AN ODD ODE

AN ODD ODE...

“Just pull the lever”, that’s all I do,

My work is no science, none like done by special few…

What follows is the death of a legal offender…that is what the judiciary says

I witness, or better still, I cause their demise each day,

I am the death executioner, the HANGMAN of the country prison

I am liable to no dreams, got no promotions to envision!!

Every day, a new wrongdoer stands next to me, hands tied behind,

To the black blindfold and garland of noose, his fate resigned…

I never heard a word from them before,

But today he said, “Regret has no cure”             

Still, the support to his feet solely holds his living corpse,

Hence I pull the lever, and his neck warps,

A surge of sin baffles me each time...

I pity how dearth for food, has made me accomplices in crime

Every day trotting my way back, late, after another addition to the death list…

I see this lady recite a story to her little one, Jaon, about, “Bad men exist”,

She would move to and fro on the porch, enjoying the rapt attention the kid gave…

She would say, not following the deity, sends you early to the grave..

Both would then fold hands , look up high..

She would state, “Joan,close your eyes,

Bless us god and also the sinners,

For they don’t know, the wrong they do,

Also bless those who doubt you”

In respite, with their words, I would close my eyes along..

For a sinner like me, everyday, at least, someone hums a song…

I have never said this before,but today, I say it to you,

To Joan and her mom, “thankyou"

'The Fiction Web'

“THE FICTION WEB”

None of us have missed the chance of entering an old store in our house, a sure site is the spider web at all corners of the small ceiling. It is attached perhaps so slightly to the 4 corners, yet suspended. Probably that’s how I will define FICTION. Though ‘ONE with corners of reality’ yet suspended…in touch with only the senses of reality but away from the architecture or the people that  reality inhabits …it’s indeed a free surge of the mind's eye.

If I try defining fiction, I ask myself –is it an escape from catastrophe that we see around…or is it a fresh food of thought to the mind…or a window to another world when the door of our life is tarnished with monotony.

If I factually put it in your plate ,I would say –it is a colossal of alternative timelines ,or an aisle of fictitious characters..where  just the  “what if” is erased from the beginning of the contour …and everything is given a form acceptable to the perceivable portion of the brain…its nothing more than befooling the mind willingly ..

Let’s just skip the “WHY FICTION” for some time...WHYs are dreary, WHATs are fascinating. What has always engrossed me is the KIDDISH FICTION- Dragon ball z has been one of my personal favorites. it’s like you know it’s not true but you clinch your fist when the fictitious character faces a jeopardy, u smile along as he somehow manages a secret  ‘get-through’ by churning  the  mountain, he walks over the deep river as if they were shallow enough for survival,  he applies brain, power and wit at exactly the right split second. And hold on, you are so influenced that scribbling a requiem for the HERO won’t take you long because you are so into him…That’s exactly where the whole amusement lies concealed… here Fiction is delight. And hat’s off to the creators of such delight. It requires unchaining yourself from the shackles of existent picture and think of an ‘off the track’ bizarre setting.

As I climb up another step on this ladder and unbolt the door to the domain of “SCI FI”I see it as a multi dimensional form of fiction which has reason to every ‘why’ that strikes the reader while going through it…it is probably a fiction of sequential logical where an idea is worked upon very sharply by the creator to immeasurable depths. INCEPTION stands out as a glorious paradigm .Although we generally believe that fiction is a \ free surge of thought and truth is sans-climax, sans-surprises but you know what is eccentric … science fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, it is hard to step out of the realm you have created in your setting...truth isn’t like that...what reality offers is sometimes extraordinary ‘than’ the limited context of possibilities fiction has to offer. But I guess the problem is ,not often but rarely the truth is surprising, so we created fiction with lots of valley and peak points to fill in the voids of climax that our mind yearns for.

Fiction isn’t always a new world or, to say, a new wholesome of characters…perhaps it’s sometimes just a suiting modification to the realistic life, sometimes presented as serendipity and sometimes as an elixir  pumped into the monotonous life, sometimes a story of love unexpressed, bottled into a corner of heart make its way- through as fiction ,sometimes the lifelong regrets...which when penned…flare into desires…or sometimes just a concrete of “life u aspired” flares up fictitiously as the “life u lived” … penning all that down, at times, is oddly comforting. The arena of fiction is just one of the clues to the extent of human psyche…fiction is a constructive tool that helps us create the unfeasible.

