The Travelling Bug I Have Not
Wherever you travel on the face of this earth
You will but encounter more of the same —
Buildings, roads, people, mountains, lakes
Trees, dogs, flowers, lovers, and the homeless.
The Parthenon might look sublime
In the dappled light of the setting sun;
The Colosseum might leave you in awe
When you look at it at any time of day.
The Kutub Minar might bring to mind
The era of the Mughals and their excesses;
The fortress of a house in your village
Might make you nostalgic for its past glory.
The dress and fashion varies land to land
Your globetrotting self might discover;
Foods and cuisines are different so much
You will note, wandering kitchen to kitchen.
Amidst all this pleasing variety on offer
What matters it if you discover them
If in all your travels you do not discover
The commonality that runs through them all.
The Dionysian Me
There’s in me
That something
That defies logic
Defies reason
Defies rationality
That pops up
When I am conversing
With a woman I love
Or a friend from long
It pops up
When I read Rumi or Hafiz
It pops up
When I read Nietzsche
Or Schopenhauer
It pops up
When I see
A Claude Monet painting
Or one of Rene Magritte
And it pops up
When I remember
My mother.
Sleeping Soul
Under the scythe of time
Nothing stays what it is
For better or for worse
Including the ones you love
And you yourself;
Amidst these shifting identities
You struggle desperately
To find some meaning
And purpose to life
Only to realize
Dreams have no meaning
Nor any purpose.
The Temptation
However much I push myself towards the Divine
The world seems to pull me back into its fold.
“No” to Existence
This urge of Nature in me
To recreate itself again
Has me very unimpressed
Why should I cooperate
I who care not the least
Whether this world exists
I who care not the least
Whether I myself exist
Expiry Date
I am like a pack of tablets
Whose expiry date is near
Which people avoid taking
Only, a bit more worse,
My expiry date is over
And, my shock of white hair
Is ample testimony to it.
O Lady of Shandilya Gotra
O Lady of Shandilya Gotra
To teach me what and how
Have you come into my life?
Maybe what I have learnt from you
Is how to be human and vulnerable
Open to life and all its vicissitudes.
I who take so much pleasure
That I have Truth all figured out
May still have something to learn.
Double Coincidence of Wants
It is so human to fall in love
Human, too, to reject love
We are ever in search
Of that special someone
And, like in barter, it needs
Double coincidence of wants;
Think with your heart
And it will lead you astray;
It’s so very human, too,
To consult one’s intellect
Which shows up love
For what it really is
A need that requires
Someone else to fulfil.
Keeping Awake
Truth, Love, Reason, and Emotion
These are mere words
Real though they seem
Even a mirage seems real;
Well, what can you say
What’s real and what’s not
When it comes to imagination;
Those who want to dream
Dream on;
As for me,
Though the night is long
I want to stay awake.
Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha
Wealth interests me not;
Love interests me
But not a whole lot;
Salvation was a dream
From which I have now
Woken up;
But, righteousness, strangely,
Still has a claim on me.
The Ticking of the Heart
Here I am on earth
Yeah, it’s been a while
Like, quite a while;
Called to live
Or is it, forced to live,
For what, I know not;
The head is there
Yeah, cool;
It’s the heart
That gets me into trouble;
My mind thinks
And revels in time,
But the heart
It knows not what time is
And I do not know
How to live
Where time does not exist.
Right in the Thick of Things
In the midst of thinking
I want to see the Truth
In the midst of battle
I want to feel the Love
In the midst of despair
I want to let out a laugh
In the midst of scorn
I want to flash a smile
In the midst of illusion
I want to have an insight
In the midst of humanity
I want to be a nobody.
The Dawn of Loneliness
We did seem to love each other
Once upon a time, a long time ago
But I drifted away from her slowly
Being as I was on the spiritual quest
And I was not there for her sadly
When she perhaps most needed me.
Now I seem to need her company
But she seems in no mood to give it
And I am thinking to myself wistfully
I probably do not deserve her company.
When the Mind Falls Silent
When the mind falls silent
Where does the “I” go
The “I” that is the ego
Is the “I” then nothing but
A mere wisp of a thought
Is there another “I” then
Unconnected with thought.
Oh, To Be a Child Again
Oh, to be a child again
Hours seemed like days
Never looked at the clock
Could play till very late
New friends to make
Chocolates to taste
Mama to tell stories
Papa to take questions
Holiday when it rained
Homework meant books
Time there for dreams
Time there to fulfil them
A dog brought on smile
Many a thing to learn
Mistakes did not weigh
Then listening to opinions
Inner voice left the scene
Sought wisdom outside
And then the rot appeared.
Nature/Culture
Did the earth convulse
When man first set foot,
Fearing what was to come?
Did the rivers rise in spate
When man first took his breath,
Knowing their polluted fate?
Did the birds forget to sing
Recalling the ancient prophecy,
When first man was born?
Did the stars shine less bright
The night after first man was born,
Knowing what was in the offing?
