Tales of the Wanderlust

Something is pulling my soul from me Like how my amma pulls a small ball of dough from a bigger one, Like how the earth was pulled from the sun, Or the moon was pulled from the earth. Every night, the sky searches for me, to whisper a thrilling plan If only, I come out of my house. Millions of rain drops wait to fall on my cheeks, If only, I peep out of my umbrella. Thousand blades of grass wait to kiss my feet If only, I step out of my shoes. The paper boats I made and let sail as a child, Have reached the streams of my future and are waiting for me to board. I will cross the seven seas and conquer lands beyond, If only, I Wake up.

The colours on the canvas fade slowly As the winds of life erode the surface Of my our imaginary worlds Those worlds that are made and destroyed By wills and fancies – ironically not mine! For solace we can fall back on Karma, Honestly where will civilizations be  if not for these philosophies? Well, for some, dreams are like bubble wrap, Meant less for nurturing, more for bursting Either for the pleasure of others Or for ourselves, as we have nothing better to do! But thanks to those fancies we beggars can ride once in a while.

Don’t call me a drunkard; I drink to be honest The world kills the candid men; you either lie or die Spirits make us blurt out the harshest of the bitter truths Hence listen, sober fools Often the protagonist and the hero of a tale are different The protagonist is destined to be, but to be a hero is a matter of choice The protagonist shoulders the responsibility because the hero bears the burden The protagonist was because the heroes rose Sadly, the heroes are forgotten as the legends are propagated No one knows which is inherent and which you absorbed over the years Tales are a grotesque mixture of innocence and vile astuteness They now spread rigor mortis slowly into inspiration Should I fight or should I love the death of the spirit The answer glows as the warmth spreads Leave the coils and be a free soul eternally And hence I drink and strive to peel off the layers to reveal the reality Don’t call me drunkard; I d...

It is overcast but it would never rain like the trepidation will go unspoken Pieces of broken glass stick together like in one of those unbreakable glasses I grind my teeth and try to scatter them but come back with bruised fingers Its always about others.... or for them, themselves The best words are never said, they are the worst too I walked miles only to discover that it was a circular path Living in desolation would at least keep me grounded The last drop to fill the cup shall never fall Don't even bother what difference does nudity make when no one is around!

The largest black out in human history, which India faced shall remain the largest for quite some time to come as it is quite impossible to replicate the same anywhere else, unless China also fails in an equal miserable way (the chances of which aren’t remote as China’s demand for power is also more that its capacity to generate). This blackout had left millions stranded in the dark for a long time, there were miner trapped, hospitals disabled. Those who could afford ran their back up systems and could maintain the status quo but what about those who are dependent solely on the power supplied by the government? They had no choice but to suffer silently.   In a typical reactive mode our government is now talking of reforms in the power sector. But one needs to ask what kind of reforms? Privatization? Even if the UPA government gathers enough courage to usher in such changes, at best it would benefit a few large corporates who will walk away filling their coffers at the cost of...

The tantalizing purposelessness The guilt inducing vacuum Sound of piercing chats, confusing piety Desperate Calling out to a misunderstood deity Purple pink sky  The golden yellow lights of bulbs Tug of war between elevation and elation Closure of one more episode of countless lives Fear of safe return And anxiety like that of roosting birds Forewarning of the darkness to come Aching longing for the distant joy Vacillating loyalties Rising royalties for the people who tread the uncharted Neither the light to understand nor the darkness to hide, my sins I hate the twilight, whenever I get the time to think whenever I get the liberty to be myself I hate the twilight.

When I can’t talk to you after a testing day, When I can’t see you roaming around, And feel secure in that natural bond, which tied us together, When I can’t listen to your voice - a soothing reassurance, like a breeze that foretells the arrival of monsoon on a sultry summer evening, I try to hold on to the myriad images in my memories I try to experience them in my mind I try to look into the photos in which we have frozen moments that defined my life. Alas, that only makes me cry As I crave more to hug you tight, to lean on your shoulder to beat, to pinch, to bite you to laugh my heart out with you. Those long walks are gone, The silent evenings are a distant past! The unseen, untold, unforgettable hands of darkness hold me down as I try to jump out of this quick sand. All I see is the huge distance As I try to grab as much as I can from your presence To fill up the vacuum of your absence, I slip down in the abyss as huge tongues fla...