As I arrive to the closing stages of this piece, I wish, I could  just wink at THEE…and let this be a ‘GET SET GO’ to my world of fiction  …wish I could endlessly switch at will…but something tells me, if fiction is strange, “truth is stranger”….who knows when the ‘wink trick’ actually  starts to work out..!!, until then, I  have my fingers crossed…J

                                                                                                                                                                    

heart of hearing.wmv

I always wanted my poems to be accompanied with pictures...so that if something lays unexpressed by words,let the picture adorn its meaning...:)
this video is exactly what i wanted..based on one of my favourite  poems "JIGSAW"
hope u like it..:)

SPHERE

                       "MY  SPHERE"
sometimes the image formed in the mind ain't the replica of what the eyes see..MIND is an excellent tracker of events.'THE LATEST' is updated as soon as it happens.Not just this,it is an expert at analogy...diving from one strand of thought to the next bunch.As a paradigm-You glance at a familiar tree,say,and you go down the memory lane of your school days which had such trees in the vicinity...and all this happens in a snap..you don't even realize the invisible wall between the two time zones..the analogy is so  quick and so 'by itself'...it impeccably picks up the right link from the bunch of thought clouds floating around...ALL this is tracked out so beautifully from the reach of the conscious...the conscious will be left boggled by this natural process,turning it rhetoric..some things are better when hidden from the conscious.If this whole process happens naturally and is n't manouvered,it surprisingly opens logical answers to some of the most wondered questions..what follows this,is a brief of what happened when i tried tracking the analogy of mind-
As i scribble this note in my re-read drafts,i am sitting in a bus to one of the beautiful cities of punjab.After a logjam of vehicles at every crossing and our bus being an un-escapable prey to it..luckily(i say luckily beacuse there is a different pleasure in hearing the beats of music after the thump of blarring horns..,my mind likes sudden contrasts..).the snaked road takes us to yards of greenery..it is 5 p.m  and per chance i sit to the west to witness the sunset which of course is 'no new view' but somehow triggers the answers to my well laid questions..
i begin with admirining the innate delight of the lush green view,,then i slowly look ahead to the yellow maze visibly merely as dots from such a stretch,then to the shrunk cloud of smoke from the brick furnace,then to the hazy sheet of smoke and fog which covers the trees and i merely see them as dwarf saplings,ofcourse the towers and the sagging wires came into the scene too but i ignore them..i realize that if i am the centre, i can only see the sphere of radius "from me till the dwarfed tree.."and each moment this sphere changes as i move..it influences me,my decisions..the size of the sphere makes me feel that my space is limited..so should be my dreams and wants..but the fact that the sphere is rolling increses my stage...my audience and my resources.
 in simpler words,i somehow like this 'sphere view comfort' that emboldens me sometimes to just have a peaceful sleep with the knowledge that the sphere isn't that big and i can sure make my mark in this one sphere of the big world..
As i toss the coin to see the other side.."the rolling sphere view"..i let my joined eye lashes seaprate out as i bring myself out from the comforting sleep to see the world again..apparently the view around is just the same when i wake up ,but i see the sphere is moving and it requires sincerity and toil to get through..the two phenomenas work so perfectly givign space to each other when required by the conscious..if the stagnant sphere brings in perseverance ,the rolling sphere brings in passion..the unconscious selects the phenomena and the conscious needs to juice out only 'the moral' and move through both and get going through each..as a snail or a tiger..that choice i leave to the conscious..
This was the answer to one of my wondered questions...
THE MIND PERFORMS ANALOGY WITHIN A SNAP...
HE is indeed a perfect engineer of the human mind...:)

SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT

You walk amidst of a thousand people…many seemingly alike…and u feel the desire to be seen…of course a little strange sounding…a little off the record thing but you feel privileged when an imaginary circular spotlight follows you  when you walk across the stage …

We like being heard don’t we..if not by many but of course by few…wait a minute…let me not talk about you today…

Let me talk about me. I like being known…but my definition of being know is based on parameters different from yours and by this statement I am not underlying your parameters in any senses…no offences but I am proud of my yard stick…:P

I love being appreciated..but excess of sugar spoils the essence of saccharine…a little less sugar is weirdly a great pleasure …probably because you get an idea of how much was exactly missing in the tea…kind of a step towards exactness...but it’s hard to trick this ambitious heart of praise…if you add a pinch more …the taste of the exact amount that was existing, goes off…vanishes…

Anyways the word ‘praise’ is something which has records of taking me off the runway…

I come back rite now..!!!

Where were we…”spotlight” .sometimes I  question is it this greed for being known makes me do what all I do…

Is it the expectation from people around…the fun element…?

Or is it just because you have thought of it all life…or is it about proving yourself that “I got what I wanted”  Seems too short a statement but I guess this stands a close chance to being at the top most of my list titled ‘what drives me’,  or its about the mere passion to work hard for something I don’t know yet…

What is the driving force…I am pondering a little deeper coz I wish to know what drives me…what holds the key to power/energy  in me… “The source” this discussion will lead me to might be too shallow to accept but I guess that’s how sources are…eureka moments strike you when you are sitting all alone…and the best description of the place that suits this discussion is “bathroom…”I am not being sarcastic…I strongly believe…!!!

