Turn of the Year...

From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust, but some things don't blackout from the mind. Specially with the Noel beginning from this day on, a lot comes rushing back and refuses to leave.

So, seasons greetings merry gentlemen and fondest wishes for the lady. Merry Christmas and happy resolution free new year :)

Negotiating With the Dead

Taking you back in time. Two years, give or take a few months. Fasten the makeshift seat belts for this time machine wasn't designed for more than one. I promise nothing more than a return to the right here right now that you leave ahead and now that it is understood between us...shut the door. We are getting outta here.

Are your ears still ringing after crashing through the years and when I speak do my lips form unintelligent words. Maybe we will understand better now that the protocol of words is stalled and we negotiate through gestures- untaught in the doctrine of kinesics we have nothing to misrepresent, mislead or misconstrue. When I was a child I would peer through coloured glasses- one half of the world would be flushed with bright lemon sunlight and one bathed in lurid chiaroscuro. But don't let me distract you...we didn't come all the way back for coloured glasses...but who knows when blood dries on red glasses or when red roses bleed.

Walk in...don't touch the dusty song sheets slipped under coffee mugs and yes, I know I never finished writing it down and yes I know you could help me with the finale but you can't change a thing here and when we go back it would be gone. Walk over..around the couch...don't worry thats just me trying to get some sleep before another working day tries to enervate.But before I wake up lets wind up the thing we came here for, shall we? Right? Good.

I want you to see this girl I have trapped within raspberry and tulip frames. She is so beautiful, unclouded brows, a smile and not a preset. I had a good mind of throwing her away, but this baby intrigues me and I kept her on the shelve. Somewhere where I could forget that she exists so that years of dust could hide...sorry...I forgot you are still around. Was I talking to myself? I am crazy? Then what are you?

But shh...you will wake me up. Tell me, how does she make self sufficiency seem so simple or love her little world with unconditional love. Like music not yet recalled is made of, which lulls you to sleep, colours your dreams, like an atmospheric flute playing and losing identity with your subdued attempts to hum. Nothing hackneyed...not like it is now.

But, I sound too much like an emo and excuse my sentimentalizing the dead. Its time for us to leave...close the door softly behind.

Syncopation

To What's In a Name,

This is to notify you that I have rolled the dice in this tagging game you lassoed me with. And before you take up the next few minutes of your life going through my playlist, I would like to mention that your choices are far from being soporific. Anyway, here goes...

Rules:
1. Put your MP3 player/Media player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
Wicked Game [REM]

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Another Day [Dream Theater]

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Little Wing[ The Corrs version]

[alrighty this is certified dumb. Little Wing?]

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Child in Time[ Deep Purple]


WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Reel Around The Sun [ Riverdance]


WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
At My Most Beautiful [REM]


WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Coming Back To Life [ Pink Floyd]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
It Ain't Me Babe[ Bob Dylan]



WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Electrical Storm[ U2]

[*grin*]


WHAT IS 2+2?

For the Love of God [ Steve Vai]


DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Wind up [Jethro Tull]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Don't Panic [ Coldplay]


WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Bobby Brown Goes Down[ Zappa]

[No, no...*shriek*..*faint*]



WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Aaj Jane Ki Zid Na Karo [ Farida Khanum]

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Jeremy [Pearl Jam]


WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Slow Dancing In a Burning Room[ John Mayer]

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Importance of Being Idle [ Oasis]

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
On an Island [David Gilmour]


WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
A Weekend with You [ Warren Mendosa]

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Starry Night [Satch]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Ave Maria[ Franz Schubert]

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Scarecrow [Pink Floyd]

Yours faithfully, Antigone

Just a Thought.

Now if the ladies and gentlemen present promise not to raise their objections, I would like to ask you...where had you been all my life? Hey there, look at me...and some one please turn the radio off...I can hardly hear a word...or is it just static between us?
You were expected before...or did my invitation reach you too little, too late?

You see, I mistook a few for you. They walked in, walked about,walked all over..but now that I see you unwinding in my parlor, I know I had been entertaining ghosts in your name. They looked like you till I saw them silently facing the sunset- the lines of your face burn with life in the dying light. They sounded just like you, till I heard them whisper promises- you don't promise me...you promise to yourself. They felt like you too, till they held my hand- they hold on to hold me back and you hold on to take me places I have never dreamt of.

Is it a sojourn or are you here to stay? Oh,a sojourn...fine...I think we can have our breakfast now. You don't mind honey in tea, do you...and someone turn the volume up...they are playing one of my favorite songs.

