The Fragrance

A strange feeling swept through him as the car drove past the familiar gates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The sun was about to set and the mellow chirping of birds filled the crimson late evening sky. The car drove through the newly laid roads, past the famous landmarks and all-too-familiar turns and finally stopped at the gate of the newly renovated guest house. Aniket stepped out, took off his shades and looked around. A gentle breeze had started to blow. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply.  A strange aroma filled his senses, something that he always associated with this place. What was that smell? He couldn’t tell exactly.

He took his small trolley bag and rolled it along to the reception. 

“Your name, sir?”

“Aniket Bhattacharya”

“Room S4”

It had been ten years since he last came here. Or rather, ten years since he had left this place. He still remembered the day when he finally left the campus. He remembered how a small crowd had gathered to bid him farewell—friends, batchmates, juniors and other people around the hall.

Everyone has to leave at some point or the other, everything has to change—it’s something you cannot defy. But as you go along, you make connections, share moments and enjoy times together, and what’s life but a colorful collection of these moments—the happier you make them, the prettier the whole picture becomes. And still now, if he were to recall the happiest moments of his life, that moment would flash before his eyes. Seeing all those faces in front of him, all those hugs and “Yaar, we’ll miss you”, yes, he was happy and filled with heart-wrenching sadness…happy to be sad.

But life, as they say, isn’t a bed of roses. And time is a stealthy predator, quick to pounce on anyone too caught up in the past. Maybe that’s how he had become its prey, Aniket thought. Leaving the campus was hard, and perhaps he had never been able to leave it behind completely—it had become so deeply ingrained in him. Searching for the same footing as he had in Kgp, the big bad world outside took him by surprise. It was a different cliff to climb, or hang on to, and Aniket had taken perhaps too long to realize that. Dramatics had been his passion all through college. He never even tried to feign too much interest in academics. And not that he had lost out to others—a pretty decent job along with loads of love and respect was what he took away from kgp. But somewhere down the line, he had missed the curtain call, he hadn’t realized that the lights were off the stage and it was time for him to start playing the role of life. Amongst the numerous characters he had so deftly portrayed, his own was perhaps the one he had faltered most in playing out.

Aniket remembered the day one of his friends called him up about this Alumni Meet.

“Oye, kaisa hai tu? Bohot busy rehta hai ajkal?”

“Ya, thik hun..tu kaisa?”

“First class.  Alumni meet mein aa raha hai na?”

“Umm… I don’t know..matlab kaam hai thoda..”

“Kya kaam? C’mon Ani, u’ve missed the last three times we’ve met! Is baar to ana hi padega..”

“Ok, I’ll see…”

“See-vee kuchh nahi, you r coming, that’s all! Aur bata…kya chal raha hai…?”

That was the question he didn’t like, because he didn’t have a proper answer. He had looked out the window of his office and thought, yes, how was his life going? And there wasn’t an answer. Just as the sun was setting, an emptiness gripped him from inside, the office, the chairs, tables and the computer screen—everything seemed hollow…from inside.

Aniket looked out the window of the guest house now and felt that same feeling of emptiness. What was the cause of that pervasive nothingness? As if nothing meant anything at all? Was it that sole missing face he was still searching for in the crowd? On the day of his final journey, with friends all around, he had lingered a couple of moments longer before getting into the car, hoping perhaps to see her, one last time, to say a memorable goodbye at the least. But that was so long ago. How could it still affect him! And suddenly now, that smell again…he felt it, so deeply yet very subtly—it tickled his senses uneasily. He still couldn’t make out what it was.

