As the sun prepares to sleep, the curtain rises for the extravagent performance that will continue all through the night. A performance that will light up the whole world with colours. A performance that will continue night after night after night, till the performer, the artist breathes its last. A performance that will be witnessed by none other than the deafening silence of the night. A performance that will be performed each night without delay without an audience or an applause…

You must have seen the lights, haven’t you?

Life is hard. A dull, mundane monotony that stops as suddenly as it had started. No meaning, no reasons, no choices but a bleak, dark continuity. Man scurrying away to work every morning of his life, to the same place he had been to five days of a week, sometimes six, and sometimes even seven. Woman cleaning, cooking and handling kids at home. Child remembering hard the sixth line of the first page of the third chapter for the nth history test in his class. He is not going to remember the name “Mahmud of Ghazni”, let alone how many times he raided India, when he has his own dungeon to go to everyday, a few years down the line.

This does not make sense, no none at all, not at least to me. The pointless repetitiveness of the most overvalued possession called life. The same old story repeated through every generation. From where I see nothing has changed from the age of the savages. They ate and drank and shat and pissed and got ill and died exactly the way we do. They killed and ravaged and ruled the starved the way we do. They looted the weak and served the strong. They prayed to those who instilled fear while mocked those who talked sense.

But then it rained. It rained hard, and I saw a man quietly walk down the road holding hand of his ten year old son, getting drenched in the rain. Suddenly it did not matter…

We are mere toys of the universe. Picking options, making choices, taking decisions with no idea whatsoever how and where it is going to lead us to. Thinking we know what we are doing , but really do we?

Pawns in the hands of nothingness, waiting to die. Whiling away the time, our lives, imagining it is precious, believing that the entire world, everything around us has a meaning. That we fit in somewhere. That it has some worth. That our actions, opinions, decisions, choices really make a difference. That our emotions are really felt. That our lives mean something…

Lo and behold it is all a lie! The world is a farce. We are all but slaves, mere slaves…

What a fucking joke!

Woh raaton ko jaagna,
Woh night out maarna compu ke saath.

Woh cigarette peena sassi pe jaake,
Woh karna daanton ko weekend pe saaf.

Pahunchna insti hamesha late,
Woh kehna prof ka get out from the class.

Woh windT jaake hamesha rona,
Yahan ka system hi hai kharab.

Woh nescafe jaake maggi manga ke,
Woh gande uchalna yaaron ke saath.

Bas yaadein, yaadein….. yaadein reh jaati jaati hain,
Kuch choti choti baatein reh jaati hain.

And a few lines that were omitted…

Woh 1st year ka roz naya pyaar,
Woh likhna table par F aur teen star,

Le jaana rainbows par just for a coffee
Woh lena fachhon se paise udhaar..

Disclaimer: This parody is written by people other than myself. Kudos to all the Kumaon Tigers!!!

I am driving my car amongst the morning office goers and listening to 93.5 Red FM “Bajate Raho”, something that they are quite proud of and emphasise quite a lot during their shows, bajate raho, huh!

“First speed breaker, second speed breaker…”

“Why is this guy in the black Indigo not budging?”

“Oye uncle! Side side side…”

It is getting hotter again after three days of close to non-stop rains. Thanks to the rains most of the roads in the city have potholes carved into them, big enough to hide the devil in them.

“Ouch! Speak of the devil and here the pothole comes. “

“Mar jawan… mar jawan…”, a beautiful song I must say but the beauty seems to have been lost somewhere between the honks of the office cabs rushing past me in such a hurry. The same hurry we used to have pushing our trolley while going to school. Our trolley must come first. And what are you going to do once you reach school early. Play football before the assembly begins… yeah!!

“Ohh come on, a traffic jam!”, now this could have been avoided. Doesn’t the traffic policeman uncle remind you of something? Traffic policeman UNCLE, you are 25!!! (A smile). The traffic policeman reminds me of the scarecrow in the wizard of oz. You surely have read “Wizard of Oz”, have you not? Now what did the scarecrow want? Lemme think…. Ohh yeah Brains!!! Stupid scarecrow… hehehe

“Ohh Shit!!”, the traffic started. Stop daydreaming my friend. One right, then left and here comes my destination “HUDA Parking lot”. I drive my car every morning to the same signboard and am the reason for their separation every evening. I am damn sure there’s something cooking between the signboard and my car, though am not sure who’s the male and who’s the female here.

“Click Clack”, the door of my car opens. With a whiff of the still cold morning air comes a sweet smell. I have smelled it before. Now come on what is this smell?

The football ground. Year 1997. Running past the school gates a thirteen year old boy. Rushing through the cry babies, the sad faces, the sleepy faces and the loitering ones. Got rid of the heavy bag as soon as he reached the class row and turned to face the lush green grass in the football ground.

And so he ran, ran towards the friends, ran towards the football and ran towards the sky, towards the end that could not be seen. He just ran and ran and ran!! And while he ran he smelled what he loved to smell, the smell of the morning dew on the fresh green grass.

Something tried to trickle down my eyes. I, in hesitation or embarrassment I don’t remember, gave the parking lot guy a stupid smile and walked…

I don’t even know how it got stuck there. I was so at ease when I finally felt I was reaching the stinking place I had to be. Not that the stink eased my senses, nor do I not feel repelled by this most disgusting stink which keeps flowing into my senses all day and night and makes me hate my existence to the core but I was happy that finally my possession would not be mocked any more. Less did I know that my intentions were going to be nullified in the matters of the thing which people keep cribbing about called “time”. I am quite unaware of this thing called time. I am quite unsure it really exists unless of course it is made tangible by travelling through it. All that has passed has no more existence than memories in our conscience and all that is to come is nothing more than a fear and anxiety of the future. Time, thus, can never be understood, seen, felt, known or materialised but all would keep fighting for it and keep making fuss about it for no worthwhile reason whatsoever.