Its quarter past one...and its one of those days when its just me and a screen absorbing my erratic thoughts. When inspiration dwindles,caffeine induced bad poetry or stilted prose forged using impersonal third person voices is all I can manage. Although it becomes a matter of clinical curiosity to observe that after furiously typing down emotions hidden behind the bulwark of words, or typing down winding lines that curl into an insignificant dot or oblique allusions carefully generalized, I think- But this is not what I meant at all. This is not it at all.

Then what devil is it that makes me write? Your guess would be as good as mine but when the hideous chorus rises in my head, I haven't been taught a better way to cope or delude. With a little help from my necessary evil of course.
I am learning that when you clench too tightly, it begins to hurt. And I am also learning that if you clench sand too tightly, it slips between your fingers and...then that hurts.
I am trying to learn that my whimsical demands for closures need a tourniquet I can not undo later. And I am also trying to teach myself the exemplary balancing act.

Strangely I do not wish to bring this to a close now. Shouldn't closures be for matters resolved and not for matters which ride in tandem with incertitude? Choosing between right and wrong ails not me and things are not coloured by shades of necessity. My hamartia lies some place else...a farce in two acts.

I would like to translate this minute into a symphony or a play, a sonnet or a melody. Something beautiful, something fine, something to last for a lifetime.

My Ahiliya, sleep in my arms
Long has been my wait,since you rose from my side
My warrior come home, to kiss my feet
Take off your deerskin, put your cares aside
The mountains retire into the mist
And the leaves shiver in the cold
Lie on the pillow I wove for you
Lie beside me, the night grows old
I am the tsula you draw in
And I am the smoke that surrounds you
I am the one certainty you have
When the dark spirit confounds you
This pipe is man, strong and enfolds
The bowl and his woman he holds
Till all his thoughts within
Gently under the skies, unfolds.
And when you arch to draw the smoke
The Creator's breath fills your soul
And the smoke rises up to unify
Broken once and then made whole
Our dreams and hopes twirl in the fume
But our prayers against the gathering gloom
Is the 'us' we have, not talismans and charms
Rest my Ahiliya, sleep in my arms...


............................................................

Drawn from a native American folk lore. Its interesting to witness the intrinsic part grass plays in love, religion and the community. Although, this post is not to advocate for it. We, unfortunately live in different times.

Comic Art

Trying to post this ...um..post again. Hope my luck won't run out on me this time around and the images will load just fine.

Reds four up against Bolton. Rafa is happy tonight and so am I. 30 points, a GD of +20 and escalation to third position[but thank your Anfield stars for that Nicolas Anelka botch up]. Man Utd have a game tomorrow against Fulham so we might have to climb down the rung.

But methinks thats tomorrow and let tomorrow worry about itself.

Ophelia.

And when tonight is done
I think I'll rest my tired feet
And I think, I am thinking too much
Or is this the sweet taste of defeat

As Eirene walked on the wooden board, her spangled sleeves caught the sun's stare and gleamed.When I peel off my skin do I terrify, or should I just swipe the smile off my face.... Sound make ridges,a sleepwalker awakens and she thinks he recites his lines to perfection

Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire....

You said you wish to know me, inside out, without within, so why do I terrify now when I peel off my skin. I hear a voice say Be wary then; best safety lies in fear but what remedy to curiosity .

Eirene,Eirene don't you desecrate...I lift the branch and shrink under the weight. Someone get me out of here.. And she says-

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven


And she is tempestuous yet calm, intense yet remote. She spins words like a juggler but her pretty talks are the empty wares of an illusionist. I have seen her dancing alone, spinning lightly with a lonely drummer boy for company. Then why does she recoil when I bend to hear the music of her footsteps.

Have I myself of my audience been most free, beautiful and grotesque like yonder Joshua tree


He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders
Of his affection to me.

LORD POLONIUS
Affection! pooh! you speak like a
green girl
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.,

Come hide me from tomorrow's stern glance, one taste of your fake romance and I would earn my degree.


Tender yourself more dearly
Too frail for the labor of love
But you gave in nearly...

Now I always had Lazarus's soul and I rose from the ashes too. I wailed for my demon lover and waited for angels to see me through. Ah, Ophelia thou art sleeping still and Look to't, I charge you: come your ways

Lady lies in the shallows with the lyre in her arms. She mutely watches as the colours drain from her sky and forms little puddles. But oh, how she likes a chiaroscuro. From the shallows weeds grow, and cover the sleeping child within.But did no one tell you that in a sleep of death what dreams may come


Hamlet, I grow weary,so weary
You pass me by like a stranger
You make love to my memory
Then how in my orisons all your sins be remember'd.


she hears
There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
....

