True to his name

He came into her life unannounced. She took him in as one would let a stranger in on a stormy night for shelter. For a brief moments only silence spoke. Names were not exchanged verbally. He whispered it into the warm air of the room. Giving him something warm to wear they sat by the fire. When his eyes were set on her , she looked away. When her eyes caught his being, he was fixated on the fire. Oblivious to the happenings of the world outside, what transpired between them happened too soon, or so it seemed now. Every night he was lost in the woods, he would some how end up at the door of her house.

| Fast forward to Now |

I have skipped the good times, the convenient times, the conditional times, the pleasant times, the unpredictable times. She knows why. He knows why.
It seemed like he was a messenger of the storm itself. He brought it in with as much ease as he came into her house. Causing turbulence with his erratic, erroneous, eccentric and eclipsed behavior. Where would she go now?

She sat. Sat and thought to herself about what was becoming of her. It seemed like aeons of time had swept her away and the only thing she could feel was him. He had set ablaze a fire in the forest of her life and left.
He came back only to make sure she was still burning. Her infinite being would take infinity to burn.

True to his name. He came, he saw , he conquered, he etched and his remains still remains.

To No One

Sitting Alone
In the dead of tonight
My bones they give way
My blood it boils
My breath fastens
My flesh burns

These shooters of anxiety and pain
Don't leave me,
They are not You.
Unfathomable is this holocaust
Unforgiven Me
Unsane I grasp for breath
Unseen I float
Unfelt I linger
Unknown I Am.

To- No One

Sun Rise. . .

The night was turbulent due to an inner upheaval of emotions and confusions which led to an unannounced storm. Flashbacks of sleepless nights, eyes red with the fury of happenings around, throat dry after an ordeal of howls and the head clouded with mists of pain which were waiting to burst out as tears and flood my being. The feeling of helplessness kept knock knocking on my door. Waiting to be let in, it wanted to take over me. I peeped through the key hole and realized this time it had not come alone. Doubt and confusion at their best had accompanied. In retrospect letting them in seemed easier. Much much easier. Why? Because the state of despair I was used to these friends. It was almost as if they knew they would be welcomed with arms wide open. But something just let me stop. I turned my back after running to the door and started to walk inward. In ward into my home, inward to where I thought I did belong. They were screaming at me. They were begging to let them in as the storm was not only inside my home but outside too. They wanted solace. They wanted a part of me. I was their only means to survival.
Something just told me not to give in. Something just told me not to give up. . .


Awake all night , I welcomed the rising sun with tired eyes and parched lips. Quenching my thirst with some water I decided to finally open the door. With a little apprehension and much fear, I opened the door. The silence I was looking for was marred by the cock-a-doodle-doo's. I put on my socks ( different one on each foot) and shoes and left with music playing inside my ears. As I walked and walked, I saw a woman of around 65 stare at me. She smiled and I smiled back. The music so loud did not let me hear what she greeted me with, but I took my headphones off to ask. She spoke of how when she was my age she could also walk so brisk like me. She said her legs do not allow her to walk too much now. I continued by walk. As I kept passing her by, she kept speaking a little to me. She spoke of the importance of yoga and how I should try it out along with walking. I learnt a lesson from her. I could imagine myself her age, some time in the future. I realized the importance of the time in hand now. As cliche as this may sound, I really do feel like there is so much to learn and do and grow with at this point in my life. As the music went on in my ears and the tempo increased, the speed of my feet increased and my thoughts started to reduce. I started to feel like I was floating.


I am home now and while I write this, I still worry. Worry where my friends who have always been my companions at times of hardship have gone. This sun rise is special. This sun rise marks a new beginning to an end I hope I muster enough courage to bid adieu to...

Know me. . .

