The Ocean

I wonder if the ebb and flow
Of the Ocean's tides
Is how she sighs and lets go
Of grave secrets she hides

She knows of ancient lores of kings
She knows of broken hearts
And everyday her waters sing
Tales men cannot tell apart

And when I cried to her one day
I knew with me she'd cried
Her solemn wave rose to the bay
And fell gently by my side

Now when I pick up seashells
I often hear strange wails
Like forgotten, arcane spells
That unfold the Ocean's tales

Silent Night

Another night falls
And as my last cigarette is put out
Another lone star shines in the sky
And a single tear escapes my eye
Another time I sleep alone
On my empty bed, cold as stone.

A song from the grave

I am but a drifting cloud in the sky
I am but a blade of grasss
I am but a teardrop in a blind man’s eye
I am but a broken piece of glass

I am but a grain of desert sand
I am but a whisper of the wind
I am but a forgotten gypsy band
I am but a loveless soul that never twinned

I am but a lonely house in the bare tree
I am but a ring in a church bell
I am but a low tide in the deep sea
I am but a leaf that withered and fell

I am but a sad song they sing along with
I am but a ghost you can’t see
I am but a lost, forlorn myth
I am but a memory.

Sunshine's song.

PS: This is for my friend's pet who I loved dearly. Sunshine. She had the loveliest voice ever. I tried to make this good but I couldn't. But I do want this to be my 50th post on here.
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Oh little yellow Canary
Perched on top of a mighty tree
You sing songs of melancholy
As we stop to listen.
Everyday your feathers fall
A reminder of your final call
Your sadness makes us all look small
And teardrops in our eyes glisten.


There's a distant look in your eyes
The color of the deepest skies
The window reflecting your helpless cries
But no one seems to see
For a bird's song is always careless
Free of impending worries or stress
So people laugh and say god bless!
Our chirpy little Canary.

Then one morning you were gone
And it was before long
No more was heard of the song
That still lingers in the air
But oh what I wouldn't give
To see you come back and live
And once again hold me captive
In your voice's golden lair.

When I was six

Paper planes and puddles
Tiny tents and huddles
Colorful butterflies
Syrup on cold ice.

Toy cars and dolls,
Marshmallow stalls,
A blooming bud
A splash in the mud.

Candy and cake,
A quiet lake,
Rainbow in the sky
Heaven in my eye.

Stars in the night,
Silvery light,
A bed-time tale
And dreams that entail.

When I was six,
I lived
And now I exist
I only exist.
When I was six
I believed
In beauty and bliss
When I was six...

Sing.

Every night I sleep
With pain anchored inside me
And the roots of it are deep
But sealed away so no one can see

Everyday I smile
Knowing my heart wants to cry
But I don't want to seem so fragile
To every onlooker's eye

So I swallow it all and when I feel too bad
When the tears won't stop when I'm just so sad,
When I can't bear it all, can't do anything,
I open my heart and sing
I open my heart and sing.

So I don't tell a soul about my grief
Because I know all the care is fake and brief
When life becomes a curse, when it gets maddening
I open my heart and sing
I sing.

Everywhere I go
I look at people around me, they seem happy
I wonder if it's really so
Or if they're just better at pretending

Every time I lie
On my bed, looking at the only star
I wipe a tear and heave a sigh
Wishing I could go somewhere that far

But I swallow it all and if I feel too bad
If the tears won't stop, if I'm just too sad
If I can't bear it all, can't do anything
I open my heart and sing
I open my heart and sing

Then I feel relief sweeping through me
Because a song can heal the worst misery
And then I smile, and this time genuinely
And things aren't so bad

Maybe tomorrow a good day will come
Maybe of all the sunshine, I'll get some
Maybe I'll know what it is to be glad
And things won't be so bad

And if it doesn't well

I'll swallow it all and if I feel too bad
If the tears won't stop, if I'll feel too sad
If I can't bear it all, can't do anything
I'll open my heart and sing
I'll open my heart and sing

And I won't tell a soul about my grief
Because I know all the care is fake and brief
When life becomes a curse, when it gets maddening
I'll open my heart and sing
I'll sing.

