Accomplishment

I can move mountains,
scale great heights,
move up with brilliance,
do well, earn respect.

I love my work,
on most days,
and I could,
Shine like a star some day..

But if in this lifetime,
I don't do any of that
But bring you joy everyday,
It would suffice

On walking down the staircase on a dark night

You hold my hand tight,

and guide me as we walk down

the staircase



You instruct me

to hold on to railings

to step slowly,

one step at a time



You know my special situation,

and I sense the pride in your voice,

you feel so grown up,

to guide your mom.



I play along,

watching your every step!

Life, beautiful Life!

Life, beautiful Life,
with all it's despair,

and sadness and pain,

is still worth living.



For it would be so sad,

to waste this beauty of breath,

breathing life, breathing thought,

breathing love, breathing hope



Life, beautiful Life,

with all the misery,

with all the terrible terrible loss,

is still worth living



For it doesn't stop,

for you or for me,

it goes on,

nudging you to move on,

to LIVE life..



For each day is a blessing,

in which much can be done,

When there is hope,

and effort,

Show me one, anyone,

Who can stop you!



That is the beauty of Life.

Life, beautiful Life!



PS: Always the optimist, I can never think of a reason to never go on. Once saw an interview of old people waiting at a holy place for death. It gives them Moksha apparently. but how sad is that life? For no matter how old you are,  your life, your breath in itself is a gift. And there's something you can do with it.

Also inspired by reading review of the movie Saraansh. :)

The sixty year old rebel

She sits there at that favorite time of the day, children off to work, grandchildren packed off to school. She sits with her tired legs stretched out in front of the TV. She has her faithful coffee tumbler next to her, empty of course.

She is channel browsing and happens upon one channel, where an old man is giving instructions on food habbits for diabetics.

"I hate it when I am told what to do. In fact, if someone tells what to do, I will never do it....just never will. I could read up something on the paper or something like that, and decide on my own. But never in my life will I be told what to do. Never!", She tells with a calmness that masks the fiereceness of her words.

I smile inside, just nodding outside. I think of her as the sixty year old rebel, of how all these years have not worn out her fiestyness, and I cannot stop smiling thinking about it even now.

Forgiveness

So he hurts me
with the tiniest of tiny deeds

I am so angry
I want him to know
that what he did
was so not right

I wanted someone
older and more mature
to talk him down
and tell him
how I felt

and even before
my anger can disappear
a little voice in my mind
speaks down to me,
and tells me,
"How can you think of it?
What if he gets hurt?"

Phone Call

The joy of hearing
that familiar voice of yours
speaking to you with authority
like two best friends from school

the joy of listening
to that sound
so familiar, yet not heard
for so long

Oh! the joys of friendship,
seperated by time and space
and the worries of life.

Nice to know,
once in a rare while,
I am still remembered,
still thought of.

I am still your friend!

Walk

She walks across, in slow steps. It's been a struggle off late, this walking business, yet she must. She keeps a hand protectively across her stomach and waddles by, soaking in the wonderful scenes. And then she stops, looking at the two coffee cups on that lonely table. She smiles, a knowing smile and continues.

I hope someday

I hope someday
I live my life
like a free bird.

I hope someday
I would wake up
without ever worrying
What the world thinks of me

I hope someday
I wouldn’t look at other people
and wish I were them

I hope someday
I wouldn’t worry
about every measure there is
to measure me and everyone else

I hope someday
I live my life
like a free bird

I hope someday
I would find the courage
to break my mental cage.

PS: This is not to sound pessimistic, Which I promise to myself, I would never be, and not to send a negative vibe. Any time I feel helpless, I just need to remind myself, that it is just me stopping myself. And When I or you find the courage to break that cage of inhibitions, fears, self-doubts, we wouldn't have anything to feel helpless about. I am all about hope and positive thoughts and it has never failed me in my life. But once in a while, I do like to take out the negative thoughts through words. And then I can smile. :)

Courage

We get into a discussion
for with you,
there never could be,
an arguement

I am disturbed
at the way you react
to circumstances,
I look at you in the eye,
and tell you,
that you simply
do not have courage.

As always,
you do not argue,
Yes I am that way,
you tell me calmly
and walk away

Leaving me to wonder,
If I ever would,
accept my faults..
Leaving me to wonder,
who's the more courageous?

