Think not that I have not thought
That from the cradle to the pyre
A great man's life is naught
But a well performed satire
Wednesday, 21 October 2015
Thoughtless
Think not that I have not thought
That from the cradle to the pyre
A great man's life is naught
But a well performed satire
Monday, 19 October 2015
Burn
I learn, I learn, again I learn
How Man's mind works
How the world burns
How danger lurks
How fortune turns
I see, I see, again I see
History itself repeating
Carnage wrought with glee
Moral virtues depleting
Despite divine decree
I hear, I hear, again I hear
The laments of misery
The groan of fear
The beast set free
The despairing tear
Onset of lunacy
I feel, I feel, again I feel
Crumbling earth beneath my feet
Pillars falling upon themselves
Litter flooding every street
Books unread upon the shelves
Sanity in hasty retreat
I breathe, I breathe, why do I breathe
What possible use am I to you
Am I to only rage and seethe
Until I have suffered my due
And then to decay beneath
And add to this wretched residue?
If my purpose is not for me to discern,
What care I who lives and who burns?
A Benediction
May the droplets of dew that aesthetically adorn
The orange hued sun rays that shine through the morn
Refract through the glistening moistness of dew
And shower rainbow upon rainbow on you
May the breeze that condenses the vaporous air
Add a glow to your fairness and a sheen to your hair
May the silence punctuated only by the cuckoo's call
Bring you the wisdom of Angels and virtue of Parsifal
May the clouds that your countenance discover
Protect thine fairness as they hesitant hover
From the harshness of heat and the power of fire
From the sufferings of grief and unfulfilled desires
May the leaves on the trees that eternally surround us
Rustle sweet melodies that eternally confound us
May the grass 'neath your feet caress your delicate heel
That it never lose its softness nor its visual appeal
May all of Nature, whose fury no being can tame
Bow down in subjection to the sound of your name
May all the universe combine to right all your wrongs
That your lips are never found to be bereft of songs
All this and more I do wish thee every day
Who ever exudes compassion and over goodness holds sway
Friday, 16 October 2015
Theseus' Paradox
Every day, I lose a bit,
Every day I grow anew;
Every cartilage still fits,
Every symmetrical sinew.
Where are all the parts I lost?
Are they still a part of me?
What is my production cost?
Who composed my symphony?
Is my entity complete
Without the parts that went away?
Does my unity deplete
Further with every passing day?
And what of the replenishing stock
Of cells that now make up my frame,
That mark the progress of the clock
That ticks eternal 'gainst my name?
Do they possess an equal claim
As those who left me in the lurch
To share in my immortal fame,
To pour libations in my church?
Why am I not viewed as one,
But a manifest multitude?
Why haven't I dominion
Over my self created brood?
Do I grow or just break apart?
From whom is this judgement due?
And when I cease my beating heart,
Who, mortals, will be judging you?
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
Just a Few Days Now
He sat in his lazy boy for hours at end, settling deeper and
deeper into his imprint which had become all but permanent on the soft,
yielding leather. He stared around at his living room. Chaos reigned.
The plastic bottles from the aerated drinks that he used to mix with his rum when he began the drinking binge. The crumpled mountains of plastic glasses that he had run through in the past few days, strewn in ever growing concentric circles around his lazy boy. The vast majority of them were right behind him, because what he could not see did not bother him immediately. Especially since it had been days since he could remember being sober. Also, mingling with the plastic bottles and cups were visible three days worth of cardboard pizza boxes.
His ashtray had filled up a long time ago and he had continued smoking and disposing of the ash and butts directly into his large dustbin. He hadn’t changed his clothes for the whole duration and the stench would have bothered him if it weren’t for the overpowering perfume emanating from the glass bottles that surrounded him in their preferential seats of reverence. The bottles were cube shaped, with the edges rounded off, and the top thinning out into a bottleneck. The picture of an old monk smiled up at him from each of their labels. He could not quite muster the will to smile back. Not just yet. A few more drinks, perhaps...
He glanced down at his feet, blackened by a layer of soot. He passed an uncritical eye over his shorts with cigarette holes in them, his unwashed shirt with pepperoni stains and ran his hands through his beard which was beginning to resemble the Amazon forest not just in its density, but its potential suitability to support an ecosystem within its undisturbed wildlands.
“When had it come to this?” he asked himself. He knew the answer to that. It had been this bad for only a few days now.
Just a few days ago, she had left him.