Things left unsaid.

She had once told him while they were on the phone, "I don't care if you go on and sleep with random women. Have mindless sex with them. I just don't care because I know how it gets... I am so far away and there is nothing I can do about it. But I cannot stand it if another woman occupies your heart, if your love for her is stronger than what you have for me, I will lose all purpose of life. I won't know where I'd go, what I'd so, what I'd be."

He listened, reassuring her that she was the love of his love. He told her how he could never stop thinking about her eyes that had the depth of a thousand seas. He told her how he loved her hair, especially when she let it flow freely. He told her how he wanted to marry her and none but her because she was everything in his otherwise troublesome life. He told her that he knows that she doesn't much care for children but that he'd want her to be the mother of his child if he ever did have one. He told her about how his love for her was unrequited and how he lived every second to just make the one moment of their rendezvous everything that she had hoped for. He told her that he lives to see her one day, to be able to place his hands on her shoulders, gaze into her eyes and tell her how much he loved her.

She listened, feeling reassured. Hoping that he loved her as much as he said he did because she knew that even when he said all this, she was not the person in his head. He was speaking to a lover. But he wasn't speaking to her. He was saying all the right things but they weren't directed at her.

Then one day she asked him, "You still love her don't you?"

He did her the favour of being honest. He said that he did and that she knew he did. He had told her before that he'd never be able to forget her.

"Yes, I know", she pressed, "But you would you go back to her if she called you back? Would you give me up?"

He sighed and told her that he couldn't lie. He told her how they were together for five years. How they sat next to each other at work and looked at each other all the time. He told her how they were inseparable. He told her how she had been a huge part of his life and how she took a portion of his heart all for herself. He told her she was his companion and he was hers.

She understood completely, swallowed the pain that filled her up. Her senses, her body, her mind, her brain, her soul. She was a bundle of pain. Suffering. She was loveless. She was a lot of things but she wasn't non-understanding. So she told him she understood. She told him that she thought it was wonderful that he could love someone like that. She told him that it only made him more admirable in her eyes. She wasn't lying. She meant every word she said. But she left some things unsaid.

She didn't tell him that the rest of her life she could only pretend to be happy. She didn't tell him that she craved for someone's love. She didn't tell him that she wanted someone to love her as he loved his ex. She didn't tell him that she was devastated. She didn't tell him that she wanted to cry. Because for the first time, she felt bad for herself.

Then one day, she left. She didn't say where, she didn't leave a note, she didn't give him a reason. She just disappeared like she was never there. She left no traces of her presence. Nothing for him to remember her by. Nothing to remind him of her.

Ten days later, her brother called him to tell him that he could come to the funeral if he'd like. She suffered from a vague illness for which the doctors couldn't determine the cause. That was just another thing she didn't tell him.

Are they worth it?

This is a true story. Friend of mine from LA told me it happened in her sister's high school
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"Oi, Sarah! Guess what?!! I finally asked Raul to to go the dance with me and he said yes!!! Isn't that great?"

"He said yes?"

"Hah! Yes he did! I know... I know... I can't believe it myself!"

*********************************************************************************

"It wasn't like that Sarah, I was meaning to ask you first but she has been asking for like a month now and I just couldn't say no."

"You should have told me a week earlier. Not the day right before the dance. Bye Raul"

**********************************************************************************

"Hey Seth, would you go to the dance with me?"

"Sarah! Umm... I... would love to... but..."

"No it's alright I'll ask someone else! Thanks anyway!"

**********************************************************************************

"Raul... hey, RAUL!"

"Seth? What's up?"

"Did you see the evening papers yesterday?"

"Papers? Haha! No man why what's on?"



I wonder what made that young woman think that death was the answer to high school boy problems. I wonder what makes anyone think that death is the answer to any of life's problems. RIP

Knowing her... knowing me.

