With a whisper beckons the spring
A billowing breeze wafts by,
Bearing mystic sounds and scents
The vestige of a yearning sigh.

The urge to soar above of all thoughts
And inhabit the world of dreams
Paint it with a myriad shades
Weave a story in each theme.

But where have all the stories gone
Did they fade in grey shadows
In the relentless carnage called life
Did I demolish my green meadows?

Out of the window I dully gaze
Waiting for a spark of inspiration
To my surprise what awaits me
Unlocks my dormant imagination

Bathed in soft iridescent light
Among leaves gleaming velvet green
Dwells the king of scented blooms
Filling a unreal yet ethereal scene

The white sheath of petals enclosed
Yet their fragrance cleaves the air
Mellowed by the shower of light
Their message is blatantly clear

Break the chains that freeze your core
Inhale the exhilaration in our scent
Let the magic flood your senses
For your dreams are not yet spent.

We have a wealth of knowledge on spirituality, alternative health, science, fitness and wisdom for a purposeful life. Why has it not found its way to technology--why has it not pervaded every mode of information from podcasts to youtube? Actually I would say that youtube is still well populated but other forms need to pick up!

Relax, don't do it!

Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From the evil which never arrived.

Famous lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Our generation puts such an emphasis on being ‘chilled-out’ and ‘laid-back’. Yet we are the ones that have the maximum victims of stress and anxiety. We are the smart ones, the so-called planners, the people that have laptops hanging on their arms which they use to meticulously book every detail of a trip. If we are constantly securing the details of out future, then where is our enjoyment of the present?
Our society has become ‘carelessly organized’ now. We believe the most in spontaneity and excitement yet beneath all our actions is an undercurrent of organization. “Hey are you free or do you have other plans?”--how many times have we heard ourselves say this to other people and vice versa? Stress has become a ‘life partner’ in this generation. We are in a constant battle to ‘bust’ it sometimes with yoga and aromatherapy and sometimes with cigarettes and alcohol.
We are in a state of constant planning--for us, everything that has not been looked up before or planned before is an ‘unknown’ evil. Let us take, for instance, our obsession with review sites. WE ‘yelp’ or ‘burrrp’ for restaurants, we skim frantically through Rotten Tomatoes for movie reviews and we are simply not ready to buy anything from a particular brand of cereal to our home theater system without reading a few Google or Amazon reviews. Where. then is the thirst for experience? Are we not making our experiences predictable? I agree with online reviews for buying big and expensive items such as a home theater system or an HDTV but is that all that there should be to this process? With all the virtual reality at our disposal, we can simulate every process but the experience of our senses is still missing. Our visual, auditory and tactile senses have still not been completely replicated by any machine. We miss on a great deal by denying ourselves that experience.
Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hillary did not have a Google satellite view map when they scaled the heights of Mt. Everest. Of course I appreciate the convenience that Google satellite view has given us but it exists to assist and not the other way round! So taking a cue from Emerson, an avid explorer, let us not make ourselves so handicapped by the internet that our pioneering spirit dies. For that would mean no discovery and without discovery we will forever be stuck in a time warp.

The infant

Morbidity eludes
The wondrous expression
Untouched by worldly woes

Minute clumsy fingers
Wound in a tiny fist
Grasping the world within

Imprisoned in our lives
Hopeless in our dreams
Stagnant in our thoughts
We stand miles apart

But distance collapses
The burdens evaporate
As we draw closer to
That toothless smile.

Untitled

Black are the dreams that pierce

The grey shroud of sleep

Drenched is the pristine pillow

Through which the tears seep.

Faces marauding the pensive mind

Some smiling, some stark

Snatches of time that shaped my life

Penetrating through the dark.

At the murky night sky I stare

Searching among the stars

Beyond their twinkling facade

Is it where the departed are?  

A few random memories

This is something I wrote to commemorate the centenary cele bration of our family Durga Pujo in 2009.

How tender was the age of six

When Mejda set the trend

Put Chhoton’s hand in mine

Said, “This brother is your friend”

The rhythm of our childish hands

Melding seamlessly with our minds

The dhak beat and the kashar toll

Spun the eternal thread that binds

How fragrant were those misty dawns

When Dida and I were flower girls

Picking shewlis with vermilion stalks

Dew teardrops glistening on the whorls.

Buckets full of khicudi and labda

That we trudged around and served

On sweltering days and breezy nights

When laughter was never curbed

The corner seat for chandi chanting

Where readers changed with clock chimes

Little did we envision in our content

That some will get plucked by time

In a distant land across an ocean

A universe apart from home

Those faces flash before my eyes

While the memories silently roam.

I have no flowers, O my mother

No garlands to adorn your feet

Only these pictures from my soul

I weave together and offer thee.

Enlightenment

In the light of age
And the age of mind
All I see is a carcass
Worth leaving behind

Discontent invaded flesh
The spirit became numb
We marched in unison
In thought we were dumb

Where was my voice, my own
Did the maestro push me back
To where my notes were mute
And my will was slack?

A rainbow of distinct choices
Merging into a grey abyss
Is that all there is, my friend?
Is that all there is?