Encore

A little way into the past,

there's a bit of you and me.

Not the ones that you or I know of now,

but ones with the horribly bruised knees.

A togetherness that will never be,

and a kiss that says I love you without a word here and there.

Endless complaints to feel free,

never having to try too hard to care.

There we were, making promises to each other in packs,

bailing out every time someone failed to bother.

Fights and tiffs amidst love so different from eight years back,

holding on secretly to confusing fathers and mothers.

Now we have to make sure our kids don't fall,

make sure we have saved enough to last ten falls,

make sure we are there to cure our world,

whenever there is a chance to lose every bit of it all.

And then comes the part where we can't have our way,

watch out so that the cocoon of happiness doesn't constantly break,

hold on to everyone around so they don't complain

then return home with a heart as heavy as hell.

And all the promises to be there forever are broken forever,

with only a hope that tingles the heart with lies.

So when the lights in the city die out one by one,

all we can do is try to stir our heart to fight.

But when the soul is beat and the eyes so yellow,

the mind so numb and the heart so mellow,

All we can do is put the children's hearts in the little glass jars,

and lie down comfortably to stare at the stars.

Star Child

When times change,people don't.
So goes the law of nature that traverses time.
But every hundred years or so there's a change that is inevitable.
So much so that people forget what it was like to be old.

There comes a change in sanity and insanity alike.
Every door gushes forth a child unmistakably unbound.
And thousands rise in rebellion against the dam that had broken the earth.
Falling and rising with each wave of the hand
the masses swirl into unknown depths.
And the depths loom and loom blacker with the sun that rises everyday.
While everyone learns to know what is wrong in their right.

Suddenly the songs have no meaning
and the nation searches for a soul to write
And one day out of nowhere in obscurity emerges one warrior
fighting the publishers and the mongrels alike.
The nation finds its voice and screams out in glory,
hiding courage in their overconfident tones.
And when the time comes to prove their death to the world
they go down in history as characters of a distant past.
The future hardly pays any attention to what they did,
sacrificing what they had so that we could be.

And all we care about are diamond stars
And all we care about are fancy cars.

Nowhere do we think of the hundreds slaughtered
to excuse the whims of cowards that preach lies.
Nowhere do we write down laws
to severe the ties of inhumanity.
Never do we remain satisfied.

Somewhere,sometimes a little heart breaks.
Somewhere,sometimes a little heart is sold.
Somewhere,sometimes a little heart grows weary.
Somewhere,sometimes a little heart grows old.
Children of the star, grated by evil against the wall.
Sanity goes amiss, when asked to take the fall.
And they do because they have nowhere to go.
Only one to believe,and no one to say no.

Waiting

You could see the smiles on their faces
as they played on the sun.
No notion about their universe,
Or the endless black all around.

They could dive into the sun and no one would notice for a moment they were gone.
Then they could come back up again and no one would still care for a moment.

When your mother is lost and your father is gone,
When strangers knock at your door as soon as you have turned twelve,
When all you can hear are insecurities being vented out,
There's nothing to try for except hope till the end.

The rooms contract every night,
Gradually pushing them against the walls.
The windows bolt themselves shut
while the dove cries through the night.
The beads of sweat give way to anguish,
Relentless wrinkles of desperation show up in the broken shards of the mirror.

The blue mists hide whatever dreams they had ever had.
And the mountains never let the moon go out into the night.

Silver wings sprout on them and wear off every month,
Protecting them from the hunger that makes for the blanket of all the filth.
Bruised for reasons justified only by punches returned,
Saving money by not buying clothes,
Wearing the ones they already have for days on end
till each thread wears itself out loose.


Tonight is a beautiful night by the beach,
But all I keep wondering about is how they go on.
Never doing anything for themselves
but doing everything for themselves to keep moving on.
Where does the courage come from?
Where does the hope reside?
Where do they keep the strength?
Where have they locked away all their hearts?



They deserve every bit of grace,
To see life as the others do,
To unlock their hearts and fall in love,
To know what it is like to have a future,
To know that they have a chance;
One chance for a life the civil man does not look down upon
But that's where the civil man has already stooped down.

Stalker

No more cold lights to hold up,
we can take refuge in the dark corners of my room.
Lives will go on if not for strange reasons people may have, to look for us.

I'll keep you safe in the pages of my diary.

I'll be who you want me to be.
Play the part I play best,
and hold the door open for you,
so that you may see me on your way out when you go off into the rain.

Surrenders to the deceptions in my mind
I find comfort in the way I fool myself.
I can watch you smile for the rest of your life
and not move an inch lest my pen rests.

Try a different life where there's you and me
And music for the moments we have.
You could spend the day reading books of you choice
while I listen to my heart to make that music that plays.
On winter nights we could get drunk
and know why we are so warm in the cold.
Oceans of notions in the mind could play with the wind,
while the rumors could spin their own tales.

The last pages of my notebooks have a picture of you.
And a picture of an afternoon we shared.

I could make ten mistakes and you'd never know.
You make one and I know how many are going to follow.

Do you ever wonder who that man is?
Face half hidden behind that notebook he keeps writing in.

 So frequent on your way to and from work.
Anybody could be me,
I could be anybody to you.
But I love watching you talk to people,
and the way you smile even when everything's gone wrong.
There's a certain beauty in those grey eyes.
Almost as fragile as a baby's bones.
I couldn't touch them for fear of breaking through the mirrors.
For fear of losing the distance I've built from you.

