Journey begins from within

November 2010, Bangalore. 9 years after my last visit to Himalayas, I am seated in a train and am lost in thoughts. From a financially struggling teenager to a blessed 5 year old software engineer in one of the best companies to work for in Bangalore, I have come a long way. And in those 9 years, world has changed too. e-mails and chats have given way to Social Media in the form of Orkut, Myspace and Facebook. Best among all, the Google maps!!!!

Pictures of people's travel to previously less known destinations are pouring in. Urban legends of friend's friend's friend having been on a Bullet to corners of Himalayas seems to have some reality in it  as self driven vacations are picking up. Fight for leave approvals with managers live on(somethings never change). Thankfully, flights have gotten affordable.

And all of a sudden, we in southern part of India are exposed to places unheard of. No itenary on any package tour operators have the places in Himalayas which are now seen on the social media. We have come to believe, there is more to Himalayas than Char Dhams and the usually promoted hill stations.

For the first time in my life, I have been able to fund a trip for myself to a place which I have only seen in the pictures. I am 27 and the only time I traveled alone was to Germany on a company assignment. Keeping all the embarrassing experiences aside, it at least gave me the courage to step out on solo expeditions such as this one. My train of thoughts end abruptly as I am interrupted by the ticket checker.

December 2015, New Delhi, I am made aware of tripoto.com and I am encouraged to write a blog on it. Encouraged by people whom I have met since November 2010. So here I am. Little did I know that one journey to Himalayas will alter the course of my life. What was supposed to be yet another example of classic text book tourism ending up as a photo album on social networking, it has turned out to be a constant quest for answers. Answers to questions which aren't even clear yet.

I wasn't prepared for the sheer size, the Himalayas presented, when I reached Kalka back in November 2010. Though I had visited the Char Dhams earlier in my life, I was however too little to understand much. The picture wasn't as rosy as I dreamt it to be. The narrow unguarded roads and the remains of the cars which have run over the cliff showed me few grim pictures which others tourists never did. The over loaded trucks negotiating the bends and the sudden appearance of an overtaking cab at a place you least expect, reminded me of that many Gods which I never realized I knew.

When I did reach Shimla, my amateurish planning had given me 6 days of stay in train and just 2 days off it. It meant that my exploration of Shimla and place around had to be short. Armed with what are sold as 'Sweaters' in Bangalore and a pair of thick socks, I was rather poorly equipped to face the late November evening cold, on the mall road of Shimla. Having managed to stay alive through the usual site seeing spots, the view of the distant snow covered mountains breathed back a  lot of enthusiasm into me and made all the prior ordeal worth it.

With almost all the things having gone wrong but 'as planned', I owe it all to the people who accompanied me during that journey for making it a memorable and most importantly, a bearable one. Heaving a sigh of relief after reaching the plains, when I looked back at the Himalayas, I could almost hear it laughing at me. I have always been treated with care, respect and hailed as the savior of my family. I seldom recollect when did all this respect and admiration bloat up my ego and made me believe I can do anything and can conquer anything. The Himalayas, in its mute but mighty way, had cut me down to an insignificant size. All the pride, the ego I carried into the journey expecting to boast about it, when I am back, seemed all lost. A person who people depended on, was all through the journey, dependent on others.

If at all the journey did any good, it was that it gave me a new challenge to pursue.  A challenge to get out of my comfort zone and explore the world. It ignited the desire to travel and appreciate the world which is around us.

Since November 2010, I have been motivated to
> Experience the central India on road by driving from Delhi to Hyderabad
> Enjoy Port Blair and surrounding on two wheels
> Explore hills of Araku
> Sail to the fort of Murud Janzira
> Pluck fruits on the hills of Mahabaleshwar
> Attend history lessons at Bidar Fort

While the journeys have given me a new passion, Himalayas have given me a new purpose. I couldnt help but feel a connection with the hills. Though I was defeated by its climate, beauty and its ruggedness, I heard a calling which to this day am seeking to find the source of. It is this Himalayan calling which have turned my life around and have made me surrender to these hills.

Attached are the pictures shot during my numerous journeys  to the Himalayas in 2015. Hope you all enjoy viewing the pictures as much as I have enjoyed capturing them.

I Want More Of Whats Free

I want to breathe in all the fresh air there is,

though my lungs can only inhale this far.

