Being Elvira

 November 5, my first day as Elvira-the name itself seemed like a tongue twister at first, the tongue rolls itself to sound it right. Anyways, the first day of practice and I am given a thorough read through of my part. The writer in me had already started appreciating sudden gushes of comedy and the unexpected climaxes but then my director (another lead in the cast) brought me back. I came back from the practice at around 10 and not being habitual to this phase for a year or so, recollecting all the energy to chit chat and explain the day to my favorite buddies was a little tiresome, but as many of you know me, well, it took me just a day to get into the soak. And the cycle repeated everyday with the most eye awakening promise every evening, “we meet tomorrow morning at 6”. On my way back, I would promise myself of sleeping on time but then they all, my buddies, had some chit chat and could not afford to miss it :P. We have covered variety of time zones from 6.01 to 6.10, be it 6.01 or 6.10 , Mr. Director was always there!! It is easy to talk about being passionate about something, but it takes immense strength and devotion to bring it out. Rightly said-You are what you do, not what you say. I have made great friends, people I surely knew, but just knew, never worked with. People who were perfectionists, each of them, none would settle for less than what their character is expected to do, every delicacy taken care of. My character wasn’t much of me. Surely way more interesting than I am. She had mixed air of being childish, being bold, being naughty, being clever, being a cliché deceiver and yet a hard core ‘wanting’ lover. The most beautiful part about theatre is you get to play something you are not, but I tell you a secret right now, that too is the most difficult part, You have to trim the layer of ’I’ and be someone else. Someone you are in some hidden corners of yourself but there is a silent promise with the self to keep that in. Sometimes being someone you never will be. Sometimes being what you hate the most. And all that indeed is the beauty of it ( I have felt the transition from ‘I and the character as two separate beings’ to ‘how will the character react to a situation and giving an expression’ to ‘being soaked into the soul of character, so much that you forget who you are… And the stage has that magic!! the magic of being what you are not ! Theatre is farce. This farce is exuberance when you live it on stage. This is tragedy when you fall short of an applause, and for an actor, this indeed is life !! As ‘the’ day-november 17 drew near, the fact that I still stand yards away from the glide and flowy nature of the character was disturbing me. Much came inbetween, My NMAT exam, but for very few things you feel like giving your heart and soul to them, this is one of them... I utilized the journey to get thorough with my dialogues. The lady sitting next to me in the bus was wondering why I looked up and murmur something after going through a page! Well, you can’t explain everything, can you: D? Still something was missing, and hence anger burst into tears, I knew it does not matter that if  I don’t do well, nothing will change, but their was a spark to do it as my director wished it to be ! But somehow the magic wasn’t happening. Tears have no reasons, no explainable reasons. I told my friends in the play my fear, the fear of –what if he magic doesn’t happen on the final day and well their answer was-‘it’s a play’! Play with it  :) and probably that was the day something unaccountable changed! It’s been my pleasure to work with people who love theatre even more than I do ! Yes, Theatre is a farce but the joy is real! So purely real!

I AM..

I enjoy the daily doses of humdrum

tangled in the bubble of everydays odd jobs

 But I lend an extra glance to a heart felt knock

I dig a layer deeper to that stumbling block

I am one among you,

I am –

a poet

A blank paper to my wor(d)ship, is no less than a dock.

Thoughts besiege me like needles of a clock.

All Apart yet miraculously making sense..

 Never should they make a deceiving pretense.

No it is not just words, no show, no flair

 But a version of glee and moments of despair

I am one among you,

I am-

A poet…

Quill and pinned thoughts

I am impulsively in the rush of connecting those disjoint dots,

Sometimes words of savage

 and at times sugared with elegance..

I am on my voyage to an un-attempted excellence

My destinations could be as hollow as anger,

and as deep as a cave..

 only my heart’s slave,

I am-

A poet

unlike Music which  is created

When sounds sleep,

And echoes walk in a trance...