The evening had been rejuvenating for some, interesting for others, but for Aniket it was about missing pieces. A part of the puzzle that didn’t fit in, dialogues that were incoherent and characters that didn’t quite play out their parts. He was desperately trying to put it all together, trying to play the part he was supposed to. That, until he caught sight of her! Everyone was busy catching up, talking about the good times, reliving the past and sometimes when the glass of memories overflowed, spilling onto the present—to talk of family, career and work. Yet he was enjoying the moment, talking about the good old times, which had been so wonderfully enjoyable. The food was sumptuous, the student representatives bubbly and enthusiastic as ever, the people moving around, meeting up, laughing and sharing. From a distance, all of a sudden, Aniket caught a glimpse of her. That pretty face had only gained a lovely matured cut in all these years. Her eyes were discerning as ever, hair beautifully laid and that smile that made hearts melt. Lisa was still as lovely as the last time he had seen her. He stood there for a moment, and the floodgates opened, letting in a mad rush of memories—ones he had let in ever so cautiously for the last ten years. The organizers were escorting them to the auditorium , where a little show had been put together. Even as the waves swirled up in his mind, Aniket walked up slowly and tapped her on the shoulder. For a moment she was startled! Then her gaze relaxed and she smiled.

The stage was lit up, as it always used to be. There was dancing, singing and some speaking—performances and people sharing their experiences. Aniket though, was in a daze. The same lights, the same stage, and he was drawn back to those days…especially one of those days. He still clearly remembered the scene. The prince had just been driven out of his native land. And now, he stood in front of his love, asking her to love him for what he was. He felt goosebumps as he remembered how he had knelt down and said, “ I am a man who has lost everything, but if there’s still something I fear to lose, it is you”. How Lisa, who was playing the princess, had turned and held his outstretched hand. At that moment, Aniket didn’t have to act—the emotions became real! He could still feel the same spotlight on them, the emotional music and the audience in silence—captured in the moment. Yes, that was the inception of their love story—albeit a fleeting one. They were like two artists and the campus was their muse. Their every work, play, laughter and love blossomed in this beautiful place. But not every play has a happy ending. Soon they realized they had run into walls—strong and unyielding, those from the world outside—those of caste, traditions and norms. Neither was courageous enough to let their ship sail in the storm, although they dearly wanted to see the other side of the sea. Times changed quickly, minds even faster, and flowers began to wilt like those that adorn the campus every spring.

Aniket looked at Lisa now who was sitting next to him. She turned and their eyes met. All these years, they had kept in touch, more like acquaintances do, only through the occasional email and deliberately so. The pain of coming close was too much to go through again. Yet still there was a feeling of comfort between them, even in silence.

 The program was about to end.

“The moon is lovely tonight. Can we go out for a bit?” she asked.

He obliged. Yes, the moon was certainly beautiful, and the stars were bright too. They sat on the lawn outside and looked up at the lonely light up in the institute tower. They had settled into an imposed status quo with their lives. Aniket knew it was not going to change. Yet he felt somehow that emptiness inside him fill up a little bit. He sat there, thrust his head back and closed his eyes. There was that breeze again. And that same fragrance, which he associated so much with this place. This time, though, he knew what it was. It was the smell of being young and fearless, of feeling at home and expressing yourself—as if nothing else mattered, it was undoubtedly the fragrance of freedom!

Rain Dance

It had been raining since late night. Sritoma woke up to the sound of mellow rumbling of clouds and rain drops whispering outside the bed-side window. The incessant rain through the night had metamorphosed the sultry summer night into a cool and pleasant morning.

Sritoma, 15, stared outside the window with sleepy eyes soaking in the flavor of the early morning rain. “Toma! Are you up yet?”, Anuradha’s voice from the kitchen brought her back to reality. The morning was supposed to be beautiful, but instead it seemed shrouded in gloom. A lot had been going at home since the last two days. Dadu was ill, very ill, more than he had been all these years—compounded by his whim not to be taken to a hospital and “left to rot”! Finally, they did manage to coax him to a nursing home, but by then he was too weak to protest. And then there was this man….“Come, get your breakfast dear! How much longer would you take to get out of bed?”. Sritoma pulled herself up.

It was a virtual holiday. It had been raining in Kolkata since the past week—relentlessly, like some curse had befallen on the rain gods. The streets were water logged, transport hindered, and she knew she was old enough to bunk a few days of school. She loved the rains, did Sritoma, loved to listen to the sound of it, and soak in the smell and the romance that surrounded it. But this time, it was a bit different. Doctors said that it was the sudden rains and temperature dip that had caused dadu’s latest illness. However, there was another dark cloud built up inside her—darker and deeper than those in the sky.