Now I shall take my leave..smile and bow graciously..no farewell speeches please. Goodbyes are best made by not making them at all and though you shall be missed...Come, my
coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies;
good night, good night.



........................................................................

The words etched in bold are the Bard's and have been carefully quoted from Hamlet, the first Shakespearean tragedy I read and could make some slight pretense of understanding. Before ADS and his Macbeth happened [ I say his Macbeth although he made it as much ours...a breathing reality rather than a fabled king from the gilded pages of academia]this text about the lovelorn lady and doomed prince fascinated me. And how.

An exercise in alternate narrative.

Afterglow

Reaping is Done

My madam picks her silver spoon, and measures out a soupçon of dust. And my madam tears the checkerboard asunder, then crawls under and sleeps in a field of rye. So my madam makes a pillow of the spade, and takes the willow for shade to dream a dream of flying away.

But madam, will you say goodbye, wont you let me sing a lullaby and kiss the lonely gaze. Oh, but she has demons to fight and she cant hear me seranade and while she raises her hell tonight, I pick up my hat and leave the masquerade.

Now as I walk down the primrose path of my making, and although that heart is surely breaking, I think I shall soon forget.



And she says
The reaping is done
And knots come undone
Someone tell me if
It is morning yet...

Scripsi

There is a part of me which shall be forever you
When I plead my case or when you ask
Me to take my coat of defenses...off.
There is a part of me that shall be forever young
When I slide fingers over a mist kissed window pane
When I write my songs, when I try to entertain
Thoughts of walking barefoot on acres wild
There is a part of me which shall be forever cold
When I sit still,smile fixed irreversibly in place
Or when I twist stalks of the first flushes of spring
There is a part of me which shall be forever false
But[smiling]my truth is a cinematic lie
Just hints of rain in a searing sky
And there was no time for revelations....



But I am not sure who wrote these lines
Or why she stops to fold her palms
A part of me apart from you
Unravelling in troubled arms...

Acclimatize

In the category of things she was finicky about; dry hands were an incontestable evil. So before she resumed her conversation Em generously dabbed some Nivea across her palm and idly kneaded with her thumb. The woman standing near the door gave an apologetic half smile and said- " Onek dure thake toh, tae aayeteh parum na" before adding shyly " Polapan'r bap mone korbe". This woman is a curio of her kind with her lilting inflected speech and the guilty appeasing gestures that flowed through her. When she was not talking, she was nervously twisting the end of her sari into complicated knots or surveying the patterns on the floor with downcast eyes. Her brows would suddenly rise at some silent question she was mulling over and the sudden drooping twitch around her mouth would tell you that she had reached some distressing conclusion. Em was amusing herself with this mime show when her mother spoke up, trying to employ all her powers of persuasion.Taking advantage of her mum’s momentary preoccupation, Em cautiously stretched her recently indulged fingers towards the bowl of Saratoga chips that she had been very specifically told to stay away from. Furtively popping some in her mouth, she picked up the pen and carefully jotted down the woman’s reply with its exact mother tongue pull.

“Moving out is a funny business if you think of it. You pull out all the whatnots that years of domesticity brings about in its wake- those greeting cards and scrapbooks with faded ink promising years of friendship, dog-eared volume of books, rusted compass and random sketching pencils strewn over photographs which couldn’t find a place in the family album, an old watch with Mickey Mouse dials forever stuck at 8.30, poems written on postcards or dinner napkins, an old address book which makes me philosophical about the various relations that start with a bang and end with a whimper, butterfly hairclips that some fond aunt gave me when I was seven, old schoolbags with some change still jingle jangling in the long unused pockets, letters which your dad wrote to you when you were learning how to read, piebald beads and dried roses in magazines shoved underneath a chaotic pile of clothes- things carefully hidden from the utilitarian’s world view and fondly kept away beneath the paraphernalia of life as little tokens of love, friendship and memories..."

Tictactoe...Down You Go.

