Songs unsung

Jazz on the Rocks…

I find parables of you, my dear lover, in Nature
For you there’s a blue rosy mist moving me along nowhere
As our ol’ friend Norah plays a smoky tune to heart
I feel your colors rise up in my body
Can’t call you an angel for you are so earthy
A river whose depth lies in its gentle flow
As it moves from the highest peaks to the lowest plains
Time is always so yellow with you
Like a crazy fantasy we are all living by
A bit of rock in a world of jazz

Like a pebble you’ll wash me by with your heady sweetness
But I’m so eager to be touched by you
There are no regrets here
What a pleasure to be so free…
Like the open summer fields…
Like words in an effortless poetry…
Like You-and-Me

Love is like a demure river
Always flowing and always transient
And sometimes it seems to have disappeared off the surface
But when you see the flowers blooming…that is its trace…

So don’t hang on to these feelings love
Just listen to them like bars of cello
Don’t try to capture them into chords…
Let it go…let them flow
For they are just these flowers you see
Just an ephemeral illusion perceived of the love that’s true reality

Silent airplanes streak across a summer sky
The fragrance of lotuses floating quietly on a pond
You are in me now as I am in you…
Hold me in your arms and kiss me
Just a dream though it may be
For I’m not your past and not a future
Just a timeless present shining through your Soul
The sun shining through the stillness of a tree

I catch a glimpse of you beneath the fresh sheets
And white blossoms start exploding from every inch of my Being
The rain continues to fall outside
And I’m lit from the warmth of your messages inside

For the first time I’m awake to see the rolling hills along the highway
And the resplendent colors of gulmohar and bougainvilleas
Gently swaying from the speeding cars along the way
You are no sugar, you are no honey
You are what my mind can never conceive
Like the music that brought us together that fine day…
You’ve awakened the dust of my soul like the first rains…

_____________

– dedicated to the one and only dearest Vinu V: sketcher, musician, avant garde music reviewer, brilliant coder and best of all a friend with the gentlest possible soul…

Liebeslied

I remember you’d love caramel, every time i have coffee…
My eyes revert to the man with the red jacket walking down the street…
i find your sense of humor reflected in your friends’…
i skip a heartbeat when i see peaches in the market…

would you call this moving on…
and can you take the luxury to be flattered
remembering such silly things about someone
can be an ex-lover’s favorite to-dos

i know with each passing day memories can fade away
I’ve been there and been the one who forgets
but when Joni sings ‘little green’ i get some blues about Starbucks cafe
i hear the graveling sound of the tram go by again,
and search for you sitting fiddling with your phone at it’s end

would you call this reminiscence…
fleeting images that appear through my chores to my dreams?
i intend to let you go…
but for now i just relish you through memories a li’l more?

i know now goodbyes can be actually good
but let’s just say ‘auf wiedersehen’ and let’s just have hope
let’s connect through visions in intimate secrecy within only our hearts
while the tag line reads, ‘we’re just friends…after all…’

–With love and only love, to Ashwin.

Emperor

A short poem in class.

Emperor

“When the crown sat on his head
He robed his usual finery
It was an ostensible servitude
That was nothing more than perfunctory.

But look into his eyes…
His wisdom lay there
Tranquil and enigmatic
That gripped them and eluded them, in despair.

He spoke not of faraway lands
But of genius that in simplicity was laid
They failed to understand his dialectic sermon
Alas!they fell in the stereotypes of those beneath their grave.”

A midsummer night’s dreams…

there is no clock in my room since i can’t stand the sound of time. it was, however, 5:43am. i checked my cell. it was blank. i tossed. the thought sped past barriers of my subconscious like a dart that missed the shield i often put up, and i thought of him. the one i loved. i tried to blank my mind and put myself to “sleep” – or rather, as it had now been reduced to, background thinking. but no. he refused to go. rather my mind refused to let me get away from the same questions that had been jarring on my mind since quite long. i felt like calling him up. to just reach out. then thought why disturb him by interfering in his life that he’d so proudly pulled away.so i tried to think of something else, but in vain. i crawled out of my bed and put on my playlist. it belted the only rock i had come to adore and admire. concentrating on it i tried to sleep. the windows lay open and the wind rustled the tree peeking at my window sill. as i closed my eyes i could sense the dawn coming up – rather felt the light trying to seep through my translucent eyelids. And before i knew it, i was asleep; or so it seemed at first! then started the spirals of “dreams” as i relate it now to the best of my recollection…

thread#1 : seen as if i was filming it – in second person, exactly like Harry Potter would be when he entered thru’ the Pensieve.