Change

Him:

He stands there gingerly. At the door to the classroom.

He remembers the usual way. He would walk in and turn right, stopping just before, just for a split second, to smile and wave good bye, and he would disappear into the crowd of little people making their way to their classrooms. It was like he was in auto-pilot. He would walk straight and turn left, and the first classroom, was his. There inside would be Lavanya Miss, she with the beautiful dimpled smile. Only he didn’t have the vocabulary yet to describe that. But he knew what it felt like when someone smiled genuinely at him, and he liked the way she smiled at him and welcomed him to the classroom. Such a short life, such deep memories. He couldn’t describe this either.

But he felt today was different. His mother didn’t drop him off at the gate, but walked along with him. She was in fact asking directions, and after little walking, which confused him, and he didn’t know left from right, and where the entrance was, she led him to his new classroom. He stood at the door gingerly…

Her:

Routine was so comforting. You don’t need to put thought into it. Every day at 6 am, an internal alarm would go off. And she would wake up, no matter what day, no matter where she was, be it home, or in a hotel on a vacation. And she knew what to do. Pack child off to school, get ready and leave for office, throwing in some house hold chores in between. It was smooth.

She would take the same route every day. That’s how she could listen to music and drive. At work, she liked to know what to expect. She always prepares her work day one day in advance and plans so she could leave at 6 PM everyday.

Familiar faces, familiar language, familiar everything. It was bliss.

But today she stands on the thresholds of change, a subtle change and she looks at it with glint in her eyes, but only the glint is that tear, hidden away for fear of society

Him:

He didn’t know why he had to get into this strange place. The faces were all new. There was no Lavanya Miss and this new lady wasn’t even smiling. And where was Karthika, she who brings Lays chips every day, she who listens to his tall stories, and she again who smiles from her heart. Where was Karthikeyan, he who always fought with him. It wouldn’t occur to his little heart that he missed even what he despised. It was all so strange. And suddenly his mother was asking him to get in and sit down.

What’s with all these people?

She:

Suddenly she finds herself in a new job. One she had chosen herself. A change she had sought. It should be exciting, shouldn’t it? She tried to convince herself. She looked at the mirror and smiled at herself and said a “Yay!” to all new beginnings, and with a deep breath she set forth.

Behind all that cheerfulness, there was fear of the unknown. Fear,  that tried to seep through her eyes.

Him:

HE walked into the classroom. He was asked to sit in a place. The bench and chair was to be shared with another child, whose name he did not know. All the children were quiet like little dolls in kolu. He found it so stifling, he could take it no longer and cried – “Amma don’t leave me and go. Amma please!”

She:

She starts her two wheeler and drives on in the hot sun. There is music playing in her ears and she takes a right turn that she usually takes. And stops, after driving in that direction for five minutes. This was how she drove for 6 years. Today is different and she realizes that. She turns around and starts driving in the opposite direction.

Him:

It was not even afternoon, and it was already like a year for him. He couldn’t wait for the bell to ring. It rings four times usually. Unless that too has changed.

He had to just pull through the intermediate time. And he realizes as time progresses that it isn’t too bad, and he might actually consider coming here tomorrow. They sing familiar rhymes. Yes, familiar rhymes in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people.

The bell rings. He can’t believe he pulled it through already. He sees that familiar face appear through the window.

“Amma” he screams in joy.

She:

She has reached the new office. She has worn her best outfit and she thought she looked professional. She had to ask for directions once, but the directions were bang on, and so she reached earlier than she had anticipated. She didn’t know where to park, and this in an IT Park. She had to wear her ID card, prominently. She didn’t have one yet, so she got a one day pass.

All the while her mind travels back to walking in to the earlier office without an ID card. She knew everyone there. Her face was her ID card.

This place was huge. Hoards of people using all means of transportation to get through its gigantic gates. She walks up to her current employer’s office. There are others like her, but in all shapes and sizes and ages. In walks the on-boarding executive. Surprise! She realizes that the on-boarding executive is a familiar face – same college.

She finally smiles.

Perception

Life is strange
in that some times
Someone's music
could be
someone else's noise.