He remembered hanging out around the house as recently as a month ago. He had never been one to socialize or host parties or live the wild life. A book, a conversation, a piece of music and a bite to eat constituted his perfect day. Only that... and her.
When she left him, he flailed. Uncontrollably, unabashedly, he panicked. His mind reacted like a despairing man in the face of death would, irrationally, self destructively... dangerously. He had tried to stop the spiral by anaesthetizing it with alcohol. Nothing else occurred to him to arrest the perilous momentum his brain had gathered on its path to destruction. The alcohol had been lying around the house, but he had never needed it before. Now he drowned himself in it with the sole aim of flooding his brain with this heavenly poison and trapping it in a deluge of intoxication so that it would have no time to ponder its own emptiness.
From the moment she had left him, he had not left his room, unless it was a trip to the bathroom to relieve himself by urinating or vomiting. On many occasions, his state of inebriation had not allowed him to complete the trip all the way to the bathroom, which resulted in intermittent puddles of undigested pizza also finding their place amongst the plastic wilderness. For the rest of his conscious hours, he was drinking.
Even in the depths of drunkenness, he could see her flawlessness before him. Her beauty, her ethereal form ran through his head as if it were a melody. The gentleness of the winter sun’s heat upon chilly skin, the ecstasy of a cold brook’s ripples running over one’s feet, the beautiful descent into blissful repose that only accompanied sleep or death; all these delightful sensations could be encompassed in her person. If this were a mythology, she would be the Goddess embodying bliss.
And then, just like that, before his mind’s eye, just as in reality, she faded into nothingness. Her luminescence extinguished unceremoniously, her radiance quenched disrespectfully. Now, he could see nothing but darkness enveloping him. It suited him, this darkness. It prevented clear sight into the carnage that her departure had left in its wake.
He remembered the days when they had been constant companions. She had been a perpetual reassurance to his sense of self. She was his source of ambition and his anchor of humility. She was what he aspired to even as he held her within his grasp. With her, the world lay at his mercy.
And now, nothing. His room bore witness to his worth without her. A dishonourable wreck, loveless, faithless, purposeless. And what seared blindingly into his mind, whiting out every other possible thought in his head, was that she never looked back. She never hesitated. She never returned. She just up and left, and that was that.
He wondered how long he could continue like this. How long would his body hold out, how long would his funds last, how long would his sanity last? He considered a slow crawl back to reality. Maybe this should be his last bottle. He could take a couple of days to recover and then attempt to normalize his life once more.
But the mere notion of living brought back all too vividly the memory as well as the sensation of pain that had been crippling him for the last few days. It was this pain that had kept him from sobriety. It had been three days, but even now he trembled at the prospect of facing up to the excruciation without the aid of alcoholic numbness.
He raged at reality, at optimism, at life. There wasn’t a single peaceful patch in his life that he could recall that hadn’t been punctured by the most spirit sapping mishaps and mischances. She had been life’s one answer to his pessimism. And now, devoid of her presence, he felt akin to the lonely boatsman stranded at sea who sees nothing but a vast expanse of blue stretched out in all directions with no indication whatsoever to guide him as to which course he should pursue.
Like the boatsman, he now resolved to give up, to let his body consume itself, to let it give in. He longed for painlessness and he could see only one path to it. He sighed, resigning himself to wait for peace. A different peace from the one he felt just a few days ago.
A few days ago, before Poetry had left him.
The plastic bottles from the aerated drinks that he used to mix with his rum when he began the drinking binge. The crumpled mountains of plastic glasses that he had run through in the past few days, strewn in ever growing concentric circles around his lazy boy. The vast majority of them were right behind him, because what he could not see did not bother him immediately. Especially since it had been days since he could remember being sober. Also, mingling with the plastic bottles and cups were visible three days worth of cardboard pizza boxes.
His ashtray had filled up a long time ago and he had continued smoking and disposing of the ash and butts directly into his large dustbin. He hadn’t changed his clothes for the whole duration and the stench would have bothered him if it weren’t for the overpowering perfume emanating from the glass bottles that surrounded him in their preferential seats of reverence. The bottles were cube shaped, with the edges rounded off, and the top thinning out into a bottleneck. The picture of an old monk smiled up at him from each of their labels. He could not quite muster the will to smile back. Not just yet. A few more drinks, perhaps...
