A song I wrote

I wrote a song
sometime ago,
about a boy and me.
I put the tunes,
the kind I like.
Happy tunes.
The kind of music
that takes your
soul flying.

Last night I
lay awake on my bed.
Sleep evading.
So I sang
that song.
I lay humming
in the dark.
I sang,
smiling in the dark.
I sang some more
and fell asleep.

Words are vain. Words are fleeting

Still I write.
It's like I'm intoxicated.
Lines running in the head.
All the time.
When I die, I'll die with few lines in my head, for sure.
It makes me sick sometimes.
Imagine! Writing making me sick.
It's like I have no control over me.
It's just words and words and words.
Damn and I'm wild and out of control.
Thinking thoughts that I call sin.
Like a savage who's been without food for thirty days,
and is out, hunting, searching, destroynig on it's way
everthing that it considered sacred.
So hungry.
The ugly beast.
Doomed by words:
those sick things that give shape to my thoughts,
those sick things that now control my thoughts,
those sick things.
I'm wild,
I'm hungry,
I'm sick,
I'm ugly,
when I write.
Sometimes.

"Zindagi ki kahaanee dil pe likhi jati hai, Kaagaz pe nahin."

Post Christmas

Didn't post on christmas.
Silly me!!!!!
This christmas was mostly all about bad scotch tape. Did the house two times over beacuse things just refused to stick. This is the first time ever that such a thing happened. Me so pissed off that I finally decided not to blow the balloons. Anyway the house looked beautiful. It was me who put up the lights this time.
Said my prayers. Christmas was good as always.......

God, School, Law School, My Mother & Me

My faith in the divine up there (I believe there is one) has been through many phases. To start off, for eight years of my life I have been to church everyday of the nine months in a year that I spent at the greatest school up in the mountains. Nothing to do with devotion ofcourse, it was rule. The nuns. Ofcourse always sung in the choir, but in class 1o there was me and S who were the seniormost in school, so we sang the loudest of all in the whole choir, with or without the organ playing. It was us lighting up the little chapel.
Those days we grumbled and grumbled, failing to understand why we little kids had to go for half hour mass every morning, and fifteen minutes rosary in the evenings when the entire christian community worldover rarely went to church, if at all only on sundays. We were'nt nuns, so what if they were, and more importantly we were never going to be nuns.
There were days when we hid and hid after dinner, not wanting to go for rosary. The rosary prayer afterall consists of approximately 53 hail marys, 6 our fathers beside other prayers and that would take up the half hour playing time post dinner, while the very fortunate non christian world played and had the time of there lives, under the stars, out in the cold. Here I proudly claim that it is only those who went to that greatest school called Convent of Jesus & Mary in Mussoorie know what it is to play at night in the cold under the stars, because there is no place on earth from where the stars look as beautiful as from our hill and there is no other place where you would take off your warm clothes to play in the cold, sweat in the cold. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE WAVERLEY, THERE NEVER WILL BE.
Crazy but ya that's how we lived. Now as I look back, the chapel in school and things relating to the chapel are part of the most fun memories. All that hiding, all that forceful praying. The nuns claimed that we may have been too young for any kind of serious devotion but all they were trying to do was inculcate the habit. Four and a half years on, I can say they partially succeeded.
In all of this the best part was singing, the hymns are beautiful. If you make a bunch of us from school (non christians included) we could sing all evening. There are days when I sing these old hymns and I'm surprised at how much I remember.
Post school during the two years at home, the religious life was down in the dumps. My mother though a very pious and devoted christian never imposed her way of religion on me. Apart from christmas which I celebrate in huge style there was nothing more. Once in a while at night she'd ask if i prayed or not, she still does that. I still sang to myself sometimes, nothing to do with prayer. But I believed in God, I remember.
Then came law school. I have two friends who are christians, we go to church once in a while. Spirituality and me in law school, a very strange relationship. Law school in the beginning completely broke my heart, how could it not for somebody who came from waverley, expecting the same, expecting so much. Don't remember exact things that broke my heart, they say the human mind is better at remembering good things, my mind thankfully fully comes under that category. But I just remember that I was in some kind of pain. And you know what, I prayed, I strived. I knew I had to live. I really prayed. Believe it or not I read the bible every night, not to please God, but because I believed it was giving me wisdom of some kind. My roomate is proof of me reading every night. I prayed every night. Don't remember when I Stopped but I just stopped.
And ya life was good, not good by itself but I learnt to be happy. I think life in law school is war time, still is. You just have to keep fighting. Before that life was all bliss, joy came so easily. School was nine whole months of picnic with people dearest and the three months were spent being pampered at home. Ya so I always had it so easy. But this was war.
Even when I stopped praying I still went to church, all the way by bus, because in that church they sang all my favourite hymns, this particular one especially which they sang every sunday.
And so I don't really pray anymore, but I know on christmas I will pray for people dearest and ya I'll thank him, habit/faith/belief, I don't know.
But my mother really prays. And if you asked me I'd tell you that me is so happy, me is me, me is the dreamer, me is me all because of her and her prayers/wishes whatever you choose to call.