As she entered the dining room and stood by the table, her eyes met the man sitting opposite her. Eyes she knew only too well. The face, too hadn’t changed much, except for the carelessly grown beard. It made her weak in the knees to think that it was her own father sitting opposite to her—the first time in eight years they were so close to one another. “Good morning” said Srinjoy looking admiringly at his daughter. Sritoma took her eyes away. “You aren’t going to school today, are you?” ;“No”;“Which class are you in now?” ;“12^th” “Oh, big times ahead, haan?” Sritoma nodded tentatively.

The rest of breakfast was quiet, except a couple of short enquiries and even shorter responses. Srinjoy was trying to be coy, feeling for the place that he had so carelessly let slip all these years. Anuradha was being polite, and contained, not willing to step into the unknown she had so long ago shunned from her life in search of solid ground. Sritoma could feel the cloud intensifying inside her, sometimes jumping up to her throat and threatening to spill out.

She never quite understood what had happened eight years ago. She was still a child then. She loved her parents, yes, she loved her father, and she felt he loved him too!! But then, one day her father went away—she didn’t know why, and somehow didn’t want to either. All she knew was that it made her mother cry, it made her cry too. But slowly, she felt the picture of her father, his eyes, his smiling face, reassuring touch—melting away into oblivion. As if the colors of the canvas had been slowly washed away with rain, or teardrops—whatever you prefer to call it. It was a place she could never go to now, even if she wanted to, not even touch or feel, however desperately she craved for it—it had become a dark deep cloud floating above the earth and below the sky, hidden in between the lines of her reality.

It was dadu’s ill-health that had brought them together today. Apparently, her grandfather was very fond of his son-in-law—Sritoma remembered vaguely how the two of them used to spend long hours playing chess when they’d come to visit dadu from Barasat. Anuradha had recounted sometimes, how they shared a common passion for gardening.

The day before, dadu had wanted to see Srinjoy—“ekbar”, he said, holding his daughter’s hand in his. Anuradha strangely, remembered the phone number even after all these years, and when she rang up, she was half-relieved to be able to recognize the voice at the other end. That was yesterday morning. Srinjoy drove up all the way from Barasat braving the rain and the half-flooded city. After spending the evening at the nursing home, when they came out, it was raining. It had rained for most of the day, and in the present condition, it made no sense to try and drive back all the way. “Stay back tonight at our place” offered Anuradha. “I wouldn’t want to impose..”said Srinjoy “Wouldn’t be a problem”. Srinjoy said no more.

The rain had stopped quite a while now. There were even little drops of sunshine peeping through the clouds that still looked ominous. Sritoma walked lazily to her favorite spot in the house, the chair and table by the window of her room. She sat there dreamy-eyed looking out into a world that seemed so oblivious to her presence. Inadvertently, her hands picked up the bright red exercise book on the table, as she had so often done in her moments of deep sorrow, joy or realization. It was her little book of poems, one she treasured, loved and lived for. She was lost for a while as she painted with ink the pictures in her heart—

I was lost in sleep when I should have been awake/ Awake to the sounds of laughter and joy/ Awake to the sunshine that let the flowers bloom/ Yet I slept,/ In deep ignorance and deeper innocence/ Only to wake to the thunder, storm and rain/ To an emptiness deeper than pain…

“Toma, what are you doing dear?” Sritoma quickly replaced the book hearing her mother’s voice. “Nothing maa, just sitting around; you need anything?” Anuradha cast a cursory glance on the exercise book. The significance wasn’t lost on Sritoma. She never could understand her mother’s aversion to her passion for poetry. Knowing her mother, who was a very understanding and liberal parent, it didn’t quite make sense. It was a newly acquired passion for Sritoma, one that she had discovered a few months ago—the urge to express her feelings in a deeper way than she could confess to any person she knew—and it was kind of addictive! But she also loved her mother more than anybody in the world, and tried her best not to hurt her in any way. “Your father is leaving…he wants to talk to you..” Anuradha broke her chain of thought. Sritoma looked into her mother’s eyes for a moment. She suddenly sunk her head into Anuradha’s arms and wrapped her own around her. For a few seconds they didn’t talk. Anuradha caressed her daughter’s hair, “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine…”.

