The Plucking of the Daffodil

There was once a little daffodil,

Leaving beneath the great oak tree,

Who was also her dear uncle Bill,

Under his shade she dreamt a life free

Of chasing her dreams, ever so many.

Under the million stars, her dreams she kindled,

Of the faraway lands and knights in shining armor,

There she lay awake, night after night so splendid.

She had a smile to stop a king and humour,

A pretty face too to match.

Every night she dreamt of many a great things,

Of singing to the birds in early mountain dawn,

Of kissing the queen and of donning her mighty crown,

Of touching a prince and forever be in him gone,

But alas that was not so to be.

One fateful day came the great merchant doom,

He asked Uncle Bill so artfully for his dear little niece,

Many a great things awaits he said, not a drop of gloom,

For this beautiful daffodil would make a garland for ladies fair and nice,

Promised him of a place so fair, and all that’s good for his little niece.

The lovely little daffodil wept and wept and wept all right,

“I am so young, yet so tender for my dreams be forever crushed,

It is too early for me, to lose all of life from sight”

She pleaded and begged, but yet her opinion away was brushed,

Oh dear, Oh our poor little daffodil.

Her dear Uncle Bill did seldom put up a face so stern,

Pointed at his niece and said in a voice ever so hoarse.

“I wish only well, my dear little child, all I wish is you not burn

For you are to me precious as the short king’s mighty horse”

I wish only good and all the glittering glory to you.

I know of your dreams, so high and mighty,

Of wandering the worlds and of the royal garden,

But you are only a daffodil and take that not so lightly,

I am old and weak and with you future laden,

This is for you good my dear little one.”

On the day of the great plucking, came the merchant doom,

She was plucked ceremoniously, our little miss daffodil,

No more a miss but ever so young and yet to bloom,

She cried so hard that night and lost was her dreams and will,

Only to wither away in the dark shadows of an alley way back.

I Could Die Today

I could die today,
Not a man who is all happy,
But neither a man so morose.

I could die today,
Not a man who is free as a bird,
But neither the one in chains.

I could die today,
Not the man, a saint,
Neither the devil, not Satan’s heir.

I could die today,
Not a man of Midas’ touch.
Neither destinies dreaded orphan.

I could die today,
Not a man who lived as nature,
Neither the man who heard not the rustling leaves.

I could die today,
Not the one to walk behind Buddha,
But neither the lost soul of Maya.

I could die today,
Not the man of all fulfilled dreams,
But one with all that matters in life and death.

For all I could care,
I could die today,
A happy man, A happy man in death.

Bonds to Cherish

It is possible that in the tumultuous lives that we all live, so full of twist and turns and not so happy endings, we may lose sight of who we are and what we are. These are the times that we truly question ourselves aren’t they. I am not here to lecture on what we ought to do and or suggest ways to cope with things that I have no idea of. But I can safely say that in thee difficult times it is our friends and family that keeps us together. That keeps us from falling into pieces. These are the people who have feed you those memories whose hand we take when the going gets tough; they have given us days by which we can swear that the times were better.

There are many bonds in life that are far too valuable to be neglected. The bonds those are inexpensive yet invaluable. The bonds that make you want to strive to be a better person every second of every hour of every day. In life we seldom comes across people that stick for the long, some become your wife, others become your best buddies and sometimes we are blessed with blood relations that are the best in the world. Sometimes we get brothers who would die by you and parents who would swear by you, not always but yet sometimes they do happen. Even for the less fortunate ones among us we get to be with friends who are just as intimate as a relation, if not more.

I myself has been lucky, for I have not found just one, but a bunch of them. In fact I have found half a dozen of them in my college life. I consider myself far too lucky in this regard. One among them became the person with whom I have decided to share the rest of my farting and the not so better part of myself with. The others would hitherto be my best men and women for the rest of life, godfathers and god mothers for the my, sorry, our children. Uncles and aunts who they will adore , the kind I will have a hard time preventing from spoiling my children.