He glanced down at his feet, blackened by a layer of soot. He passed an uncritical eye over his shorts with cigarette holes in them, his unwashed shirt with pepperoni stains and ran his hands through his beard which was beginning to resemble the Amazon forest not just in its density, but its potential suitability to support an ecosystem within its undisturbed wildlands.
“When had it come to this?” he asked himself. He knew the answer to that. It had been this bad for only a few days now.
Just a few days ago, she had left him.
He remembered hanging out around the house as recently as a month ago. He had never been one to socialize or host parties or live the wild life. A book, a conversation, a piece of music and a bite to eat constituted his perfect day. Only that... and her.
When she left him, he flailed. Uncontrollably, unabashedly, he panicked. His mind reacted like a despairing man in the face of death would, irrationally, self destructively... dangerously. He had tried to stop the spiral by anaesthetizing it with alcohol. Nothing else occurred to him to arrest the perilous momentum his brain had gathered on its path to destruction. The alcohol had been lying around the house, but he had never needed it before. Now he drowned himself in it with the sole aim of flooding his brain with this heavenly poison and trapping it in a deluge of intoxication so that it would have no time to ponder its own emptiness.
From the moment she had left him, he had not left his room, unless it was a trip to the bathroom to relieve himself by urinating or vomiting. On many occasions, his state of inebriation had not allowed him to complete the trip all the way to the bathroom, which resulted in intermittent puddles of undigested pizza also finding their place amongst the plastic wilderness. For the rest of his conscious hours, he was drinking.
Even in the depths of drunkenness, he could see her flawlessness before him. Her beauty, her ethereal form ran through his head as if it were a melody. The gentleness of the winter sun’s heat upon chilly skin, the ecstasy of a cold brook’s ripples running over one’s feet, the beautiful descent into blissful repose that only accompanied sleep or death; all these delightful sensations could be encompassed in her person. If this were a mythology, she would be the Goddess embodying bliss.
And then, just like that, before his mind’s eye, just as in reality, she faded into nothingness. Her luminescence extinguished unceremoniously, her radiance quenched disrespectfully. Now, he could see nothing but darkness enveloping him. It suited him, this darkness. It prevented clear sight into the carnage that her departure had left in its wake.
He remembered the days when they had been constant companions. She had been a perpetual reassurance to his sense of self. She was his source of ambition and his anchor of humility. She was what he aspired to even as he held her within his grasp. With her, the world lay at his mercy.
And now, nothing. His room bore witness to his worth without her. A dishonourable wreck, loveless, faithless, purposeless. And what seared blindingly into his mind, whiting out every other possible thought in his head, was that she never looked back. She never hesitated. She never returned. She just up and left, and that was that.
He wondered how long he could continue like this. How long would his body hold out, how long would his funds last, how long would his sanity last? He considered a slow crawl back to reality. Maybe this should be his last bottle. He could take a couple of days to recover and then attempt to normalize his life once more.
But the mere notion of living brought back all too vividly the memory as well as the sensation of pain that had been crippling him for the last few days. It was this pain that had kept him from sobriety. It had been three days, but even now he trembled at the prospect of facing up to the excruciation without the aid of alcoholic numbness.
He raged at reality, at optimism, at life. There wasn’t a single peaceful patch in his life that he could recall that hadn’t been punctured by the most spirit sapping mishaps and mischances. She had been life’s one answer to his pessimism. And now, devoid of her presence, he felt akin to the lonely boatsman stranded at sea who sees nothing but a vast expanse of blue stretched out in all directions with no indication whatsoever to guide him as to which course he should pursue.
Like the boatsman, he now resolved to give up, to let his body consume itself, to let it give in. He longed for painlessness and he could see only one path to it. He sighed, resigning himself to wait for peace. A different peace from the one he felt just a few days ago.
A few days ago, before Poetry had left him.
Saturday, 10 October 2015
Unravelled
Two strands of Fate, once entwined,
Set out their destinies to unravel;
To find what freedom they could find,
To travel where they longed to travel;
Into nothingness traversing blind,
To submit to Escape’s mighty gavel.
They weren’t the first to choose that path,
But those before had left no signs,
No guidebook to escape Reality’s wrath,
No landmark that their route defines,
To soak their selves in the bloodbath
Where matter and anti-matter combines.
They happened across a kindly sage
And stopped to hear what he would say;
And hoped the wisdom that comes with age
Would help prevent them going astray;
And hope his discerning eye would gauge
Their plight and help show them the way.
