Itiraf (Confession)

Usne kaha, “Kabhi fursat mein yeh bhi bataana ki tum kya sochti ho…”

Main raat bhar un alfaazon se bejhijak khelti rahi. Kayi soch apnaye, chand sawaalo se lar pari, kuchh ehsaason se to naraaz hokar zindagi bhar baat na karne ki kasam bhi kha li.

Par ziddi sawaal peecha kahan chorte? Saath chalte gaye, chalte gaye…..chaukathh pe pahuchkar tang aakar maine kaha “Thik hai, khamoshi ki zuban nahin samajhte ho to aaj sun hi lo. Bar bar nahin dahoraoongi..
Subah subah aankh khulte hi ek labz aa jata hai hothon par. Tum sochoge naam hi to hai. Tumhe kya pata ki ab mere liye to yehi nazm hai….
Kabhi khayalo mein kabhi khwabo mein yoon kho jaati hoon jaise mera ab duniya se koi vasta hi nahin. Tum kahoge sirf ek adhura khwab hi to hai. Tumhe kya maloom ki ab mere liye to yehi zindagi hai..
Shaam ke dhalte huye sannate ke saath chupke se kuchh anhahi baatein tumse kahe deti hoon. Tum samjhoge chand shabd hi to hai. Tumhe kya khabar ki mere liye to ab yehi mohabbat hai..”
Daheleez par ek sannata sa chaa gaya. Khamosh khare sawaalo ki taraf maine dabi si muskurahat ko chhupate huye poocha…” Ho gayi tasalli? Par tumhe kya laga, yeh sab main nahin batana chahti thhi?”

Humse na jeeta hai na jeetega koi, woh to hum jaanke khaa lete hain maate aksar…

The Zahir

Mohabbat mein nahin hai farq jeene aur marne ka, usi ko dekhkar jeete hain, jis qafir pe dam nikle…

My mind is restless today and I cannot write. I’ve taken a few attempts to unleash the strong emotional urge that I feel, but perhaps the intellectual vent that facilitates correct interpretation of sentiments and thereby enables a suitable expression isn’t wide enough to hold the gush. Needless to say, it’s spilling all over.
So if you can forgive my cluttered thoughts and worse still, the spillage of disjointed words and phrases like one in a fit of literary delirium, you may go on reading. By now, I may have tickled your curious instincts enough…oh, no…trust me, I am not trying in the least to follow the bandwagon of a Thursday night television soap from Balaji Telefilms…no flashy reverberations building up on ‘kahani ka aglaa twist’…I am merely trying to gauge the intensity of my propelling idiosyncrasies and sieving the clichéd from the novel. Whether I am successful or not, well…that’s another question!
Ironically, my inspiration is also my reason for confusion at this moment and it is called….love… an untamed force that enslaves me every time I try to imprison it. Does it happen to you as well? Love to me, is the omnipotent dream merchant’s biggest sellout! See how we fall in love, we falter, we fail; we console ourselves with “It must have been love but it’s over now…” only to find a new reason to fall in love and you’ll know exactly what I mean. No amount of heartburn is good enough to stop you or me from buying the next dream. Incorrigible romantics, aren’t we?
Before you start assuming that I have turned into a self-accredited love guru, let me tell you a wee bit more about what’s raiding my thoughts. A good friend of mine authored a paperback called that thing called love some years ago. The book hit the bestseller’s list instantly (am told it’s being translated in other languages and will be made into a film soon) and made him quite a star amongst promising young Indian authors. Am I promoting him? No, I am just trying to lead you to the fact that ‘love’ an emotion that is old as time itself, still manages to creep into our so-called seemingly busier-than-ever-lives and steal the heart and soul, and if I may be allowed to add…pockets away. Love sells; and it sells like politics, sex and glamour. We all know about it, live it, love it or hate it, but we buy it nonetheless.
Yet, do we all really know what we know? As I am looking at this paperback, I tell myself, my bible for this particular emotion, is however not this bestseller. It’s a beautiful compilation of thoughts called The Zahir by Paulo Coelho, my holy grail for life's most beautiful yet most painful experiences, one that leaves me fulfilled yet empty at the same time.
You are your best judge, but this thing called love and its unfamiliarity makes me nervous. It is wild and instinctive, with the rawness instantly reminding me of a bleeding cut, one that stares blatantly at your face and tells you..."Be careful here, it hurts". And I strive to fight against that instinct, strangely though hoping against hope that I won't win, until there comes a point when I allow myself to be vanquished by my overpowering enemy, my unconstrained outburst of bottled up emotions.
This thing called love, I don’t like it at all....it collates all the self contradictory weaknesses and strengths, amalgamates them in an illogical cement, and puts up a self promoting placard akin to a popular ad slogan that says....Dare to dream.
And while my battle for rationale continues, another part of me, the less calculative, less scientific, less scheming alter ego, lounges in the tranquility of this upheaval. Sounds paradoxical? Perhaps! Let me elucidate....it's like being in the eye of the storm, letting the eddies form, lash, whip, bellow around you, while you stay inert, untouched....that eye of the tornado is my love absolute, my obsession with the concept of one, its manifestation in life and its interpretation in you, .....that is my Zahir.
While I might go into another maelstorm of oscillating logic and emotions on another day, right now I'll rather cherish this thought and live happily with the truth thus... ruuh ke bandhan khulte nahin hain, daag hai dilke dhuulte nahin hain..
With and within you...

