I’m Completely Different

[A poem has the power of healing a wounded-heart. It can show a way through or it can give you a shield to hide behind. It can turn the light back on in a place you thought was permanently disconnected. It can be a talisman to be worn in the head for warding off miseries. Kuroda Saburo [1919-1980] is a Japanese poet, he writes often of matters relating to love & family. ‘I am completely different’ is one of his best poems- I even call it a modern mantra, for the act of reading it is somehow comforting. Saburo always sees roses in debris; hear dirge as a song from a Nightingale. He feels eruption of hope in the midst of devastation and destruction. It is one of my favorite poems- I read it again and again whenever I feel blue… whenever the course of life becomes uncharitable.]

 I am completely different.

Though I am wearing the same tie as yesterday,

am as poor as yesterday,

as good for nothing as yesterday,

today

I am completely different.

Though I am wearing the same clothes,

am as dirty as yesterday,

living as clumsily as yesterday, nevertheless

today

I am completely different.

 Ah-

I patiently close my eyes

on all the grins and smirks

on all the twisted smiles and horse laughs

on all the shameful defeats and defaults-

and glimpse then, inside me

one beautiful white butterfly

fluttering towards tomorrow.

Image courtesy: Google                

For Whom Should I Cry Now?

“Alas that love, so gentle in his [Romeo’s] view 
should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.”- William Shakespeare

Back in time, when young was the moon 
speechless we stood in a train station. 
Holding hands, we’d wept for our failed- love. 
Pale went your face as you fought tears, 
concealing wounds in your heart. 

Shrieking horns came then a blue train and 
home it carried you… your marital home. 
There under new skies you’d become 
a wife, mom, and grandma. 
Stupefied I still watched the train 
running over my love heartlessly. 
The moving devil now looked red not blue, 
showing the color of my tears. 

Leafing thro my Memory Book, 
your pretty face I oft look. 
Can I ever forget your elegant eyes? 
that spoke volumes and volumes once. 
Seeing your bubbling dimples when you laughed 
rainbows bobbed up in my heart. 

All sweet kisses your rosy lips gave me then 
still remain moist in my mouth, tasting like nectar. 
The perfume and fragrance you’d wafted when hugged 
still remain spread in my body, making me ever balmy. 
My love! 
To keep your memory ever green in heart and soul 
I had to fight with Time, a heartless Monster. 

When waves of time brutally wrecked my life boat, 
I struggled like a fish in a hook. 
Void and emptiness grew thick in heart 
as I wished to see the face I’d lost to Time. 
Leaving me in a limbo you’ve gone 
to the wind to make a wind, 
to the moon to make her more shining, 
and 
to the grey sea to make it green. 

Shocked, I felt like falling into a cauldron 
when your demise I knew from a tabloid. 
I smothered my sobs and fell into my knees. 
But… but… 
Amidst sorrows, I felt a drizzle 
drenching my soul. 

For, in the ‘obit’ column of the paper 
I didn’t see an age-ravaged, time-eaten 
face of an ol’ lady.’ 
The photo therein was the one 
you gave me long back when 
we were in the spring of love 
breathing for each other and 
praying for each other. 

Now- 
Straddling relief and sorrow, asked my broken heart: 
“For whom should I cry now? 
You or your failed- love or your dead lover? 

Catching up with Nilam

[This post was written when Chennai was in the grip of fear on 1^st November, 2012. When Cyclonic storm Nilam was all set to strike the metro, weather bloggers predicted unprecedented disaster and devastation to the metro.]

Cyclone Nilam that hit Chennai last week was expected to be a grandiose affair having had all potentials to devastate the metro. But then, a cyclone is not a messiah and it never leaves a spot without getting it lambasted through tornadoes or hurricanes or constant, aggressive pouring, that scare even a Noah. Fortunately, Nilam got dissipated, became tame when it crossed the shores of Mahaballipuram, a heritage treasure-trove, about 60 km south of Chennai

.

For those who were indoors, the only effect they thought that Nilam left on its trail was the abrupt shut down of power supply from midday to midnight. They felt isolated from the outer world since TVs’ became mute, not able to flicker. They were groping in the dark like the people living before the advent of electricity. Through the dim light of melting candles they felt they still existed.

