Tales of the Wanderlust

  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.

Take off your ear studs And start shaving daily. Keep your eyebrows knotted And stop moving gaily. Can you see in black & white? Can you worship your chores? Do you keep singing always? It’s rude to knock on the doors. A lieutenant cannot speak He should be all eyes and ears. Wait till you get three stars So silence for three years. Understand if I yell at you it’s only a correction, Ah did I tell you? you need to change your vision. Now the silly child within asks,  ‘Where is the bearded uncle, Who used to dance like possessed, And sing a song at will?’

A pupa breaks its cocoon to emerge as a colourful flutter by and the fog settles down as a thousand diamond dew drops. The water buffalo emerges from the swamp with its back caked with the mud of past and the drizzle caresses it to a sparkling grey. Every time you laugh, One more layer of my heart unfurls. I no longer sleep like a foetus, I sleep with my arms wide open waiting for you to run into my embrace. Metamorphosis into an open, infinite expanse of limitless love.

  Time flies faster than our thoughts if it is deemed close to our hearts. I started this course, unsure, not before long but here I am, already with my swansong.   The RD Chants, the occasional rants the endless nights, the senseless fights the presentations, the explorations the tricky assignments, the disillusionments   Trickled through our hands, these precious moments we found a strand worth holding in endless torrents slowly our ‘When will this get over yaar’ changed to ‘why is this getting over yaar’   However, sunset is just a reminder of upcoming dawn sleeping club will still be flooded with many a yawn for friends like us, eternal and true Good Byes only mean God bless you   This one year, together we swivelled and whirled in this MBA, undoubtedly the best in the world For us MBA is not Masters of Business Administration but it is our ‘Most Blessed Association’

Rains are more beautiful in my home town. the anticipation and wait make it sweeter. Over there it is relief, it is change It is a new beginning. It is the end of summer that saps energy and life out of us. The showers in wilderness Downpours in concrete jungles Mild drizzle in the mountains Or lazy rain of the countryside nothing of these are as spectacular as the rains that flood my city and make our lives tough. Yes, the rains are more beautiful in my home town, Because when the rain comes down  it brings memories of running to get wet  with a blue plastic bag on our heads. and because along with the scent my soil Rises my past When I believed that I can make my paper boats Sail to the sea And across to foreign shores.

If all world is a stage we started acting  at a very early age. only that somewhere down the line we forgot to stop. In this jungle of  tropical insects hungry for food, In this garden where bees are eager to suck or to sting We too are flowers our petals shrivelled and souls frozen.

Is 65 years Old? Yes, in the case of mortals. But for the timeless Indian spirit that transcends past, present and future, 65 years is a mere instance but a significant instance at that. Where there has been turbulence and malevolence Where there has been revolution and evolution Where there have been fights for blood and bread. Are we a booming economy or an incomprehensible Dichotomy? The answer is as confusing as the famous Indian nod. We are brave, we are generous We have come so far in a journey which is onerous. We have grown and we have won. Progress, prosperity and charity But did anyone say clarity? We have cultivated breeds of politicians without strains of leadership. Amidst these chaos My mother stands tall as ever, inspiring the world in her infinite wisdom Of harmonizing contradictions, rising despite odds, and drawing billions towards her for solace of the motherhood. Incredible India indeed.

I wake up, besides you Bleary eyed, to the smell of distant freshness Sunshine and drops of honey Sticky, viscous The hangover of happiness Rain washed away the dirty smudges Outside the eternal battle of cutlery Hot, breakfast Amma, can I have the cake and eat it too? Mom said yes!! Thunder and lightning Change of scene Oh no not again. It’s a dream And my heart touches the diaphragm.

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.