When I walked up the stairs of this building with hardly a small back pack and an half-filled pen, with dreams that were taller that the tallest skyscrapers. I for one did not see this coming. I did not believe that I would be making buddies that will last a life time. But I made a bunch. I did not believe in love, yet I found the perfect girl. I had reservations for my future, yet it has never ever looked so promising. For what it’s been worth , The time I spend with my friends , squalling and trashing, fighting and abusing, loving and caring, looking out for one another and not. Those endless hours I have spent in there company gossiping. The insidious love and the improper infidelity. These were the best days of my life.

Great moments are born from great opportunity. That’s what you have here, tonight, boys. That’s what you’ve earned here tonight

I remember this quote today, because four years back I was presented with a great opportunity , an opportunity to make friends with best and most amazing individuals in the world, and thank god you made me grab it and make great memories of them.

The art of letting go

I have heard people mention several a times that the whole point of life was to let go of it, piece by piece and person by person. To gain many a things through hard labour and then silently watch it being squandered away. The withering away is to life what ever birth and growth will ever be, in fact it is more to life than birth would be. It is what completes and fulfils life. It is the final act of redemption, the last nuance of liberation.

A wise man had once said that a man starts to die the moment he is born, that his life is but a eventful journey to his grave. But life is more than the slow withering away, isn’t it? Life is not the indeterminate decaying of self, it is not a subtle dance to death.

During the short tenancy upon this earth it is true that we must at many times learn to let go. Every time something dear and near to us dematerializes, one has to cope survive the vast vacuum it leaves behind. But always the real challenge is to acknowledge it’s transiency, even when one knows what that is lost is lost and no longer ones to cry over. The real challenge is to accept that something’s no more and no longer worth saddening over.

Hence the art of letting go remains the final art to master. Why we find it so difficult to grasp, must come from the fact that we had all our lives tried to for go the truth and establish its permanence. We always believe that what we have will remain, we always believe that our grandfather who is 95 now and sick over a decade will never die. Thus with futile belief we make a facet and wear it so often that it becomes an integral part of us. It is with attachment that we wield our life and this is the cause of all our great fears.

To learn to let go one must understand that life is more than these bonds. I make no claim of afterlife and nor of some superior understanding of the spiritual realm, all I know is this one life and all my assumptions stems from a need to understand it. When all you have is just one life, it seems inexplicably expensive to waste it in any way. The truth about letting go is hence very selfish in natural. To let go is to take upon one’s life a responsibility of one’s life, to live it with a greed beyond compare.

The guru granth sahib asks us to celebrate the mystic reunion and not to be sad in the final absolution of a dear one’s existence. But to let go is not always about death, more dreadful is it when we have to let go of someone on our own and is not forced upon us. They are by all means necessary and though not as imposing as death may be are still very much necessary. The act of some one leaving for good, not so much as bothering to say farewell is deafening to the soul. Yet you know very well that it is just as necessary.

I pretend not to preach but yet the alien perfection betrays my pretensions What ever it may be and however I say it, the truth about letting go is simple, you simply have to. The art of letting go is hence simple as well, at least in principle. The art of letting go is to refrain from clutching on, it is to let go with entirety and not to force upon one’s self the separation. To Let the tide of time unite and dissociate at will. That is the art of letting go.

The Silhouette of Silence

It was in one such night that I saw her, her real self her heart and her being. We knew each other much before and may be we were even what could be called as acquaintances but never friends. But that night changed it all, that one night. The night when I sat across from her, the night when our yes met not for the first time but for still the first time. I had known her before but that night when our eyes net under slow burning street lambs we came to know each other. That night under the simmering glow of the electric street lamb, in the bitter coldness of the European winter we met for the first time.

I must have known that the silence we shared was but only the beginning of a life long journey. A journey that would transform our selves and transcend our being. In that silence when our eyes met I saw something in her eyes that was burning, it was not revenge, it was not anger, it was not love and it certainly was not the glow of the hope but it was the reminiscent glow of the despair coming from the ashes of burned up dreams.

It took me aback to a darker time when the whole world was but the four walls of a prison cell for me, the days when my innocent dreams where held captive in the heavy chains, when the wings of my colorful dreams were clipped and all around was just darkness, blood and despair.