I want to drink all the freshest water there is,

though my thirst can only last this far.

I want to see all the beauty there is,

though my vision can only sight this far.

I want to portray all the joy there is,

though my imagination can only dream this far.

I want to cherish all the fine memories there are,

though its my struggle which has brought me this far.

I only want more of all these which are free,

love of my life, tears of my mother's joy,

strength of my father, though their hands can only reach this far.

Hope, calling

A Drop of Music

Setting the context.

This poem has been inspired by the track below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDjZceUNr3E

I urge you, the reader, to treat this poem as that journey where the beauty lies in the travel than the destination. Request you to go through this poem, while playing  the above soundtrack in the background. 

Its best experienced when you relate the lines of this poem with the soundtrack. Its even better if you could relate it to yourself. You will reach the end of this poem nonetheless, but let that not be what you are looking for. Hope you enjoy it....

A Drop of Music...

I am put to sleep by her gentle hands.

The song she sings is to heal my wounds.

Instead, it strangles my soul and

Makes my insides implode.

I shrink in the gravitational force her croon creates in my heart.

I hang my head in shame,

As I fear experiencing my true feelings,

Laid bare by her provoking hum.

Once in a while, an awakening such as this, comes along,

Threatens to break the dam,

I am building to isolate my stormy emotions,

Trying to keep them calm.

Are these the sound of defeat,

Or Symphony of hope?

Am I to drop silent tears of despair,

Or let my bruised ego shout?

Voices inside my head become loud,

Begging me to let them out.

I tighten the clasp of my empty palms,

To stop myself from explosion.

I try in vain to stop these voices in the only way I know,

By being louder than them.

I do so by playing the same song, only louder,

Till I can’t hear my thoughts anymore.

I close my eyes trying to bear this assault on my ears,

And let the purity of her music fill my body, my strangled soul.

I wait as my soul is being cleansed.

Soon till there will be nothing of me inside me.

I will be replaced by this drop of music,

These new feelings...

I yearn to be free.

I yearn to be reborn.

Where you belong

I smile, I wait...

Dont stop praying

It is disappointment which makes me realize, I have traveled all this way, only to find my world is somewhere else.

It is pain when I realize, the tune which makes me forget myself and dance comes from puppeteers whose strings I am entangled in.

It is despair that I see in the tired reddened eyes, when I look at the face staring at me in the mirror. And no it doesnt seem to be me anymore.

But it is the hope that makes me knock and wait at the door of my empty house everyday, hoping that someone would come answer it one day.

Till then, dont stop trying, dont stop praying!!!

Healing

Insanity

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.

Reason behind every Purpose

Sometimes, life’s toughest question can also be the smallest. For example, WHY? The degree to which we have answers for life’s ‘Why’ question(s) can be the degree to which we have control over our life and things happening to and in our life.
Whenever I walk down this lane of thoughts, two words which I come across more often than not are, ‘Reason’ and ‘Purpose’. While some times they seem same, they are really not. While some times they seem different, they really are not. Some times we do stuff without knowing the reason and other times we do stuff not knowing the purpose. And few other times things happen with or to us, for which we neither know the purpose nor the reason.
For example, when I was born, I neither knew the reason I was born (of course I am not talking about the result of biological and chemical reasons here) nor the purpose. Neither did I know the purpose I was born to accomplish nor the reason why I and only I was supposed to accomplish those. Some are fortunate to get the answers to get this question and mend their life before it’s too late, whereas for few other unfortunate ones, by the time they figure it out, they are too old and tattered and it’s almost time to die.
It gets particularly complicated as in real life we seldom walk the walk of our life alone. We walk with people having their own purpose and reason. Recently on one such path, while I was walking with someone close to me, I was stopped and asked as to ‘WHY’ were we taking this path? I did not know if the answer to this question lay behind us in the reason we chose to take this path or was the answer to this question laid ahead of us which was the purpose we was taking this path to accomplish. What seemed like a good reason when we started on this road had turned out to be worst possible purpose we were going heading towards at the end of the same road.
Started the journey holding hands just not to get lost in the crowd who were heading on this same journey. Down the lane, hands were being held to stop the each other’s fall. At times it used to feel so nice to see how the hands fit perfectly. At times it used to feel so secure to know there was at least one hand holding us and guiding us through the journey. At not so pleasant times, it used to feel the grip was too tight and suffocating to be free to do anything else but walk the journey. Sometimes I was leading and other times being led. Sometimes I was being pulled to continue the journey and other times I used to pull. Sometimes I used to hold the hand tight against the storm and other times I was held that tight.
They say life’s beauty is in the journey and not the destination. May be that’s why I figured out that at the end of the journey that the final purpose of having made the journey, for whatever was the reason was, was to hand over the hand I had held this long, to someone else’s hand. Doing so, I had just handed over all the beauty of the journey at the destination.
Was I was just a delivery boy. May be I was just meant to bring the other person safely. Had I taken a wrong route and so I had to handover what I had brought with me to be taken to the correct destination. Who is right, what is right, whom to ask or what to ask, I know none.
And when journeys reach wrong destinations (at least from other’s point of view) people who aren’t that understanding make the destination they have reached as the final one. While few of us who are understanding and sensitive to other’s point of view, give up and start the journey all over again. However this time, with or without a hand to hold. Because,
‘Journeys don't stop, Destinations do’.

