Stand-up for Love

She was like IIPM's rankings,

Too good to be true,

But like aunties are to K-serials,

to her I was addicted too.

I tried hiding my sentiments.

like netas in swiss bank stash their loot,

But all my feelings lay exposed,

Like Poonam Pandey on any photoshoot.

Akin to a Tatkal booking on IRCTC,

I was giving up without a fight,

But she kept appearing in my head,

like pop-ups on an adult website.

I approached but became like Manmohan,

whenever around any TV cam,

She acted like Kryponite,

whenever I felt like Superman.

I still gave my best shot,

But could never get a hang of her,

It was as hopeless as commenting in English,

is for any Pakistani ex-cricketer.

She stayed a Bermuda Triangle,

A mystery I couldn't decipher,

Together we were just complex,

She real to me, I imaginary to her.

The Stand..

From the pedestals of morality,
willing to take a fall,
Hesitantly, we walk together,
away from them all.

From the charades of life,
A moment of truth we'll steal,
No need for secrets,
Shrouded we are,in anonymity's veil.

We try forgetting the future,
escaping away from the past,
Let's share this moment,
and try to make it last.

Gasps of air for another,
before diving again into indifference,
Trying to race against time,
to live a life in moments.

And dawn makes us strangers,
neither lovers nor friends,
What we had begun,
with the night had to end.

Curious Kid and Unattainable Awesomeness

The first time he saw her, let's call her Unattainable Awesomeness, was on a computer screen while surfing Facebook on his office's secured internet connection with his boss's access code .He was supposed to be verifying a 1000 line SQL code but that's another matter.

If you are thinking that he had the mentality of one of those desperate teens who treat social networking sites for voyeuristic pleasures, you are wrong. Well, not completely. He was simply 'Single and unable to mingle'. But after all, social networking sites are for networking and it wasn't as if she was in the friend list of a mutual friend's mutual friend. If you really want to blame someone, blame the Facebook coders, they suggested her name in 'People You Might Know'. He didn't know her but curiosity isn't a crime. Isn't that what institutions of higher learning aim to encourage? Let's just refer to him as the Curious Kid (everybody likes to feel young).

Curious Kid looks forward to seeing Unattainable Awesomeness in the near future (okay, you are gravitating towards calling him desperate, I don't blame you). However, a curious thing had been happening  with Curious Kid; with the feline-shaped halo resting on his head, suddenly women started having similar sentiments for him that Rickshaw-walas have for Mithun Da, reverence and admiration. Shocked and stupefied, Curious Kid asks out the first woman that gives him any hopes of romantic bliss; that they are as incompatible as Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati is a late realization and the relation has the same  longevity as Chinese-made products is beside the point but we are digressing; the story is about Curious Kid and Unattainable Awesomeness after all.

In the midst of this tumultuous phase, Curious Kids lands at the institution of higher learning. The first time he sees the living, breathing Unattainable Awesomeness, is when she is accompanied by an elderly lady, probably her mother, who could have intimidated even Shahrukh Khan if he laid an eye on her ward. Curious Kid, though desperate to strike a conversation decides to keep his distance for the time being; in his head, he categorizes it as the 'Playing Hard to Get' strategy.

Although this strategy was supposed to be short-term, for various unmentionable reasons (e.g lack of having balls) this becomes a mid-term strategy. In the meantime, Unattainable Awesomeness becomes, well, Unattainable Awesomeness for the majority. Curious Kid decides he needs to make a move sooner or later and then one fine day he decides to initiate conversation.

There weren't any violins, breeze or falling leaves as she approached him, rather he felt the way a tailender does when Shoaib Akhtar is about to bowl a 100 mph bouncer from a 40 yard run-up. He did, what he had to do, he ducked (categorized under the strategy 'Live to Fight another Day'). Repeated attempts led to similar results: a temporary bouts of laryngitis with immediate recovery until the next time. Until one day, Curious Kid realized he had the panacea all along, madira and mobile. With immense gratitude to His Holiness Vijay Mallya and the Zoozoos, he conquered his fears (FO Mountain Dew!) and thus began his dalliance with destiny. However, Unattainable Awesomeness had generated the same amount of interest as Facebook's potential IPO on Wall Street had and Curious Kid had to fight for his place like a first timer in a Mumbai Local train. With numerous hedge funds vying for the limited public shares, it was time for the strategy to reevaluated.

Curious Kid decides to retreat (categorized as 'Cut Your Losses) and focuses on other important aspects of life (e.g drinking, partying, more drinking). Unattainable Awesomeness heads her own way. They bump into each other once in a while and have occasional conversations.

5 years down the line, Curious Kid is still curious about Unattainable Awesomeness. What was she like? What did she like? What made her laugh? What used to upset her? What did she want to be? And that wishful thinking that perhaps sometimes she feels the same.