"I need to get my life together", sighed Andrea, her head rested on my shoulders. She was my age, shared the same dreams as me and liked the same things I did but unlike myself, Andy had a face as perfect as a painting, never sang in cacophonies and actually had a heart which I suspected was made of gold.

I patted her shoulder and tried to think of something comforting to say. "Andy I've known you for donkey's years and I know you will find a way out of this mess.", I said reassuringly. Andy shook her head and smiled. "You say that only to make me feel better"

"No I mean it."

"I don't think so. I'm nothing but a little dot on the vast planet trying to make my mark in this world even though there are people way better than I am, doing greater things than I do with a greater degree of perfection. I suck. End of story."

"Well...", I began and she cut me short immediately. "Don't!! Please don't say anything. I know what I am. I am a small fish in a big sea. If I dare venture outside of my little shell, I know I'm going to be eaten."

I sighed. "You're right Andy. There's nothing you can do about it. I guess you're just going to have to accept that you're good but not good enough. Not everybody makes it to the top of the ladder."

She looked askance at me, rubbing her thumbs together. She always did that.

"What do you mean *not good enough*?", she asked, careful to stress every word in its utterance.

"Just that... not good enough."

She stood up, arms akimbo and stared right into my eyes. "Look, I don't know about your standards but let me tell you... I've been published in more than one renowned journals, I have had three exhibitions of my artworks... two more on their way, and I have been invited to be the lead for the nationwide dance extravaganza. So if you wish to tell me that my accomplishments are *not good enough* I will need you to place on record your own. And after that you can badger me with your aspersions but until THAT happens I will *NOT* be abased, you hear?"

I allowed myself to smile a little and then stood up myself. "Now that we have this sorted out, you want to go to Ranger's and get pizza?", I asked averting a direct gaze at her searching eyes, fumbling with my purse. Andy stayed quite for a minute and then we both looked at each other and laughed our lungs out.

"You are such a piece of work, you know that?", she asked squeezing me into one of those girly hugs that I have never grown quite comfortable with even after ten years.

"Thanks Andy, I can say the same for ya."

She nodded and we walked hand in hand to the pizza restaurant down Baxter's Road, talking about horrible Mr. McMath at school and how difficult it was to find good looking boys to go to the dance with... and suddenly we were ten years old again.

Pieces of a puzzle

It is amazing how sometimes your life seems to be so perfect - like someone took the missing pieces of a fabric and sewed it all together. You have a dream, you have love, you have a great family and the most entertaining and compassionate people as friends.

They say life is what you miss when you spend years thinking about what it is. So often, we forget to notice how meaningful everyday occurrences are. A mother's smile when you tell her what a wonderful cook she is. A brother's childish-yet-I'm-so-grown-up look when you speak to him about how precarious the road ahead can be if you have no plans. The look of gratitude in a friend's eyes when you tell them you'll be there... even though they probably wouldn't need you. It is in those little things that you find the true meaning of life. At the end of the day, satisfaction is what matters more than happiness. And what can be more satisfying than hearing from the ones you love the most about how much you mean to them?

So many of us seek adventure in life... Traveling the world, climbing an insurmountable hill, falling free from hundreds of feet above the ground, diving under the oceans to look at all the beauty that is concealed within... No doubt, a person learns a lot about her/himself during these overwhelming journeys. Surely, it helps them discover a part of them that they were either unaware of, or were uncertain of. However, what can be learnt from the details, can be learnt only from the details. There is a broader perspective to almost everything... more than what meets the eye. It is when we notice those that we truly begin to understand our purpose of existence.

When I sat, hands rested on my cheeks, looking out of the window - my mother sat beside me.

"So what is it?", she asked seeming to be very certain that something was amiss.

"Nothing maa. Just... looking at the birds.", I said convincingly. But she was my mother and she didn't buy that.

"Ah. Yeah lovely birds... black bodies and grey necks... how wonderfully they sing... caw, caw, cawcaw..."

I laughed and put an arm around the woman who is my best friend, my angel, my savior and my teacher. She can sweeten the sourness in my mood anytime.

