At Present

 

You may have been laughing just a minute back on some really idiotic joke-not a care in the world, feeling as light as a feather. And suddenly, with that speed and randomness that your thoughts often process, the jolt of memory tugs at that remote recesses of your mind, where you had stashed the thought of that event that you anticipate.

It comes back to you...

The very carefree happiness that you were reveling in, just a couple of seconds back, is wiped clean like some internal rain sweeper working on the glass of the mind.

Yes, I am currently in that stage of life, where the wait seems to be endless.

A special acrobatic performance is being staged exclusively for my benefit and personal viewing within my tummy! And well, just the wait, the silence, the unknown outcome is just resulting in repeated shows of the performance every other hour! Don't those acrobats ever get tired? *sigh!*

To think that this became the course of my life only in recent times and that it was not even on the cards, a couple of years ago, when I wanted to take up a completely different route for things, it seems strange that, in its short stint in my existence, it has acquired such gargantuan importance.

Giving something your best shot, never quite got it for you. There was always this other element, that some people called luck and I simply call 'that something', that was required to clinch it and claim it yours. I do not know if that something is with me this time. I shall not know till the moment of reckoning arrives.

And that is what is making everything so hard to plough through!

I have wanted a lot of things in life, the self-proclaimed Lady Oliver Twist that I happen to be. But nothing has quite matched my want for this! I have so made up my mind, that I won't be able to digest it if it can't be mine. I'm scared to dream of what wonderful possibilities lie ahead if it becomes mine, and also scared to visualize what a pathetic mess I'd be if it is going to be a life without that on the cards!

I really want a seat in you! Kindly select me for the next round of interviews. I'm already going near-berserk with all the mounting tension and anticipation.

Here's wishing I'm on its academic rolls!

Godspeed to me!

(For all those who absolutely did not get this post- I've applied for my PG and desperately waiting for the results of the first round of exams. End of March is when the results are expected and I'm running out of patience! )

when the crow and the dryad spake...

(an attempt at free style poetry with Javits. For people like me, who haven't heard of the term- here is what you do:Each person writes two lines at a time. You name the poem in the end(which we forgot to do! :P)

He was brimming with words and verses that were so fresh in thought and vivid in imagery. I kind of spoilt it, I thought. But the exercise was beautiful, I must concede!

So here goes...The italicized words are mine and the ones that are in regular font are his. And yes, they are two separate untitled poems :D )

A dispensing machine and one paper cup;

You and I like the tea and coffee we want,

Brimming in our youth, sugar coated melody,

And violence topped with crème.

Staring at one another, staring at the machine

Choices, my dear, are always difficult to make!

Strung up like rusty violins and violets,

Simmering velvet affairs,

What is brewing within could perhaps

Tell us which brown liquid to have?



If instant kappi makes you happy,

Or chai, chai, elachi chai,

How the hell did two random people come to discuss,

The spoonfuls of sugar, in the cuppa they prefer,

And march away, never to care,

Forgotten burnt tongue,

Back to the moment, to this existential question,

Chai or coffee? Neither-nor, either-or?



**********************************************************



Must we in the depths of our hearts,

Burn with desires to last another day, demanding

Or sweep away, back into the days of yore

Rustling through the leaves of time

In search of freedom, that can never be ours,

In search of love and the sea.



The sea... the calm blue forgiving sea

Expanding like the moment when I first held you in my arms

And cradled my anger, my animosity

Plagued me, with your generosity.



Love- used to provide me with succour when you were around

Love? Now I question what it was all about!

And go about with life, with out

And answer, a peace of mind

Why was the meaning present-then, there, those days?

And suddenly dysfunctional- everything, everyone, everyday!



Love was once like a cherry tree,

And you came like the winter wind stealing my pride

Love has became the gutter-dark, defunct, smelly

Forgotten wastes, unwanted excreta and scurrying rats running amuck

Decaying my soul and chewing its hide, you let me rot,

You let me die…



So how is it that we define what-was?

I was no good with words; you were the one so good with them all!

Or how is this that we've become strangers in pot that boils down

Happy-i-ness to hope-less-ness

It feels so strange to just talk to you

And yet so abnormal if I don't!

Let me walk away and never hear you say again what love meant to you

For to me, it meant a bloody big deal.

Jai Ho! :)

 

When the lady's fingers ripped apart the envelope in an uneven fashion, when Zack Ephron bent forward towards the mike, to declare the results, a girl, who often declared that the 'Mozart from Madras' is beyond awards, felt an anticipation and anxiety that superceded everything she has ever felt before for the happiness of someone else!

And when the words were just about to be formed, she lip read the first syllable and shrieked out in joy- ah well, everyone would have! For millions were glued to their TV sets that day- people from slums to people sipping on morning juices from while sitting in front of their Plasma TVs- for one man-A.R.Rahman!

When he did reshape the history of the land, (with a little note here and a crescendo there. Oh! And some faint triangle strains, if I may add) by becoming the first ever double-Oscar winner from India, the entire country erupted into cheers!