Sritoma stood at the doorway long after Srinjoy had driven away, disappearing like the invisible whirl of smoke from the exhaust pipe. There weren’t any life changing words said between them, no apologies or complains or anger or joy, but there was something else. A sense of harmony. Sritoma looked up at the sky. Harmony. Between the sun and the rain—two sides of the same coin.

Anuradha was lying on her bed, book in hand. Sritoma knew she was only pretending to read. She always did that when she was upset. Pretending to read, and thinking of something else. But she knew better than to intrude upon her now. Back to her room, by her favorite table, she found the note left to her by Srinjoy. It was a small piece of poetry, handwritten, the words were clear and the effect disarming—

“ Rain Dance

The words that formed, but never came out/ The dreams I dreamt but never woke up from/ The pictures I drew but never painted/ The songs I made but never played out/ The clouds that formed but never rained/ The place I took but never made my own/ Today they all came pouring in/ In hundreds and thousands, like each little raindrop/ They drenched my soul/ They took me out, to the place I belong/ And danced the eternal dance of rain.”

Sritoma stood there motionless—holding the note in her trembling hands, and just as the rain engulfed the world outside again, she felt the dark cloud burst inside her and tears began to flow…

A Journey with a difference

It was a strangely eventful last weekend, one of those that just urges words to form in your head, turn into sentences and knock wildly until you finally let them out. So I guess I’ll have to put down what went through, or at least the part where it all began—my trip from Lausanne in Switzerland to Kaiserslautern, a small town in the middle of nowhere in Germany. It was going to be my first experience in the Eurail and I was excited for more reasons than one. The first leg of the journey didn’t disappoint at all, from Lausanne to Basel, the two and half hours left me gaping out through the gigantic window panes as the train sped past the Swiss countryside. The pristine beauty of the scenery around was unprecedented. Meadows rose from the railway tracks and climbed up the mountain slopes which seemed a stone’s throw away, and the vast expanse of verdure was interrupted in between with lakes and streams gushing by. The small stations in between were quaint with and vividly colorful with flowers—like pictures drawn on a postcard.

When I got down at Basel, I was wondering what more lay ahead of me in this wonderful journey. Next thing I knew, I found myself in a local train crossing the border to Germany. Apparently, a goods train accident and derailment had blocked off the route to Mannheim (an incident which according to one of my German labmates “sounded very much like the German train system”), my next stop. So, a “trainful” of people, including me had to take a detour through the nearby villages, changing trains twice and taking a bus ride in between to reach Freiburg. Now that was supposed to be the end of our ordeal. But it was far from over. We waited at the station, and so did hundreds of other passengers, for the trains to arrive, but they were delayed 10 mins, 20mins, 1 hr and then cancelled altogether. Finally a train did arrive at 12 15 in the night after 3.5 hrs of waiting at Freiburg (the railway stations strangely have no public toilets!!), that was to take us to Frankfurt via Mannheim. When I reached Mannheim at 2:20 in the morning, it was still 2 hrs to the next train to Kaiserslautern. By that time I was quite flushed out, I stood there for a moment in the empty platform, looked at the gloomy faces around, and I said to myself “Bhaad mein jao! I’m taking a cab”. So I booked a taxi to KL. The driver said “I drive very fast on highway at night”—and boy, the next half an hour he was speeding the Mercedes at no less than 160kmph. When at 3 in the morning, just a few blocks away from my destination, the driver diligently stopped at an innocuous traffic light on an utterly deserted road, I could be forgiven for asking the question—“what’d happen if you jumped the light now?” And it took a pretty long time for the inception of this idea that traffic lights can be jumped—apparently he had never thought of it!! If I were Obelix, I’d have gone “tap tap tap…”.

I’d be doing injustice if I were not to mention the people I met along the way, most of all Frank and Judith, two strangers whom I met at Freiburg. Apparently they had also met each other earlier along the way. Judith, a young English woman, who spoke perfect “Oxford English” and Frank, an ex German army man turned businessman, were my company from Freiburg to Mannheim. Talking to them on various topics was the only way I could keep my mind off the situation, which was at times admittedly scary at times, when I started thinking of the gravity of the position I was in—being stranded alone at night in an unknown German town—and how worse it could get.