I thought of starting this with an accusatory tone to show you how you know nothing of me. Nothing of who I was, who I am and who I am becoming, and who I am not. But it suddenly hit me that the reason you may not know is because I did not let you know because I did not show because maybe I do not know? I don't know if these are facade's or if they are an aberration from the reality that I have painted in the colors black and white to you. Cleverly forgetting to show you that all i am is what you will get when you mix the two.
That is where I have grown into residing. I have known myself in the Unknown. With a mind so powerful that my own being cannot stand what it is radiating anymore, it burns. Why am i so unconceivable to myself? Why have I started to know me through you? Through your presence. Through your absence. Through the blind spot that I am waiting at in your life.

Again, I have started to accuse you. Again. I do not know who to blame for what I have become. A disintegration of a Being. Scattered and existing in pieces. Bit by bit I crumble everyday, forgetting how I used to be or looked. Why are you with me? What have you seen that is still keeping you here? What have you felt? How do you even know I exist , because I fail to know anymore.

Cajoling me you came through as some piece of mystery I thought would add the fuel to living that I always seek for.Playing with these bonds so beautiful. Tying me down, tying us down.

You carve from your own self a figure of me that fits into your mind's embrace...

Do you know the storms within me that change the course of who I am with every time they arrive?

I have been so comfortable in this space of Ignorance but now it is talking to me. Calling out to me to know of it. I know now but I do not know how. . .how to handle this or how to be faithful to myself and to who you think i am. . .

Without adding to the chaos, I just hope some day you Know. Know it all.

Where We live is a dimly lit house with only walls and no door, giving no way to reach out to our mortal mind.

That my whole world is but the lonely Ray of the sun. Seeking solace in the moons shadows.

Lighthouse

Strife, difference of opinion, prejudices that thrive between us on parallel lines, walls of stone and creepers with pointed thorns so sharp they could make you bleed. Find me a place they don’t exist. Find me some interaction they don’t cast their shadows on. I cannot help but laugh at them sometimes. The divide in cause in our existence is etched, as it could never be undone. Insoluble questions come jaunting into my mind. They crash as waves in a high tide sometimes. Sometime they come as a stroke with a gentle touch. Even though I emit Light, there is certain darkness inside my depths that only I know of. I ruminate out aloud. That is all I can do? Running the dull errands of everyday living, there is still somehow enough time for these type of thoughts to come pay visit. I sometimes wonder if brilliance comes with being fundamentally unsound. There must be a simpler way, some far from laborious way through this all. I stand tall. I feel the birds perch on my deck, I know they wonder of who gives me the much required companionship when all is dark and all is silent. This ocean with me is the only teacher I really have. Well, you must ask if she considers me a disciple but I’d rather you don’t. I sometimes wonder if the ocean is in me or I am in the ocean . . .

(To be contd.)

When we become One...

When we become One...

Dedicated to Kisses.

Our souls climb into comfortable planes

The breadths at which they merge can be our home.

Venus came to quench her thirst

And drank from our pure depths.

Immutable in rhythm and joy

We drift in ecstasy.

As I see into you and you see into me

Our Eyes reflect.

Reflect a happiness of whispered truths.

24th of August 2011

Awaken: From a sister to another

Today I will resist Temptation.
The Temptation to quote.
The Temptation to reproduce.
The Temptation to borrow.

Because today I will give you the stark naked truth of our lives that I have been meaning to let you into for a little lazy time now. . .

It is an epiphany... that struck me... Not as a bold lightning , not as an electric current passing through the existence of the helpless , not as the iron of a blacksmith will strike , not as a sword will at the hour of surrender....
This has struck me as an accumulation of droplets turned into an ocean over the years and finally washing my ignorance away with waves of truth. . .
My life - in retrospect has been a prolonged cold spell where warmth was a much coaxed visitor. I have come to realize that I was being  unaware to what was behind the curtain, on the outside of the tall glass windows.
The awry room of my lifehouse seems more real and coming to life as I write this. I can hear voices. Voices that amplify and turn into sounds which neither feel good nor bad. This neutral state was a veil. A veil concealing Chaos. When I was present in the room , I was comfortable with it's arrangement. As I stepped out and got back, things seemed different .Chaos. As if it were a room of a doll house and the hand of the child had slowly inserted itself thru the ceiling and knocked everything down either in sheer ill temper or by the impulse of her mother's repeated shouting of her name signalling to retire to bed and call it a night.