Naughts and crosses, baby blue
Bullets singing a hymn for you
Hide in holes or die without clue
Hush now, you don’t matter
The government, mad as a hatter
Takes up its hammer to shatter
Your independent point of view

Realpolitik now taking shape
Arson, murder, arson, rape
Dry blood on your videotape
Cry havoc and dead bones rattle
Lying naked in a political battle
Hush, now don’t you prattle
For baby there is no escape

And now the country out of grip
All we do is shoot from the hip
Bloodied hands wring from the crib
So rest in peace all those who died
Rest awhile on the leeward side
But the partisan's words bona fide
Sings an anthem of the cartridge clip.

Supporting herself against feeble palms pressed down on coarse pebbles, Em quitely listened to the hint of breeze in the branches. Now that all the voices in her head were numbed by the early winter chill, she was quite alone. I wanted to know whether she was thinking about her sixpence spool of coloured yarn or whether she was afraid now that the heavens had splattered ink all over it's floor. But if you could see her then, reclining back on improbabilities, teaching herself half-truths and lies...you wouldnt. Instead you would just say-" Isnt that Orion? I think it never looked better than it looks at 3.15 in the morning..."

Six.

Daddy can you hear my voice
Calling across the stretch called time
Daddy can you hear my voice
Reading out a memorized nursery rhyme
Daddy can you raise me up
Free me of ghosts beneath my bed
Daddy can you watch me sleep
Daddy is your little girl dead
Daddy patiently pick the flowers
And wear the ragged floral crown
Daddy when they make me weep
Make me laugh, play the clown
Daddy when I grow up
And let the world have it's way
Daddy when I grow up
Old as eternity and a day
Now, eternity and a day being up
Whither can we flee
Daddy bring a sprig of yew
And a last bedtime story for me.

The Keyboard.

Dear Diary, tonight I write
Lines for the stargazer's sake
Mapping the star's hasty flight
Dreaming, half asleep, half awake

Then look up at the firmament
Grey fingers engulf the moon
It's beauty which seemed permanent
Lost in the dark, a bit too soon

Don't turn in your sleep and say
Hope is gone and life, forlorn
Shadows melt with break of day
And life has waited everlong

Everlong, while the human race
Made me think that dreams are gone
And I felt so out of place
I hummed a tune, but forgot the song

Stargazer, look away from your stars
Come down and rest on the ground
And sleep in these moonlit hours
Let dreams spin their magic all around.



.....................................................

woven on this and written for all the stargazers, gazing away in broad daylight.

Untitled.

I warped the moon while I waited
A thousand beady eyes stared
I went on twisting her sinews
Till her voice was impaired
She croaked like the midsummer crone
I broke the vision of the moon
She struck in hysterics of ire
I burnt her in cold, cold fire
And then you opened the door
The moon was beautiful as before.

If i am cured of my sinfully slothful nature, the strip will soon follow.

You and I

Fold me in your palm and let me trace, the lines of sorrow on your immaculate face. Take me through dingy passages oppressed with ennui and the trampled streets of your threadbare existence. Move in closer as we drift in this half and half world between night and dawn, between slumber and wakefulness.Move in closer into this self sustaining moment …the tears lying in the parenthesis of my smile dry on your fingertips. It’s been a long December evening, protracted by trivialities that delineate the day. Nameless faces with strange underpinnings, short stubby fingers jangling change, feet shuffling around in pursuit of happiness while old newspapers and grimy leaves tangle about like dead remnants of days and seasons past.
But who would say that you and I are parts of that broken nondescript world if they saw us leaning against each other, shaking with silent laugher or quietly confiding about irrational fears… What do you think they would say?

“They would say that such artlessness isn’t to be encouraged…”

A reworking of Thomas Nast's "The "Brains".

An old work in watercolours.

My first anime. I have straightjacketed her into a flamenco dress.

Caliban returned tonight, it’s a happy hour he said
Dreams being spun on the looms of thought are dead
I told him there was a rumor among men
That perchance God is still awake
When will he rest? Leave those thoughts aside
And wear the ebony shroud instead
Let’s play a game of solitaire
Watch how I play to lose
Playing the muted ivory keys
Singing my black man’s blues
Take my mask of harlequin
It fits me ill tonight
I won’t be a tale twice told
Counting stars with blind sight
And death is desired for new life to flower
Your dreams are dead, tis an happy hour
So, wind up, wind up your conditional trust
Before you recoil in the automated shell
Write love-songs while love bites the dust
You are alive yet it feels like Hell
When love is starved and arrested development well fed
Then its time to live, for now your illusions are dead


.....................................
@ Pranav, thanks for reminding me about it's existence:)

Smoking Gun

Bedlam of battle

Here, in a room of one’s own, we collect the detritus of yester years. We present to any reader who cares to listen, vignettes of the wasteful war. We who have never lain maimed under the drilled corpse of a comrade or looked at physical brutalities with shell-shocked stupor.What shall we ever know of hell’s upsurge in the dark story of arms and the men? But then ‘English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them’ and battle shall always remain the enervating truth glossed over by whispers of Pro Patria Mori.

