Flames you fancy

Seldom does the flickering flame know,
Its ferocity, fame and freedom is controlled by the silent fuel fueling it.

While I am not the flame you fancy,
I am the invisible fuel, reflecting the flame,
That you forget to see.

Changing me...

With the hand which took pride in lighting the fire,
But of a soothing lamp,
You used it set fire to our lives,
In which we will eternally burn .

The shoulders I strengthened to bear your weight,
One you could hold on to while you grew old,
You let others rest a gun on it and shoot,
Only to destroy the world I had built for us all.

And as I try to hang on to these dim flames of hope,
In this dim light I try to heal the deep wounds of love,
Please dont pry open them,
And let bleed the bad person in me you have now come to know.

Let Our Deeds Rain

“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap…” sang AC/DC back in 1976. If anything, those dirty deeds are done lot cheaper these days. We can buy law or at least a part of it for much cheaper than before. We can buy law makers if we can just afford it. We can even hire law breakers for rates which are very competitive. And the effect of this on our society, our nature and us is so profound that I seldom need to explain.

What has also gotten cheaper is the value for one’s life. Mines are dug deeper and wider than how much is allowed. Pollutants are leaked to environment without second thought.

Just a short drive had so much pollutants fed into my system. So much so that cleaning my eyes alone left it dry and hazy. However, it would be unfair to blame my dried eyes on just the pollution. It was also due to all the sleepless nights I had been having. And each of these sleepless nights used to turn into train of thoughts which stopped only at the crack of dawn. Lately, these sleepless nights are putting me into a state of trance. Due to which, I have just not been able to ascertain if some event really did take place or was it all a dream.

Few nights ago, as I was lying on my bed looking at the ceiling, I started to wonder if a man’s heart can also be as polluted as his lungs. If so, what can that pollutant in the man’s heart be. Can it be the lack of love towards other humans? Can it be lack of love towards other living beings?  The pollutants which affect the lung and heart may of course differ. But both have been polluted nonetheless. Most importantly, what can more of such pollution in a man’s heart, mind and lungs, in future lead to? While I was just pondering on these thoughts, I fell asleep and started dreaming that…

We had dug the earth far and wide to find things which nature had tried to hide from us in the first place. We had set fire to what we found and energized the world we had created, tearing apart the delicate balance of nature. While nature created clouds where we always found our silver lining, we had created clouds which stopped the sun shine from reaching us.

Hiding in my car, I saw that the thick dark clouds had given way to a rain. The rivers and lakes which otherwise opened up their surface to welcome every new drop from heaven, that day, wore an armor from which the rain's drop bounced off. I wonder if it was the oil in our rivers which bounced the water drops off or if what was raining was so poisonous that the rivers were not even accepting it.

I am not sure what were those drops of rain made of but whatever it was, the roof of my car was just not able to hold it back. It burnt right through the roof. In panic, as I looked around yelling for help, I saw that there were many around me whose roof had burnt down exposing to these drops of rains which were more like droplets of acid. I heard the people say that their concrete roof had got melted by these droplets from hell. As the panic and cry rose every minute, I realized that neither the empire I and many others like me had built, nor the paper wealth many of us had sold ourselves for, was able to stop this rain from burning everything in its path and setting our skin on fire.

Desperate for a way to save myself, I folded my hands for my first prayer in years and prayed for that fabric which could save me from this rain. If not a fabric, at least a twine, with which I will be able weave the fabric together. Just when I finished muttering the last word of my prayer, I heard a voice telling me that the only thing which can save me and everyone else from this rain is the person who loves us the most and love us unconditionally. To whom we are the world and for whom we have been the reason they ever wanted to live. Even before I could make out the direction of the voice, the voice continued that the fabric which will be capable enough to save us from this rain would be their skin and their flesh. The twine which will stitch these together would come from their nerves, their veins. And our survival would be possible only because of their sacrifice.