Words

23 years. Barring the weekends, I everyday have taken the 8.10 am local to work. Wave a quick goodbye to my wife who drops me at the station, rush to platform 3 and wait. Then find a way through the hordes, somehow board the train, quickly run to the corner seat and take out a newspaper and read for the next hour till reaching my destination.

It was another similar day. Waved my wife goodbye, ran to platform 3 and waited. The train came, I plunged into the mass rushing into it and moved towards my corner seat only to find it taken. I grumbled aloud, started looking for another seat and finally found one near the door. Still indignant over being displaced, I kept glaring at the usurper as I fiddled through my bag to locate the newspaper. As I took it out and turned my furious eyes towards it, the front page boldly proclaimed yesterday's date and I despairingly realized that I had forgotten picking up today's paper. Cursing aloud, blaming myself and the world in general  for making the day horrendous, I began pondering my options for occupying my mind for the next hour and as the train stopped at one of the stations, I accepted grudgingly that I had to contend myself with scanning the faces around me.

It was then that she caught my eye. Not that her appearance was an anomaly in either extremes or that she tried to attract any attention. Dressed in fading and over-sized ragged clothes with a bundle in her hands, she was barely able to get on the train as it sped away from the platform. The people standing near the door yelled angrily at her, mouthing obscenities and she fearfully ducked away from them and settled down on the floor between the doors on either sides. She peeked into her bundle and continued to smile beatifically looking at its contents till she was accidentally shoved by one of the standing passengers. It seemed to have disturbed her from a reverie for she was startled and then stormily stood up and started screaming loudly at the guilty passenger.

Despite myself, curiosity got the better of me and I leaned over to see what was in the bundle and was surprised to find an infant wrapped in it. Perhaps noticing an alien set of eyes on it, the child started screaming out its lungs and I started fearing a rebuke from the woman but despite its loud cries, the woman seemed oblivious to the child and had her attentions focused on the now-irate passenger.

I drew back quickly and paid attention to the woman's screaming only to realize that she was uttering incomprehensible noises and was perhaps mute. The passenger seems to have noticed the crying infant for he pointed towards it and as soon as the woman looked back and saw the child crying, she quickly bent down and picked it up and started cajoling it with incomprehensible sounds. The child quickly grew silent, as if it could completely understand its deaf-mute mother's unique language.

All I could do for the remainder of the journey was to watch that woman who without a spoken word from either side was engaged in an extremely coherent conversation with the infant and for the first time in years I felt something stir my soul.

As I got off the train, I realized that everyday, in that sea of humanity, I had become less and less humane; losing my innocence, optimism and empathy, bit by bit as I withdrew more and more into myself. My thoughts kept returning to the woman, who would never be able to say anything or listen to what the child would say for a lifetime. I could only wonder at the lot of us who do have the ability for both, but in our ego, fear, anger, arrogance, leave so many things unsaid and refuse to listen to as much. I could only think of all the people who I had stopped communicating with over the years. I could only feel guilty about the fact that I had nothing to say to my wife of 20 years apart from waving a simple goodbye.

It was ironical and poetic that it took an encounter with a woman who could not speak or listen. for me to realize that we fail to recognize the gifts that we have been bestowed with. A kind word, an expected response, an encouraging sentence, an expressed emotion could make someone's day, perhaps even someone's life better.

Smokescreen

Engulfing me,
Hauntingly slow,
Becoming part of you,
Before I could know.

Making me an addict,
with your intoxication,
content I float,
devoid of sensation.

I begin to see,
what I wish to,
Giving you a form,
that I hold onto.



And like smoke,
you drift away,
shapeless,formless,
finding your own way.

The End..

Bridging the differences,
through intoxication,
Escaping reality,
by embracing commotion.

The music soon fades,
Thoughts in each head,
Eyes averted,
& no words are said.

Pretensions like dominoes,
fall away one by one,
The smiles are crushed,
by the veiled burden.

Cursed with incorrigibility,
Search for a haven,
Live through another night,
In suspended animation.

A haze of smoke,
An empty glass,
is what the night left behind,
is all that lasts.

उम्मीद की आस

जब पत्ते सब झडे,उम्मीद बचाई सीने में|

अब पेड़ ही न रहे खड़े,तो क्यों आस रहेगी जीने में|

जब अरसों बारिश नहीं बरसी,उम्मीद बचाई सीने में|

अब आँखें आंसुओं को भी तरसी,तो क्यों आस बचेगी जीने में|

जब खाली हुए शराब के प्याले,उम्मीद बचाई सीने में|

अब मैखाने पे पड़ गए ताले,तो क्यों आस रहेगी जीने में|

जब ज़माने से मुंह मोड़ा था,उम्मीद बचाई सीने में|

अब जो तुमने साथ छोड़ा है,तो क्यों आस रहेगी जीने में|