Geisha

:P...thats David. By the way, thought you should know that the liberties taken have nothing to do with symbolism[like- the yawning gap in the place of the face do not depict the effacing effects of modernity]

Two to Tango

Ballerina

After one year and a handful of months, I went back to sketching on photoshop...so am feeling quite good. This one remotely resembles a ballerina[hopefully] although I initially wanted to draw a couple waltzing.

20th September '07

I saw a particularly insufferable B-grade horror flick today which would have made the devil nosedive straight into the deep blue sea if he were to see it. It had this schmuck suffering from a perpetual bad hair night and whose pancake make-up seemed to have given her a bad case of anaphylactic shock. She sprinted with a dagger; she whirled around in a Brownian motion and did other things which any self respecting spirit wouldn’t do. So I took out my shoes and took myself out in the al fresco.

The Dhakuria Bridge is like a carelessly cluttered montage of sorts. You can stand still while people hustle by and watch a solitary stranger fan out bright red rags on the railroad tracks. Or the kite frozen in suspended animation while street children caper around with arms splayed. Mottled skyline as the light peters out. Birds on their flight back home. And an occasional heart etched out on the bridge by nameless lovers. Once upon a half forgotten time I walked up and saw the lightening flash across the length of the sky.

Starry Night

The night crawls in and lengthens the shadows across the room. A flattened, larger than life parody in two dimensions that flickers on the wall, bends at the corners, looms from the ceiling. So an aphonic giant keeps you company tonight and counts love’s abuses on your face. What seamless dream sequence woke you up from your troubled sleep and what spasmodic memories keep you awake? Do you bury your ears between your knees to stop the ticking of the bifurcated arms of time or do you lie on the floor and stare at the piece of sky outside your matchbox apartment? Do you try to talk to God, perchance He is still awake or will you hide behind your smokescreen?

Look, while we talk soft grey pencil lines of willowy clouds break and the stars chart their silent pilgrimage across night’s immutable face. Don’t say that maybe we shall lose this tonight as it turns into yet another yesterday; for I have learnt that nothing is really lost. Fast fading faces of loved ones, blurred memory of a happy day, the indefinite felicity of childhood when we thought the sun shone for us …they coalesce till they can no longer be evaluated objectively but stay with us as ‘spots of time’. The fact that we can’t see something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Maybe it just walked by while you were trapped in a phantasmagoria of your own making. So put out the light and siphon off the shadows on the wall. Go to sleep…it’s a new day tomorrow.

Hey you, juggling pieces of fragmented dreams, are you going my way? I see you standing on sidelines, riddled with your run of the mill existence, too afraid to move, too tired to stay. Shrug…you don’t have to carry your weight and if you had enough of seeing giants in windmills…look elsewhere for you don’t have to die today. Who told you life would answer some questions? Instead it made you question some answers. Life doesn’t come with subtitles, darling or with user friendly manuals. It just comes with an offer you can’t refuse.

How Green Is My Valley?

Disclaimer: The 'you' used in the post is generalized.

Next time that pathological egotist swaggers up to say-‘Is it hot or just me?’ be
sure to tell the dolt- “its global warming’. And while we are on that topic, we might as well do it properly. You have read about it before your EVS exams and heard about it while changing channels [Read: about global warming and not pathological egotists]. So for a change let’s see what it does and what it intends to do.

I was watching An Inconvenient Truth last week. By the end of the movie I positively hated myself for living in blissful apathy while cataclysmic changes are chocking our planet. For example take a look at the following two images I captured from the movie [no copyrights violated, I hope].





The trees, the sheet of ice and blossoms of wild flowers have disappeared like the emperor’s new clothes in the second flick and it didn’t even take four decades to reach that point of aridity. Did you say-‘how in the blue blazes?’. I am so glad you asked.