I have to stop this habit of wavering off at tangents and relating the glory of my philosophical pinnacle which just keeps on rising further and further with every revelation life opens in front of me, which it just did while I was struggling to get the green umbrella out of where it got stuck. It just occurred to me so why I was carrying this umbrella with me everywhere. Why do I face embarrassment at the hands of the entire humanity to keep it safe and that too everyday. At that very spur of a moment in which I heard my inner voice, came a tearing sound. And poof went the umbrella!!!

I left it there, stuck and torn, in the filth. I reached in, breathed in the stink, thought of all that I dwelled in today, and just smiled at the thought of all who have to carry each their own green umbrellas till it got stuck somewhere…

Lights twinkling in the backyard
People dancing on Christmas tunes
I searching for solitude or
Loneliness gripping onto me?

Moon shining over untouched hills
Water playing with its mates
A floating overturned boat and
Its analogies defining me…

Wind and water flowing together
Splashing its chill over me
My spine gets a shudder and
I smile looking at thee.

I open my arms and
Fill ‘em up with your memories
Take my last deep breath and
Plunge over the hill…

I spent years over years
But could never understand
It was I exploring the world or
The world mocking me???

I look around me and find unfamiliar places. There are pretentious faces, probing eyes and moving limbs. I feel disconnected. I feel alienated, left between people I cannot connect to or understand. Is it for real or is it just me? Am I going mad as people say? The things they say do not mean anything to me. They talk about things I cannot understand or relate to. They derive meanings out of ceremonies or memories, things which have absolutely no relevance to me.

I feel as if there is an unknown force trying to mold me into something am not and neither want to be. Its like an infection which has spread itself throughout the society. It has infected everyone and has devoid every individual off original thought and reason. Why can’t they understand me?

I am left alone in the sea of adverse thought and conscience. I feel an invisible wave of conscience trying to tear me apart and make me impotent, unable to generate anymore seeds of reason. I feel tired. I feel exhausted. I feel lonely!!!

Is it a beginning or and end???

Am mourning… 

I am an ordinary guy… from an ordinary family… from an ordinary city…  

We were strolling, as we usually do, on the terrace, when he said, “What difference would it make if one day people come to know there is no god”. I could not quite react to this. I had always believed god is a hypothesis which has yet to be proved wrong and not a phenomenon. But I never really wondered about the consequences of this thought. What if one day u wake up, brainwashed of all the information relating that Supreme Being which nobody know exists. It will not make any difference on any being… rather any normal being that wakes up with the thought of his daily bread, his children, his house, his wife. But I could not believe there would be no changes. There has to be. A thought can change the world… somebody has said, then why not the absence of a thought? 

Imagine inexistence of “society”… of people who tell you who you are… what you are supposed to do and what you are not supposed to…. imagine a world where you are born with an empty canvas of your life.. ready to paint it with colors you want and not prohibited to use certain colors due to “supernatural” reasons beyond understanding of any human being that have existed or will ever do… because life is natural…. its nature… earth is natural… space is natural.. Whatever we know or are continuously inventing and exploring is all Natural… anything supernatural is just imagination. A choice with some, who want to go beyond the realm of “nature”. And from there comes the existence of god and devil.  

God, a humanised character born out of human supernatural needs and terror. Born and cultivated, this thought has suppressed, oppressed and is continuing to kill creativity of many beings. No being is allowed to think beyond the limits of that supreme owner of life. It brings to some power, to others wealth, and to many respect which they are not worthy of. Those who have tried to think beyond this have either been killed or resurrected as god themselves. Buddha, who taught people power of their creativity, created him as god and now he is carved into idols when he was against it. They say god is everywhere, He is inside you. I say you are god, man is god, man has intellect and creativity which has given the shape to this earth, what it is now…. 

Am mourning…. not the death of god… but the death of free thought. I wish I was in a world where people were not forced into having faith in that Supreme Being but could choose everything they believed or not believed in, according to their thought and reason. I wish I was in a world where a child was not crippled and forced not to think beyond the hedges of society. I wish I was in world where every child was taught and educated and made capable to think, so that he could decide how he wanted to paint the canvas of his life, right or wrong, is individual’s perspective…

-John Donne

I am an island. I stand alone, ocean all around me. I am dead. Was I always dead? I don’t know. The ocean wets me. I don’t like to get wet. I want to remain dry. I love standing in sun, but sometimes it rains. There is life in the ocean. Am barren. Nobody lives on me. I do not move, but I have seen all. Ocean gets me everything. Taste and smell from all coasts.

Look there is a boat! These men will spend night onto me. But they won’t love me. They will love the ocean for giving them food. They won’t even explore me. Everybody knows am dead. Am barren. Am famous rather infamous. The men are gone. Dry carcasses of fish lie on me. They litter on me, leave me and never look back or say thanks.

I can see something. It’s unusual. It’s coming towards me. It is beautiful. I wish it would not leave me as everybody else. But it has life. It will have to go. Am dead. Am barren. It has started exploring me. It has made its way into the deepest darkest and unknown region of my territory. It has something I never knew existed. It is filling me with fresh water. I had always known of ocean but what is this. What has made me so incapable? Why can’t I stop? Is she a goddess or a princess? I am confused. I like it but I want to stop her. She is filling me with life. Am no more barren. How can I move? I can see land now. Am a part of a mainland. I am no more a barren, lifeless island.

I have lost my identity. I am neither famous nor infamous. Life does not suit me. I wish I were an island again. But I cannot forget the taste of fresh water.

Here I stand, not alone, but barren and lifeless. You will not see life, because she is hid right inside me. We dwell in the middle of an ocean, a pool of life, alone and barren.