Convoluted mathematical derivations seem simple before the turns of destiny which is unravelled unrivalled. If we have the magic key that opens every door honey  the challenge is to find the key hole now. Fate does not make you weaker instead it keeps getting smarter. The neural network of the universe is ever updating every move that can possible be conceived by human every thought that is still covered in the mental placenta is a mere variable in the universal equation. If in doubts destiny lets you win, experiments with you and learns skills which will be used against you. Still man lives on, the one who knows this and the one who doesn’t. He runs behind the solution of this equation which the universe has not yet finished and hence he will live on. As yet another night fades into a pale dawn It rekindles lost forsaken hopes. But still we look forward to it. Cheers to life. The most effective narcotic known to mankind yet.......

The mind gets disturbed when everything is calm Yet finds peace in disturbance If peace and transients are two sides of the same coin Where do I go in search of peace and why? Any relationship is an additional bundle And which one is the last to break the camel’s back? We spend our entire lives carrying bundles Is that all I am made for? Oh no baby, do not follow me I am not marriage material. And why do things I run away from Get attracted to me all the more? Thrill of chase leaves both of us tired. When I can’t even practice what I preach What use is any preaching of? If questions and answers are two coins of the same side Should I even look out for the answers of these questions? To hell with the world I am on my way to become an Avadhuta!

Once I get tired of running hither thither I might sit down and look up. Realising that I have been only running in circles all along and as a confounded schizophrenic might stare at you. I might want to pour out all the contradictions in me I would want to sleep to make up for these restless nights. Like the skin shedding its toxins while healing My mind shall let go of all its sins. Then it might dawn on me how great life is and how callously I have squandered it. This dawn of greatness shall spread the light of humility Then my heart will be filled with remorse For all those things I never did and I will never do. If at that time if I seek solace, refuge in you Don’t turn me away Narahari! Let me just soak in your infinite love And let me just be……..

No matter how much I try to forgive the ethnocentric North Indian, he goes a step further which forces to me extend my patience by another level. One thing is for sure North Indian will never understand the linguistic attachment of the Tamizhs. For them it is as bad as a separatist movement. I can understand that they never have had the need to defend their language but that does not ever mean that whoever does is wrong. To rate a city, a culture, a race as being unfriendly on this one aspect that they don’t talk your mother tongue is nothing but a gargantuan misjudgment. Well I am surprised that how people manage to defend it. Let us set some facts clear here: 1.        Tamizh is not a regional language, it is the official language in three countries(India, Sri Lanka, Singapore) which makes it more international than any other language in India (Hindi-Urdu – 2 countries, Bengali – 2 countries) 2.        Chennai is not one of those cities that will awe you and make you fall in love wit

The laughter is still ringing in my ears And the images refuse to budge My heart brims with longing for those moments of noisy bonding. Where are those stairs to happiness, those endless nights of banter? Where are those thousand cigarettes Which we shared with countless secrets? The way we prowled the corridors caring two hoots about everything else, Shouting war cries and swear words as if we were the rulers of all the worlds. Ah! the dirty dirty birthday bash Mango juice and potato mash? Water can Drums, Noise and Din beating the day lights out of him. As Sumanth rightly said ‘you can take the man out of the desert But you can’t take the desert out of the man’ Singapore you have it all But you aren’t like Dubai at all! For us it represents the spirit, light and glow of our friendship, love and exhilaration. Would give anything to get those Dubai days back We miss you Dubai. We love you Dubai.

When all decisions in life is determined by others can you even call it your own? If everything is predestined and karma all powerful why even placate the Gods? We all should lead lives as it pleases us but what happens when your pleasure lies in pleasing others? If neither questions nor answers come from inside Why bother thinking at all? Well all said and done, one has two choices either to live in the illusion that we determine our lives or accept & resent that we are mere spectators of the grand play called ‘la vie’.

Faith is not believing that God will solve all my problems; It is all about trusting that even his not solving is for my good. Confidence is not just being sure that you can It is all about understanding that even if you can’t you don’t lose much. Strength is not about winning time and again It is all about being complacent, knowing that you fought hard. Life is not just crossing hurdles after hurdles It is all about getting up with a heave and moving towards the next one. Hope is not anticipating good times It is all about the conviction that even this will pass.