This journey was worth remembering for many reasons—for all the wrong ones obviously, and then for the people I saw, and the scenes—the huge rainbow I saw while on a bus through a small German village, uninitiated Germans exclaiming at the “huge” crowd ,which would be about the same as that in a normal bus stop in Kolkata; long queues reminiscent of India, and guess what, people trying to jump the queue as well! It was not the Eurotrip of usual, but certainly one that’ll stay with me for a long time. All’s well that ends well they say…

Half a dozen strings...

Testing times, and it’s been pretty busy; lots of thoughts wandering my mind—disorganized and diverse, fighting for space—I’ll let them make their own music…

Yesterday was bhasha dibosh(language day). I couldn’t resist writing the Bangla expression, because the essence of this day is so emphatically linked to this language. It was in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) that a great movement was started in protest of Pakistan’s declaration that Urdu should be the official language of East Pakistan as well. This movement was unique in its objective, no material gains, no bridges to be made, no factories to be shut, no wages to be increased, just the fundamental right to speak the language of your choice, the language of your birth—which is so innately ingrained in each one of us. Bangladesh hosted the opening ceremony of this year’s cricket world cup only a couple of days ago, and in a country that owes its birth to this language, what more fitting way to begin the auspicious occasion with “amar shonar bangla ami tomay bhalobashi”…

Yes, the world cup is underway, and Indians have gone crazy about it as usual. Among all the useless debates and endless discussions, comments and retorts, there was one that stood out. It was made by the Indian captain a few days ago. When asked what advice he’d given to Sreesanth, (who, by the way is the bad boy in the team) he simply said “If he wants to irritate somebody, it should be on the other side”. Now that’s how a leader should speak.

Leadership is something very difficult to define, but there’s one thing that is common to all great leaders—the power to inspire! Last night I watched a video—“The last lecture” by the late Dr. Randy Pausch. If you haven’t had a chance yet, watch it—it’s there on youtube and TED.com. It was one of the most amazing talks I had ever heard—inspires you to change your perspective, look at things differently.

So, where is the inspiration around us? I think most of you fellow Kgp-ians will agree that this is probably the greatest shortcoming of life in Kgp. All the eccentricities, all the discontent, all the frustrations (I’m not saying that’s all there is) stem from this one single fact—lack of inspiration. Maybe because of misguided choices, may be because of unchallenging coursework and even more boring question papers, or a skewed sex ratio or whatever, but you can’t deny it. Even the kgp culture, the campus activities, which is definitely its biggest asset, seems to be driven more by compulsion than inspiration. Probably all this is just a hangover of having stayed here for almost 4 years now, five years seems a bit too long…

It’s come to that time again…when I have to start thinking about what to do next—not that I have had great doubts, but still this is where you say—“lock kiya jay”. Last time was when I was leaving school, and since then it’s just been going with the flow. Honestly, I am pretty excited about taking the next step, it’s a little scary if you think of the implications—but it’s always heartening to know that there are people who’ll love you no matter how you mess your life up.

Love. It’s the thing you live for, it’s the thing that drives this world. Even hatred, malice, jealousy and every other emotion is born out of it—and I am barely surprised that this little tune of thoughts has also sought its ending on the lovenote.

On the road of experience

Another semester gone by, in the usual uncompromising way that leaves one to wonder whether it was indeed four entire months it had lasted! But this time, not without a couple of delightful intermissions—decorating memories like wild flowers on the barren highway.

Midway through autumn, after three colorful days of Durga Pujo it was time to set off. On the road and in the air, with my parents and my uncle, a week and a day on a much-expected sojourn in Kerala. From Kochi to Allepuzha, it was a soothing, if not unforgettable experience. The smell of history in the streets of Kochi, the untainted verdure of Munnar, the serenity of the backwaters—the waves of new sensations left a handful of pretty sea-shells to savor.