History impacts geography
Politics and physics intertwine
Economics and ecology cohabit.
Make then no distinction
Between Nature/Culture
As Derrida did point out.
Separate man and earth
Who will be the poorer –
Man or earth? Tut! Tut!
Did Nature err grandly
In giving birth to man
I think not, I think not.
Creation and destruction
Are part of Nature
Within certain bounds.
Though man has transgressed
Yielding to greed and ignorance
Yet future is still unwritten.
There is still time yet
For a post-Anthropocene
When man and Nature unite.
Fractured Relationships
Fractured lie all my relationships
Coming unstuck and torn asunder
I float away into empty space
From my own self far afar
For whatever faults I see in others
I find them lodged in me, too
So, the human in me and others
Disappoints me to no end without avail.
My Responsibilities?
I do not well understand
What my responsibilities are
To this world and my fellowmen;
Moved by love I may help
The blokes in the slums
Or try to save mankind itself
From perishing due to heat death
And such other climatic catastrophes
But, when the meaning of life
Is itself under question
What meaning can such heroics carry
And, if it’s God that’s created the world
Is it not his responsibility to save us
Maybe he tries to do so through us
But I see no such calling in myself
And, if there be no God,
What meaning can life have
And, where there is no meaning
Why talk of responsibilities
And such other moral imperatives.
O the Pity of It, Sam
To live
Is to be red in tooth and claw
Life feeds on life
Be it a plant
Or an animal that tries to run;
Some find this engulfing engrossing
I only wish
When another life
Comes to feed on mine
It causes me
The least amount of pain;
Death is not painful (at least to me)
It is my nerves that I fear;
I don’t have the nerve
To live smiling and laughing
In this absurd theater of life.
The World
The world promises happiness
But leaves you searching;
The world promises Truth
Which is in itself a big lie;
The world promises love
And leaves your heart bleeding;
Is the world all there is?
I hope not.
One Way to Feel Free
Driving a Merc at 110
After two pegs of whiskey
Calls for some control
Which my friend did have
As we sped on the ORR
In our beautiful Hyderabad
Exercising our freedom
On August fifteenth
As two other friends
Sat drinking wine
On the back seat
With me the teetotaller
Ensconced in front
Taking in the beauty
Of the high-rise buildings
Framed on the horizon
Amidst nearby greenery
As old film songs played
And set the mood
For banter and laughter
And also Biryani at Bawarchi
On some distant roadside
Far from the Financial District
Only to speed back into city
And top it off at Taj Mahal
With some good tea.
What do you do? What can you do?
What do you do
What can you do
When the one you love
Will not hear of it
And wants to have
Nothing to do with it
Except realize
Sometimes
Love can be a burden
Though a sweet burden
That weighs heavily
In one’s thoughts,
Feelings and memories.
Many Paths to Truth
She laughed at me and said,
Almost amused and tickled,
That I had wasted my life
Searching for ‘stupid truth’
While she had enjoyed
Every minute of her life
And lived out her dreams.
Now it was my turn
To be bemused and tickled
At her disarming chutzpah
And though I was sure
I had not wasted my life
Going in search of the truth
And indeed finding it
Though only in my intellect,
I could not but admit to myself
She, too, surely seemed to be
In the possession of the truth
Though her ways were different
The ways of the heart, with which
I was not that well acquainted.
She Said, He Said
She said something
I understood something else;
I said something
She understood something else;
Thus do we live
Our human lives
Unable to say what we mean
Unable to mean what we say
And yet somehow
In such an imperfect world
Sometimes magic does happen
When two hearts speak
And the tongues are silent.
The Seeker of Love
We seek love in each other’s arms
We seek it in soulful conversations
We seek it in the dialogue of eyes
We seek it in hugs and nice kisses
We seek it in the making of love
At the end of it we are only left
With a longing for love unsatisfied
Slowly we then begin to realize
While the seeking of love is natural
Eventually we have to understand
The seeker of love has to disappear
By himself becoming love in entirety
So no longer there’s separation anxiety.
Unfazed
She called me a cartoon
I did not feel offended
It feels good to know
How far I have travelled
On this difficult journey
Almost as if I am very near
The shores of love and truth.
Only Truth Exists
You have to shut shop
You’ve to shut the hell up
No, not your bloody mouth
But that goddamned thing
Which without any respite
Keeps churning out ever
Thoughts and emotions galore
Producing the illusion
That there is really a “me”
Who is in search of Truth
But if truth be told
The biggest illusion
Is that there is a “me”
That really does exist
And searches for truth
To see through this illusion
Is to find the Truth.
Will the Twain Ever Meet?
Think who will
That the twain will never meet
My goal in life is to unite
Love and Logic
Turning them into wings
On which one can take flight
Into the empyrean
Where dwell
All things worthy
That give meaning
To love, logic, and life.
Dancing Alone
‘Tis said
It takes two to tango
But why tango
There are other ways to be
Finding another
For the tango
Is a big tangle.
Know Thyself 