~LazeCraft~

11 on 10.10.2010

2010-10-10T21:20:00.001+05:30

Ben 10 is now behind
stuff for little boys’ kind

adding another year to ken
is nothing like being ten

eleven begins reverse countdown to twenty
it fills with ideas complicated and plenty

decade of baby-to-boy charm
has opened window to days warm

make most of growing up dear
eleven is springboard and it’s here

Echoes in the room

2010-09-07T21:46:00.001+05:30

In the office women come and go
Talking of 'what they know'

What they know, we know
We now know what to know

In the office men come and go
Talking of what they don't want to know

What they don't want we know
We now know what not to know

In the office people come and go
Talking of what each other know

Is there anything more to know
When there's everything we know

It's so dark in the room we know
Where's Michelangelo?
Who painted that picture?
Changed its colours to and fro?
There's still so much to know
Where's Michalangelo

Earth – circumference of meaning

2009-11-30T14:05:00.000+05:30

Green which one
Rs 60 kg peas,
Thekkady-deep, emerald and glazed
or Fabindia vegetable-dyed?

It’s too green
envious of colours we change
in green rooms
under climate of threat,

Seasons of gone sparrows
knock down rain
plop here, steam there,
in gutter of daily drain,

There’s nothing amiss
bathroom has mirror,
day no reflection
night fatigued, the next foreseen

So, green?
oh, herbal fads that
grandma never patented
no, no, memory is smoky
and all months cruel
don’t know when mangoes come
mulberries go

Reasons canned fruitfully
will have unseasoned answers
in Copenhagen when conscience peaks
let’s scale down summit
of mundane arrogance

No news

2009-11-09T12:13:00.000+05:30

In big nothing, lie many small
curled, quiet, but curious
why nothing? why nothing for so long?
so on…
questions pop out of turn
gunshot replaces voice
boom of busts!
beheaded man becomes
banner of heads forced to bow
how those wretched two-legged ones
who infest our jungles — that could well be spas —
dream of freedom
for states gone to dogs
or dogs having their day
17 cops, countless nobodies
one abducted, one released, one…
too many headcounts too dizzying,
trains stop, lumber back on track
life rolls out like newspaper folio
lucky beasts can’t even read!

A dozen in three years

2009-11-05T16:59:00.005+05:30

Longing for a masterpiece we lose everyday pieces that could have shaped our writing, or at least pieced together our jumbled thoughts. For years now—five or little more than that—I have trained myself to indiscipline of not writing in order to mistakenly achieve the higher discipline of writing something “really worthy”.

Some worth that everyday situations — home, road, office… — provide us with at emotional, intellectual and more importantly, moral plane, were not developed into serious thought by me. It’s not that I had to or everybody does, but the force of a situation if not reined in with words is an irrecoverable loss of idea or story for anybody who even wants to come close to the experience of writing.

Being an editor, I assumed that I was in touch with “rewriting” if not writing. How terribly wrong I was! And even having realised it I continue to be slack because in the process of editing I have put myself in a self-styled ‘I know better than the person who has written the copy’ mode. This arrogance, which maybe right mostly if not wrong all the time, cut the natural flow of words to my stream of thoughts. I started editing random thoughts even, so as to arrive at a perfect idea that “deserved” to be keyed in.

Choking for words, ideas and most importantly felicity that free-flowing writing brings started becoming a routine. So much so that it became routine! It was easy getting used to the idea of not writing till the time the idea of writing “something big” was intact in both the conscience and the subconscious. But it takes only a snap to switch any big idea to redundancy. Why make a big deal of being a writer.

My Big Bang was silent and sudden, and yet stretched across an intangible timeline. Don’t know really when I stopped writing or writing stopped me. All I know is that I can still make a start, only if I accept that I cannot — no one can — piece together a masterpiece just like that. And, simply write.

In memorium

2009-02-19T10:55:00.003+05:30

Fire wall closes in
speed of wind
thwarts my chance
to run or duck
I am burnt forever

If I were a kangaroo
singeing my feet
on ashes of home
would my child
feel the heat?