I continued . Continued to let this chaos remain , to such an extent that I no longer thought it odd.
Comfortably numb.

As seasons came and went by and revisted , occasionally I would hear knocks on the window. Oh! Before you wonder why not the door.... there was no door.
I never felt the need for one....so , the window...soon the attempts from the other side to reach me , faded away as a voice of chaos in the background. . .
There I was .

What seemed like just another day turned out to be different.
A strong feeling came upon me . Without any effort I was drawn toward the window. I was led and was being taken, was finally shown. . .

The memory of this journey is what has dawned on me today.
The journey from my bed to the wondow . The window that opened into . . .
I was changing .

 The restlessness, thirst and hunger that had been with me all my life, that had unmistably danced through my being........My rage of protest (against what and who?)  was crumbling.....
What happened next , was You .

Written in the book named " Memoirs " by Lakshmi Raman
A dedication to her , for being my Angel in Silence

Love you Laku.

Storms

Churning
Winds of change
Raging
Sweep through life's range.

Touching
Waves of her existence
Gently
But with a firm persistence.

Brewing
with a  fervor
Violent yet Alive
reincarnating Her.

Desire,
Its Glory
unsatisfied
writing her story.

Lucent,
her Spirit
flickering in the storm
with might and grit.

Sentience,
Waging
A war with the Mind
that is Losing.

Clambering
she does resurface
in a state of Being and not Being
floating in a steady pace.

Musing
with Eyes,
Fixated on the Light
hidden in grey skies.

Realizing
the Timelessness
of Storms
Sinking in. . . Awareness

Mr.Tambourine Man

This is inspired by a soul two of my friends and myself met at a beach in Pondicherry on a night that was spent having inspiring conversations. I believe, us meeting this soul who we call Mr.Tambourine Man with much love, triggered the intense dialogue that continued through the night into the day. This is a tribute to him. Meeting him has reinforced my faith in the belief that the Divine, manifests in the littlest of things and even at most unexpected times to remind us that we are all united and woven together in this creation by the subtle yet powerful thread of love...

As we sat on rocks by an Ocean which carried with it memories of many a type: pleasant, not so pleasant, of sunny rains and fiery storms which swept our kind away, of old men sailing away to fill their stomachs, of lovers united, of pain thrown away into pieces of letters remembered to be forgotten, of hope that the new dawn may bring with it, of intoxication and its dirty remains and of unspoken dreams that many of us quietly whisper into the air which then touch the waves and take them to the horizon- with the hope that someday some force in the Universe will hear and make them come true...So we sat, and we spoke. Spoke of things I vaguely remember. What is still vivid as a colorful painting in my memory is the songs we started to sing. "Today is gonna be the day...I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now...and afterall, you're my Wonderwaaal" , " See the stone set in your eyes See the thorn twist in your side..I cant live...With or Without you..." Perfectly out of tune we still managed to smile much with a certain air of confidence. Was it the fervor that we carried in us? I don't know. Singing chants that lovers of Kṛṣṇa sing to woo him into their lives came out from us effortlessly. Bliss crept in unannounced. The only thing missing was an instrument we could play to give our songs a beat. It wasn't too long before he came along. With his messy hair and crooked teeth, he knocked at our souls floating like cannonballs on the shores. Our eyes met and with no words exchanged the tambourine came into my hands. Winds of glee swept upon us and we started to sway. Every time one of us sang, the rest would sing along to. Finally, it was his turn. In tamil I asked the tambourine man to sing a song I had loved since a kid. A tamil song which sounded like a lullaby- Kanne Kalaimaane. Playing the tambourine and with his eyes shut tight, he started to sing. The passion he sang the song with, still does something to me. He was part of us without effort, without reason and most of all without expectation. We were getting into a unified blanket of trance which kept as safe and warm together. Finally, when it was time for his to take leave, he put his tambourine out. Hesitant to give money because of being afraid of him spending it on alcohol like most people do, I asked him what he would do with it. He said he would eat his meal for the night and remember us while doing so. A friend with me said, he should think of the divine who made it possible not us. The Tambourine Man, then said" I have not seen god with my naked eyes. But I see him now through the three of you." 
With this, he took his tambourine and started to walk away. The three of us, just looked at each other. Not knowing what hit us, but feeling a divine presence amidst us, we could only smile with moist eyes. And then to celebrate this divine intervention we sang...




Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.
Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming. . .

My silent reverie...

Sitting in the dead of the night
I stumble
I fumble
I realize
The source of the light.

The light that has been a guide
in the dark
to find me
amidst the rubble
when in pain, I did hide.

Those arms
that have always been
that have always seen
that have hugged me unseen
Overlooked , have been his charms.

Pure unconditional solace
in the sun
in the rain
in the dead of solitary nights
Giving me strength to walk straight all those days.

The kiss.
Oh it took me knocking
on heavens door
and back with his soul tangled up in mine
Time after Time,we did kiss.

Miles apart
I sit
Tears flowing down
the eyes only he loves to kiss
He has taken over in some magical way, my heart.

You have been
You are
You will be
My guardian angel
My only truth, unseen...

She found me

Dedicated to the time Nay found me - Christmas eve, 2009
 
I saw her arrive
uncalled for
unexpected
as the rush comes
making me alive.

Cracked through my wall
behind which there hid
parched lips,
wings resting,
from a fall.

In silence
she came.
Her being
painting
a divine, presence.

I was
caught
in her radiation.
Basking
under a sun now brighter,
I was.

Wrapped
tight
her words
pervade
my senses
Time Stopped.

Undressing me
from piles of
sweaters
I felt chokingly
insulated in,
making me f r e e

Setting Fire
on my dreams
of a love
effortless,
getting us higher.

Nay,
would be it
if perfection
had a name.
She is the flame,making me her Ray...

Innocence

Innocence.
She was born in
a golden cradle, with love
that saw no circumference.

Unassuming,she did live
in a life with no fear
or pain,not even the foresight
that sins of her blood she would forgive.

Innocence.
Visuals of lies woven
into a piece of dark art
she saw with a microscopic lens.

Her name,she did not ask for it, she was no loon
true to her name she was, as natural as breathing
remained untouched even when the naked truth
stared her in the eye. Was it a bane or a boon?

Innocence.
She survived many long years
of treason and battles...armourless
with an invisible shield of faith, a divine presence.

At times of turmoil
a force unseen
but not unfelt,would be there to guide
to sift sands from soil.

Innocence.
Slowly started to lose touch
not only with the divine,but herself
She was an unknown,in her own presence.

Innocence.
Shattered one day like a window pane
during the turbulence of it all...
they called out her name in vain..Oh! Innocence!

Innocence.
No she has not succumbed, she is immortal
Faith who is long gone, will show up someday
Untouched but in pieces she waits, to be woven into her essence

An Angel's flight. . .

Walking down the road
less traveled
I found a trail.
Feathers from wings
of a being divine,
who hailed from a heavenly abode.

Those feathers spoke.
of souls it had given shelter
on stormy nights
and burning days
its strands began to crumble
and into my hands, a halo broke.

Stripped into nothingness
by the material world
she fought against natures forces.
And she gave herself away
to a dark alley, she was light
and to her the sinners eyes did confess.

To fly, was the cause for her creation
not solitary like birds do
but taking with her , souls in need
to heights unreachable
fighting her way through the skies
she gave them, liberation.

She shed her wings in this forest of fear
unable to escape the creatures of the night
Why do you cry now at the sight of these wings?
when you were blinded by its existence during your flight?
Your demons have not killed her will
it rained when she shed a tear.

Sans wings this angel took flight
Oh world, you have done some good alright
Her body here has turned to dust
But her soul is gold, itl never rust
To heights that are close to the Eternal's clasp
She flew away, tonight...

shades of summer

Summer sunshine
with parched lips
I follow her gaze
that will never be just mine.