That moment was immensely meaningful. It not just spelt the triumph of the underdog(or Slumdog, as they call it these days), but also an awakening of sorts to the world outside of an immense storehouse of talent that is India!

For all those snooty Hollywoods(as I indulge in an occasional pardonable generalization) who claimed that talent and class was all theirs, here was our answer- "Well, my dears! We beat you at times, and how!"

For a man with a humble beginning, the struggling steps in his initial days and the immense glory that followed him once he broke into tinseltown, this Oscar was something so well-deserved. The effort, and more importantly, the humility that all his genius hides behind, definitely needs laurels far higher than any Oscar can give.

This is just the beginning, and we are glad it has begun. If there is one man whom everyone can learn from- it is Alla Rakha Rahman.

We often find fame playing dangerous games- teasing, tempting and taunting the bestowed with its tricks and making them fall prey to vices that we could never even imagine they could possess! To be a good human being despite being the best- which more often than not, all of us can't quite manage, is a magic trick, really! And Rahman has proved what a fabulous magician he is!

His speech, with his restrained composed excitement and elation, was so laced with humility and generosity, that it moved most of us who heard him.

A.R.Rahman- one wishes to give you an award that no one else could ever dream to possess- one that can just have your name and meant to have just yours!

For being one, who, with immense composure and honesty, values life and humanity, and strives to achieve glory that no other human dared to achieve; for being sincere in your efforts and kind in your actions; for giving meaning to the lives of millions of people around you through your continued hard work, and for being an exemplary inspiration to all, we confer upon you,

          Mr.Alla Rakha Rahman

the award of being the most true and honourable human being ever!

I

I am your guilt,

I am your want.

I am your forbidden fruit.

I am the dream you hide from yourself

I am the thing that scares you away.

I am a bit of you, you never knew, existed

I am that one thing you shall never have.

Yes, i shall remain the star you can never reach,

for you wanted just the tree tops!

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken

 

Every morning the maple leaves.

                               Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts

            from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big

and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out

You will be alone always and then you will die.

So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog

         of non-definitive acts,

something other than the desperation.

                   Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party.

Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I came to your party

         and seduced you

and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

                                                         Your want a better story. Who wouldn't?

A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.

Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.

What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.

            Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly

                                                                              flames everywhere.

I can tell already you think I'm the dragon,

                that would be so like me, but I'm not. I'm not the dragon.

I'm not the princess either.

                           Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.

I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,

             I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow

         glass, but that comes later.

                                                      And the part where I push you

flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,

            shut up

I'm getting to it.

                                    For a while I thought I was the dragon.

I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was

                                                                                                the princess,

cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,

          young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with

confidence

            but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,

while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,

                                                               and getting stabbed to death.

                                    Okay, so I'm the dragon. Bid deal.

          You still get to be the hero.

You get the magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!

                  What more do you want?

I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you're

            really there.

Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

                                                       Let me do it right for once,

             for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,

you know the story, simply heaven.

                   Inside your head you hear a phone ringing

                                                               and when you open your eyes

only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.

                               Inside your head the sound of glass,

a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.

             Hello darling, sorry about that.

                                                       Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we

lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell

                                    and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.

            Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

            to make a creature that will do what I say

or love me back.

                  I'm not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not

feeding yourself to a bad man

                                       against a black sky prickled with small lights.

            I take it back.

The wooden halls likes caskets. These terms from the lower depths.

                                                I take them back.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

                                                                              Crossed out.

            Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something

underneath the floorboards.

                   Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle

                                                                            reconstructed.

Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all

               forgiven,

even though we didn't deserve it.

                                                      Inside your head you hear

a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you're washing up

            in a stranger's bathroom,

standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away

                           from the dirtiest thing you know.

All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly

                                                                            darkness,

                                                                   suddenly only darkness.

In the living room, in the broken yard,

                           in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport

          bathroom's gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of

unnatural light,

             my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.

And the the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

                                                   of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.

I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,

          smiling in a way

               that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,

          up the stairs of the building

to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,

                                                I looked out the window and said

This doesn't look that much different from home,

            because it didn't,

but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.

                                    We walked through the house to the elevated train.

            All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful

                                                                        mechanical wind.

We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,

            smiling and crying in a way that made me

even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I

                                                                   just couldn't say it out loud.

Actually, you said Love, for you,

                              is larger than the usual romantic love. It's like a religion. It's

                                                                               terrifying. No one

                                                               will ever want to sleep with you.

Okay, if you're so great, you do it—

                  here's the pencil, make it work . . .

If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window

            is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing

river water.

            Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it

                                                                                              Jerusalem.

                  We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not

what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,

             a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over

and over,

             another bowl of soup.

The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.

             Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time.

                                                                            Forget the dragon,

leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.

                                        Let's jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,

             in gold light, as the camera pans to where

the action is,

             lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see

                                          the blue rings of my eyes as I say

                                                                              something ugly.