“This cannot be your birthday treat! The meal cost us only 94 Dirhams!” We exclaimed dismayed by the fact that our friend’s birthday treat did not cost him more, even after having a sumptuous three course meal in the famed Jumierah Beach Walk. Just then a bus full of laborers went past us. No one noticed. Well, why would anyone pay attention to a bus that transports people from their camps to place of work (which is a construction site of a big hotel) when you have a parade of BMW, Audi and Ferraris going by? The bus came to a halt just near our table (we were dining outside) and I got a glimpse of people inside. Nothing spectacular, no romanticizing of poverty here, it was a bus full of hardworking, underpaid men. But what disrupted the magnetic field of affluence that prevailed was not their presence but the millions of questions their eyes threw astray while they gawked at the well attired men, those dainty ladies and those spectacular structures which their brethren built and w...

For the past few days a soup has been simmering inside my mind, an eclectic mixture of Objectivism, Laissez Faire Capitalism and Libertarian Socialism. No to mention the anarchist inclinations that makes me take an anti establishment stand. The aroma that arose from that pot was both tantalizing and invigorating. It led to one of those phases in life when one questions everything that is internal, values, attitude, ethics, philosophy and Faith.     But, can faith be questioned? Is it not placed on the pedestal of untouchable sanctity?   The answer that emerged after a prolonged strife is that yes for the former and no for the later. Whoever says that faith is unquestionable is wrong, no two ways about it.   Faith has to be questioned time and again. It is only after going through the furnace of questions do beliefs transform into faith and that why, beliefs can be superstitious but faith never. The more we doubt and interrogate the more pristine it becomes. Actually ...

  Waiting for the summer rains, unaware that it would never come. Spinning out thousand  tales not knowing where they came from.   Fighting over a packet of maggie or nibbling half a 5 star for hours nothing was exclusively yours or mine the little we had was always ours.   Choosing a tinkle that has to be read now the happiness of having saved rupees ten in the old plastic dabba with a hole life was pure, pristine and simple then.   Come rains off we went to watch with glee and it was best viewed from the hall. who would sit which side of Johari’s window who gets to see the way the rains fall.   Both of us perched on its narrow sill, though unfathomable we did it, but how? Have we out grown it or has the world, Pinky, become too small for our love.

With every passing day, I unwind in your warm breath, My hands become more intertwined with yours, I lose myself deeper into the labyrinth of your heart. With every passing day, The winds of life erode the stone wall of will, I realise that you are my life source, I am drawn closer to the light of your pristine innocence. With every passing day, I let my nights dawn for your unborn thoughts And my days await the nightfall to see the million stars - the dreams which were born by the union of our hopes. With every passing day, I resonate more with your silence, I tune into your speech , I decipher your signs Yet I discover more mysteries, unfathomable. But with every passing day, Your image is getting blurred; your voice is getting muffled As the cold tentacles of time drag me away into unknown parts of the ether. Oh my life, When will you let me live? Don’t you see that I am crying under the rainy sky? Alone?

The fall that churns your stomach keeps from tumbling down. Knowing is the first step towards ignorance And ignorance first step towards knowledge. Dattatreya accepted everyone possible as guru, Is it because he was an Avadhuta ? Or did he become that because he learned from all? Do you how to eat multiple helpings of Akara Vadisal ? Lick the pickle between multiple helpings of sweet. If everybody loves you, something is wrong. Find one enemy to keep you alert Paulo Coelho Tweets! Atishoo atishoo may we all fall down.

Tomorrow I should organise my thoughts. One box for the transience and one for all that related to conscience One for her and one for her and one for her! One for it. Infinite such tomorrows have gone by and by all probability go by. Yet tomorrow might be the day; when dark things might stop crawling into my bed sheets when migraines of yore might be washed ashore never to come again. Don’t wake me up rudely, I hate when people startle me And you friendly ghost don’t you dare boo at me. For all who live inside the walls of my room  I have stopped talking to you. Strangers in my dream god bless you, you may go. I run towards sleep the only saviour When the sticky violet hands of the night chase to tear open my heart to reveal the dawn with streaks of blood. Clueless I ask the stranger on the side “Mister, when does the last train to the past leave?’’ I have some unfinished business there.