“Pardon me, sir, we need some direction,
We search for death or obscurity,
Where no parent frowns on imperfection
And no priest insists on purity,
Where there is no chance of resurrection,
And oblivion is a surety.”
The sage replied, “Death is not hard
To find at all, I hardly think you two,
Whose minds I hold in high regard,
Have ever harbored any intention to
Take measures to ignominiously discard
That shell that your soul suffers through.”
The two sat in silent, stricken wonder,
At the sage’s omniscient sight,
And answered, voices dark as thunder,
“’Tis true, death gives us no delight,
We seek body and soul thus to surrender,
That our body lives but soul takes flight.”
“Ah”, said the sage, “The truth at last.
So that’s where you two wish to go,
Insanity, the refuge of the harassed,
The shelter from intellectual vertigo,
The world that offers grim repast
To thirsting hearts drunk with woe.”
“Of life, of reason, of expectation,
Where is oblivion, where the end?
I will show you the way to your destination,
But pray you don’t reap the dividend
Of this flirtation with abnegation;
Insanity, you’ll find, is just round the bend.“
Set out their destinies to unravel;
To find what freedom they could find,
To travel where they longed to travel;
Into nothingness traversing blind,
To submit to Escape’s mighty gavel.
They weren’t the first to choose that path,
But those before had left no signs,
No guidebook to escape Reality’s wrath,
No landmark that their route defines,
To soak their selves in the bloodbath
Where matter and anti-matter combines.
They happened across a kindly sage
And stopped to hear what he would say;
And hoped the wisdom that comes with age
Would help prevent them going astray;
And hope his discerning eye would gauge
Their plight and help show them the way.
“Pardon me, sir, we need some direction,
We search for death or obscurity,
Where no parent frowns on imperfection
And no priest insists on purity,
Where there is no chance of resurrection,
And oblivion is a surety.”
The sage replied, “Death is not hard
To find at all, I hardly think you two,
Whose minds I hold in high regard,
Have ever harbored any intention to
Take measures to ignominiously discard
That shell that your soul suffers through.”
The two sat in silent, stricken wonder,
At the sage’s omniscient sight,
And answered, voices dark as thunder,
“’Tis true, death gives us no delight,
We seek body and soul thus to surrender,
That our body lives but soul takes flight.”
“Ah”, said the sage, “The truth at last.
So that’s where you two wish to go,
Insanity, the refuge of the harassed,
The shelter from intellectual vertigo,
The world that offers grim repast
To thirsting hearts drunk with woe.”
“Of life, of reason, of expectation,
Where is oblivion, where the end?
I will show you the way to your destination,
But pray you don’t reap the dividend
Of this flirtation with abnegation;
Insanity, you’ll find, is just round the bend.“
Monday, 5 October 2015
Dil hi toh hai na sang-o-khisht - A Translation of Ghalib's Ghazal
(A big thank you to Deepanshi for her help with the translation)
The original:
Dil hi to hai na sang-o-khist, dard se bhar na aye kyu,
Royenge hum hazar baar, koi humein sataye kyu?
Dair nahi haram nahi dar nahi aastan nahi,
Baithe hain reh guzar pe hum gair humein uthaye kyu?
Quaid-e-hayat o band-e-gham asl main dono ek hain,
Maut se pehle admi gham se najaat paye kyu?
Haan wo nahi khuda parast jao wo bewafa sahi,
Jisko ho deen-o-dil aziz uski gali main jaye kyu?
Ghalib-e-khast ke bagair kaunse kaam band hain,
Roeeye zaar zaar kya keejiye haye haye kyu?
Translation:
‘Tis a heart's, neither brick's nor stone's domain,
Why wouldn’t it overflow with pain?
I will cry a thousand tears of woe,
Must they disturb my sorrowful strain?
I pollute not houses of worship, not gates or doorsteps;
I sit on common passageways, must they ask me to move again?
The prison of life is no different from the fetters of woe;
Why, then, ere he dies, should man be freed from sorrow's chains?
Granted, he has lost his faith, certainly, he is disloyal;
Those who hold religion or love dear, must they then loiter in his lanes?
Has the absence of Ghalib hindered the world in any way?
If not, then why weep so bitter, why this loud refrain?
The original:
Dil hi to hai na sang-o-khist, dard se bhar na aye kyu,
Royenge hum hazar baar, koi humein sataye kyu?