I work on the answer why don’t you take a look at these two pictures taken of the glaciers in Nepal:-



What you are witnessing through these pictures is the alarming phenomenon of glacier retreat. Except the ice caps and ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctic, the total surface area of glaciers worldwide has decreased by 50% since the end of the 19th century. So as the earth becomes more of a frying pan, the glaciers on Andes, Alps, Himalayas, Rocky Mountains and North Cascades melt into oblivion. And if you are wondering what exactly that has to do with us, read this. The Himalayan glaciers that are the sources of Asia's biggest rivers - Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow - could disappear by 2035 as temperatures rise. Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan Rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades. In India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and farming for more than 500 million people. Increased melting would cause greater flow for several decades, after which some areas of the most populated regions on Earth are likely to 'run out of water' as source glaciers are depleted.

This is not a threat, mister and if you think this is pointless sensationalizing of a nonexistent issue scroll back to the Kilimanjaro pictures. The ice cap has moved back like a receding hair line and only remains in patches-



As the Earth gets scorched by global warming, there is a concurrent acceleration in the rate of evaporation from the great water bodies. Because the world is a closed system, this will cause heavier rainfall and greater erosion. But in Africa this situation takes troublesome proportions since the mangrove forests which kept the soil in place, are being uprooted by man(un)kind. In vulnerable tropical areas like Africa this leads to desertification due to deforestation and its brunt falls on the biodiversity.



Analyze this. Polar bears are stranded on melting ice floe and consequently getting a one way ticket to Davy Jones's locker. This thawing habitat transliterates into major trouble for Emperor penguins, gyrfalcons and the rainbow trout. Seal pups are going hungry and starvation is becoming the Porcupine reindeer herd’s daily bread. Joining this jamboree of destruction is the thoughtless clearing of Ecosystems for biofuel expansion. But we are dealing with the algebra of reciprocality and the equation doesnt augur too well for the fine 'piece of work' that is man. Strange fluctuations in temperature? Changes in climatic [1][2]patterns?
Tropical storms on the hike? Health issues trolling us? What is the humanitarian impact of climate change?

Well, if I havent lost you yet, let me tell you this is the fag end of the post[ did you say-'mercifully'?]

1986-The Year of Reckoning

My pen bleeds tonight Henryk. The open fields of wheat and silence flicker past like surreal shadows as I retrace my steps back to where it all began. Back to that wrinkle in time when death became our constant keeper and its invisible footprints followed us like marked men. Alessandra went first, the child of the abandoned city and the women cried till their charcoaled eyes drew black streaks down their pallid faces. Then Alexei died during our flight to Ukraine and the children of chernobyl knew they were living on borrowed time.

Spring left Pripyat one April twenty years ago. Do you remember that explosion, Henryk and do you remember the bluish white line that seared the air in its quicksilver flight? It was a parched day and a burnt taste of metal enfolded us with the grip of vice. There were people on the road handing out iodine pills and with sharp tensed gestures asked us to stay indoors. But I walked by them not comprehending the ruckus or the presence of masked men washing the city streets. I walked by them watching the blind gypsy cradling the harmonica on the church steps while tracing the rise and fall of the blues with blind sight…

So, I am going back to my home. I think I can see its long winding paths and the wide eyed sunflowers peeping from window sills. Its proud buildings, the Ferris wheel and the pine forests. Maybe the photographs they print in the papers tell lies. Maybe the sad, vacant debris isn’t my land after all. I once met a woman who stared at the picture of an old dusty piano with tawny music sheets … silent tears running down her glassy eyes. 'Фортепьяно моей моего' she wispered to no one in perticular'они играли это на моей свадьбе'

Those were moments when even time hesitated to move on. It seemed to have stopped as the ghost town was evacuated. We were going to Ukraine. My brother, Alexei was dying, his own body betraying him and we could do nothing but watch in horror. The doctors had removed his diseased thyroid tissue and gave him some months to live. How life compels us to dream different dreams. We, who thought there will be time enough for everything, begged a stoic God for a few more minutes of togetherness. But when time finally took its leave, it took away with it familiar faces. . But you know you been tainted when you look at enlarging nodes on a friend’s neck or the handicapped body of your first born.

But hush, while I write such sad lines , the terminus approaches. Без перевода and may God be with you till we meet again.

....................................

Stolen Strawberries

The rain had filled the depressions made by my barefeet on the soft saturated earth. Drawing in the elusive smell of wet soil and stolen strawberries, I felt my way by touching the peeling trunks of ancient, cavernous trees and doused sleepy leaves. I had waited till silence had undulated over the house and my solitary escapade from it had became one with the night. I remember when I was younger, I would scrunch up underneath the young coriander tree and shake it's lithe branches. The raindrops would slide down it's parsley like leaves and fall on my face like tears that only angels can cry.