That night under the simmering glow of the electric street lamb, in the bitter coldness of the European winter in her eyes I saw my eyes, I saw the same feelings, the same heart break. I was reminded of my death and my consecutive birth. I was reminded of the struggle and the daunting face of death and its giant red eyes staring down through you. Even when I write this my hand tremble with unimaginable fear and my heart beats as if time is scanty and life is terribly short.

That was the night I met myself, my silhouette in that silence I was acquainted with. Hers where the eyes of my past, her gently bosom bore the scars of the same torture that I endured. Her emancipated skin wore like a cheap gown the texture of undignified death. She reminded me of the times I had almost died and the times I almost gave up. The taste of her coarse lips reminded me of the stale and the dirt, the miserable life that I had escaped. And all around me was darkness I could see it crawling under my skin. Like a vicious creature it was coming towards me to consume what was left of me. There I lay in her hands, pressed against her cold body, with my lips just dangling above her sinister lips. In that truth of moment I realized that this is what I am and what have been and she is silhouette. The darkness of the past was but my past and I was as inseparable from it as darkness was from light itself.

That night under the simmering glow of the electric street lamb, in the bitter coldness of the European winter I met me for the first time and there we embarked on a lifelong journey of redemption.

The Bird with the Broken Wing

This happened some time back almost during the time of the last angst autumn. In my evening fiestas I used to gaze at the horizon, I used to strain my eyes as it trailed the changing shades of the sky and merged into the darkness of the night. A particular sight awaited me every day without fail and if it didn’t I seemed deem myself a failure for the afternoon. This mellifluous sight was that of a bird, petite and cute beyond compare. With much energy it filled my evening sky with its wondrous twitter. I am from now on going to refer her as a she for I know not how to find the gender of a bird and it is always much cuter when it is a she.

She was so dainty and yet so active, flying around the sky as if in some desperate pursuit, soothing was her voice, her chatter, her far away tweets. Yet unknown to me she had a heart of lead that weighed on her. I never knew then that all her energy was just a pretend, an act of the eloped. It would be some time since then when the bird would eventually come to rest in my palms and we would share much love and many emotions. But going back to the story, by then she had made herself a humble abode upon my little cherry tree, Indeed the cherry tree was not that little but she was a bit little when viewed in the context of the behemoths that surrounded her in the nearby woods.

As days flew by like the leaves in the autumn, she and I had made an invisible connection. I would often feel like she was talking to me when I heard her distant cooing and I would feel that the eternal dance of hers was but for me to watch. True or not we had got connected in a level of existence in a realm much above the one of common understanding. She had become my pet, neither the one that was bound by the materialistic confines of a cage nor the one whose heart and thought was confined by an authoritarian lease, but my pet nevertheless.

But then it had occurred on that day when the fate stood still, as it watched an eternal criss-crossing of destinies when my little bird had got hurt by some despicable evil. Her wings had been clipped, her freedoms curtained, she fell from the sky like a stone on to the heaps of scarlet leafs. She laid there in waiting for my warm hands to cup her and carry her to the warm coziness of my home and to the warmer corners of my heart. There I did dress her would with much love and compassion as if she was my little daughter, that too quiet literally with bandages and ointments that I had. I cared for her, I looked after her and from that day forth till today we spend innumerable evenings discussing and rambling about many a wonderful things during our customary evening siesta.

But then again as she gained my heart bit by bit, I started to dread the reality that was today, an inevitable day that was not in my power to prevent, I would have been cruel and selfish in the past few days praying that she never would get better but then again this was the day for which I had cared for her, the day she could be free once again and adorn my evening sky with her tweeting and ramblings. I know she would never fly far away and I know the cherry tree will forever remain her abode but then you could never tell and this very thought had been haunting me for some time now.