“i had held my Dad’s hand.i was on the left.we seemed to have entered thru the iron gate of a building, though i didn’t see it.i felt it. i could see just our backs-i.e my Dad’s and mine.the coloring was a watery gray, nay, it wasn’t cloudy. the building felt like i’d been to it before. though i know,i haven’t. i saw one or two old people around, but it was not an old age home. again no faces. the building was like some of those buildings i’ve seen in the quiet areas of Paud Road. only the first storey was visible in my perspective,but i’m sure there were more.anyways,i took my Dad to a jhoola that was tied up in the parking lot- that was either a basement,or the ground floor.we sat down.i tried to tell him something. but i was tongue-tied. no emotion was the cause of it, i believe. i am just mute in my dreams most of the time. all throughout, there’s hardly any spoken communication from my side in any of my dreams. anyways, i just put my head down in my hands and cried- and the only evident emotions that were the cause of it were shame, grief, regret. but again , there was no face. not mine. not my Dad’s.”

at the end of it i felt strangely sad. as if i’d lost someone forever.a father figure.

it(my mind) switched dreams immediately.

thread#2 : again seen in the same way as described above.

“i was depressed. my mom and i were sitting this time in a cafe of sorts. it was a cafe run in what seemed like the first floor of an old building. again the building looked familiar – like i’ve been there. but this one seemed like i had been to in my present life. its proximity to the sloping road that was visible even from the far end of the room we were seated makes me feel it was on the first storey. the room wasn’t big. it had light, dull beige walls.a color i’ve seen on walls before. some of it seemed chipped, though i dont remember exactly. my mom was speaking presently. again i could not hear my voice. my responses seemed muted. though i don’t even know what my mom was saying, but it was evident that she was trying to draw me out of my low, depressed spirits. suddenly i saw a huge Volvo-like bus coming down that sloping road that was running along the building. we were just looking there. and then out of nowhere, a group of jovial but creepy film stars appeared. i can recollect one of them as KK clutching a woman, who appeared to be, more like the usual stylish whores.there were 2 more women, whom i can hardly recollect.then came another actor,who was slightly irritated by the whole group. and then, up came Saif Ali Khan, which is truly mindboggling!anyways, he seemed veyr happy to be there and kept giving me a stupid consistent grin.he had shades on. so couldnt make out whether he was staring at the wall behind me, since that gaze was so straight and blank. anyways, these people were coming up the stairs that started from the road below went up to each storey of the building from the outside. the stairs were made of wooden planks and not concrete, funnily enough, tough then entire building was concrete and there seemed to be no other way of entering the storeys. it seemed that they had come for a shoot. they all disappeared for a few minutes. my mother went up to the old fellow who was running this “cafe” and asked him if he would hold our table if we were to go and serve them some tea!!!(this is indeed ridiculously bizarre!) the old fellow seemed to be crouching n the floor washing utensils or soemthing like that. again no face was visible. amidst this confirming and convincing, this group of actors came downstairs and went back the way they had come. my mom was about to go back to convincing me when…”

it switches my dream suddenly again…

thread #3: here i was in my shoes.i was feeling i was there,rather than being a spectator as i was earlier,filming my own self.

“i’m in an old “waadaa” i.e cottage-style house. i’m standing just inside of the back door entrance from where i can see my mother laying down a bright blue straw mattress down on the courtyard, that has a “roof” held up by bright blue wooden poles. i wanted to tell her something urgently, but couldnt find the words(again).i looked to my left(inside the room where i was standing), and saw a flower pot about 3-4 feet high. beside that(still within the room), was a patch of soft, mocha brown,moist sand.it was moving. it would’ve seemed to someone that the movement was of an animal burrowing across, but i somehow knew it wasn’t. then there was another movement – more irregular this time. and i knew it for sure. the words in my head spoke to my mother, tellin her to stock up some dry foods like biscuits. but she wasn’t visible anymore.nor was i actually speaking to her.all through it,i was tensed but never afraid.”

suddenly my dream switched again into another thread.

thread #4: here too, i was myself, but this time more myself than i was in any of the earlier dreams.

