The Musical Chair

Power! Power! Power! Body and mind, beauty, brain and brawn, money, status, position, recognition-everything so fragile, everything created-just a few of its sources. "Politics"-has the glamour of having it all in one clean sweep and hence such high demand. Power! the things it can do or rather the things we think we can do with it seldom realizing what it can do to us.

Once given, power takes routes untaken and unexplored.

Undenied, unquestioned, unstopped-power gets everything-even those considered unfair.

The unsearched, the unknown, even that which was considered unwanted (so far) is found within the orbit of power.

Everyone wants to be within its orbit. If they can't, they want to be in close range to the orbit. The closer they crowd around this orbit, the more powerful the orbit becomes-sucking everyone towards it-thus becoming the center, the crux. The charismatic enigma of power thus manifested not from the middle yet from around.

This manifestation thus gets out of control and as all things out of control gets, one gives in to it. Power thus gets us.

What was once (when it all began) a need for control, now is a reduced rubble as power takes over and controls us. In this maddening, ruthless, paradoxical irony, no more does man hold power yet power holds the man. In pursuit of power, we lose the power to control ourselves. Thus, how powerless we become by the very want of power?!

Everything said, "Men may come and men may go (yet the truth remains knowing the gullible vulnerability of man that) power remains for ever... jiggity, jiggity jig."  

p.c: http://www.popcrunch.com/musical-chairs-reality-show/

And There She Lay

The sensuous one searches the core

for that love still untold.

Search she does underneath bridges

and between the ridges.

Overflowing, melting, sans holds

steps she takes quite bold.

Exploring within, stretching beyond pleasure and pain

heart drenched in tear and rain.

Drop by drop as the drops melt 

warmth from her sure is felt.

Rising above all with hope and despair

the search for remorseless love seems fair.

Tussled hair and classy flair

nothing more she has to bare.

Cries and moans ring the air

tossed and turned with lustful tear.

Beauty and the beast all within

for once together writhing.

Finale sure does she reach

with all boundaries breached.

 Still breathing in silky moist

no language can tell this twist.

An experience her very own

in complete surrender she had thrown.

Everything is for her to keep

pain and pleasure for her to reap.

With nothing to lose and nothing to gain

lay she drenched in rain.

Uncontained, unchained and unnamed

there lay bliss untamed.

Shivering, shuddering, spontaneous

everything felt percutaneous.

Squirming as she tries to hold back everything held within

she gave herself for this win.

(inspired by a poetry I read today, I wrote thus...)

The Bleeding Angel

With a truck load of things and more to add on her list, the pauper she idolizes. The life, the simplicity, the banquet she can make with the same utensil-the only one lying around, the peasant's daughter is worth all her admiration. From the city's gate, away from the glittering luminous strings waddling from concrete homes-the grave of the living dead... her eyes looms into the distant hollow that separates her from the faint light from the country side at the distance. Can't decide whether to hide or run, she stays. The little pot of boiling gruel tempts her far more than a buffet from the king. The soul burning faster than firewood, she boils over. She has every reason to be jealous of the peasant's daughter. Now, at the city gates, she sees the richness in poverty and poverty in richness and with tear-soaked cheeks like a tattered beggar by the roadside she stands. Far away from everything that seems meaningless, worthless and pointless, her eyes scan every mortal walking through the gates with dreams in their eyes. Measuring their dreams, she revisits her own and more ruthlessly naked she feels. Just a walk away, at the distance, her place-where her heart belongs-awaits her like a waiting mother for her prodigal child with open hands; yet she trembles to take that first step. The clanking of those old vessels hoisted atop a simple burning pyre of wood as it reaches a point of completion, like the drum roll to signal the end overbearingly hustles at the back of her head. She is no more in control of her thoughts and she sways like a serpent in pain now. She twitches and arches as the weight of her "possessions" behind the city gates overwhelms her as her soul moves like a drifting cloud-forward to where she belongs. An unknown stranger in her new-found land, a pain creeps in from somewhere as she moans in understanding that she is a stranger in her own land too. With nowhere to go, she melts... just another bleeding angel at the city gates.     

Yet It Moves

Is being still and still being calm the same as doing nothing? "No" they say. And I agree. Stillness and calmness gives clarity-clarity ensures certainty-certainty, being something everyone wants, at times, needs. 

Yet, time tests our patience. Patience gives us experience. Experience gives us hope. And 'hope' becomes the base for the rest. 

Though at times, like now, I bow low to pray to the one above to conclude. Sometimes one can't help from asking, "Dear one above, is there an end to this thing?!" 

Helplessly still and calm, patience tested to the core, with hopeless hope climbing the rungs of faith, moving strong, standing outside the inner circle, wanting to be included in, un-understood by the rest, under suspicious stares from comfortable stairs, laughed, whispered and mocked at, like a beggar I stand, thus a beggar made. Walked straight, never bent. Today, I crawl, squirming like a worm, spines removed-one after the other, like the victims I plead for, victim I am made-to experience the taste of irony... hypocrisy galore!

This is something I have brought upon myself... hence sans complaining I trudge forward praying for a miracle... just one more. Yet, it moves.