A piece of god still exists

Last time I wondered if
god had left this place ago, or
had we killed him
And we never knew.

Until I realized he had not left this place
But was taking birth every time
A little one of his creation
was born.

Where he is born is a place of love,
Contained in the creatures he deemed fortunate.
A woman and her womb he cleverly chose,
In the nature's best gift, a mother.

Harshest of the hands hold them tenderly,
Cruelest of all learn to live delicately.
It's touch melts us all,
Their innocence wakens us all.

It brings to earth a piece of His sacred land,
Awakens the love in us with the pat of its little hands.
Seeing the Smile on it's face after the sadness it resists,
I realize that A piece of god still exists.

Way We Live

Hello Readers,

Firstly, this is not written to offend anyone's belief or feelings. Its intended to express my feelings about certain things happening around me.

I would be grateful to you if you read the same in that perspective.

Thank you.

Way We Live

It’s a hypocritical world we live in,
They are wolves in sheep's clothing.
While it’s on our shoulders are their guns firing,
Crushing our dreams are theirs springing.

While the systems we live in, breed thieves.
Don’t blame them, as cactus seldom blooms olives.
As we look up to His authority with confidence,
What’s eating the crop is the fence.

We can choose to be one like them,
And feed them their own medicine.
There is nothing better waiting for us,
An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.

We no longer look like one of god's creations,
All we have ever brought to Him is destruction.
You harm a tree, it doesn’t harm you,
If you hit me, I will kill you.

No matter in which filth it grows,
No matter what sins you feed,
It’s always the green leaves that grow,
Gives us life whatever may be our deed.

God left this place long ago,
Maybe we killed him and we haven’t even known.
We still slit, His child, an animal's throat,
Spice it up and savor our throat.

We are the children of the devil, and
In our negative actions the devil stays.
All that remains of our God are locked in our hearts,
Hardly in the statues and frames we blankly gaze.

To free us from our sin don’t look up,
There is no one there.
In our noble deeds, our God resides,
Not in the string of words we pray.

Convincing voices have been silenced,
Pleading requests have been denied.
Come let’s see how much of change and noise,
Few black works on a silent white paper can make.

A no nonsense love song

Have heard ten thousands love songs,
Before writing this one.
Have written a hundred sad songs,
To save this last happy one.

You can’t be a beautiful dream,
Dreams break.
You can’t be a tender flower,
Flowers dry.

I can’t promise to be forever,
Even I have to die.
But yes I can try to be with you,
As long as I am alive.

To express my love, I can’t
Make tall claims, invent new words.
I have loved you for so long, now
How do I put those times in words?

Love makes us shed tears,
When happy or when sad.
I would have known you liked this song,
If your eyes cried, but heart still smiled.

Caged, Arent We!!!!?

Sometimes it’s hard to see which side of the cage we are in. And it’s harder to understand if we are actually on the better side of the cage. But we are all caged nonetheless. Cages come in different sizes and shapes. Some we build around ourselves and some built by the society which we volunteer to get into. And all we ever do is perpetually shift from one cage to the other as the days go by.

Don’t believe me? Go on continue reading.