"Very funny maa. You got me though, It's him. AND I know what you're going to say... I've been with guys before, I've thought I was in love and then turned out I wasn't ya da ya da ya da."

"Yes, that is what I would have said usually. But not this time. This time it's different I can tell."

I blinked. Say what? This was my mum right? 5'3, fair and nice black hair? Yep. Seemed so. She was smiling at me sensing the mild shock I was in and then she said - "Swati, when you're in love and when you're so far away from each other, things can be a little crooked. But if you can feel him when he says I love you and if his words make you happy and one look at him makes your heart sing, you should let go of the hard feelings you have. The essence of anything is in its details."

What can I say? I love my mother, I love the man I love and I love my life. Of course, very shortly you will read a blog post about how things can never go right for me and about how much life sucks, but hey... we're looking at the broader picture here... wait I mean the finer details... Agh! You get the point!

When life gives you lemons, collect them and then hurl them as forcefully at you can at all your problems and say "Problem ke bache tera mu kaala!"

Change. (Might not make sense to you! :D)

Change is the only certain thing in life they say. That and death. But I am not going to talk about death here because I don't know anything about it! I know a few things about change though. Like how it can in it's arcane ways make you feel ecstatic one instant and the next instant you want to hide in a corner from the whole world wishing nobody ever heard of you. One instant you're on top of everybody's charts and then you're the last person anyone wants to bump into.

Of course without change life would suck terribly. Nobody would have any imagination. You'd still be stuck at the same place doing the same thing after ten years. Twenty years. A whole eternity. Progress would stop and this world would see day after day after day pass by with no spectacular occurrences.

And yet people are afraid of change. Nothing might be so mind-boggling without change but then things aren't unsettling either. Some people live in apprehension and fear all their lives... pondering about what might become of them... what they will or will not make of their "insignificant lives"... does anything last forever? Hope? Love? Friendship? What if something happens that will change everything? Change. Something that invokes fear and anticipation. Change. Something that you know will change your life but you have no clue if it will be for the better or for the worse. Now some may argue that everything happens for the best but honestly... how often do we KNOW what good has come out of certain things... How do we know what disaster someone has averted by losing a limb? Is it for the better? Maybe. How so? No one knows.

So what is it about change that makes it so hard to live with it or live without it? Do all of us need this uncertainty to go on? I am thinking we do. What's a race when you know for sure who's going to win it and how? Maybe change is what makes life. Or maybe change is life. So when people say only death and change is ever certain... they're really talking about life and death. Or are they? Maybe :)

JRO!

OK here I am again. I know it has been long and I've missed my blog! *Looks around happily... until her eyes wander and stop to see the date of the last entry...* Yeah, like I said... I've missed blogging.

Anyway, this is about the June RockOut which happened in July and what can I say... it was amazing! Like many concerts that happen in Chennai, the fan following was rather small (there might have been like 150 people which is kind of a big deal for Chn!) but what the heck, it was totally awesome! This blog is dedicated to my all time favourite Indian bands - Blood and Iron, SKRAT and Motherjane.

SKRAT came on and as always, they had the fans screaming out loud for more. Their music, to me, is creative, professional and fun. It isn't beat up. You can never hear a similar sounding song anywhere. The riffs were perfect, the drum fills were complementary. The vocals fit in so well... if you have seen one of those delicately carved pieces of furniture that wouldn't have looked as exquisite without minor, vein-sized details... you'll know what I'm talking about. They weave together a perfect fabric with all their instruments, paying perfect attention to details. If there's anything that SKRAT needs to achieve the overall awesomeness that they're so close to having - it is the lyrics. They're very good but they could be better.