Mere geet tumhare hain!!

My new fascination being trying to learn something about hindi poetry forms, I've been reading ghalibs ghazals, have learnt some, been reading other hindi writings. And then surprise surprise I find this really old book of poems titled "Mere geet tumhare hain", collection of Sahir Ludhianvis poems.
This gentlemen initially wrote only and only for his beloved. The pain filled poetry, of the lover sadly destroyed by love and pain. He and the beloved could not be together as wikipedia tells me because she was sikh and he a muslim. And so he wrote and wrote first expressing his love, then asking her to rebel, then finally he wrote of memories and his love still buning young, then there were poems which screamed of his attempts to let go, but sadly he never could, he remained single all his life.
And then gradually he turns into this nationalistic poet, somewhat of a marxist asking the "farmers to rise up in revolt"and the like, he wrote of the suffering of the poor, the strength of the spade. And he went ahead and wrote mere geet tumhare hain, saying that his poetry was all dedicated to the poor and the farmers.
When I saw the book I was so thrilled coz it sounded so nice "mere geet tumhare hain" I thought must be for some beloved....anyway he sang for whoever he wanted to. Nice Work.

I've picked up "beloved " from Kamila Shamsies Broken Verses.

My other blog - The democrat

The crow has another blog - The Democrat, it's enlisted on the profile. It just happened without much contemplation. I have been reading political views and opinions on blogosphere for quite sometime. Blogs about Kashmir. The guy from Lebanon who lives in Kuwait, he writes about Lebanon almost everyday, patriotism is it . This passed out senior from law school whose blog has been a source of so much information, important viewpoints, her enthusiasm almost contagious.
And here I begin just like that. An attempt towards wisdom.
Jai Hind.

Celebration time on blogosphere.

Mommy bought us a graveyard

My mother bought us a graveyard for Rs 4000. Yes. Members from our church were to contribute 4000 per family for buying land for a new graveyard. So mommy dearest went right ahead and paid for us so that we can rest in peace there someday.
I am reminded of Z asking me what I would want written on my epitaph. Hers she said would read "She smiled all the days of her life". Back then I did'nt really realise what that meant. Now I know. Nice. I wish I could steal it but I won't. Now that I have land too I'd better figure out what I want written on my epitaph. Because like Z says and I agree we don't want - beloved daughter, beloved mother, loving grandmother, loyal friend, great human being...written on our tombstones. My life and my grave, I shall decide what's to be written, soon. I'm thinking.

Thank You

You take a rickshaw from the place beyond which autos aren't allowed. You're happy sitting on a rickshaw after a long long time. Filled with joy. Feels like home after a vey very long time. You sit on the rickshaw with the hood up. The sun still shining on your face on the cold winter morning. The wind blowing on your face. You're glad to find winter again. The man takes you through the streets of your crazy little town. You look around smiling. Your ears plugged into your little white magic box and you listen to your favourite music. As you go along the uneven road, with each thud you fear your small and large intestine switch places. You're very happy.
And then you think of that face and that smile. It's the smile that you know best in the whole wide world, very surprisingly though. Very surprisingly. You could draw every curve of it without having seen it for a hundred years. So etched in your heart. So synonymous with joy. You're reminded of something that you always say - It's the eyes that you want to look at, it's the eyes that make you fall in love but it's the smile that you always remember.
That smile which "pulls the strings in your heart" till you hear music loud and clear. The music that takes your soul flying. The music that reminds you who you are. Music that shows you the world that only you can see. Music that makes you want to hold his hand and run. If theres anybody whose hand you want to hold and run it's his, very surprisingly. Music that makes you want to be young with him, go playing around in a sunflower field in the sunshine, just to know what it would be like to have known him forever, just to be his playmate.
As you write you wonder how strange it is. But it is nothing but the truth, the whole of it.
Your Angel. Unknowingly so.