“here the focus was on only a person-a child. i think it was a girl of about a year old who’d just learned to speak. she came to me.she had black and off-white granules on her mouth which, frankly, gave me a quesy feeling.when i touched her, i felt like she was a child i had touched before.i knew her from somewhere.and this was the deepest point of contact within myself i felt i had during the entire night.and i tried to get her close to me.and everytime she did, which was periodically, i would kiss her cheek, hopin the “spots” would go away.but they didn’t.i tried again.still nothing happened.and bizarrely enough, she would run a bit away everytime i kissed her, showing me a thumbs-down,u-lose sort of a sign, laughing naughtily.”

whirrrrrrrr… the dream switched again to thread #3 again wherein i was still seeing the movements in the earth.

i crashed into the most disturbing dream.

thread #5: here i was initially watching everything in an aerial view.

” i was speeding down a hill which seemed very much like those foothills in Assam on which tea is cultivated. except that they seemed to have passed. there seemed to be people in the jeep with me-can only recollect that i had an acquaintanceship with them.but there was no emotion present in this dream. the atmosphere was indeed cool and breezy like a hill station’s. there seemed to be foliage around too, though the jeep was speeding downhill, so it was all hardly noticeable.as i saw on my right, there was a Christian cemetary on that side of the hill slope. and very strangely enough, there were some Islamic men offering prayers beside the graves marked with the Christian crosses. i turned my eyes away from this sight.(now i was seeing myself again, like in threads #1 and #2) suddenly the loud screeches of parrots came to my ears. i looked toward the left and there were graves there too. but no crosses on them. in fact there were people dressed in white doing some kind of “work” there.i think they were women. and there, beside the graves was one (or more) huge cage, about 2 storeys high, densely populated with parrots- bright green with their brighter red beaks making noises. there was another cage just in front of this one, but more sparesely populated with the same kind of parrots. these were however feeding on human flesh, which seemed fresh and weirdly enough burnt.”

there was no negetive or positive feel to this dream.

but before i could react to it, my mind whizzed me to thread #4 dream again.

thread #4 (contd.) :

” i kissed this girl again, hoping this time that the spots near and around her mouth would disappear. this time when she pulled away after i did, she started laughing and pointing at me. her spots had disappeared. and she told me they were on my mouth now.”

i felt numb.not feelingless, but that i was still in the initial stages of reacting to the shock.

my mind again zoomed to thread #2!

” here my mom who was trying to lift up my spirits, told me that they had got something for me. a lovely pair of capris, peach colored – my instinct told me, from Shopper’s Stop here.(now we suddenly seemed to be in bombay).i was interested.and we seemed to be leaving that room.”

and here the whole dizzying spell of my dreams ended. i never saw the capris though!
Date of the dream: 17th July, 2006

Beyond(written for a previously unnamed rock group)

(chorus)
Beyond your reach
Beyond your hate
Beneath your love
Beyond your faith,i shall lay.

I brood in my tomb of silence about
the bygone days
If that’s the only way to keep in touch
when you deign
To show me that somewhere for me you
still care
And you’ve not yet undone ‘us’
thru your strength.

(chorus)
Beyond your reach
Beyond your hate
Beneath your love
Beyond your scathe,i shall remain.

Don’t fake aloofness cos you’ll just
fail my respect
N when u do that, i so wanna
slap you in your face
You’re burning this love up like
one of your cigarettes
Wake up before you become unloved like
the whore next to you in the train.

(Bridge)
Wake up before you feel like
a wasted doll at your desk.

(chorus)
Beyond your greed
Beyond your pride
Beneath your love
Beyond your vanity,i’ll dig my grave.

Days like these…

…and there are days like these…
Like the smell of cinnamon,melting in coffee…
Like bathing your senses,with vanilla fields
Like these lighter days with no chromatic keys

…and there’s something so stupid happening…
You just can’t stop recalling
and laughing like you never did
You’re counting the trees passing
by on your return journey
You’re living lighter days
with no trace of memories!

…and you get raspberry color in your hair…
You just dance on some John
Mayer music naked
You just stick out your tongue
to taste the rain all over again
You just blow pink bubbles
sauntering down the walkway…

…one of these lighter days
…the sun will shine on your bed
…you relish the freshly baked bread
…you’ll wake up with a tune in your head.