The prettiest of them all, the one with the shining pearl, was Kanyakumari—the tip of India’s giant ankle that is worthy of its crown. First up there was a visit to the much venerated temple of Kanyakumari. The smell of its damp, old walls, the incessant smoke from burning incense and from the ghee-soaked flames in old oil lamps created an aura that easily takes the clock back a thousand years. But what struck me the most, and it was the second time, was the exuberant beauty of the ocean.

More than a century ago it was at this very place that Swami Vivekananda culminated his journey across India. The story goes that Swamiji sat in meditation for three days on an obscure rock jutting out of the sea just off the coastline of Kanyakumari. The rock, now a famous tourist spot has been altered greatly—but the significance of its location, both physically and symbolically is hardly lost on anyone who’s been there. It’s not difficult to imagine why Swamiji had swum across the rough sea all the way from the shore to this place.

Still fresh from the first trip, a fortnight later, I was traveling again—this time closer to home in the hills of Darjeeling. This trip was special for so many reasons—one of them was the fact that I had some of my closest friends for company. From our very first stop at Kalimpong and the first glimpse of the majestic Kanchenjunga, I knew this was going to be a trip to remember. It seemed as though beauty lay all around us, waiting to be looked upon and admired. Music came to me, poetry flowed through in the moments of silence and solitude and most of all a feeling of joy and almost spiritual marvel at the astounding beauty pervaded my senses. Clouds wrapped themselves around the mountains in various shapes like a wardrobe full of new clothes and stars lit up like I had never seen before sprinkling every inch of the sky with shining jewels. Apart from the bountiful of green, the divine hues of dawn and dusk and fun and frolic all throughout, the tranquility of the hills was stimulating, almost arousing—a silence to hear one’s own mind speak, a voice that’s nearly always left shrouded by the bustle and din of our routine existence.

I savored every moment, as I always try to do, letting every wave of new sensation flow freely into me—for that’s what life is all about—experience. Some things sometimes somewhere that create a ripple, change a perspective, make a wave and wash away the loose pebbles. Like a great man once said—“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”

A word or two on the eve of the Games

October is here, and so are the Commonwealth Games!! It is arguably one of the best things that has happened to India in recent years—yet it just can’t seem to find a way out of the headlines, and for all the wrong reasons! When was the last time the front page of your daily newspaper did not sport a story on how the games have turned into a scheme for generating “common wealth” for a select group of individuals? So, given the situation, what can I, an educated young man, far away from the disquiet and the controversies surrounding the games do about it all? Well, at least I can think, and often it is at this basic level that people falter—when things happen thick and fast, they forget to think. So I was thinking… and the first thing that became clear to me was that the media has made a meal out of the entire thing. I mean it’s not that one should shut his eyes or turn a deaf ear to all the audio visual evidence in support of everything that has been going wrong in the Games. It’s just that the Indian media, not surprisingly though is very much like the typical Indian populace—highly emotional, sensitive and annoyingly over expressive at times. That makes entertainment out of news channels but it certainly didn’t help in the situation at present. Having said that, one has to give credit to the media—it is their persistence that has forced some of our peace-loving truant bureaucrats to pull up their socks and get things done. One must also realize that organizing an event of this magnitude, or for that matter any event in India is not a joke. And the difficulty lies not only in the governmental offices but also with the general public at large. People in this country seem to possess a strange affinity towards civic disobedience and destruction of public property. For example, there was an incident where the organizers had put up signboards for the Games, only to find them messed up by someone who apparently found no place else to express his artistic talent. Now this is something which is very difficult, if not impossible to deal with. Yet it is there—it’s the same instinct that leads mobs to burn down a bus after an accident!!

So, where does this go from here? Well, I for one am an optimist and believe totally in the inherent sensibility of men, especially my own countrymen. I believe that all said and done, all controversies and failures apart, Commonwealth Games 2010 will make India proud. For the skeptical, wait till the Games get underway—I’m sure you’ll find the mood of the general public changing, and so will the perspectives of the media. Not denying the mistakes and failures we have encountered so far, we are going to make it through and do so in style. And even if I’m proved wrong, I’d take satisfaction in the fact that at least I looked in the right direction, for rest assured, nothing’s going to come about by thinking “we can’t make it”!!