Stunned and clueless about who that person who loves me the most was, I began running and hunting for him. After searching every nook and corner where I thought I would find them, I wasn’t able to find them because I had let go of them and had left them behind ages ago when I had set on this journey to amass the worldly wealth. When I looked around, I sadly witnessed that I wasn’t the only one going through this ordeal. I saw many like me stranded and left to burn. Their mistake was just like mine.

Tired and dejected, I sat down under a tree, under the protection of the leaves. The tree had lost most of its leaves and few which were left were trying to shield me from this rain and getting burnt one after the other. Though it stood on the road I take every day, I never had noticed this tree nor done one bit to save it from all the axes: whose wounds it bore. In short, I hadn’t done anything for the tree to love me either, but here it was still trying selflessly. Giving up, I closed my eyes and faced down waiting for the drops to pierce through my skin after the last leaf had burnt itself to death.

As my life flashed before my eyes, I got a glimpse of those fortunate beings who had been saved by the person who loved them the most. I also saw some more fortunate beings to whose rescue had come many people. Even after knowing the sacrifice they will have to make to save their loved ones. It was also heartening to know how they always kept track of their loved ones and were able to reach them at times required.

On this judgment day, even a mother was given a choice to choose only one of her kids. And I guess I know who my mother had chosen today. And my father, of course had chosen my mother. Honestly, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. However, it made me wonder if all that I had earned was of any value at all. It was a revelation of sorts to know that no one had come to save me. I repented that how much better it would have been if we were just loved by many others. It certainly would have been so much better if my deeds would have earned me some love more than anything else. A lesson too painful but too late.

Just when I was realizing what a scum I have been all my life, I realized that I still had chance to take one last decision and make that one last choice. The judgment day also meant that I could save the one I love. I realized that I had this one last choice to either, wait and hide beneath the ones who love us and survive, or take this one last chance to go looking for the one I love the most and protect them. As I took the first step towards my sacrifice, I faced the first drop of this rain tear through my body. In pain, I looked up again but with a different prayer this time. I begged that I survive long enough and there is at least that much of me left in me to save the one I love.

As I frantically searched for the one I loved amongst all the chaos, I began wondering as to why all this was happening in the first place. The reply came to me in these verses from Bhagavad Gita.

Yadaa Yadaa hi dharmasya glaanirbhawati Bhaaratah,

Abhyuthaanamadharmasya tadaatmaanam srijaamyaham.

Paritraanaaya saadhunaam vinaashaya cha dushkritaam,

Dharmasansthaapanaarthaya Sambhawami yuge yuge.

But just that God had seldom come to destroy us as He just gave us what we sent Him, as rain and was making us pay for the mistakes we consciously committed. However, He did not come to save us either, as He was busy building a better world for the ones who had given up their lives for their loved ones.

With the little life that was left in me protecting the loved one I had found, I saw that after the heavy downpour, the dark clouds had begun to lighten up. I saw hope in the form of a silver lining as the clouds shrunk. I also saw a hope that by the time every bit of cloud has rained, we will have a world where all the scum like would have got burned down, either because no loved one came looking for them, or they had changed, found the one they loved the most and sacrificed their life.

I was happy at the end that I finally let myself be a part of humanity and love. I was proud to have decided to protect than be protected. In the end, somehow, it felt better to bear the burn on skin and see the one I love survive than to see the one who loves me, be burnt before me. Looking at my loved one for that one last time, I was about to smile while the last drop hit me hard. It was hard enough to wake me up from my dream.

“What a dream”, I told myself. And at least since that night, I have been able to sleep. Sleep in peace knowing how to prepare for that rain I dreamt. I can’t help but feel that such a rain is imminent and inevitable. What remains to be seen is how sooner or later we will have one such rain. A rain that will wash our mind, our heart and our world. Come to think of it, this reminds me of a dialogue from an old movie I was watching just before I fell asleep that night,

                                                              “Someday a real rain'll come and wash all the scum off the streets”.

A gift of growth

We are always torn between the ever raging battle between what we want and what we have. We either want more of what we already have or want something we don’t have. Some times its greed driving this need and sometimes circumstance. And more often than not, we hide our failures behind the need of what we don’t have.