But nevertheless today is here and the day must happen for our destinies were written not now but ages ago. It stood there cupping her in my arms as it ruffled around her petite silhouette. I slowly undid her band aids and held my hands up in the air and with tears rolling down my cheek and sinister thoughts haunting my mind I let her go. I watched her fly away from by hand just like she always did I could feel the instantaneous loss of weight upon my hand. My heart skipped a beat when she skipped a flap of her wings and for that one moment when she appeared to fall my heart leap. But she is the child of freedom, it is in her nature to fly and it was inevitable that she would do that. I always knew that she was destined for freedom, though it is true that I wish she would not but hers is the sky to fly and ones again as I sit back in my chair looking up at the evening sky I knew what we were and how we were to be.

The Sensual Art of Love

Sensual is the art of love, sensual the embraces and sensual the silent sniffs of intoxicating aroma. Every moment I spent with her is ever the more arousing, arousing because its her, arousing because of what is that we have shared, shares and hold to share in promise. Sexy is a word as abusing as it can be, sexy is the objectification of what is already objectified. But sensual is not the same, sensual is a praise, sensual is a glorification of what is already immersed in glory, sensual is my love and the one I love.

The Room and the Inn

I have heard elsewhere that our life is just a preparation for death, a transient journey towards the inevitable. I even remember Osho describe death as the most exciting of all orgasms, a climax that is deserving of all the wait. If all our life was indeed just like waiting in a bus stop for that one bus destined for us, then its is the people that we meet that makes the wait worth it. People emphasis stability, people embrace not knowing to much but unknowingly, unconsciously, people walk in and out of our lives in a daily basis, as if it is just an inn. But a few, a handful of people makes it more than just a room for a nights stay, they make it a ‘home’.

Inevitably when we look back at our life, isn’t it what that will make us turn around and wave back as we embark on our final journey isn’t it. In our rather short stay at this place very few of all the people we bump into really mean much, often this is what why we feel the desperate need to cling on to our lives even when certain of the inevitable. Indeed this is one journey where we cant take whom we love along with us, yet pitiful re ones who don’t have any faces to turn to and wave to as you fade away into the distance.

The question

My sensual other asked me whether I will go away one day without taking her with me, Her innocence must have never transcended the depths of the question she had asked and may be in the vast pool of people who believe in the strange motto of ‘ignorance is bliss’ she may belong. It surprises me that people though fully aware pretend to be unaware and it surprises me that it gives them a sense of safely when the insecurity is obvious to other. It is like taking an insurance knowing that it wont cover what is that it has to be covered and yet feel sure to paid for in mishap.

To come back to question,, both in life and afterlife no matter how much I would like her to be around, there are some choices that has to be made. Her sensual self is half of all my life will ever be. I can tell this to all the people who may not believe in a soul mate , its true not that there exist someone who is made perfectly for you, that certainly is hokum but this much is true that there may exist someone who can make you feel complete. The question forayed the corner of mind with such force that it made my thinking numb till I realized the obvious answer.

The truthful answer was always that I could take her everywhere with me as long I remain in the bounds of the world around me both in this life and in the ones I may come across. but there will be one time in life this or the next or the one that may come next to the next or so, which life I may not know but I certainly would have to cut that chain of too, if not for me then for you. When the ultimate freedom beacons for any one of us we have to let go, we have to cut loose and we have to be ultimately free, just free, just absolute freedom the kind we get a taste of at death. Hence I say death is a celebration, more like a wild party, one for the absolute freedom.

Back to sensuality

Sensual is a word that has multiple meaning one that means raising and one that means more than the material spheres of awareness, one that means not just pertaining to the five senses but one that means pertaining to a higher a sense, a sense of being that is understood by another being. A beauty appreciated at the highest of existence and at the lowest of existence, a transcendental experience, an experience beyond the senses. The life when shared to an extend that it goes beyond the inseparable and beyond the bindings where they merge into one so seamlessly that one is not one anymore. ‘Sensual’! yes sensual is the word not sexy or arousing or not even love, sexy and arousing are the materialization of love and beyond pure love lies the sensual I talked about sensual pertaining to the higher sense.