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,

             and I don't want to be the kind that says the wrong way.

But it doesn't work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.

                                             There were some nice parts, sure,

all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas

             and the grains of sugar

                         on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I'm sorry

                                                                         it's such a lousy story.

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently

                     we have had our difficulties and there are many things

                                                                              I want to ask you.

I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,

             years later, in the chlorinated pool.

                               I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have

             these luxuries.

I have told you where I'm coming from, so put it together.

We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .

             When I say this, it should mean laughter,

not poison.

                  I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.

Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.

                                           Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

The song I'm in love with, right now... :)

To listen to a sample:

http://www.jorgedrexler.com/

click on Music/Other, 12 segundos de oscuridad album cover(it is blue)

and then the first song is the title song.

12 segundos de oscuridad
(Letra: Jorge Drexler / Música: Vitor Ramil)
Sepúlveda, 27/03/06

Gira el haz de luz
para que se vea desde alta mar.
Yo buscaba el rumbo de regreso
sin quererlo encontrar.

Pie detrás de pie
iba tras el pulso de claridad
la noche cerrada, apenas se abría,
se volvía a cerrar.

Un faro quieto nada sería
guía, mientras no deje de girar
no es la luz lo que importa en verdad
son los 12 segundos de oscuridad.

Para que se vea desde alta mar...
De poco le sirve al navegante
que no sepa esperar.

Pie detrás de pie
no hay otra manera de caminar
la noche del Cabo
revelada en un inmenso radar.

Un faro para, sólo de día,
guía, mientras no deje de girar
no es la luz lo que importa en verdad
son los 12 segundos de oscuridad.

--------------------------------------------
ENGLISH:

12 seconds in the dark
(Lyrics: Jorge Drexler / Music: Vitor Ramil)
Sepúlveda, 03/27/06

The beam of light turns
so it can be seen from the high seas.
I searched for the path of return
without meaning to find it.

One step at a time
i followed the pulse of light.
the dark night only opened up
as it was about to close again.

A still lighthouse would be nothing
it guides as long as it doesn’t stop turning
it’s not only the light that’s important actually
but it’s also the twelve seconds in the dark.

So it can be seen from the high seas...
It’s of little use to the sailor
who doesn’t know how to wait.

One step at a time
there’s no other way to walk
the night of the Cape
revealed in an immense radar.

A lighthouse ceases, only in the day,
it guides as long as it doesn’t stop turning
it’s not just the light that’s important actually
it’s also the twelve seconds in the dark.

Dear Love,

I wonder if you exist. Well, people claim you do and talk about how fabulous you really are, and how wonderful you make people feel! However, I am not, and never have been, a recipient of your kindness.

Once again, it is that time of the year when the world is painted with a graffiti of fat red hearts and where there is-what seems to us perennially-single as- an annoyingly happy air around.

What I wish to know is, why are you selective with your doses? It is not like I'm in a hurry. But I'm just, for want of a better word, curious about what the hell you are about!

You seem to make people forget the existence of others, you make people think the world belongs to just them and their beloved and you make them do such outright crazy things!

I wonder if you have even written a chapter in my life. When luck and happiness were taking turns to put pen on my pages, when sadness-once in a while-added little footnotes, did you ever manage to grab the pen and ink every page with a little lovely paragraph on your own?

I guess I shall never really find out till what everyone terms 'the moment'. Wonder if life has it or not.

But well, in this long journey, we have nothing else to do but wait for a few things.

I shall- if not to find out when, to find out who?

Cheers,

The Dreamy Dryad

*********************************************************************************************

Sandhya writes...

The Dreamy Dryad is, as always, a hopeless romantic. Sensible sane me knows better than to go behind such one-day celebrations of love. Love does exist and maybe will have her own chapter written in my life somewhere. I, as such have no curiosity and all the time! :)

But, let me humour The Dreamy Dryad and publish this for old times' bonding and forever-optimism.

And to all of you love-struck, happy happy people- Happy Valentine's Day!

And to the rest of you single ones out there- Happy Valentine's Day! Today may not be, but tomorrow is yet to come! ;)

And to the true spirit of love- for everyone that forms this bright beautiful world- Love you all! :) Celebrate!!! :)

-gh);hywdlf,

 

Words are trying to phrase themselves right

But there's a backspace-a mind's blight

Something is crying out from the soul's inner reach

trying to break free and from the layers- breach.

What are those letters-falling random-trying to say?

They seem to make no sense- arranged whichever way!

I know there's some point- a sort of full stop

when put right in its place, a meaning would crop.

But semi-colons, commas and horrifying hyphens

Are all that dance merrily from between the sentence

Honestly it is a mere jumble, a play of random words

flitting aimlessly, jabbering like wild birds

Give me my full stop and the power of grammar

To teach them some sense, some values and order.

I want not anymore this vague mumbo-jumbo

A reason behind it all- you better quickly show!