And I remember lying awake and listening to music wafting from the jukebox of a neighbour I had never met.
And I remember trying to understand shapes of the fleecy clouds swirling in the fluid firmament.
And I remember pressing the crushed petals of a roadside shiuli as dawn broke in the sleepy horizon.
And I remember looking longingly at a kaleidoscopic kite tearing the air in it's lonely flight.

And as the rain traced random meandering paths down my arms, I will remember tonight. A sliver of memory savouring of a moist moonlight and stolen strawberries.

Sans Souci

Madam, don't raise your brows if I talk to that tramp in the dappled shawl. Etching semicircles in the air with suspended toes and fingers contorting to grasp chords that can't waft within your protective walls...I am tired.

Lord knows that I had enough of pseudo non-conformists and consciously careless trainee hippes who quote Lorca, Morrison and Ginsberg. You have a fire burning between your fingers and when you speak the smoke twirls in patterns infinitely more interesting than what you have to say. And you look like an initiate to a cult...happy to be different...not knowing that the credo was to be indifferent.

So you think bohemians are the glamerous outcasts who watch as smoke rings dissolve into poetry and pain mutate into songs. You thought it was abandoned afternoons in blind alleys with mavericks who wisper in nicotine tinged tones. Street with hushed names where somnolent eyes can gather grace.

But you see the careening bodies later, lurching with delirium as demons thrash them around. You see the vacuous sockets later emptied of their piebald dreams. And do you see the indie artist rummaging his dead friend's pockets for his 'naked lunch'.

And does that frighten you, my friend? Or does that make you sad. It's not much, but I have tried to see this civilized world from dusty sidewalks while talking to fakirs selling copper rings. Walk barefoot on warm streets with naked street childrens or inhale time. Silhouette the taut sky or learn to live sans souci. Read verses and drink raindrops. You have watched that hand on the fretboard but hold it tomorrow when it lies limp.

But Lord knows, I had enough of trainee hippies for bohemianism was never about aping prototypes.

Desert Rose

Haunting...

Eternity is a Moment In Time

When the unbearable lightness of being calls out from the sepia tinted photographs I search for words unborrowed from another mind. Tell me about the lulling hum of raindrops falling on the gravel and leaves shivering in the mildewed breeze. Reverse those bifurcated hands of time to an age when dryads worked their magic for believing eyes or extend them to escape this warp where the eldritch is thrown to the wind.

Kidnapped within the cold structures of mortar and girder are vacant lives that sink in morasses and forget the art of talking in simple unaffected words. And I ask you 'pray for the wild at heart trapt in cages' and juggle more words out of the babel like a conjurer with a spent trick.

Watch me deal in erudition and ask me what I think about so and so...I am tired of the internalized jargon of phonies and a voice I remotely recognize as my own. The unbearable lightness of being alive and not marionettes.

A Rose on the Grave

I am catching lightning in a bottle and elemental chaos in my prayers. Life has stretched it's long fingers and dug them deep in your savage mind. When you were a lone midnight rider and the darkness slithered down like ink on your dreaming heart, I loved you like the fairy tales that a certain six year old read and believed in.

Memories of Us

21st June and it's World Music Day,Im told. With Jeff Buckley's cover of Hallelujah[ thanks to Homesick Alien] drowning the random chords I am playing and some old school of rock after this Keith Urban track...I am in a musical nirvana...

Shooting from the hip

This isn't about lives less ordinary which lived fast and died young. This is definitely not an eulogy since I don't know enough of Vicious's music to do so or otherwise. I don't own a Sex Pistol so don't ask me if I think he was a legendary punk rocker or just a pale no-hoper who couldn't play bass. And yes,before I forget...this isn't to romanticize Nancy. But have you wondered what it would be to see the sky through her eyes.

I didn't expect them to put this song...It's Cohen song and it's beautiful. Maybe thats why it's here in my blog...the song is pure magic.

Room 100..Chelsea Hotel...RIP Sid and Nancy.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Snow [Hey Oh]

Cold December mornings and waking up when the newspaper guy rang the bell. Black coffee and music playing in the apartment...talking about the time when I was living alone. More often than not,I would find myself on the couch and this RHCP track would be the first thing on Vh1...everytime. I don't know how but for weeks it was the first thing I heard.

SCAR TISSUE

RHCP...and the doctrine of abandonment.