An Obituary

The past week was not so particularly good; with two funerals in a row you can expect anything from it either. I hate funerals for a start, they make me rather uncomfortable. But where I stand different from the vast majority of people is on point of perspective, I hate funerals not because I have a hard time understanding life and contemplating death and neither because those are the moments that reveal the evanescence of existence. I hate funerals because of the way it is celebrated rather mourned. I believe death has to be celebration not a moment of sadness, it is a moment if liberation the point of the ultimate nirvana.

May I think so because nobody close enough to me have so far died to cause me a traumatic state of mind or neither have I connected so well with the great people who have passed away so far in my close kith and kin. I do understand and uphold the possibility of a complete crackdown in ideology whilst someone so dear does pass away. If any do hold a stance not in unison to me do take me for a nubile and let it go.

I am writing this as a memorial for the souls whom I knew and did not have the good will to know before they disposed their mortal selves. The first of it was the father of a friend, rather an acquaintance. I must say it was a very bad day to get to know him His father’s funeral is by no way the best of days to know a person and understand him. It’s so strange yet so true that in such dire moments we see people with no makeup, they are clear like crystal. Amidst the broken mind and the fl9owing tears they don’t have the time to put up a facet. They are bared inside out and all they crave is a pat on their shoulder and a shoulder to rest on.

He was a wonderful person, teacher and personality, Not that I know him personally in the eyes of my friend and his mother I saw what a human he was, a true noble soul. In the words of anger that they uttered with divine disgust I was the loving father he was and in their omniscient silence I saw what and how much he meant to them. After all what could a man what from his short mortal stay than to leave a legacy behind, not in big books of history or in bronze statues but in the hearts of men and women whom he lived with and shared his life and its worth with. A man of incalculable value and an owner of a wide heart. May he rest in peace and may his family rejoice in the memories he left behind for them.

Next to depart was a person of such adorable nature, grandmother of my roommates, a very special person to him hence a very special person to me. I have seen her, been in her presence hardly minutes yet those moments shine through the kaleidoscope of my mind. She was a real women with an almost divine aura about her. I don’t want to talk more about her as I know that my friend will obviously read it and it’s hard enough for him I don’t want to make it any harder. I really wish he didn’t read it at all.

It’s unbelievable isn’t it that in every second almost somebody very dear and real to somebody just cease to exist, some we know many we don’t know. Death is a ubiquitous truth that happens with no warning, no pattern nor any premonitions and yet its remains the most beautiful of all things that could happen to a person. Death is just the end of a dream we call life and death is an awakening into a world beyond the boundaries of this dream we call reality. Death is never an end it’s just the beginning of another existence.

It’s What is Not Said

Life is rather elusive yet we live it as if we know all about. In its rather innumerable strangeness lies its beauty and the very reason for the invaluably of life. Life has certain unique ways its chose to be and it has rather solid reasons for it remains so. Who could have thought that what we prefer not to say is much more significant than what we spit out. I have heard people speak in volumes about the importance of saying at times and not saying at times, but what they carefully or carelessly neglect is the significance silence has in ones life as it is. May be that’s because silence is as unattainable as most of the good things in life, they never come easy.

In the many things that we prefer not to say for obvious reasons remains for obvious reasons the fundamental building block to solving our many a million problems. It sounds so obvious doesn’t it; keep your mouth shut and no more problems. It ought to be that simple yet we find it increasingly difficult to keep our mouth shut, don’t we. The truth and trick is to know when to keep it shut and when to shout aloud. The particular thing about life is that it is not whether we fight or not, fighting is fundamental to marriage as sex, to borrow the idea of Jon fighting is instantaneous, creative and deeply personal, in fact everything that sex ought to be. The trick is not to over do it, know when to stop and know what not to tell. Like any fair fights you win some you lose some, and isn’t the reason for the fight not to break up. It serves as a excellent opportunity to let out the steam and make you calm down.

Every fights is a potential treat, you could convince yourself that your fights are just that the normal average household is used to. But the unfortunate truth is there is no simple fight, in every fight lies the indomitable ability to develop into something formidable, something that could wreck your household. Every fight requires the active care of both persons involved to prevent it from developing into anything more than what it is now. A fight is always volatile and ever so tempting.