PS: It's raining again...and you know what? I just knew it would...

Timeless Memory

We connect specific individuals to special pictures in our mind frames. The very thought of a particular person is related to his image in our intellect. The face, the smell, the sensation of that particular touch, the voice of that someone remains etched in our minds.
And memory has no age; it does not grow older with years and the passage of time does not leave a wrinkle on its visage!
As years roll by, walking down those cherished by-lanes of reminiscences, I stumble upon those old images of amassed senses, those warm passionate touches, that glowing countenance, the smell of a half burnt cigarette and the caress of a cold black leather band on a humble white dial HMT watch against my cheeks.
A dark dingy room with old brown curtains and its little holes, through which the first rays of the sun filters in, encompasses my world of memories.
It is a very modest room and speaks reams about its owner. You could write it off as a disorganized and messy bachelor's pad, or if you saw it through my eyes, call it the little heaven of a creator and a poet.
Time has not changed the way I feel about the room, though there have been many significant alterations and amendments in the life of the owner, that now definitely reflect in the modification of its mood and décor! Despite the changes, I see the room as an unpretentious little penthouse of my very private moments and very personal experiences. I still feel that diffident air in the room that smelled of burnt cigarettes and moisture.
Even now, I picture the room in its old image, with half-opened Kafka and Richard Bach, lying on a dusty old mahogany desk, an yellowing letter from an old associate in the drawers, butts of Charminar plain lying in every corner of the tattered rug that was once a red carpet, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Traffic booming from an old CD player on a smoky, dusky afternoon., and You!
Starry eyed you, with a thousand dreams in your doe-like almond eyes.
Fiery, passionate you, with that furious Capricorn rage, one that could destroy the world, your relationships and finish you!
Affectionate poetic you, telling me what I looked like when you brought me home from the hospital, three days after I was born.
Creative, talented you, singing "Am I a fighter or a lover?" in my ears.
Romantic doting you, drenched in rains with a rose bud in your hand.
Passionate adorable you, admiring my face in the light of a match stick one midsummer night!
Then I see us!
We sharing a sunset; we reading out pieces from Love Story together; we wishing upon a silver shooting star, we holding hands in a dark theatre watching a gripping Spielberg thriller, we dancing in the terrace on a cold moonlit night to Ian Anderson's magical flute; we hunting for old tattered pieces of wisdom in the pavements of College Street, we cooking up a new recipe out of a stale fish curry; we making love in the rain!
No. I don't see my bruises, don't even feel the pain and don't hear myself sobbing in those long lonely difficult nights when our worlds were falling apart.
Thanks to memory, it has a selective vision.
Memory does not age. Its images do not alter, amend or modify with time and relationship.
Is memory infinite with neither form nor definition? Unbound by time, emotions or space?
To all my memories, its images and metaphors, its senses and emotions,
Eternally yours...