Dair nahi haram nahi dar nahi aastan nahi,
Baithe hain reh guzar pe hum gair humein uthaye kyu?
Quaid-e-hayat o band-e-gham asl main dono ek hain,
Maut se pehle admi gham se najaat paye kyu?
Haan wo nahi khuda parast jao wo bewafa sahi,
Jisko ho deen-o-dil aziz uski gali main jaye kyu?
Ghalib-e-khast ke bagair kaunse kaam band hain,
Roeeye zaar zaar kya keejiye haye haye kyu?
Translation:
‘Tis a heart's, neither brick's nor stone's domain,
Why wouldn’t it overflow with pain?
I will cry a thousand tears of woe,
Must they disturb my sorrowful strain?
I pollute not houses of worship, not gates or doorsteps;
I sit on common passageways, must they ask me to move again?
The prison of life is no different from the fetters of woe;
Why, then, ere he dies, should man be freed from sorrow's chains?
Granted, he has lost his faith, certainly, he is disloyal;
Those who hold religion or love dear, must they then loiter in his lanes?
Has the absence of Ghalib hindered the world in any way?
If not, then why weep so bitter, why this loud refrain?
Saturday, 3 October 2015
Winged Whispers
A menace of red droplets hover,
The horizon darkens red;
Amongst the bloodshot cloud cover
Some whispered words embed
Themselves, for those minds to discover
That are from life unwed.
The shells of life unfurl before
The onlooking eyes, aghast;
The morbid sight that men deplore,
They're forced to watch, steadfast;
The eyes that wary watch the shore
For the dreaded beetroot mast.
A hero grim amongst them stood
Of stature hard and strong;
A creature that to a noble brood
And to noble stock belonged;
A creature bound to causes good,
Sworn saviour of the wronged.
He strode forward before the rest,
His wings he cast out wide,
To put to their sternest test
The strength of ship and tide,
To cause with his mighty chest
The raging waves to subside.
His wings he cast also up high
To battle with the clouds;
The droplets that ever drew nigh
To rain death upon the crowds,
Those droplet-laden clouds ran dry
By the force of his winged shroud.
Cloud and shell struck his frame
And naught was allowed to pass;
The almighty gale was rendered tame
By his all consuming mass;
But the evil storm that has no name
Took its customary toll, alas!
The hero took along with him all
That possessed the strength to harm
The frailty, that we wonderingly call
Life, and thereby preserved its charm;
The hero perished, but ere his fall,
Evil fell by his winged arms.
The masses, awe struck, beheld
Their hero's fearless nobility;
They stood still as he was felled
And watched his death set them free;
And now, the danger being expelled,
They cast him solemnly out to sea.
But the droplets will loom large again,
Again the ships will form their fleet;
The harbingers of grief and pain
Will soon resume their dreadful beat;
The heroes endeavour in vain
To stall the Fate we all must meet.
The horizon darkens red;
Amongst the bloodshot cloud cover
Some whispered words embed
Themselves, for those minds to discover
That are from life unwed.
The shells of life unfurl before
The onlooking eyes, aghast;
The morbid sight that men deplore,
They're forced to watch, steadfast;
The eyes that wary watch the shore
For the dreaded beetroot mast.
A hero grim amongst them stood
Of stature hard and strong;
A creature that to a noble brood
And to noble stock belonged;
A creature bound to causes good,
Sworn saviour of the wronged.
He strode forward before the rest,
His wings he cast out wide,
To put to their sternest test
The strength of ship and tide,
To cause with his mighty chest
The raging waves to subside.
His wings he cast also up high
To battle with the clouds;
The droplets that ever drew nigh
To rain death upon the crowds,
Those droplet-laden clouds ran dry
By the force of his winged shroud.
Cloud and shell struck his frame
And naught was allowed to pass;
The almighty gale was rendered tame
By his all consuming mass;
But the evil storm that has no name
Took its customary toll, alas!
The hero took along with him all
That possessed the strength to harm
The frailty, that we wonderingly call
Life, and thereby preserved its charm;
The hero perished, but ere his fall,
Evil fell by his winged arms.
The masses, awe struck, beheld
Their hero's fearless nobility;
They stood still as he was felled
And watched his death set them free;
And now, the danger being expelled,
They cast him solemnly out to sea.
But the droplets will loom large again,
Again the ships will form their fleet;
The harbingers of grief and pain
Will soon resume their dreadful beat;
The heroes endeavour in vain
To stall the Fate we all must meet.