Poetry is made,

Out of  an emotional impulse,

Reflected with a deeper glance..

I am ,one among you,

I am-

A poet.

To you, I am foolish,

May be A little off the track,

i don’t carry your burdens,

the burdens of your shame on my back,

I was-

I am-

A poet…

NO LIGHTS-NO CAMERA-ONLY ACTION.

 

“Squeeze your life to a 10 second dimension, what clicked you in the snap of the moment?”

Skip this question, depicts nothing but a dramatized version of life!

I see 3 kinds of people, one set of people who inspire the writer for a  protagonist like them , another set who pens that down  and the third set who reads it.(assuming that everyone at least reads, even  VOGUE Magazine would do, don’t worry! ) And yes they interchange positions; those who pen it down sometimes become protagonist to others and real protagonists become autobiographers.

None of the three intended being what they are, it just happened.Sometimes by will,sometimes in search for a diversion from the normal humdrum of life.

Real idol never knew he would trigger hearts and pens to express. He never did anything for being taken into notice. Life is not a motion picture where someone’s sacrifice is captured through a rolling tape and then shown with just the apt back ground score. Snap out of it. Come back to reality, for instance-if you really want to do something for someone do it and forget it, else think twice before you call it a sacrifice the next time. . I guess living is not a challenge lest it does not include the most trivial of the things which you have to do, things which might never come in notice. In fact should not come into notice..it tampers their essence .

Coming back to the REEL again, In Just 3 hours, ‘ the boy turned young, followed his heart, found the girl  down subway, and of course with magnified tribulations, married her  and I bet you never missed the last scene, when he sits by the bonfire on his easy chair under the grand smokestack, and the camera stops at his unblinking eyes.’ I am telling you a secret right here, no one will do this for you. No back ground music, no slow motions, nothing. It will end and the world won’t even care. If you were a good man, your eulogy would be true; else they will just make up something. Not a big deal.  

Whatever happens before the ‘unblinking eyes’ is what is going to matter. Be hated if that is a bonus to saying truth. Although what the herd says about you matters, we are a social being.  But how many opinions will you consider!! People will have subjective opinions. Myriad of them. Thus, myriads of beliefs.  And to make matters worse, when it is you as the protagonist in the ‘TUG of War’, it miraculously narrows down to only two basic beliefs, YOU in one sink of the weighing balance, and the ‘whole world’ in the other. You go by weights/beliefs/ the power of conviction somehow the obvious one weighs over. But then there is a way out, you lose this game only if you allow the herd to sit in the other basin of the balance. Decide things by yourself. Regret decisions, but decide. Fall hard, but decide. Life is real, unlike “3 hours-come-watch-go”. I Wish movies could make one more declaration like the rear view mirrors, “Events in real life are slower than they appear here, any resemblance to the pace of events is purely fictitious.”.This declaration might just strike a boy before attempting suicide when he failed ‘once' in a competitive test.

In the real stage ,for every life breathing this moment, the end is unknown and so should it be. Roads are as important as destinations. Destinations are impassive like the dead skin on the wound. They gain significance either when the wound heels or when it hurts as you rip off the dead skin. Making of successes, also failures has all the fun if you ask me. You can choose the brightest star in the sky only when you have many of them to choose from. A ‘real life’ will have a proportionate mixture of all lusters. Don’t hate yourself for a few dim stars. “ITS PERFECTLY OKAY”. IN real life,triumph does not happen in a snap, neither does failure. It’s always been gradual like the tortoise, but unlike that story, we don’t know if we are the same tortoise who won in the end, or are we some another mislaid tortoise which was slow and whose story never made its mark into the children story books. You could be any, perhaps may be the winning tortoise thought just the same!!

Through all this, I don’t intend you to stop dreaming. But a caged mind, with deadlines of achievement wanting to achieve what the world  wants him to, at a break neck pace is an illusion,and if possible then futile.simply- Carve out YOUR dream and work for it!