:)

Time

As the tales of all writers, and my conscience pricks me to immediately add, wannabe writers, go, every story has a seed in some real life instances. Some become stories and some, well, in a non-imaginative day; they just become accounts, to be reflected back on, someday, and somewhere. And as any wannabe writer trying to avoid writer’s block will tell you, one is always searching for that real inspiration, not mundane instances in one’s ordinary life.

Yesterday was yet another ordinary day. What you did on weekend, people ask. Well, us, we like to spend all the time at home, attending house-hold chores, lazing around, indulging in pointless talk, sitting with empty plates, long after lunch and dinner, and just talking. And just once in a while, someone drops in, a sudden guest, before you could call your simplistic life boring.

And yesterday, it was a college-mate, not a friend, but, husband’s friend. Should I mention that the husband and I were classmates and are now house-mates.? J The husband mentions him and I travel back in time, yes, nostalgia is almost a hobby now. This friend, A, was unique, one of a kind. Any day that he was absent, was a boring day. He was a trouble maker, yes, but students were always fond of him. He was a back bencher, and a nightmare to many a professor. My husband and I still recall some of the funny things he did back in college and laugh like it was just the minute before. I remember he came to my house once, a day before an exam to ask me to tear out some papers from my text book, so he could Xerox it. He almost bullied me into doing it. I wonder if he ever feared anyone. Anyone at all. He was flamboyant. He would give roses to random girls and yet he was not a flirt. Everyone said he was a good friend with a good heart. I only observed him from a distance, and was always driven by curiousness over his uniqueness.

We were so different. He stood out and he liked it. I tried hard to blend in. If I could, I would have dissolved in to the crowd that was the classroom. Attention made me blush. I liked the sidelines, went to them like steel to magnet.

I was upstairs, getting dinner ready, when my husband rushes in and tells me, he’s here. I walk in expecting him to be same, the same way I remembered him from college. I see him and smile and start talking. And in his shyness, I see a totally different person. It’s like we have swapped characters. No, I could never be him from college. But he has become a minor version of me from college. It doesn’t occur to me till he leaves that he has spoken only twice to me, and only four times in general. We had good conversation with his wife and his kid and Sanjay got along very well.

They leave, and I want to go and continue dinner. But I stand still and think to myself- What had time done to him?

What has time done to me? What has time done to you?

Good Bye!

He sat there rolling chapatti dough into tiny balls.

In another time not so long back, she would sit near him and turn those balls into circular chapattis. He wouldn't have rolled 10 balls, and she would ask him to go rest, for his hands might hurt.

Was this a budding romance? No, they have been married for a decade.

How things change when you least expect them to? Love alone wasn’t enough to kill those misbehaving cells.

He sat there, frozen in time, unable to say Good-bye!

PS: I wrote this for the 88 word challenge at the Writer's club in office.

Dedicated to maami who loved maama a lot, and to maama for still holding on to her love. 

PPS: Not to spoil the cheer of the season. I couldn't come up with anything else for the topic - Good bye! One of the members had a joyous take on Good bye. He had written about Marriage- Good bye to bachelorhood. 

Anyways, Season's Greetings to all the visitors and readers of my blog. May you get whatever your heart desires. May your eyes see all the Joy surrounding you! Happy New Year!

Love

Shruthi has been yelling at Ram all through their short journey. She sat behind him, holding onto the side bar for grip, careful not to touch him, her decibel level increasing with every additional meter covered. For the 60 minutes since, he hasn’t spoken, anger choking his words. And she hasn’t kept quiet.

Momentary silence. She wonders if it’s the three year itch.

There is a speed breaker and the vehicle suddenly jumps and lands again on the road.

 “Ah” she says tying not to shout.

“Are you alright?” – he asks instinctively, breaking his hour long silence.

Prayer

It was like time travel written about in Science fiction books. Here she was in her present, sitting calmly. And suddenly the world around her begins to spin. And suddenly it’s as if she is herself, from a few years ago. Everything’s the same and yet everything is so different.

She is young and naive. No tinge of cynicism hues her thoughts. She visits this very temple everyday at the same specific time. And she prays for the same two things fiercely. She could never leave the others, the world.They were always there in her prayers, added as if in conclusion. But the two things that seemed to matter the most, was what her lips repeatedly muttered with generous sprinkling of pleases. Please God! Please God! There was so much pleading in her inner voice that those who didn’t look into her eyes would never know. There’s no point going into what she wanted. At that stage of her life, it was what she desperately wanted. She did all she could in her might. But she couldn’t influence other people’s minds. Her faith could do that. God could do that.