Writings from the Automated hand

It's like light from a defracted dream vision falling on raindrops sliding down a window sill. Or fleecy clouds dissolving in a darkening horizon in the remains of the day. Or maybe a trembling silhouette against a wall when you have shut the door upon the world.

Maybe you and I didn't need coffee,clever verses on cityscrapes or rock to open the clogged doors to perception. We cluch at life but it slipped through our clenched fingers like sand. Didn't someone say that love can't heal what love has wreaked.

savvy

Captain Sparrow looks like Cher??!? These T2 reporters aarr preposterous.

Let Them Eat Cakes

A tip of the hat to those who can bake their cake and eat it too. I am not talking through my hat and by the beard of the prophet I swear it's no cakewalk to bake a cake. Following are the two epiphanies I suffered after that beefcake's birthday-

1. Vanilla essence is revoltingly obnoxious. Some cretin of subnormal intelligence wrote of a svelte female who used it as a perfume and the male moron couldnt figure out what it was and found her irresistibly enigmatic[sic]. well guess what? It isnt. It's a potent male repellent.

2. Never substitute butter for oil...unless of course you know the exact equation. Havn't you heard of the 21 year old girl who tried baking a cake in the thirteenth hour of 2nd June 2007? After being informed by a well wisher that olive oil wouldn't make the cakes sell like...um...hot cakes, she used butter...and landed up with bricks that she later used to scare crows away.

When Everything Is Made To Be Broken

The video made me throw my hands up and the track made me hastily use those very hands to close my ears. He did an awfully off-kilter job of that Goo Goo Dolls hit Iris. When he was not screeching he was belting out the lines and when he was doing neither, he rode across the screen or stared out of a mammoth satellite disc.

Zippy boy bands, crummy lyrics and tunes like molasses...pop days are good till they last.

Rorschach

A sneak peak into the Rorschach Test.

http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.php

Raising high the roofbeam, Carpenters...

Random six things that make me happy-

1. Get up and discover that I still have an hour to sleep.

2. Honest music. As honest as Nights in Shining Karma.

3. Walking barefoot in drenched grass or catching sight of a butterfly balancing in
the breeze.

4. Talking to people without whom the going gets tough and Sundays when bhaiya calls

5. Finishing the sudoku before babba

6. Being ma's numero uno stress buster

Colourblind

Your Eyes Should Be Violet

Your eyes reflect: Mystery and allure What's hidden behind your eyes: A quiet passion

What Color Should Your Eyes Be?

Toothsie

Today I made a momentous discovery that I hate to be dragged out of the house at three in the afternoon. Specially if it is done to meet that dash and a dot dentist whom we will call Plopboinkgruff for obvious privacy reasons.

Plopboinkgruff's chamber is a typical oishob jaega where the receptionist stares till you fell you are some exhibitionist ready to break into hives. So you just flip through the well thumbed magazines or listen to the nauseating chatter of some precocious kid or maybe look outside the window at that sleazy celluloid poster with some imbecile of an actor smiling, as it seemed at gunpoint.

The insufferably bulimic woman hanging around his neck looked like that fabled Betaal. I am, of course talking about that guy in the poster and not Plopboinkgruff who summoned us, an hour after the appointed time. He was barking at some one when we entered and kept on barking for the next ten minutes. Finally when he had exhausted his creativity in invectives, he snarled at us.

The point is, ma's gums are bleeding. The last doc waved it off as psychological[ psychological bleeding? for Pete's sake]and she wanted a second opinion. SO Mr Plopboinkgruff tried to get to the root of the problem[ hey, if you didn't get the pun, then go back and re-read the last line] and all the while ma kept on talking about some imaginary relatives whom he had miraculously cured.

He looked as if she had just passed him free lunch baskets. The diagnosis was promptly pronounced- Vit K deficiency. He paused theatrically to notice our response aaaand then said with concentrated gravity- 'A B C D E F G H I J...K' with each letter being enunciated with an alarmingly escalating pitch. These dentists are crazy.

Yawn...

Your Brain's Pattern

You have a dreamy mind, full of fancy and fantasy. You have the ability to stay forever entertained with your thoughts. People may say you're hard to read, but that's because you're so internally focused. But when you do share what you're thinking, people are impressed with your imagination.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

Blogthings....I swear I was bored and had nothing else to do.

You Are a Chick Rocker!

You're living proof that chicks can rock You're inspired by Joan Jett and the Donnas And when you rock, you rock hard (Plus, you get all the cute guy groupies you want!)

What Kind of Rocker Are You?

Y?

Why do they kill all the cute guys?