I love cyclones. For, with its many upheavals and being beyond the reach of man, it shows its unbeatable, supreme prowess over man and his pet dogs -- science and technology. I too hate cyclones since they bring in its train only holocaust and devastation to humanity. How can a person love and hate a thing? I must be a crank.

Fear of cyclone starts the moment weather bulletins flash on TVs. When a forecast announces a trough disturbance, rapidly increasing its size and strength and moving north/west, we begin to shudder thinking that the would-be storm is going to decimate the world.

So it begins in our minds. A storm with gusts of over 120mph, still growing in size and speed, as it moves toward a decrepit city or a cosmopolitan metro. This time we were privileged to get the Nilam. Giving it a name at some point did little to diminish the mysterious excitement of the whole thing.

A Restaurant owner became taciturn and timid. Giving me a glass of Chennai filter coffee, he asked me suddenly with fear-ridden eyes. ‘Sir, will Nilam strike at his area?’ I startled, looking at him quizzically and said: ‘Why on earth, do you ask such a bloody question?’ ‘Because’, he was a bit hesitant and replied, ‘I have opened this eatery very recently investing a huge fortune. I fear the cyclone will make it all go at one stroke’. I didn’t know how to dispel his fear. I had only pity on him. Everywhere, people are like the restaurant owner only self-centered no matter it is storming or not.

The cyclones themselves are always astounding and thrilling. We have some wild bunch of people who would venture into sea-shore whether it is raining furiously and sideways, hoping for a gust powerful enough to lift them up off the ground.

When we got our ears glued to FM radios [the only communication channel we could be linked with] that’s updating the movement of the Nilam and the catastrophe it’s causing around the city, I was surprised to hear the RJ announce that there were bunches of adventurous youth parking themselves in the forbidden seashore, snapping the furious waves, the turbulent sea and the darkened sky just to upload them on their social sites. The awesome power of nature, the freedom of the unknown, of innocence, of playfulness- all of it was so alive and fascinating. Everything was rich and wild and sweet and amazing, even difficulty and danger.

I wait for another cyclone.

Rewinding myself to my childhood days, I could still remember how we, the children, at the time of a gathering storm, would huddle in a corner of the house, scary of the howling winds or thunderclaps. As always, mother was our rallying point. Seeing our fear-ridden faces and trembling bodies, she would make us sit around her. Giving each one of us a rice-ball mixed with some curry, she would say: ‘Storms are nothing but gods coming over to the earth. They come in the form of swirling winds and bolts of lightening only to destroy the baddies. They would be benignant to those who are good and innocent. You children, you are always good. So, you needn’t worry about storms’. Getting convinced of what mother had said we would retire to our beds with new-find courage.

However, times have changed. I could never say such things to the children of today or justify the arrival of storms. When told that a cyclone is in the offing, one of my neighborhood children retort saying: ‘Why, uncle? Why worry? If need be, we can buy some windbreakers to deal with the storm.’ I could only laugh at his childish ingenuity.

New-age children with their knowledge and understanding about the Nature and its course are better placed than us in taking the calamities of nature in their stride.

Image courtesy: Google

Quotes courtesy: ‘There is only Now’, by Scott Morrison]

Missing Quilt of Life

[I’m 70. I’m alone]

Loneliness when I hear

the morn-birds

sing paeans to the Sun.

Loneliness when I

quiver in winter mornings

missing my quilt of life.

Loneliness when I

sigh at children

dancing in the rain.

Loneliness when family

look askance at me

and my ever stinking bed.

Loneliness when someone

hold my hands and cry, but

I don’t know who she/he is.

Loneliness when I

mutter Gitanjali, but

stop as memory fades out.

Loneliness when thoughts

about my dead wife

still knife me and wet my eyes.

Loneliness when I

lay awake during nights

drinking the poison of silence.

Loneliness when I was

in a hospital, caching up

with my departing breath.

Loneliness when I hear

footsteps of Lord Yama

holding ropes on hands.