This bush got it first
this, soon after
and that, in a flash
those, like dancing girls,
jumped into smoke

The school is closed
children are away,
their houses smell
of burnt flesh
they will not return to either

Sam is a survivor
she drank water
held a hand and sighed
koalas that died are
floating in her memory

(After reading a news report on bushfire in Australia)

Of Mere Being

2008-02-24T02:02:00.006+05:30

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

-- Wallace Stevens, 1954

Stevens’ evening had been cluttered with thoughts just before he decided to succumb to the vacuum that horizon so effortlessly stretches. Space and its certain fixtures, he realised a little later, fill in life’s blanks as honestly as poetry does.

‘Of Mere Being’ actually stands ‘at the end of the mind’. The end is the submission, and the mind is the acceptance of that compliance.

Stevens is on the edge of an eventful, perhaps painful day—almost etherized upon a table of bronze distance—which could culminate into branches of answers. But he pins his hope, in the form of gaze, on the setting sun. The rise, he understands, is soon followed by a free fall.

The palm becomes the incubator of his hope where playful sun sings and mimics a bird. The distance—from which Stevens is looking at his gold-feathered bird merrily trapped in branches and not trying to look for meaning—drinks the difference between happiness and unhappiness.

The outer, the foreign, fills the inner, the native. And the mind starts returning inwards from the edge that it stood precariously upon sometime back. The ‘edge of the space’ pushes back the ‘edge of the mind’. Here, a bigger perspective puts a smaller one into frame.

The wind that rustles in the branches, or the thoughts that float by Stevens’ mindscape, can hardly shake the sun’s resolve to go down and ‘the bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down’.

‘Of Mere Being’ is an evening in the life of an evolving being amidst rotating sun and stationary palm.

The Other Side of Planning

2007-06-04T23:28:00.000+05:30

You go to the office
I go to the office

Kids come
..................grow up
................................go away

You go to the office
I go to the office

Bibi

2007-05-13T00:20:00.000+05:30

May 11, 2007
10:30pm

Is there a way I can bring my Bibi back to life? Yes, she is still around, I mean her body. About 65 kms away from me as she lies in peace after a tormenting wait for death; I desperately want her to breathe, yet again.
Nani, after all, is not merely stuff stories are made of. She is flesh and blood. She was, I mean. My silent prayer and perhaps that of many others took away what she was clinging on to — the farthest end of time.
Once very punctual, prodding and prim, now child-like for dozens of weeks and reduced to very fair shriveled skin, she had lost the count of memories both happy and sad. For the last eight days in a soul-scorching battle with death rather fear of death, water was the only earthly symbol that appeared to make the cracks of age look erasable from her being. Food meant nothing anymore in this famished existence.
What meant the most was not survival but freedom from claustrophobia in-between life and death; where everything, everybody, every memory alive choked and blocked the way to Mukti. What mukti and how, from whom and why now? Riddle-like Salvation suddenly seemed to have an endless logical elasticity, one which could be stretched directly in proportion with an individual’s capacity of self-assessment.
It was time for God to step in. And He did, silently, when we were not expecting Him but Bibi finally was. At ninety-two, she couldn’t have bargained for more, I reasoned. But Lord had taught me earlier not to decode death. Ever since I have and I am still trying to internalise that instant, accidental, painful or peaceful, death is beyond the bar of category, even age. It has its own level, exalted and life-like in the Kingdom of God. In fact it may not be death at all if we consider what we have gone through to achieve it.
Tomorrow bed-sore ridden body will be consigned to flames. Bibi will soar. And Nani will always remain stuff the best of stories are made of.