Blood and Iron was pure METAL. That's all there is to it. It was raining cats and dogs. Nobody cared. Half an hour of headbanging and indulgence. And then they were gone. Just like that. For what seemed like a minute, a silence fell over everyone after they found out that repeated pleas of an encore wasn't going to yield any results. BnI has musical genes in them. If they wouldn't have told you that the drummer had a broken wrist, you'd hardly notice. The grounds were filed with mad sounds from the snare and the crash. The double bass was too good to be true. Keyboards made the song. Guitar solos have their own place in a song but a keyboard solo this genial is hard to come by. Vocals were out of the world. The only thing was that nobody could hear the bassy. Well, bad arrangements maybe... But Blood and Iron was probably the band that got most of the attention and accolades.

Motherjane... if you would look at these guys in a coffee shop they'd seem like ordinary Mallus who live a happy life eating beef and drinking their everyday chaaya. The "rockband" outfit is only for stage. And boy do they astonish you! The Neversink river isn't the confluence of east and west, Motherjane's music is! You will start to wonder if Nikola Tesla made magical guitars if you'd just look at Baiju play. Now it's Indian... now it's western rock... Indian... rock... It makes you breathless and when the solo breaks off and he's playing rhythm again all you can say is "wow!"

There might be Wacken Open Air and Bloodstock and Woodstock... but there is also JRO and the talent here is definitely a threat to anyone who is competing. Viva la Musica!

Dementia

I was drunk as a fish when I wrote this. So no you can't laugh too much over this one.

Seething through your veins
A surge of anger passes
Down the memory lanes
Violent, maverick clashes
The darkness overcomes
And you can’t set yourself free
The chains of indifference
Make you blind and you can’t see

Venomous tasteful desires
Creeping through your veins
Light of a thousand pyres
Down your memory lanes
Seeping from the shadows
A discerning twinge of gloom
Hits you deep inside
And takes you to your doom

Now the anger is gone
And fear is here instead
You can’t sleep for too long
You twist and turn in bed
Your mind is now capsized
By the wilderness vile
And your heart is incised
Into pieces fragile

Hold on to your broken soul
Don’t wander too far
Or get sucked into the black hole
And soon you’ll be that dead star

My entry for Jhankar 2009-10 poetry writing

Inspiration: Hypnogaja - (Talk to me) Like lovers do

So we were given this topic "Can money buy love" and an hour's time to write our poem. And this is what got me the second place. Only goes on to show that the others really sucked =P 

Can Money Buy Love?

I’m a rich kid with a lot of money

I have a personal bodyguard and three cars

But I sometimes feel strangely funny

When I lie awake watching the stars

For I may have a playstation and the latest game

And all the record labels in the store

Yet I sometimes wish that I could claim

That I have something I want evermore

 

I dream of lovers holding hands

And kissing gently beneath the sky

Or sharing their tacos at the stands

But that’s something money can’t buy

I dream of gardens and the sea

And two souls oblivious to all that

Whispering sweet nothings softly

Lost in their subliminal chat

 

I have a fast bike that can fly

But I have no one to share the ride

I have company in laughter but I’m alone when I cry

I wish I had a lover by my side

If I could trade all that I possess

For a humble wish from Above

I’d forget about playthings and fancy dresses

And wish for one true love. 

Life is a storm cloud

**I wrote this for my ten year old cousin and she urged me to put it up on here. So yeh go ahead, have a laugh at my terrible writing skills and dance like mavericks at the grave of my dead muses.**

Just when you think that it's all over

Life gives you a sudden cheer
If all your worries would sink any lower
You'd wonder if they were ever here

Some memories fade and some linger
Some seem like they happened yesterday
Like the song of a soulful singer
They often rewind in your head and play

Distant dreams look closer now
All your wishes come true somehow
Your heart wants to sing in glee
You want to dance because you feel free
Say it once, say it again out loud
Life is a moving storm cloud

Just when you thought you'd never find love
Life gives you a surprise
Like a blessing from the heaven above
Like an angel in disguise

Some friends go and some stay
Some come into your life late

But I'll think you'd agree that any day

They make your simple life great

Happy times are closer now

All your tears seem to dry somehow

You can't help but nod and smile

At how it seemed over before a little while

Sing it once sing it out loud

Life is a moving storm cloud