THE BACKSTAGE OF ‘WAR’

Swords had clashed,

Lives into few breaths had dashed,

True the conquerors on their part,

Justified their winnings and had achieved their darts…

But who goes to the silent lanes,

Where BLOODY BODIES lie of those who died of excruciating pain

Even a valiant, a gallant does have emotions at core,

More than a safe country, he does not ask for more,

But is every soldier meant to be a martyr,

Is war a necessary death bed to be bear..

The RED sea had, and always will reflect man and his insane ethics,

To man, his anger is his biggest jinx,

We don’t witness the presence of god,

But still we pray.

Though blue skies have turned grey,

But every cloud has a a silver line,

I am wishing for that glimmer to shine,

Else, the conqueror’s throne and peace shall only exist..

WHEN LIVES CEASE TO EXIST. 

 (I wrote this one in standard 9)

IF I HAD ONLY KNOWN......

If I had only known that thoughts prior to the first meeting before wedding could be so awry ,I would have resolute to die single .Dressed in my velvet red robe, I looked out from window which creaked with the gush of air following the rare April showers. Rolling my eyes off from nature’s surprise, I looked at the grand wall of clock for the third time within a single round of the second hand, and terrible it might sound, I still had no idea to what time it was. I oscillated in unreasonable panic in front of the dressing mirror. I reached out to the window again, that was when my eyes landed at a cart forthcoming my aisle, silencing my thrill. Each knock of the horse feet to the ground, raised my heart beat. The cart hence paused. Stealthily, I saw his vague movement in the shadows and a voice sway along the beats of my favorite romantic rhyme, “I hope you find in me, the trust I found in you, the skies sure will be grey and blue, but I hope u find in me, the trust I found in you”. He stepped out, smiled to the mother queen as she welcomed him in. In seconds of this meager encounter, I had fallen in love with his shadow, his husky yet heartfelt voice. Within a snap, I smashed open the door to have his glimpse as he came in. I rushed through the flight of steps, but only to fall midway, tossed over like a coin’s head turned to tail. This thump of fall brought me back to reality, out from the dream I was in. I found myself at my hostel bed, with the cell phone alarm snoozing, I instantaneously silenced it, to fall back into the vapid dream, but alas…  If I had only known, that dreams could halt midway like this one, I would have indeed taken a sleeping pill. Leaving the movie at its climax is the worst the audience could do to itself. Perhaps, I had been a victim to this..!!

THE CYNIC AND THE EDGE

THE CYNIC AND THE EDGE

In the silence of falling snow,

In the silent beat of river flow,

I heard a cry,

A farther plea,

From the selfish ‘I’ to the hiding ‘WE’

“Don’t believe”, was all I heard,

Just then the mynah perched,

The conversation hence lost in the mounts,

The inquisitive I, thrown into doubts,

My team of trekkers paced slow,

Appreciating the rarity of the snow show…

We dug our sticks hard into the soft white crust..

I rushed , the kid in me, wished to be the FIRST ,

As I stepped forward, trekking towards the peak,

A globule of soft snow just skipped my feet..

I stood there suspended at the edge…

Supported by a mere wedge,

A glance below, and death seemed at bay,

And rescue seemed miles away,

For I knew, none shall help endangering their own being,

Even the mynah can’t fly lifting the baby bird on it’s wing,

As my sliding hand just gave away from the snowy wedge,

A fellow trekker tried pulling me on the edge,

But within seconds, now both of us hanged toppled around

As mere wind whooshes would have seemed our pitched cry sounds

But still a shrill of noise seemed a ‘knock for help’ to one more man ,

That’s when I realized unlike me, no one is a cynic in my clan !!

He managed to lift both of us off the steep terrain,

I heard the mynah again,

Still I heard a farther cry, a still farther plea,

But this time from the HELPLESS ‘I’ to the FEARLESS ‘WE’

“believe” was all I heard,

And again, the mynah perched…

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"