— An old poem revived.

Acting…

Acting… from what little i have done of it, acting is a pilgrimage of the mind-body-soul trinity.Your face becomes a canvas, left for the director, the script writer to paint it as they wish, with you being the one who ultimately projects it and puts it into motion. Your voice too, becomes a prop, and your body is an extension of the canvas itself.
But when the mind takes a step back from the self into the shoes of the character and the Soul rings out empathy and steps forward, a space is created in between… and that is when acting is born.
And the process itself is poetry in motion.

The more i see actors like Dakota Fanning, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, it becomes quite clear that acting, even though just a profession, is for a very evolved soul. For it must take a great deal of evolution to be able to not just identify with different emotions wrapped under sharp characteristic acumen that might require one to reevaluate geographies and histories, but also to be able to dissect the different shades and levels of these emotions, with the precision of a surgeon and the grace of a ballerina.

On top of it imagine the inundation of the spoils of life thrown in all the time in your face, while keeping you on a pedestal of a hoi poilloi who will claw at you to see their ordinary mortal selves in you, while expecting you to uphold a larger-than-life facade, and through it all, coming back full circle, you are still evolving at an olympic pace with a jugglers timing, to churn out frames and reels of personas…as acting.

Surviving Breakups

After a psycho doctor that i dated, i asked for the complete opposite – someone who is not at all emotional, especially in relationships.  i asked for someone who is completely stable, doesn’t-need-anyone-in-his-life sorts, a macho personality, completely unglamorous and wholesome, completely independent, believes in himself to the core, will do things for me in a quiet measure, and would be a good companion. Little did i know about balance. Today i stand after the sunset of yet another relationship, wondering how accurately i had manifested my ex in my life. He fit the bill to say the least. I guess i asked for a few things quite misplaced. Being a VERY emotional person myself, i realized i was looking for someone to balance me. An external source. And as i have been delving a lot into spirituality i have finally come to understand that the balance is never found externally…it is to be developed internally. The lack of sensitivity and emotional empathy always made me feel ’strange’ with him, as if i were not being understood. Since he didn’t ‘need’ me, i craved for attention from him to my immense surprise, and that made ME feel like a stranger to myself. His ‘doing’ things to please me in quiet, subtle measures came to be inadequate for me, mainly due to the earlier mentioned craving for attention. Appreciation turned to complaints. And as it would seem logical, a breakup came along.
It’s funny how being in a relationship exposes the most vulnerable sides of you you never thought existed. We always attract our mirrors in our life… that’s why life is said to be an illusion. Changing others is like cleaning the mirror that shows you flaws in your face, instead of cleaning your own face which is flawed. Hence, i am cleaning up my own face now, and finding my own balance, rather than finding it in someone else. Most importantly, i have started a love affair with my own self, by doing things which make me feel in tune with my bliss. No one can make you feel lonely, through their presence or their absence.  It is just self-ignorance and nonacceptance of some part of you which makes you feel that way.
Moreover, i have learnt, largely through past life regression, you never ever lose anyone…they just change faces. And if they go away from your life, it’s to teach you a lesson – could be self-discovery, independence, forgiveness, love, letting go, anything really, but through Love. Once your lesson is learnt, they come back changing faces, wanting to teach you something else this time…again, through Love.  Love is always found around the corner and always to be found within you.  Doesn’t it seem as if it were our school teachers i am talking about? But then isn’t earth also one giant school?

Getting through a breakup:

Nothing makes me a specialist here   but these few ways have worked for me…

• Not burning bridges after a breakup – Especially if the person you’ve dated is a really nice person. For some, the decision is taken months beforehand on some mental level… it just takes a while to be ‘out with it’. The same might go for the receiver too, but hearing it from the horse’s mouth makes it an ‘ouch’ sensation. Talking out reasons after weeks of calming(and crying) also helps a lot in seeing it from the other person’s perspective.
  Sometimes even the two nicest people can’t sustain a relationship.

• Writing helps – Writing down what really broke it from your perspective, what is it that you wanted more from your partner, writing a letter to your own self in second person while seeing it from an overall viewpoint helps. The important thing here is that whatever you feel lacked in the other person, are the areas YOU need to work in your own self. The trick here is avoid perfection and embrace completion – discovering what ‘balance’ is for you.