Melting moments

2006-06-20T20:46:00.000+05:30

In the heat of the day, when senses succumb to both physical and mental shallowness, one should try and allow a breezy thought. This afternoon, when I was pushing myself to office and limping down the staircase out of lethargy, I heard boisterous children (who live in the garage right under the annexe that I have rented) bargaining with their mother (who’s a domestic help with my landlords).
I was surprised to see addition of five new faces to the usual trio (three boys of drastic differences in height, face and conduct). It took me little to guess, still, that the brothers had their cousins over in summer vacation. Two pleasant Kumaoni girls in the gang broke the male monotony.
The children, all between the age group of three to 16, had an ice cream vendor waiting at the end of the driveway, while their mother/aunt did desperate calculations.
I did my time calculation too and was about to drive the vendor out of my way, but instead I shouted for kids: They were around me in a flurry; except the 16-year-old adolescent, who only peeped from the window. “Which one do you want,” I found myself mothering amidst cute cacophony of “chocolate, doodhwali, orange, kulfi”... As the vendor ducked in and pulled out their favourites in scorching heat, I saw each of them darting to their room, shying away to enjoy their group feast in front of me. Of course, one of the boys, about 4 years, did not forget to carry two as his “bhaiya” was waiting inside.
The total was more than I expected! As I paid and drove out of the porch, I could see their mother in the rear view mirror. She looked relieved of one of those day-to-day mathematic burdens. It was a little cost to pay considering that I conveniently forgot to take a pain killer for hours. One must make the most of melting medicines!

Strange Friends

2006-06-19T20:11:00.000+05:30

In times when friends (the school and college time buddies) are estranged or plain busy because they are married, finding friends in strangers become pastime acumen. Being a single woman (with no clear idea of prospective husband) can disgust fellow married girlfriends, who by now have got into the rut of sending two kids to the school! The status also opens floodgates for men, who like to believe in prospective ideas.

It’s dicey then to lament loss of friends or appreciate those who hover around or beep every half hour on the cell. Acquaintances acquire an allergic proportion, where one doesn’t know who sets it off. But then, social animal can fight it all.

I detested the idea of walking to up to stranger for a chat (I’m one of those who’d like to be marooned on an island!), I hated it from the core of my heart to trace a phone number and call on the same when I know the answer from the other end is going to be, “Who?” But strange things happen and stranger are the gifts.

God chose a profession for me, which could rectify, replace and renovate most of my self-styled logics. Having cried enough at loss of social life of late (putting the blame largely on journalism), I conveniently neglected what it (my profession) bestowed upon me. A thunderous surprise call from Shatrughan Sinha, a pat on the back from Om Puri, a peep into Raghu Rai’s viewfinder, a thank you note from the animals at an ‘animal shelter’, a movie with deaf and mute Paramjit, a laugh riot with VJs Nikhil, Cyrus Sahukar and Ramona, musical meanderings with Silk Route… Ah! I don’t even remember all the meaningful meeting. I will recollect and get back with anecdotes that all my strange(r) friends had to share with me.

Blogger's Park

2006-06-09T20:32:00.000+05:30

Blog being a new kid on the block, I know not etiquette it entails. I still have to figure out the formality of being informal on this public domain! I still don’t know how to tell a blog from a bug. Or can I put both here? Can I simply let an 'out of shape' thought jog on this trail for that elusive frame fitness?

Footloose

2006-06-03T20:42:00.000+05:30

When on the threshold of inner change, it is important neither to look back (for regret, nostalgia, retrospection or such hindsight activities) nor leap at what’s in store. Today, I hurt someone very dear in this pendulum pandemonium. In my own dash to make it to clarity as early as possible, I bypassed my friend’s foresight rooted in present. I hope my friend, as always, lugs me along on this road to recovery.

Well, road reminds me of yesterday, when I took to it deliberately, on foot. Considering that I almost live out of my automobile, walking across two blocks (from Sector 8, KFC parking lot to Sector 9 HDFC Standard Life) with an intimidating signal to cross, it was a big deal. I would like to push a medical reference here. Though I have come to believe that my legs cannot carry me too far, the doctor thinks otherwise and often chides me for not taking advantage, as a walker, of Leisure Valley (Sector 10), which is hardly a furlong from where I live.

Cloudiness made it a light choice as I almost glided from the parking to the pavement, over the iron railing, across the slip road and onto the divider when I heard a woman calling. She was coming from the opposite side. I ignored her grand command in the first instance, having habitually ignored catcalls, only to look at her as she again shouted, “Ladki”.