It was so real that she pinches herself to bring herself to the present. Tears coat her eyes. She can’t believe that whatever she had desperately prayed for, God had given her. Yet for so many years, in so many places of worship and non-worship, this had never occurred to her. Every stage in life brings its own needs and its own prayers.

But this once, just this once, when she was all by herself, with her thoughts, and the history of the place, all she felt was contentment. There was nothing more to ask. Thanks! – Her lips muttered, as she closed her eyes in Prayer.

Love is strange

Blindness

Love is strange,

In that you know,

That it is a fault,

That you see,

In somebody you love.

Yet, let someone else

Point it out,

And your blood boils,

Like there never was,

Any fault at all.

In Absence

Love is strange

In that I learn to get by

Without you,

Not noticing the void

Left behind by your absence

Life is beautiful

There’s so much

To do, to look forward to.

And then you call me,

Reminding of the sweetness

Of your voice,

And the fact that,

You are not nearby,

Where my arms can reach,

To touch you..

And suddenly,

life seems a big void!

Hope

Love is strange

In that it hurts..

All kinds of love,

Motherly love,

Romantic love,

All kinds of love

Yet, there is hope,

In that it wouldn’t

hurt so bad,

If there were’t

so much concern

And it must have hurt

On the other side too

And then there is a smile

That love flows freely..

Between the two sides

That love is hope

And hope is love

Love lost

Love is strange

That the love for someone

Who leaves you and the world

Makes you feel responsible

For all the others

And in all of them

You see the one

You loved so much..

Forgiving love

Love is strange

That even when

Someone you love

Is unreasonable to you

You still pull over the blanket

Over that exposed toe,

On those cold nights

When one generally deeps sleep

Foolish Love

Love is strange

In that the heart

Doesn’t change it’s ways

The world calls your honesty,

Naivette

And all your principles,

Foolishness.

You put on the clothes

Of a cynic,

To get by..

But deep within,

You are that,

Naive foolish heart

That no matter

What happens,

Love always triumphs

For you..

And never hate.

For love is your life breath,

More than that,

Love is life

And life is love!

Shy love

Love is strange

That where it is

The most deep rooted,

The most established..

It still fights shy,

To sprout out that single leaf,

To prove its existence.

PS: On love - All kinds of love. 

On Dealing with Anger

So she stood there, extremely frustrated, and frustration slowly giving way to anger. In a few minutes though, she would be a different person. She would find a way to laugh over the incident.

She would imagine them switching places, She the boss reprimanding, and him the junior minion, listening with a sorrow face. Or a million other things. Or better still, she could curse him. May he face the same insult as me, or still worser, or some such. Slowly she could get lost in thought, flying over imaginery terrains,the incident lying centuries ago.

Contrast

Somedays I am sad,
like yesterday,
When I was digging deep,
into my memories,
to unearth sad thoughts.

And then there is today,
Where I am smiling away,
like I have just received,
a very flattering compliment,
on my looks....
Only I haven't, not today,
not yesterday...

And then I wonder,
What is the reason?
I don't have to think hard...
Yesterday you weren't here!

Silence

I wonder at this
lack of words..
it is like time
as it goes by
is swallowing up my words

I flow along
doing everyday tasks
and it doesn't bother me,
this lack of words,
till I stop to think..

And then a million thoughts abound,
the scariest among them-
is it the slow death of love?
Or can there be such a thing?
It overwhelms me
into silence again..

But there can never be true silence
in the mind, Can it?
And thoughts remind me,
that in some of life's most beautiful moments,
I only had silence and tears for company..

And then I smile,
happy to know,
to be reminded,
That love doesnt need words,
That love doesn't lay rules!

Earring

A shiny new earring -
Greed glistening in her ear-lobes

Tossing and turning,
in synch with her own movements

As she moved around,
not awake, yet unable to sleep..

Light weighted, and delicate,
heavy sleep might crush it..

And so she tossed and turned,
Greed still glistening in her ears!