A plain simple 'Idiot' is what you feel like. Mebbe thats one state of being, one emotion that summarizes it all, that we all know so well and hence...idiots..all of us at one point of time or another...            

6th December

This is a day that I can never forget or rather allow to slip out of the consciousness of my mind. Some 16 years back something happened on this day which fortunately or unfortunately did not touch me at the superficial level in any way back then  ....but years later when i tried to understand it, revisit the facts and let go of myself in the emotions surrounding it.....it changed me in more ways than one...

As an attempt to revisit that time, that thought and the pain that goes hand in hand with it i watched two films today. Saw ''Raam ke Naam'' for the second time,  a documentary by Anand Patwardhan, trailing the kar sewaks as they were collected for the mass uprising and the demolition of the Babri Masjid....a film where L K Adwani and other top wrung BJP leaders are shown openly gives inflammatory speeches inciting the Hindus... thus bringing about the mayhem....it also talks about the how the whole thing was brought about, how the secular people who had anything to do with ayodhaya at that point of time were done away with inspite of the 'religion' they belonged to.....it also speaks of the common man of those times who stood in the background watching with horror all that was happening silently saying that it hardly makes a difference whether there stands a temple or a mosque or both of them.

The next film ''Ye Mera India'' is a relatively newer flick and speaks about the differences that plague us at the current moment...i would not say that it tells us something that we have never heard before but it does say it in a manner that moves you and now and then you do associate with one or the other character and dare i say it does bring a few stray tears here and there....i will tell you what i am talking home from the movie...other than the unity bit and how neither all muslims are terrorists nor all terrorists are muslims....i take home a lesson that i knew and practiced but somewhere down the line had unknowingly dropped along the way.... prejudices have vicious cycles where their thrive and if you are a part of one prejudice then other prejudices are not far behind be it by you or against you.

I often wonder if I should be happy that I am a part of a secular state or sit down and debate how pseudo secular we are. Hindus here feel they are not the preferred lot, Muslims complain they are not allowed to feel at home... the national language Hindi has not many takers down south and far east agitation for a seperate state is a psynonym for the way of life there. We can't say that the agitation for a seperate Khalistan is over as yet. The law and order in certain states puts human existence to shame.

The Masjid was demolishes long back but the rubble both real time and in terns of our collective future still lies in the way of anything productive that we might want to do. Back in school when I was a little girl my teachers told me ''we are a developing nation, we are gonna be a superpower very soon''. The same thing i am sure is still taught to the tiny tots in schools till date. We were developing, we remain and dare i say we will...the statistics might have changed...the per capita income might have the GDP might have...we are still a bunch of unhappy people....unhappy with the illiteracy, corruption, population explosion, inflation, unsafe streets, lack of streelights, lack of light, unemployment and a score of other things.

And why not...our political parties have amazing manifestos and agendas...they wanted votes back then on religious and caste based lines...they still do...they appease based on caste and creed not talent and qualification...once in power they promise the first thing to construct a temple.the common man is no better..they sing saare jahan se accha and one of our most pronounced wish is to have the greencard approved or at least a foreign trip.

So much so say...so much bitterness...so convoluted and not as if I will let you on to a secret you don't already know....just that the anguish is so so much...just one last thing before i sign off....you know what makes me most angry...when I meet contemporaries..people below 25 who unabashedly ask me my religion cast and other details...not in a passing manner but in a manner that will help them to reach something definitive. The way they have stereotypes fixed firmly in their heads along with pre-conceived notions with half baked dangerous information. The readiness to belittle another and praise oneself.... and the urge and tendency to stand up and get violent about things and choices that are not even theirs in the first place...that takes away from me all hopes that I have harboured of a  future far distant from the history I have read in books. I did not choose my family...my religion or my caste and though I have a responsibility towards them all but nowhere in the purview of this responsibility falls the right to call another kind smaller or insignificant....how can one sing paeans of something that they are not a conscious part of. To be proud of your legacy, lineage and posterity is entirely one thing while the things people have been doing in the name of religion putting theirs versus that of another just makes no sense....

It almost makes me say...we dont need a temple...not even a mosque..we already have too many of them...and when it is a dark dark night and I am all alone...all by myself...there is no temple in sight...not a gleam do I get from the brightest one you constructed....and at times like these I just turn to the God who resides in my heart....he is the one who keeps tabs of all that I have been up to even since I came into existence and he has forever been my best friend, and no conditions attached to that one....don't promise me that temple or mosque... help me love, respect and hold on not just the God that resides within me but also the one that lives in almost everyone who breathes....

Don't give me a temple and a mosque and instead take away my God....it is too lousy  a bargain.....

राम

मेरे राम को ऐसे बदनाम मत करो...मुझे मेरे हिन्दू होने पर शर्मिंदा मत करो. मेरे राम के नाम पे ये मत करो.....हाँ उनका जन्म अयोध्या में बेशक हुआ था और मैं जानती हूँ की इस वजह से सारा अयोध्या पावन है... मगर किसी एक चप्पे पे उनका नाम लिखने को सारे शहर को लहुलुहान मत करो. राम के नाम पे मरने मिटने वालो ये तो बताओ की वो अयोध्या का कौन सा कोना है जो पावन नहीं है? मेरा भगवन जहाँ है मेरा मंदिर वही है...फिर चाहे उसकी शकल तुम जिसे मस्जिद कहते हो उससे ही क्यूँ न मिलती हो. राम असत्य पे सत्य की विजय का नाम है, अधर्म पे धर्म का की विजय का, क्षमा का नाम है, कमजोर और निहत्थे की ताकत बन्ने का.

मेरा राम बस मेरा नहीं है... अगर उनका जन्म उसी बाबरी मस्जिद में हुआ था तो फिर उनका अस्तित्व वहा किये हर एक अज़ान में और प्रबल हुआ है....वो हर उस मुस्लिम के हैं जो वहा जाने अनजाने आया है अपनी आस्था का दीपक लिए. क्षमा और सहनशीलता की उस मिसाल को अपने इन जघन्य कृत्यों से बदनाम न करो. अगर करते भी हो तो अपने नाम पे करो..मेरे राम के नाम पे ये मत करो.