So, here’s to a highly successful Games, here’s to New Delhi 2010!!

Cheers.

The Prelude

This has really been a long time coming. I say that not only because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now, but also that I’ve been filling up my personal diaries with thoughts and scraps of imagination that could easily have fitted into a personal blog. What kept me waiting all this time was perhaps an overwhelming sense of possessiveness towards my own thoughts and feelings. My writings have always been very close to my heart, as honest an expression of myself as only a few people closest to me know about. Now, after 3 years in college, having experienced some of the good, bad and the ugly and having seen a little bit of the world, my heart tells me it’s time to let go. To let go of those painted butterflies I have been holding in my palm for long—now I think they are strong enough to fly!
I am not a religious person, although there are certain things I worship—poetry is one of them. Poetic expressions are everywhere, but most of all they are in your mind, intertwined in every thought and color that you might conjure. Many people think of it as an inconsistent, cryptic way of expression and often one that is associated with the long-haired and bearded eccentric “intellectuals” who have nothing better to do than analyze the abstract wanderings of someone else’s thoughts. Well, I do believe that analyzing verses in terms of its literal meanings (as we were often asked to do in school) can be a futile exercise—rather, you’ve got to feel the sense and the sound of it, take it in as a whole—much like a song where one single note is an isolated sound whereas the song in its entirety is music that fills your mind with a million colorful feelings! And yes, it is hard to comprehend sometimes; but if you think about it, it is bound to be, and it is in this apparent abstractness that the real beauty of poetry lies. You see, often, it is born out of thoughts in its very purest form, where they have not been constricted by the boundaries of one’s physical surroundings or chiseled and shaped by the nature of society and the outer world. And expressing this very unstructured feelings requires a language as fluent and dynamic as the mind itself. Now, isn’t it natural that this language would be different, more complex and demanding than the normal colloquial dialect or even prose for that matter? After all, you don’t expect to be able to understand the equations of quantum mechanics without studying the subject deeply? That’s because like poetry, they too embody a complex system through their expressions, and that demands them to be written in an equally complex and somewhat abstract script called mathematics! Having said that, it’s worth mentioning that the greatest poets do manage to impart clarity and universal meaning to their poems in the midst of the streams of ideas and thoughts—and that precisely is what makes them great. I’m sure many of the readers will agree that there is an immense pleasure that comes out of this exercise—that when you are able to navigate your way through the labyrinth of abstract expressions to excavate an idea or a deep-rooted meaning, the feeling is ecstatic. Like looking at a picture which at first glance, seems to be just a splash of colors and gradually as you look carefully, outlines begin to appear, shapes begin to take form and an entire image emerges from the background. And it is then you realize how powerful poetry is as it leaves a deep impression in your mind—perhaps because it can touch your feelings directly and so profoundly, swaying them to the sense and sound of the words.
As far as my own writing goes, inspirations are few and far between, but then there’s always imagination! I have these little thoughts now and then, like little drops of ink—and then, my imagination nurtures them, moulds them into letters, words and then fills up a few pages of my diary. Now, let me turn this page into my own little sky as I let fly a couple of those butterflies I promised to. Here goes…. hope you like it.

1
What do you say when you have no words?
Maybe you delve into the eerie silence of the night
And discover your own painted thoughts,
Blow them away into the world
In search of canvases to glorify.
Maybe you speak
The language of dreams,
Which is to feel and not to think;
Maybe you find all that was thought
Was nothing but a dream,
And all that felt was truth itself—
Like the stars that glow
Through the twilight gloom.

2
When it rains like this
On a dreary autumn evening,
Drop by drop into my heart
It smells of sweet belonging—
Of times spent in thought,
Of dreams that were born
At the spark of lightning,
Of storms that shook me and took me far away
Like some fallen withered leaf
Searching for its soul.
And now it’s time for dusk
The long awaited shore;
The fire will burn no doubt,
In gentle rhythmic waves
With the warmth that felt like you;
And the night will shine,
In a thousand colored stars
I know when you’ll light me up
One day in the twilight sky—
It’ll rain like this, for sure!