Loneliness when people

force opens my mouth to

spoon -feed drops of water.

Loneliness when I

search for a bygone youth

but, meets only the

the corpses of my desires.

[Poetry is not my cuppa. But then, afflicted by a sort of Sensitivity Affected Disorders and driven by strange emotional upheavals seeing the demeanor and deportment of things, both animate and inanimate, I begin to indulge in a kinda verbose, which I brazenly call poetry. Puritan Poets may, therefore, very well excuse me for this aberration since I always call a poem a product of heart not head]

Image courtesy: Google

Children Not Our Own

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 “You may give children your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”- Kahlil Gibran

 What a prophecy and how clairvoyant is Gibran! For, today’s youth have their own anarchy of dreams and fantasies, which defy comprehension. Regrettably, they have lost their ideals and gone far away from their moorings pursuing the mirage of their own make-believe thoughts and perceptions. Mesmerized by some bad movies and, growing in a no-holds-barred, ultra-tech world which preaches a neo-culture, the twenty-first century youth grows like shrubs in the wilderness not wanting others to tend their growth.

 Recently, two eight-year-old boys in Chennai staged their own kidnapping drama taking a cue from a movie they had seen. They did this because they did not digest the admonitions of their fathers over their erratic behavior. A twenty-three-year- old Pawan Varma from Delhi enacted a scene of kidnapping and demanded a ransom of Rs.5 lac from his father because the boy wanted to go to a picnic spot and he had no money.

 We have these disturbing trends going on for some time. Youngsters, yielding to their impulsive whims and fancies, resort to such extreme steps just to grab the attention of their parents and family members. The movies they watch, and sorts of strange and bizarre culture they are exposed to in the society convince them that they could turn their parents’ attention to them only through such extreme and abnormal means.

 Poor parents! Since they are always engaged to earn bread and butter for the family and satiate every essential need of their wards, they are left with no time to give proper attention to their children.  Pitifully, most parents find it hard to strike a balance between their work and personal lives. In fact, they don’t have chances to spend quality time with their wards who always feel an alien in their home.

 The advent of the nuclear family is always thought to be a safe haven for young couples as they have their long-felt luxury of privacy. That it has its own hazards too is known to them only after some time when their children start growing up. For, the nuclear family leaves no adequate support system for the kids. Lonely youngsters upset over the lack of parental attention and company resort to extreme actions like their own stage-managed kidnapping because they want to tell their parents that there exist a young soul at home who wish to be with his/her parents for at least some time a day and share their pains and pleasures. The education system too, with its antiquated curriculum, fails to shape the youth.

 Another reason, according to psychologists, that make children abnormal and defiant is the parents’ controlling. It is appreciable that parents always want the best for their children. Their expectation to see their kids grow as good and responsible citizens is also natural. However, in the name of controlling, some parents go overboard and cruelly punish their defiant children not knowing that it only affect their ward’s psyche. I know one of my relatives always brutally punish his 10-year-old son even for his small mistakes. He would strike the boy with anything he could lay his hands on: brooms, spoons, leather belts, and hairbrushes, et al, without knowing that such brutal punishment teaches only revenge to the boy.

 Nuclear family, parents’ controlling, bad movies and an emerging unpalatable culture in the society may be the reasons for making children defiant and delinquent. It is high time for parents and teachers to take cognizance of the malaise and find ways and means to cure them. Good communications between parents and children will always help ease bad situations since the kids have opportunities to open their minds either to the mother or the father. Parents should understand that kids, too, need their own space and can’t be forced. For their parts, kids need to be made to understand that parents are always for them.

 Gone are the days when we had ‘moral’ classes in schools where teachers taught us all the finer values and ideals of life. Since teachers were our role models then, we grew up as Good Samaritans avoiding all pitfalls of life. However, schools had since long transformed themselves from educational institutions into business concerns. They now stop with churning out children who are only academically brilliant, but morally fake.

 It is heartening to note that The Education Department in Tamil Nadu recently urged schools to pay more attention to students’ behavior and necessary corrective measures. They advised teachers not to stop with producing results, but work on strengthening the value system of the community by instilling values in students. Behavioral scientists say that the teacher is the core point. They should become the role-models for the students and integrate value education with classroom teaching.