The Mask Series VII

"Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God." Diana Robinson

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.” Patanjali

This is a mask clicked hanging in my Mask Wall that seems stuck in deep meditation. I often wonder if people who get into substance abuse to escape the "real" world-they find hard to deal with-are nevertheless same as these people who take up meditation to do the same... and they say meditation is addictive once you start... would I be surprized?! 

The Circle Of Life

Recently my F-I-L was upset over my B-I-L. Usually a man very reserved, he suddenly poured out his feelings with the repressed anger of an ageing man shadowed by the tenderness of an ignored father. I knew he was disappointed with the fact that his son hardly spends anytime to even recognize his presence around and this feeling of emptiness was making him feel more and more less wanted. This incident happened when he was watching me play with my 9-month-old. He said, "I used to take my son everywhere I could, spend as much time teaching him everything I could, get him as much as I could and I was a hero too once."  I looked at my kid, knew what future had in store for me too and I told him, "Today, the hero; tomorrow, the villain; then, the zero... I know its coming my way too." 


Often I have people asking me, "Will your son grow up to be like you?" and I wonder. With every reason to ponder, I realize that as I get pulled into the enigma of my child's presence-that innocence, that simplicity, that spontaneity-those 3 I am struggling to relearn, having lost it in the path of life that he is just stepping into, he is learning in the meantime from me-that necessity to be complex, the need to be manipulative and impossibly corrupted-those 3 I learnt encourse survive, that which I am fighting to unlearn. Now, who is growing up to be whom?! 


This is an interesting circle of life: 
Stage I: I am complex, manipulative and corrupted. He is innocent, simple and spontaneous. I want to be him and he needs to be me. We are full of mutual admiration.   
Stage II: We meet at crossroads. He calls it teenage and I call it mid-life-crisis. We have conflict of values. He is something I don't want to be and vice versa. We are each others villains who can't accept eachother's values, morale and everything that defines who we are and we bite eachother's very crux of existence. 
Stage III: I am fed up of fighting and call for truce. He is keeping himself busy with all the bruise. I am tired running the path of life and am moving slow. My thoughts are innocent, my living simple and deeds spontaneous-something I have been craving to be that my son was born with. In the meantime, what my son is busy chasing seems meaningless to me now and he is as much a zero to me as I am to him. We find eachother's existence worthless... yet, I love him.


Life ends for me thus as his begins... when he makes a home on his own and has a child of his own and sees the innocence, the simplicity and the spontaneity in that child of his and craves to be that. Yet again, once again... I will smile gently at this circle of life.  


By the by, in the pic is John Aariyar Fredjeev, my son.

Depth Of Field Illustrated

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.” 

― Mark Twain

 “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” 

― Dorothea Lange

“Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small.” 

― Corrie Ten Boom

By the by, these are photos clicked from my bedroom window

Mask Series VI

Shuttling back to the Mask Series I had started earlier, clicking masks I have stuck to the Mask Wall in my bedroom and coming through with a reflection that emerges with it, here is one more mask to the series... an Abandoned Mask. This is a mask I could not find a place in the wall to fit it in and hence lies around as dead as its natural self. Found lying for quite sometime now, it has started adding a character to the room and would be missed if I do dump it someday and thus lies once here and sometimes there. At times we too let a persona lie around though unused, though unusable, yet for some strange reason and for no reason, just let it lie around. Maybe it has a purpose to fulfill and I must borrow Shakespeare's  “O time, thou must untangle this, not I. / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie” to wonder and leave the rest to ponder when the time doth come. 

Roadside Fight

This is a typical scene we get to see in our country... traffic, crowd and roadside fights. Whose mistake? No one knows; yet everyone will have their opinion. Mostly the decision of who is right and who must be wrong is decided even before a fair enquiry is made. The bigger the vehicle, the more probability of him/her driving it to be assumed, accused and condemned for making the mistake no matter how innocent s/he might be. Smaller vehicles are usually the victims to the onlookers eyes; one of the several benefits in driving one. This is one such situation I got a chance to click in Bangalore when a heated argument was going on.

Busy onlookers watching with an uninteresting interest emerging suddenly out of nowhere to play the role of concerned audience is something offered within seconds of any incident happening. No matter whose fight it is, there are always these kinds that gathers around like scavenging crows to pass their opinions at the drop of a hat. These are people who have seen more than they would have, heard more than they could have and talk more than they should have. They know everything! The lines they drop in may not be true at all yet as many other things said by strangers are presumed, this is yet another assumption made for roadside panchayats to render judgement at the earliest. Life moves on before the next traffic jam thus...

So What Are You Reading Now

This is how organized chaos looks like after clearing my bag revealing what I am reading right now. The rest I get in between reading is by shifting between genres rather than stop reading completely. Variety makes reading more diggable and maintains consistency. A notebook and pen in hand helps preserve interesting ideas, quotes and strong words I wish to remember intact and for later follow up nevertheless register thoughts emerging from those "Aha!" moments that will sure be gone just the way it came in-from nowhere... those thoughtless thoughts has a significant priority in this list for later gathering. Besides these reading, editing and constant (ab)use of my eyes has gifted me with some solid frames I cannot do without these days. At the end of the day, I do believe that a thinker's mind is like a magician's cap... only if you put something in earlier can you take something out later.