We are all ambitious. Aren’t we? We need our houses big and relationship ties little. Based on how much our hard work comes to us in terms of money, we buy ourselves a house which we put all our heart and soul into beautifying it and making it cozy nonetheless. Area in the house goes on to represent how big we dreamt and how much we have achieved. Those neatly laid out dinner table with four crafted chairs seldom makes us realize it’s empty. Those beautifully placed couch never makes us wonder where we get the people to sit on them.
Isn’t it odd that we open up our homes and close the doors? In my foster years, my mother spent hours trying to find me as to which open door did I run into. Today she still keeps the door of our house open with the fragrance of an incense stick trying to invite people home, while the neighbor’s kid barely gets to smell it, as they are caged behind the closed doors of the dreams which their parents have achieved whether the parents are themselves home or otherwise.

Our roads are becoming wider and longer while our parking lots becoming smaller. Why would it not. Owning a set of wheels, for most of us, is a lifetime wish. Our friendly neighborhood car salesman gives us more reason than not, to stretch our budget and go for the one car which we know we are going to find it hard to buy. But we still give into the temptation and buy a car with our stretched budget and sit inside to see that we can hardly stretch our legs let alone our arms wide open. I did the same and so here I go again travelling in this little cage which I have myself bought. Oh how I miss the relaxing stretch to soothe the aching back after a long ride on my bike. It had seldom made me realize the light years of headroom, latitudes together of shoulder room and longitudes of knee room I had actually bought with two lesser wheels. And here I am finding it hard to understand if the 2 extra wheels really reserved more space for me on the road or shrunk me into a smaller cage than I initially was in, which was the whole wide world?

On the serious note, these are not the only things we cage ourselves or others in. Our religions, our gods, our believes, our relationships, jealousy, possessiveness and negativity are some more of them. When the relationship turns sour between two loving couples, they break up in an ambition that being separate is somehow going to be better than being in it. Wonder why is it called breaking up and not setting free? And wonder why then they spend rest of their lives caging themselves in thoughts and memories of all the things that went bad with their relationship.
What’s worse is that, some of those cages are given to us at birth, some while we were growing and others which we build during our life time. We hurt the ones amongst us and look up to beg forgiveness from He, who more often than not, silently watch us commit the sins we do commit.
With the captivity of our believes, we hold hostage our minds, feelings and humanity. So much so that we don’t share our plates, our food with the ones who don’t share our beliefs and the franchise we, seldom, chose to be in.

It’s so beautiful to see that the same grey matter produces so many colors in our lives. Wonder why we then don’t let our mind free. As someone had rightly said, we humans are engineered for success but programmed for failure.

Days have gone by

Pained, he sang……

Days went by,
Size of the palm grew,
Distance between the arms widened,
But whom you can carry between them,
Remains one.

When the lights at the junction of life turned green,
Everyone left, including you.
Even my life moved on, I was stuck behind.
Unable to catch up, I started walking back,
To carry those tons of memories you left behind,
But I couldn’t.

Days went by,
Size of the palms grew,
Though there were many whom we could see,
Whom we wanted to see always,
Remained one.

It’s been long since the river flowed this way,
Dried grass and burnt sand wake up to say.
The river overflows from the dam built around my eyes,
Behind which, trying to stay afloat,
To great depths,
Has sunk my heart.

Days have gone by,
Size of the palms has grown,
Though there were two different hands I could hold,
Whom I have carried in my heart,
Has always remained one.

From distance far away came her voice….

Days went by,
Size of the palm grew,
Distance between the arms widened,
But whom you can carry between them,
Remains one.


Anxious, he questioned….

Insanity to me was new,
Newer still was your insane love.
My love was never insane enough for you.
Now, while I am madly in love,
What you see today is my madness alone?

Repenting, she stammered…

Days went by,
Size of the palms grew,
Though I stand here today with my head hung down,
Whom you have decided to turn a blind eye to,
Remains one.


Gulping his heart which had come up his throat, he broke down…

In return of
My shadow you hid behind,
Away from the scorching sun,
You have given me these dark glasses.
Just so I hide the tears you gave, while
You see my creased lips smile.

Days have gone by,
Size of the palms has grown.
To the ears deafened to my voice,
There are few heartfelt words am wanting to say,
You will always remain,
The one.