Spirals

Listening to your heart is never a crime. There is a common misconception about the whole matter though. All your life you are taught about being honest to yourself. But when the key turns in your life arrive, you find far easier solutions in lies. And to your surprise, the same people who taught you otherwise encourage you.

Listening to your heart is being honest to yourself. And these days there aren't many who dig deeper into what their heart has to say. We all keep talking about integrity and honesty and the likes but what really exists,is an idea. A false lead, a lie that you have planted n your own head. One of these gives rise to every other until you are wrapped up in a cocoon of lies extending over years which you cannot rollback even if you wanted to.

A little but of self control is always good to be exercised. Lies surround this one heavily. Take cigarettes for example. Every addict says he/she is not addicted to it. Yes, a few may be telling the truth. But no matter what they say, ask them to quit. And there are bound to be days when the cigarette count is way ahead of what they constrained on themselves. A lie is all it takes to fool the mind which is the most intelligent machine and the dumbest one that ever exists at the same time.  Or take the foodies,trying to cut down. The french fries and the pastries are never to be eaten. But yeah certain days do make for exceptions. Except that they never do. A lie is all it takes to tell yourself, "its just one day" . And the day never comes.

Old friends make for the best times. Life isn't a movie alas! Any place is the start of a new journey, new friends and new people. And hardly anything from the old life accompanies you. All you can do is reminisce and smile. With the distance, time takes the upperhand slowly and then there's nothing to talk about. Two different tangents and none close enough to each other to get an inkling of what the other is all about. Slowly and steadily, you recognize the new life as your own because of the new sense of familiarity and accept every aspect about it till it makes you smile whole-heartedly. Your laugh changes with people and soon enough it sounds the same as the old one. That's when you've blended in.

People

How our lives are all entwined. In every walk of life we meet people who are not even remotely related to us. But yet somehow somewhere I feel they are just the same once you get to know them. Whether they hail from Bahrain or Trinidad or even from some other part of your own country, there definitely are cultural differences but if we get to know them properly, we'll know they go through the same things we do. Schooling, colleges, bunking, movies, music, hanging out with friends, coffee, chocolates, working, companies, families, babies in the household, siblings etc are never much of a different scenario. It's just how we perceive them.
Starting work in my life was an apprehensive moment. I arrived in Pune city, all alone and put up at dad's friend's place. Such nice people. The city is just so small. It'll take a maximum of an hour and half by car from one end of the city to another. Transportation is horrible and oh-so-expensive. But I made friends at work and people are really nice. I have always wanted a n eclectc mix of cultures to work with and now I have that. I have colleagues from every corner in India and one from the center even. Everyone's pretty cool and the interaction level is just amazing. Out of the 25 in my batch, half of them are from my college so no difficulties there although I do wish things might have been shuffled and mixed a bit more. The other half include the West, North, South and the one from central India.
Getting to know them slowly, I found how we are all just the same with same responsibilities, lives, ways of doing things, but each with a different dream. Maybe these dreams are not very clear to me as of yet on the 3 weeks I have spent with them, but it is clear that everyone is looking for something, looking to climb higher, looking for their dreams to realise. We've all had similar setbacks, downfalls and our own shares of bad luck; but at the end of everything we are now all together at Tech Mahindra. Seems like a sign, does it?
With the start of office, writing s just gone outta the window, as is songwriting and playing guitar..... People keep telling me about my gifts and talent but I have no idea about where to put them to good use. Work life is a boon and a vice at the same time. On one hand its that independence, the financial independence, the freedom that we are supposed to enjoy. On the other hand we lose everything dear to us, everything we loved or had wished to continue, especially the hobbies.

Little Bird

It's been along time since I last wrote anything. Will probably be my last while in Calcutta. Next week I leave the City of Joy to start work at Pune. And if all goes well and I don't get kicked out, Tech Mahindra shall be my way of life for at least three four years. I'd prefer less though.

Life in Calcutta is abuzz right now. Lunches, dinners, friends, family, with the home training thrown in, all in a muddled up mess. Amidst everything, I found this little sparrow which sleeps right outside my window behind a pipe. Everyday its there, sleeping peacefully as the Havell's stand fan whirrs incessantly in my room through the night. Nothing to worry about except for food and water. But it manages somehow. But yeah, just two of them compared to the thousands of issues I have, face and have to think about? Nothing I guess. To me,it's just free.

A new start to life is around the corner. What I have always wanted. A restart button, a fresh city, fresh people, fresh experiences. But I don't feel excited at the prospect of it anymore somehow. Somewhere I seem to have aged and come to live for others but keep saying that I only live for myself. Life's taught lessons in these 23 years. Some wonderful and some not. I wish to learn from the ones that are not. And I find myself staring at this guy who is somehow 23 and doesn't want to be. Living for myself was this idea when I was young. That I'd have an awesome time, awesome friends, awesome everything. But that's hogwash, brainwash.Now that I know a little of the world and the kind of people it holds, I know all of that is just in the movies, the books and the celebrities. But the fantasy hasn't died out yet. I have taken life's decisions holding family in regard always and I have found at the end of the day, I am happy that way.I have worked hard to have good friends, to be liked and be there for all I care about. But being a sober, decent, nice person hasn't really paid off. That's exactly what keeps that old fantasy alive even though I know its not possible.

I hope Pune bears luck in the guise of mental satisfaction for me. That's one thing the last few years of 23 didn't feel like giving me. Made me feel hopeless, helpless, hapless, pointless, worthless and all the "less"'s there could ever be.