Fiery red.
Burning desires
Evaporate,into an afterlife
they tread.

Delicious orange.
Sunset in her eyes
crumbling into our horizons ever moving
. . .a mélange

Sweet Lime.
When our lips meet
sealing a love
sublime.

Mellow yellow.
Subtle yet taking over
my senses
into her afterglow.

Summer moon.
dancing in the lunar light
to a different shade
in a summer love we swoon.

Crimson crystal. . .

Senses, shattered
like the ripples of the moonlight
on a violent river
Senseless, I remain on this cold night.


Beyond reason
we broke into crystals
scattered but alive
It is not love, its a change of season.

Everything tainted
reflecting crimson
not from hearts pure
Bleeding , the brushes of our soul painted

Losing the luxury
of chasing each others shadows
we turn a deeper shade of crimson
Existing, only in my endless reverie. . .

Where infinity is a vast experiment of the soul. . .

I awake,
Realizing.
Senses awaken,
Grasping.

I am
Immaterial.
I am
An Aerial.

I have
Nothing.
I am
Everything.


I can see
sans the eye.
Without a wing
I fly high.


Fathom
My mind.
Sharp as it is
You won't find.


They 
Disable.
They
Label.

Still
I Remain.
In a world
of Disdain.

They look
outward
Seeking pleasure.
I swim inward.

I am
Infinity.
Myriad
Energy

Unfound

Inspired by Mrs. Saldanha. A graceful young soul who is 84 years old. My interaction with her spoke much of how the elderly feel when their children leave them after all the years they have been looked after by their parents. 

We spoke for quite some time and she told me about her life there. Since she couldnt see properly, she missed reading books at night before bedtime. She called me back to meet her someday and insisted that she would take me by rickshaw for dinner and would pay for it herself. 

I just hope all of us, the youth, realize that although old age does bring with it physical deterioration their core remains untouched. That core needs to be given love. It needs to be looked after just like they look after us and with undying care and love while we were young.

I am grateful to have met her. Just those few moments with her, have taught me much.

 

Lines on her face

Smiled at me, speaking

Of summers of 69 

And how gorgeous she was in her prime

Without being asked, she began

Reminiscing . . .

Of freedom and being brave

Now for the same she did crave.

Children in her nest

who needed her then

Are long gone to lands far away

But they never missed her birthday.

Silver hair neatly combed

As natural as her want for love

Shined in the light, in strands

Untouched by nurturing hands.

Lips craved

For words sweet

Respect for her wisdom true

And something besides bland food to eat

In her smiling eyes I see

A love that sees no bound

All she seeks is a humble refuge

In the hearts of souls unfound. .

Sans

She caught my sight 
like the waxing moon would
subtle yet glowing
she was all that existed that night


A gaze turned into a word
and then into words 
only we knew we uttered
if eyes could talk, you'd have heard


Her presence broke 
broke into fragments 
that I could easily absorb
She came onto me with a soft stroke


She pierced into my guarded mystery 
with her scythe of a passion
unraveling my dire need for her
Restraint, turned history


Bodiless , we were making love
catching glimpses of things unknown
we reached our peaks of ecstasy
nestled but burning reaching above


She plundered the Unknown's mighty estate
Took me knocking down walls 
the world around us built
we left nothing to fate


Multiple realities started to take form
It was our own truth
that we were meant to be
Unaffected by the norm


I had seen scavengers who hunted for lust
and those for whom I was just a highway
But her unfathomable want for nothing - but me
turned into flames, that never turned dust


She replaced the trail 
of concepts that ruled the world,
choked and limited lives
into a black and white or facing the nail


Orgasm. It happened to our soul.
As she knew me and I knew her
Merging and emerging
we became a whole


Then I knew
Then I found
The soul is not a He
Or a She


If only you did feel
her soulbeat alive
Caressing my senses
A sweet surrender , it did heal.


There is no shame
in such a love
A deathless soul
And divine, the name.