PS: This was written in quiet solitude on a rain swept afternoon more than a decade back, when a speck of wisdom fell out of a leaf of grass and left me moist. Never thought I could make a public display of this misty emotion until someone I was speaking to the other day attested my reasoning and agreed...yes, memory has a selective vision and it is untouched by time! Do you agree?

Gosh....am touched!

Dear onlookers, bystanders and friends,
My! My! Ain't I absolutely bowled by your curiosity, response, support and encouragement?! Much as I always assumed (in a bout of high self esteem..ahem) that my writing wouldn't particularly bore you to death, this overwhelming response to my first posts was simply not anticipated! Am so very grateful to you for having taken time out of your busy schedules on a Friday and giving my page the desired attention.
Thanks so much for all the motivating words and if you know me (as most of you do), I shall try my utmost to keep this page growing (and glowing...in reflected glory)in times to come.
Humbly yours...

Mon khushi emni emni...

Some years back, somebody I knew asked me a rather strange question one day. Well, it wasn’t just the oddity of the query, but the queer manner in which it was both fashioned and presented.My curious friend took the pains of coming up to me, fixing an appointment to ask me the strangest secret of my life. And he asked rather seriously and critically, “I have seen very few people who remain as cheerful at the end of the day as you do. How do you manage to do that?”For a while, I felt both funny and important. Was it so? Did I really do that? Thank God, people hadn’t seen me cribbing and cursing at the car parking, packing off from office and calling names. Thank heavens, I didn’t yell aloud at the coffee boy, for that syrupy mug; thank God, I said “XXXXX” in an undertone when I walked out of a not-so-favorite colleague’s work station. And not to forget the unpardonable forbidden word that sometimes suffices for punctuations marks in my conversations with myself!! Anyway, my interviewer was adamant. He categorically listed the events and days on which, if I were “any other person” I would have blown my top, and insisted that I had managed to be as chirpy and cheerful as ever, even in times of stress!Now, it was my turn to indulge myself in another bout of high self esteem--importance!!Before Piush, my inquisitive friend asked me, I had never really given it a serious thought. Was I generally a happy person? Did I do it involuntarily or did I have to put an effort to remain happy? Well, that particular friend Piush, ran a stress-management consultancy and for him, more than a friendly colleague, I was an interesting case-study!Chewing on a thought, I told him, smiling again, “I think, I do it with a little effort. Every morning, when I wake up, I give myself two choices—either to be happy or be sad. And deliberately each morning, I opt to be happy.”My one-man audience was positively impressed! He even made vague references to the possibility of "Annie" being a reincarnated Zen monk and noted down my words on his scribble pad!When I walked out of his office, I left him with a smile and a thought for myself.Let me share it with you. All these years, I had believed people only noticed tear-stained faces. Never did I once imagine that one day the world would be so stressed and so bogged down playing catch up, waging an endless war against cut-throat competition and running blind on the fast track that a humble cheerful smile could make them sit up and take note!!
How do I manage to glue that smile on my face? Well, from girl to woman, from woman to wife, and graduating to a mother has been an interesting journey, and in hindsight, seems like a happy repertoire of fun-filled events, wherein lie frames of fleeting moments like snapshots of a celluloid dream.I am an emotional fool, they sometimes tell me. Tears are a part of my very own existence. I cry when I am happy and still smiling; weep when I am upset and still ‘trying to smile’, and howl in grief, hoping to smile again. A miserably confused description, which does not agree with my happy disposition! However, fighting it all, I still will perhaps always consider myself to be a very positive person, the kind who chooses to close her eyes to the dirty dark black world and tries to hunt for the moon even in an eclipse!!! Escapist, one might say. My other word for it? Brave!
I strongly emote to the fact that before and after everything, Noah's Ark or Doomsday, life is worth its smiles. And how do I live on that conviction? Let me share my secret with you today.Think with me. You must have often heard people using words such as pure happiness. What exactly does one mean? Unadulterated, pure, doubly refined (doesn't that sound more like sunflower oil????) pleasure??? Is that how one defines happiness? Or does one put himself on a self assumed measuring scale, weigh it and conclude, “okay I am happy...One TON!”!Just like pain, I think pleasure is very personal and has its own undefined measuring tool. Each one of us has a separate and distinctly designed beam balance for weighing our pains and pleasures. Clearly, one set of Vernier Callipers may not be applicable for another! Pain and pleasure have varied standards, depending on individual scales.No common rules can accommodate personal emotions and sense of judgment!With time, I have understood is that everything in life is momentary and ephemeral! All our lives we speculate and chase the most unidentifiable visage of life called "Future", never realizing for a while, that life spans between two fleeting moments, living only between an inspiration and expiration!I also think life’s charm lies in the fact that happiness is such a transient phase and the comfort of pain lives in the truth that it does not last forever! Thank god, nobody ever heard me cursing and cribbing aloud about life and its idiosyncrasies!! Did you? Shhhhhhhh!!!Just happy, without a rhyme or a reason,
Mon khushi…emni emni..

