buddha's quest

what happens when you come face to face with death? or rather what happens when u come face to death in a way, you have never seen it before.

imagine u are a happy person, a loving person, a person who has all the things to keep him happy, no reasons to make him unhappy..you are a king for god's sake, u have a beautiful loving wife, u have just been blessed with a son, and there is a whole kingdom filled with people who are ready to give up their lives for you.

and one day u see death..just like that..the first thought...what if i lose my loved ones to death? u mean, it has to happen..there is no escape from losing them to death? all the time, all the emotions, ive invested in my relationships can come to an abrupt end, if death chooses to take away the people in whom ive invested so much?

what is the solution then? how can i prevent this? i can choose to invest in so many people, that i need not fear death, snatching all of them at once..or like a die hard alcoholic, i can choose to change my brand if it suddenly becomes unavailable.

or i can think of a way, of being happy without depending on my relationships.


and that's how somebody sets out to be a Buddha.

dreams

saw you yesterday,
after a long long time...
u had your two day stubble
the kind i always loved
to see on your kind face,

your eyes were
darting .... now playful,
now brooding
they kept changing
their expressions, chameleon like.

the air was thick with normal talks,
you seemed to want to say a million things,
the same million things
i so wanted to listen to, but
you were bidding your time
and i was ready to wait
our love being an unspoken
complacent wait

saw u yesterday,
in my dream
for that's the only place
i get to see u now

the heartbeat

at the onset i must admit i wasn't too excited or even too sure about being a mother..in the sense, being a person who more or less went with the flow, and, the information that i was pregnant, gave me a sense of excitement, more so for the excitement it gave the immediate family on both sides and the colleagues at work, than an excitement about gushing motherhood and all that stuff books and movies and people kept talking about.

in fact the initial three months, was not even good. as most of the days, i just tossed my home cooked lunches out of the window, while my dear colleagues and friends shared their lunches with me..

the only  thing that was  really exciting for me  in those days was comparing notes...... another colleague of mine, was pregnant with her first child too..(and since her husband worked nearby, he often treated both pregnant women with wonderful tasty and healthy food) we cud sort of share stories. ..she had more stories to share, cause lot more  people in her life were pregnant at the same time..her brother's wife, her husband's brother's wife, her mother's sister's daughter.

and thus days passed, with regular gynac visits, cooking, puking, stealthily throwing lunches out of windows, traveling to work in local trains,taking calcium tablets, folic etc etc

i was already aware that soon i wud be able to feel the baby kick...the heart beat.i had already heard old wife's tales about how the painful the kicks often were..but it hadn't happened yet, and after the third month, i lost interest..it will happen when it does!.

and that day, i was, as usual, going to work..had already finished two legs of my travel..the rickshaw to the railway station, and the ast local  from vasai to bandra, where i had to cross the overbridge to catch the next train....i was crossing the overbridge as usual half running, half jostling people, half walking down the stairs, so as to not lose the connecting train, and be late and get a crossed muster, which wud result in loss of half a day, need to conserve leave and all that, as no idea if  i wud need it badly later., me being pregnant and all that......etc etc, when somewhere on the fifth stair downwards, i felt it.

its no exaggeration at all., if i say that.  for me that minute the whole whirling world stood still.......or rather, it was the other way round..suddenly the world was moving in a fast blur people comming and going, trains whistling past me on both sides.....

but my world had gone still. perfect still. a peaceful still...all i knew was that my baby had acknowledged my presence. it was a tremendously warm... gushing warm moment. i forget all about  connecting trains, musters to be caught and leaves to be saved..

.i got down slowly the remaining four stairs,slow motion, and sat on the concrete sofa of the railway platform, and then kept doing just that... sitting and sitting. I calmly watching the world go by. a feeling of  pure bliss surrounded me.

 that feeling must have lasted for about ten minutes, and then the mundane beckoned to me again, i remembered the trains, and the late musters and leaves, and then took the next train to work.

kanyadaan

watching a song from kanyadaan...likhe joh khat tujhe.

a young shashi kappor serenading asha parekh. i like this movie for its songs, for drool drool worthy shashi, and finally its last scene.

but before i reach  that, the story..

city boy shashi kapoor falls for asha parekh, a village belle, and she is inclined towards him too, but asha's mom turns out to be the fly in teh ointment, when she says asha is already a wife, a child bride.

luckily for shashi, the groom is none other than his best friend, who incidentally is married with kids, and in blissfully unaware of his 'wife' in the village. so shashi uses this info to lie to her and her mom, that it was he himself who was her child bridegroom, but is unable to continue with his deceit , when he realises that asha has taken the childhood marriage seriously and was ready to be with him totally based on that premise...

so he spills the beans, asha is resigned to be the secret bride of his friend, and also decides to stay at his place as his maidservant for good measure, things get funny, when the friends wife objects to her 'weird' behaviour.

she is of course left with no recourse, than doing the mandatory running to the mountains to jump down cliffs, just like most movies of the good old 60s and 70s climaxed :D..which is when her mom, tells her to forget the child marriage, and marry shashi.

she is confused..

mom, u taught me my early values and morals,
now u telling me to do exactly the opposite...
so whats right and whats wrong?

mom in all her wisdom answers,.

..child im a mom..
no mom will teach her child wrong..

for me this worked, cause all the while i was wondering how were the writers intending to get out of an impossible situation. the writer in me was intrigued, as i could think of no solution to the impasse  created by the situation .

what's life?

What is life?

Life is
A celebration
of emotions...

From birth
to death
We spin yarns
Weave tales
fill it with coLours
paint pictures
Beautiful sometimes
Sometimes grostique

We feed it
our sorrows, joys
Pain and pleasures
Sing, dance
Pray and more

Life is a celebration...
Of  lies

Immigrants

Immigrants

they move from one heartland
to another
restlessness leading the flight
and pace of the mover

the old paths not yet fully faded
the new colors haven't quite stuck either
the sun gives light, but gives not
warmth, couldn't it be warmer?

roots, yet to take grip
tender wings can't fly with grace
stuck in a no land of a restless mind
waiting patiently for the settler's peace

to own a piece of the new,
old baggages' thwart
not sure they fully belong
not sure of the new heart

generousity

genrosity

I can think of two different kinds of generosity, that can abound...

1) emotional..where the person is more than fair in his emotional dealings with the world
2) monetary, where a person is very generous where spending money is concerned


why is it that some people are more generous than the others in either or both categories?

I feel a person who has been surrounded by generous people in his childhood, ie have known generosity naturally, imbibe generosity and turn out to be naturally generous people.

where as people who have not seen emotional or financial generosity, or both, they tend to be calculative in their dealings with others, i.e they may turn out to be fair minded, but not a penny or ounce more than fair.

without u

 

without u...

i could tell you, one day,
of the million things i do
when u are yet again away

tell you, of the dozen dime,
the regular humdrum,
with which, i fill my time

i talk,i smile, i laugh,
i fill the blackboards
with routine chalk

they serve me well,
these common chores
for on u, i seldom dwell.

if  indifference is living, i do
then  live everyday
without you!!