In fact the sources of greatest discoveries have popped in the simplest of the moments…sometimes under the shadow of tree…Newton.. the lock key that holds all closets safe has its source in merely two awkward shapes fitting into each other…so this is all what motivated me to find the source of “what drives  me”

… you know I started this article with a different perception about the conclusion…the title gives enough of hint about the dilemma I am in…but not many times, but I have been bestowed with enough chances to realize that spotlight is mortal…if not many examples with ‘me’ being the victim of the spotlight disease but I have seen it vanishing with time for many people…sometimes I wonder  how does it still make me work really hard sometimes…I LOVE WORKING HARD…there’s an innate delight in it..

 we know that time is inescapable..it keeps moving… but then something must be stationary with respect to what it is moving…isn’t it…

May be that something is the desire…the charm of the desire..that’s what holds us to this attire of ‘life’…

A crave for achievement…stationary as stone..winds, water influence it…it withers…its shines but stays…,in different forms.

And it escapes with the last breath…the craving of desire is instilled in all…toil polishes it to present success…

I AM READY TO WORK FOR THIS MERE DESIRE…

Yes…and a thousand times over…

Grey

           GREY

Are right and wrong as demarcated as black and white....

Black doesn’t necessarily indicate that white wasn’t there but leaves us with a doubt that may be black overpowered the stain of white...

But the irony is the mark of black is harder to get off than the stain of white.....

What is right...?

Is it what ought to have happened if things aren’t going as planned

Or

 Whatever is in the RIGHT NOW...?

As a kid, right was white and black was wrong...simple clear and unblemished perception ruled our minds...

But as I have grown and somehow crossed a year more on 4th September...I have realized may be that's not how it is...

May be what ought to be done is right but what if you don't wish to do it...

Does that make you wrong...?

I don’t think so...AT ALL...this is the new entry of grey in the tennis court of right and wrong...

A strike and you fall onto the portion of land outside the demarcated area...

u stand their witnessing the future match that may happen on the basis of what area the ball of thought drops in NOW..They say...life is all about decisions you make...

"They MAKE or BREAK you"...and believe me this clause makes the decision making process even more strenuous...but i guess that’s life...

Everyone comes across this phase of deciding...

From things, friends, new people, the road taken and the road not taken...DECIDE...what if all went wrong...

Give yourself a chance...

JIGSAW

JIGSAW….

As my one and a half year old granddaughter, Joan, goes off to sleep giving me a recreational break ,I wish to recast  as I flip through the life book ,I unseal  something from my gone 6 decades….

“Every moment we weave …

And may be now, I do believe-

That there is a story behind how a picture got on the wall…

Also a story behind how engraved name of two people still stays on the table of tea stall…

Probably also behind why you chose ‘that’ over ‘this’…

There exists a narrative in the backseat of “the moment I felt HIS bliss”…

A tale behind every scar on your face…

An unexpected anecdote behind when you told your parents…”please, I need my space”…

A tale behind the tear the little ‘u’ dropped sitting marooned in your fancy dress…and….

And probably a story behind an abrupt smile amidst of extreme mess…

A story behind “a look back” at someone…

A story behind “I won’t look back”…

A story behind a persistent gaze at yourself in the mirror…

A story behind every performance…

Perhaps a story behind what made you applaud…

A series of events in the shadow of your notion “spotlight is immortal”

And again a string of events at the back of breaching this perception…

Perhaps...

A story behind what made you thank, what made you pray…

A story behind what made you hide, what made you say…

A subconscious story behind your  each trance … 

A story behind a ‘lonely walk’ on a lonely road…

A story behind each stoke of fury…

“And of course a story behind love….”

Each story…

Of gloom or glory…

Though narrated alone…

Complements another tale…

 Dusk is incomplete without dawn…

Dusk fits after dawn…

Sun fits into dawn…

The tale of birds fits into the story of branch…

That of branch into the story of petal…

There exists a bond between all…

Strangely also between, ‘angel’ and ‘the demon fall’

This is HIS jigsaw puzzle..

I complete people’s tale and so do they complete mine…

It’s like water to wine…

Like sun to planets nine…

Like Flame to fire…

Like Rhythm to the ‘pull’ in the piano wire

And thus HE assembles each piece…

A tale of one fits into tale of else …

Like the sound of chime in the resounding hollow bells…

And I silently applaud at HIM being a marvelous player of this game…

As I stand up to clap , my adorable Joan, mimicking me does the same…

And says “dada..u clap,I clap…”

And that’s how she comes out enthusiastically from her nap…!!!

That marked the end of my leisure break …

Perhaps there’s a story behind ‘this story’ for sake ….!!!”