Every time you are presented with the option to win, but at what cost it comes is a matter of great concern. Would you want to say something sinister and unforgivable and win or would you want to bow out like a gentleman in the true sense of the word and preserve what you have. It often bothers me whether winning is worth it, why do one ever have to win to win a domestic fight, i ask myself Wouldn’t i be happier to just lose and have my family than celebrate my victory as someone else very dear to me lies shattered. Isn’t it her loss my loss and isn’t her victory just as mine as it is hers. Yet at every fight it seems just as different a story as it possibly can, the spontaneous and explosive creativeness and the intense emotional and personal involvement leaves but little room for a thoughtful fight. But one thing is certain before you say anything too much you are sure to choke and it sure is going to get caught in your throat, that’s when you ought to decide whether to say something you are sure to choke on, at the heat of the moment. Its always uptown you to decide and the question always remain.

To say or not to say.

The Little Big Things

Every journey is a new experience, no matter how often, no matter how short they tend to be. It’s not the journey that matters, not as much as the people we get to meet and life we get to experience. Every dawn and every dusk brings along with it a hoard of experiences that are just waiting to be discovered. This is the story of just one of the many interesting people I got to meet in my numerous journeys that made me realise that life is not something sacred; it is what happens right in front of our eyes, everyday. Don’t for one second think that I am an adept traveller, the sad truth is that I started travelling out of necessity and though I prefer the familiar comforts of my writing desk it has given me a chance to experience life as it is, raw and unadulterated.

It must be in one of those dreary Friday evenings that keep coming up every week, offering a strange intoxicating mix of anticipation, relief and happiness that this happened. I was supposedly going home after a week’s hectic schedule and it was literally killing me that I had to wait further for it to happen. I have had a practise of going with a couple of really goods friends; we have been travelling home together since we were travelling home at all. But today they had to pack and they were late, late enough to let me fend on my own. The necessities of the travel insisted that I find a suitable mode of transportation, an autorikshaw ( for those of you unfamiliar with the word, it is a three wheeled public transport vehicle in black and yellow or either, refer any Bollywood flick to know more . It’s easy to spot and hard to forget, for us it’s just a way of life like taxi is to New Yorkers.) is what I had in mind. It was not hard to find one, certainly not on a Friday.

Okay! That matters too!

Soon I landed a certain driver who was more than just willing to take us to the railway station that we needed to get, but since my friends were still packing I had to wait for them to come. Poor chap readily agreed to wait along with me; I must say he was a jolly good fellow to spend time with. Now just for the record I had to wait a good 45 minutes for my friends to come and hence being late for all the right trains. But then again that gave me this rather valuable lesson in life.

The little ones knows much more about little things than us!

The long wait let us on the streets with nothing much top do but talk, though a practical lover of silence I would always like some company at times. He insisted on talking as he would occasionally blurt out some random question or the other (like does every one speak English in the campus) and so and so. I did take a liking to him. Things didn’t get any interesting till a friend of his dropped by and they got talking. The truth is I never intended to eavesdrop on those guys as I was happily trotting away in my own imaginary world. The startling reminiscence of innocence in their routine chat drew my attention to them and their conversations. He was talking about his luck and I was instantly interested in knowing what lady luck has bestowed upon him, the truth was it was me, rather us. I realised then how much it meant for them to have the weekly trips that we made, our travels were more essential to them than it were ever to them.

In their casual conversation lied an unmistakable scent of innocence that is otherwise unseen and unheard of today. He was talking about how lucky he was to have gotten customers that day and how he and friends were celebrating in their free time yesterday and so and so. Its not what they talked that made it important, its how is said it, how with a smile and a attitude to match he made it seem that the very basic things in life were something else entirely. Its how his words and the sentences they formed transcended what would have been just a ordinary life into a story worth talking about, a life worthy of mention. In the simplest sense he taught me how life is in every little thing we do. And what I learnt sitting under the bright evening sun on a concrete sidewall by a rather crowded piece of asphalt.

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