A working mother would always wish she had two more hands to complete the work a little bit faster so that she could spend that much more time at home. While working on projects, I always wished there were more than 24 hours to a day and timelines were a little bit longer.

Consciously or unconsciously, I had taken a path which had put me in pursuit of acquiring things I always wanted to have. And soon I was living the life among the things I always wanted to have. Wearing the brands I always wanted to, carrying the latest of gadgets which I fancied.

Come my birthday, I had more reasons to get more of those things I wanted. After having a great party thrown by some of the best friends I have, I returned home to my quiet room. Quiet as my dad was asleep in the other room. The movement inside the house after my arrival had woken up my father. I was aching to get back so that I could open the presents my best friends and I had presented myself with. While I was exploring one of those, I heard my dad telling that he had gotten chocolates for me and they were in the fridge. So engrossed was I in my precious gift that I forgot to even acknowledge that I had heard what he told me. The sentence seemed familiar but I was too occupied to even remember where and when I had last heard that.

Hearing no reply from me, he came up to my room and wished me a very happy birthday and told me that he had gotten chocolates for me. Sometimes, when memories which reside in our brain wake up, they tear open our heart to come out. And through this gap came out the memories of all the birthdays I had spent waiting for those chocolates which had made the birthdays special. They weren’t special for the fact that they were hard to find. But it was just because it used to mark a special day. It was on my birthday 25 years ago that he had promised the ‘little’ me that he would gift me a chocolate every year on this day. And while he had been keeping his promise of gifting me this chocolate wherever on earth I am on my birthday, I just realized that over the years, I had been making him come farther each time to reach me. And farther; not always geographically.

Had I grown up not to see a chocolate as a fitting gift anymore? Or was my father being childish in still offering one even at this age? After all, it was a childish promise, promised to a child. And I was no longer a child.

I accepted those anyway and he returned back to his room with a smile. But a smile seldom of happiness. A smile which was more like a self-acknowledgement of something. Something which I couldn’t understand right away.

Chewing on some of the chocolates he had given me, I spent hours pondering what that smile could have meant, and suddenly realized that I may be missing the perspective altogether. May be I missed understanding that what’s more important than having things we want is to want the things we have. I could not see any other reason behind the tiring journey he used to take every year just so that he could live up to the promise he made when I was a child. And come to think of it, all the promises he has been living up to.

Realizing this, I went up to his room to thank him and also asked him why he had to travel this far to give me the chocolates when I could have taken it from him when I visited my home next time. To which his answer was that I will understand when I grow up.

It was that moment which made me realize, that in the last 29 years I had just aged and not actually grown. Guess all the pages of books I had mastered to reach the ‘growth’ (can also be referred to financial stability, professional ability, IQ, etc.) I have today, had not actually helped me grow at all.

May be growth is not about how many of the complicated things we understand but how many of the little things do we realize. It’s when we start understanding that responsibility is not something we need to expect only from others. And responsibility is not when we just commit to something but when we start keeping up all our commitments or keep trying till our body hits the grave.  

When he did come to my room to give me my birthday present, maybe he was expecting that this year, I may have grown old enough to learn these lessons. But whom he met was still a kid, but just that the kid was standing taller than him. And God knows for how many years he has been waiting to hear the question I asked him today. When I decided to go to his room to inform about what I had just realized, I saw him waiting for me at the door as though he knew I had finally grown old enough to understand what and why he has been traveling all these years to meet me on my birthday. I saw that smile again. But this time it was a self-acknowledgement in happiness. But I still couldn’t understand what the self-acknowledgment was about. I guess I will have to wait till my next birthday to learn it. And I hope I would have grown old enough to understand that.

Let me grow

Dont send me with a tear,
As that’s the last thing of yours I am going to carry.
The merciless storm I am walking into will wipe my tracks,
Just never to find my way back to you.

Don’t see me off with a smile,
It will never let me leave this place.
The sea of debt I need to swim across will drown me,
Every moment I stay, I let the tide rise against me.

I need to go, I need to grow.
If there is anything you wish to do,
Promise to meet me at the end of my journey,
And accept the person I am going to be.