The ‘title’ of address put me off so terribly that I turned away and hurried. But she caught up and fell in step with me, though it meant backtracking for her. With little choice left, I looked at this bulky ‘ghagra-choli’ clad woman with wisps of grey on temples. She carried an equally big sack. She could not have been a rag picker, for she wore chunky silver jewellery and was absolutely tidy. Even as I looked at her meekly, she refused to mellow down. I could do nothing but run, which I did making the men on the other side of the road leave everything and take notice of me.

Having covered a good rough patch half running, half brisk-walking, I did not turn back to have a look at the woman again. The air-conditioned interiors of HDFC Standard Life put my pulse in place. To my surprise, the premium renewal of policy that I had been dreading for almost four months, did not take more than four minutes. My bank phantom was actually a friendly man at the help desk. And I realized, as I stepped out in the heat again, that the woman I ran away from was a phantom from my childhood. My grandfather used to tell a tale about a woman who had the strength to toss all bad kids into her sack and carry them on her back to an unknown world.

My piggy ride was over long ago. The woman had grown old too. But phantoms are ageless. The entire episode, I believe, was initiated by a ghost, a fear that if I steer my new vehicle into the choc-a-block parking lot of Sector 9, it’s bound to bear a scratch!

Crafty move

2006-06-02T20:22:00.000+05:30

In a sort of blizzard of blogs, I thought I would hurl mine, for sure, today. I even, unwittingly though, stage-managed my day so as I could trapeze from moments to words with finesse of an obedient observer. But I still have to learn the ropes of “position”, which invariably slips in my case. As I admit that the first half of this cloudy day was work-induced and the latter mood-inflicted, there was a polarity in positioning by the day end. Blog, rather a berserk desire to write and prove something actually drove me to senselessness. I hope I make sense tomorrow, which will not be crafted by any desire.

Birth of a Blog

2006-05-31T20:11:00.000+05:30

It’s hypnotism. Like labour and love in childbirth blurred with magic realism. After a terminated attempt at building a blog, this surrogate status is satisfying. Yes surrogate, for I bear someone else’s faith in each word here. It’s an opportunity that I did not conceive but was considered capable of nurturing and delivering. I hope I am a responsible parent.

Song sinusitis

2006-05-31T00:33:00.000+05:30

It’s a hard day’s night and nasal nightmare haunts. It’s certainly not about clogged nostrils but overflowing violence to the ears. Prejudice aside, for an object(ive) consumer at point blank range, Himesh Reshammiya’s blasts are not as satin-like as his name suggests. In fact he leaves no scope for reconciliation. The singer (his lead role of a music director has been overshadowed) may corner you at any point of time inthe day with an army of combat girls, who seem to be guarding him ferociously with some latest technique in dancing. Honestly it pulls, but that’s the bait to draw the victim into a web called ‘Spillover Syndrome’.

The syndrome begins when one starts reacting to what one has been fed the most on. You can’t tell a humdrum insect not to crawl up the silk snare that the spider weaves for it! Our Spiderman – this one wears a cap – does the trick with high- pitched musical notes, now formulae that most hum and drum. He even rips through the roads the common man takes. If not in person, he’s virtually in every party,wedding, talent hunt show, on satellite channels, in aspiring singers’ imagination, riding air waves,ruling ipods, motivating choreographers, synchronising free style dancers, wafting from rickety rickshaws,giving rhythm to the snips of a barber in the salon… I won’t be surprised to find him on the bedside wall ofthe ready-to-be-smitten teen queens!

My hypo allergy can wait while I credit His Exc(ess)ellency with the phenomenal task of making music so whine-able for every one who has a tongue. Wish the promising music director – who started his career with ‘title’ songs and ‘background’ music for serials at the time when TV too was bereft of ‘syndromes’ – had not been so chronic in times of clones. And wish he could (over)kill all with a smile at least.

He has made indeed stubble-ridden Aashiqs out of pop lovers, who now have a Desi icon capable of delivering a hit at the drop of a cap!