 Will teachers or for that matter parent’s wake up to the new responsibilities imposed on them by a sudden and swift change in the behavioral patterns of students and prevent them from becoming moral bankrupts? That is really a ten million dollar question on which hinges the future of the Generation Y or Z.

Image courtesy: Google

Prayers Not Aladdin Lamps

Prayers, like breathing, are an integral part of human life. They are considered more sacred than hard work. Bereft of a scientific sentiment and a rationalist mind-set, people believe that prayers to the gods of their choices will bring to their doorsteps all comforts of life: health, wealth and a powerful status in society.

May be these are puritan prayers. But, amazingly, sinful souls also resort to prayers with a view to getting them pardoned from the misdeeds they commit in life. Prayer is thus considered Aladdin’s Lamp, the possession of which is frantically sought by every human soul.

Pathetically, prayers are always purpose-oriented, having specific demand-tags attached to them. Again, they are not a one-time affair and the god in question is continuously solicited by men either for getting more of what they already have or for retaining it.

Fear of losing comforts that are presumed to have been achieved through prayers always haunts men. Swami Adiswarananda aptly describes men’s predicament thus: “The healthy have the fear of disease, the wealthy of thieves and the robbers, the beautiful of the old age, the socially prominent of dishonor, the learned of rivals and the virtuous of scandal.”

Advent of money, coupled with the advancement of science and technology, makes the world a global village that offers droves of comforts to men. These are sought to be owned by the human tribe not through hard work but through prayers.

Prayers have now become gimmicks with the evolution of innumerable gods. Each caste or sub-caste has its own god. Families too have their own deities. Abodes of gods don’t stop with cities and villages. Every pavement or platform is now littered with a variety of small, petty and makeshift temples.

Gods in such temples are worshipped in many unique ways. Along with mass prayers, the rural gods are offered padayals [special food] which normally contain a sackful of goat meat and a bottle of arrack. People who feed their gods in this way promise more sacks and bottles if their prayers are heard and answered.

Conventional prayers of the above kind are always visible. Conversely, most of ‘have-all’ do not have faith in explicit prayers; theirs are implicit and silent. You cannot trace and decipher the gods to whom they pray. But everything – their requests and the god’s response-comes to light the moment these prayerists offer some gifts or presents to the gods of their choice, who had heard their prayers and responded favorably. The gift of a Tusker to the Guruvayoor Temple by one of the TamilNadu Chief Ministers is a case in point.

Today, in the name of religion, terrorism is unleashed but some disgruntled elements who, following the dictates of their leaders stage destructive activities in alien lands, causing the loss of thousands of human precious lives.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon without any compassion for the human lives involved in their operation, underscore the extent of the havoc one could cause if one’s senses are allowed to be controlled by fanatics. The world is thus exposed to violence and counter-violence.

Nothing goes wrong when a person offers prayers for his/her own development and family’s well-being. It is one of the natural traits of man, which compels him to place his self above all other things. But, dangers peep in when prayers are offered by the religious with an ulterior motive of getting political clout and command.

Today, mass prayers are resorted to for the purpose of showing the strength of a particular religion to the powers-that-be. Even now there are places in India where people belonging to a particular caste are not allowed to offer prayers in temples by the upper, high-class religious fanatics.

“I pray for nectar. If I cannot get the nectar, I shall not fall back upon ditch waters,” said Swami Vivekananda.

Here, in our country, bigots pray both for nectar and ditch water—nectar for them and ditch water for their rivals. Secularism can be said to have grown only when people begin praying for the whole humanity not for their own self-aggrandizement.

*

 [I got an insignia from the Delhi-based ‘Alive’ mag to enter into the world of writing when they chose to publish this post in their June, 2002 issue. Thus ‘Alive’ had initiated me into the realm of writing a decade ago and made me go the whole hog with my tryst with words, publishing, off and on, a host of my writes. Though this post had the privilege of having been set in fine-print, it now looks mediocre not reflecting the metamorphism my current writings are sporting. But, back then, I was nascent in the realm of writing, catching up with its ropes.]