Music, moonlight and moments....

"Can you see the light there?" you ask me, pointing towards the dark sleepy hills dominating the landscape across the sparkling Subarnarekha. The river's at her passionate best, shining like quicksilver on a gorgeous moonlit night. "Do you hear the rumbling of the maadol?" I ask in return. Somewhere hidden in those mysterious shades of green, grey and brown jungles, someone is offering a prayer in a language we cannot comprehend, but whose essence we can both construe—musicIt's well-past dinner time; and on another night when there's a nip in the air, we could be happily tucked in bed, sleeping or talking; or perhaps awake and wrapping up the end of a long day doing little things that make us happy. On another night, at this hour, you could be sitting next to the soft lights of the terracotta lamp (yes, the one with those little bells on its rim…the one we picked up after much bargaining from the Poushh Mela that year when you played for the first time in Santiniketan) leafing through some new music reviews, or humming lines from a very old favorite ghazal…maybe Zafar, maybe Momin…or even Ghalib. On another night, I could be reading excerpts from the latest Man Booker winner rocking on my very coveted black Mahogany grandfather's chair (yes, the same one that I fell in love with at an old antique shop on Russell Street. It cost us a fortune but I wouldn't settle for anything else), or perhaps just scribbling over the last few words of the Telegraph crossword, that I didn't get quite right this morning. But on such an ethereally lit winter night as this one, wrapped up in shawls, we are both happy to be awake and to let our souls drown in what we feel happens rarely, and therefore cannot be missed—the milieu of music, moonlight and mystery. As the apartment lights and halogen lamps switch off one by one, and the whole neighborhood plunges into honeyed slumber, we stay awake, straining our ears to hear and absorb the distant reverberation of a rustic Santhali tune, wondering and seeking the origin of a music so secreted, yet so eloquent, untouched by the periphery of urban life or parameters of "civilized understanding". We stay awake in a trance, relishing the music, the forest fires, while the moon moves slowly and deliberately over the hills like a seductress, enveloping and embracing the entire panorama of our vision in a mystical silver veil. We are at a strange crossroad of feelings tonight…assimilating the beauty of the ambience individually, yet together, in a way. Unlike our usual discourses, we leave nature to initiate and lead all the conversation. After all, even sharing a moment of silence with someone who can read your thoughts can be so beautiful. Tonight, let's celebrate this moment of silence, of music, of mystery, of moonlight, of togetherness, of all the little passions in life that bind us beyond time, space and definitions… tonight, let's just celebrate "US".