High Hopes

Another love story was to unfold
A timeless classic, a tragedy untold.
The spirited river neath the sun burnt skies
Befriended the young lady with emerald eyes.
“So how are you today my lovely”, he asked
The moonlight shone, tears surpassed.

The pregnant silence beleaguered his sentiments.
The stage was set, her eyes spoke, and lips glistened.
“I look through my eyehole every day and every night”
“For someone or something that would always be right”
The river chuckled not knowing what to say…
Philosophy seldom arrives when life is all happy and gay.

“Oh young lady of distant land”
“Why such sudden desire I don’t understand”, he said
“A utopian someone who is always right”
“Now my friend, wouldn’t that be a delight?” she replied
He pondered over the young girl’s impeccant reverie
Wondering if life be all generous, or would it be misery.

“May your dreams be your reality” he smiled
And with those words he waved goodbye.
“Thank you for your wishes, my friend of yore”
“If it wasn’t for you, life would had been such a bore”
The old friends parted ways, only to meet again,
But many years later, whence the end began.

The once spirited river was now gently streaming.
Those emerald eyes were old but still dreaming.
“How you have changed, my old friend, over the years”
“And finally, did life grant you what you always desired”
She looked at her old friend, his apprehensions were masked
The moonlight shone, tears surpassed

“Sometimes you get things in life you are not looking for
Realizing they are much better than the ones you actually asked for
The desire for that sanctified one had long subsided my friend
And yet I look through my eyehole every once now and then
Reminiscing the old times, joys and pain.”
The river smiled not knowing what to say…
Philosophies seldom arrive when life is all happy and gay.

The Sepulchral Voices

So why such sadness i ask
and also with such grace-
Have you ever been so happy and yet so bereaved?
A culmination of all your dreams in front of you,
and a certain numbness longs for your presence.
The eternal rest is not a dream
but the eternal dream is to rest.
You are obscure and so am i.

The old song brings back memoirs,
The old joys give you pain.
Time is an unwanted dear friend
for he shall stay the longest,
unmoved by apathy and without any gain.
Drink the ale and make merry 'ol friend
for thy genesis has only begun.
The fun gods shall soon be dancing with you
and yet ...the old song remains.

Jasmine

It was drizzling yet she had no plans of retiring under the mulberry tree. Jasmine was five and it was her first trip to the village fair. She looked like an angel dressed in pink polka dotted skirt with the golden long streaks dancing in the wind. Her blue eyes sparkled every time someone passed her by, never had she seen so many people together. She saw other kids with their parents and with a smile waved at them to attract their attention, some smiled back, some waved but hardly anyone stopped.

Jasmine knew soon it would be dark and before long she would have to tread her way back to the village but it was not the distance that was bothering her. The drizzle had stopped but the wind was still up at it, the juggler was bored and the clown looked bereaved...she wondered why. She was tired and sleepy now rubbing her eyes and yawning only to look more divine. In another few moments she would be on her way back and she was thinking on those lines when she saw a young couple gleefully heading her way. Their charm mesmerized the young girl but not enough to make her forget what she was there for..."Flowers for the Lady, Sir?"

Religion is...

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. […] A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

– Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground.He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

.......Robert Frost

Another One Bites The Dust

We are all in the gutter,but some of us are looking at the stars

....Oscar Wilde

You always believed that equality ,brotherhood, culture, religious ethics etc shall take us to the pinnacle, always had faith in the countrys ever increasing GDP,economic development,globalisation...blah blah, always the first to critise the invasions of foreign culture,americanisation of the Indian youth,your kids growing up to Hendrix n Floyd rather than pandit ravi shankar(all due respect to da gentle man).You are an indispensable part of the "Mera Barat Mahan"brigade and a true Indian to the core. I salute thou not for your patriotism but for thy foolishness.
Have you ever asked yourself as to why we have been ruled for over 1000 years by the turks, afgans ,mugals ,persians, portugese and finally britishers? Do you know the history of your country? Do you think freedom was fought for and won..and are you proud of it?....Maybe yes for you are yet to discern the pangs of hunger n yet to discover how it feels to make your kids walk for six kilometers to fetch water because you cant use the village wells for thou are classified as a "harijan" in the religious encyclopedias. People have been baptizing crime in the name of culture since ages and what’s surprising is somehow we still are very proud of the fact. Let me quote Woody allen here” culture is all but an illusion of permanence” Its been 59 years since we got the freedom tag yet we are so underdeveloped relatively when in comparisons with countries like Japan, China, Germany but still the false ego prevails. I would like to highlight the fact that these countries have had a more woeful situation than we can ever imagine but have significantly superseded us in every respect, so stop whining about how we have been exploited by the Britishers and how they looted us over the years. Infact if it were not for them we still would have prevailed in the neo-nendrethal era like Venezuela or Brazil (ofcourse with a sense of brotherhood and respect for elders). I aint any firang sympathizer but the point if that they gave us a lot more than we could ever bargain for like education, rails, telecommunication, constitution (Babasaheb only amended it) etc....which none before them had, and btw what brotherhood are we talking abt?..all it takes is decapitating some prehistoric statue and all we ever learnt in the moral science books goes for a toss.How many more chandraswami n ramdev baba shitholes are we gonna tolerate who claim to cure aids n cancer n suck on the poor n rich alike .These political buffoons have added an all new dimension to democracy with their “Hindutva”, “India shining” , “ a new world for the poor”…lol.. it’s now more like “for the lunatics of the lunatics and definitely by the lunatics”.
Why such feeling of abhorrence thou shalt ask, I guess its more the grief that something that could have been so beautiful has turned out to be so horribly wrong. I only hope(yea hope is better than despair) that u fellas realise that we aint "mahan" as yet n therz still a lot of bloodshed n gore before the final war of freedom is won.