Image courtesy: Alive mag

Till Death Do Us Part

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Whenever I see happy married couples and their ever-going-strong married life, I simply crack my head, wondering about the factors that sustain such marriages … factors that prevent the conjugal bliss from tumbling down into an abyss.

 Emotional compatibility [EC] is an ability to empathize with a partner’s emotion; level of caring, love and nurturing shown toward each partner. It is not a small matter to be brushed aside. In fact, EC is a far away moon to those partners who have no idea of the different levels of their emotional needs.

They say EC is the anchor that sustains marriages. Emotional compatible partners are like true friends, share their emotional needs and avoid cabin feelings.

 ‘Why did you hide such things from me? ‘What secrets you still have in your mind? ‘Don’t you have faith on me’, are some of the questions couples ask one another when he or she finally chooses to let out the truth lurking in her/his mind for long. This attitude of ‘not-willing to reveal untold truth’ happens only when the partners behave like strangers not having space for other’s emotional needs. Their attitude is naïve, for they think their only symbol of marriage is the mangalasutra the wife sporting around her neck.

 A husband or wife should be keen, look forward every opportunity to make a clean breast of untold truth lurking in their minds. A conscientious wife or husband will always feel bad if they have some grey areas hidden in his/her mind. They will come out with truth though they fear that such revealing may bring havoc to their conjugal bliss. They also know that on what ground their marriage stand and would readily spill the beans. And there lies the ‘Success Quotient’ for a happy marriage.

 Conversely, if a husband or wife starts hiding something from each other because it would create a holocaust in the home, the partners, then, are not doing anything conducive to the smooth going of their marriage. Theirs is only a fake or pretentious living. The fact that they are not truthful to each other ultimately put their married life in a furnace.

 One of my friends told his wife about the physical contact he had with a woman when he was in his late twenties. It was not a big matter for the husband to open up his mind to her. For, emboldened by the harmonious relationship he was having with his wife, he chose to share the long buried secret in his mind. However, what mattered was his wife’s response to such an honest confession. I asked her [she was very outspoken; would always call a spade a spade] about her response to her husband’s sharing with her a bitter truth—I was a bit curious. She looked through me, smiled and said:

 “Err is human. It is quite common that hormones play games with the youngsters when they are in a vulnerable age and make them to do what they don’t want to. Even exposures from media and internet add to the woes of the youngsters and make them go ashtray. That my husband had a fall in his twenties and became a bit askew then should not be taken into account for deciding his trait or character. It is his confidence in me that made him to show a black spot on his otherwise clean premarital life. The emotional attachment we have for each other did exhort him to show the chinks in his past life. It happened because he thought there should be no secrets between us. So, I accepted him as he is and my love for him grew up immensely after his confession.”

 I now saw my friend’s face gleaming, eyes reflecting the real joy of his marriage. Kudos to his wife! She understood his spouse well and her attitude and emotional levels only made him to reveal a hidden truth.

 Here no one compelled the husband, not even his wife, to let out the untold things or talk about a blunder he had committed when he was in his mid-twenties. But then, the harmonious ambiance prevailing in his home and having an understanding woman for a wife, he was able to reveal a thing that had been torturing his mind for long.

 Again, if his wife had nagged him to tell her about the things he hadn’t told her before, the husband, by every chance, would have kept mum. Successful marriages will never find couples spying on each other or trying to find holes on each other’s behavior.

As I said earlier, emotionally attached couples easily identify hurdles to their conjugal bliss and stay clear of them lest they sink their marriage boats in the ocean of misunderstanding.

 The factors that give fillip to the conjugal bliss and  make one’s married life an elixir are lying in small gestures and deportment like, husband and wife watching movies together like true friends, going to comedy shows and talking about the show and laughing together. Sometimes, holding one’s hand brings a feeling of oneness and tranquility to the other. Whenever my wife starts holding my hand, I feel like she is telling me, ‘I love you; live for you’

 These are simple secrets that go a long way in making a marriage more meaningful not a Greek tragedy.

Image courtesy: Google