• Reading helps too – The ‘right’ kind of reading does…For me personally, the self-help book called, Question Your Thinking, Change the World by Byron Katie worked wonders! So did going down the rusty ol’ memory lane and picking up Enid Blyton books and other childhood faves.

• Staying away from common friends – Common friends inadvertently come up with references or awkwardness regarding the mention of your ex. So stay away…you don’t need them to fuel your memories when you are trying to develop tolerance towards them. What helps is joining people with a common interest like a book club, music club, meditation groups or even enrolling in a weekend activity that will keep your mind occupied like a language class, hobby class, etc. Often people try to drown themselves in work, but believe me, having tried that, the numbness or dull throbbing ache it leaves you with feels like taking 10 painkillers for a single headache… not worth it! Ignorance doesn’t work. That dull throb comes back when you are in the next affair/relationship or even meeting an attractive person in a harmless way the next time around, running into a deja vu ruin.  Might as well face it and get over with it!

• Deal with memories rather than trying to erase them – You are not the 50 First Dates character with the blessing of memory loss so don’t try it! Rather it is better to shove away the gifts for a while safely in a closet, or turning them over to a friend for safekeeping until you are ready to take them back in an unemotional way. But memories… better to just close your eyes and savor them or write them down even if you have tears rolling down your cheeks. Memories are indeed sweet when savored and torturous when suppressed.

• Staying away from sad songs/sitcoms/movies – As if you didn’t know already how much entertainment has a role to play in our daily lives and perceptions!! Laughter therapy is the best therapy! Better to catch hold of mindlessly funny movies/ sitcoms or even cartoons if they do the trick for you, and stick to feel-good songs rather an all-time fave Elvis Presley!

• Understanding the other person’s role in your life – Often we are too caught up with role-playing in our lives. The partner is usually playing the role of a knight in the shining armor, a parent-like caretaker, an attention giver, a romantic/humorous refuge etc. and in fact it is WE who pin down these roles on our partners. In doing so, when they cannot fulfil what we expect of them in this role, our dreams feel shattered, our heart is broken. The dirty truth in this is that if we carefully strip our partner from this role completely, they mean nothing to us. In short, we were in love with the role, and very less, if at all, in love with the person him/her self.
  This role is the most important side of yourself you will learn about. You miss this in yourself… and NO ONE…not your parents, not your children, not the bestest of your friends, NO ONE is capable of filling this role, this void except YOUR SELF.

• Taking your time – Take your time in healing yourself… especially through all the above ways. Don’t let anyone push you. Feelings can’t be changed quickly and time heals them better especially if you invest in it by working it out for yourself with what makes you feel better and better.

Finally, there is no ‘better half’… there is only a Complete One… and that state is capable of being reached when you are complete on your own. Two completes make a single complete. Call it a New Age love philosophy if you like, but i was personally struck by the beauty of it when i saw it in existence with some of my friends.

A glass and half of sparkle….

With the fall of a bottle our energies touched…
Carried over from a forgotten lifetime of lost love
You reached out and set forth a series of accidents
In the madness of that neighbouring metro…
My Soulmate, you are the mountain dweller who’s searching
Unknown to yourself and open to my Soul’s eye,
A well of wisdom that lies hidden in the desert that is…but you
The zephyrs sift the sands of your awareness in patterns of impulses
And though you find yourself parched under the de rigeur diurnal harshness
I see the treasure amid the desert that your magnificence keeps cachéed.

In the city rains lotuses blossom privy to our eyes only
As demure melodies of Beethoven with the gentle strength of an embrace,
amid enclosures they intertwine
A warm beacon of love shines down on us as we trek…
This rugged territory of nothingness with no distinction,
with hearts in hands
A crystalline evening, an enchanting exchange…
And the wispy elusiveness of someone’s love reaching out,
like a bright light through the trees
And though it all appeared distant through the lashing veils of the rains
They merged eventually, like him, with love and light…and he was blessed!

There was a mountain standing still across time
While you were a cloud climbing the stairs of the sky
Don’t step down to kiss it o’ meandering Soul…
There are stars waiting up for you in that Kingdom above
“Don’t settle for second best!”,the mountain cried…
“…for I am just an illusion here…
When you complete this journey upward
We’ll celebrate our existence in togetherness
Like the golden stardust shimmering across space and time…
…through a glass and half of sparkling wine.”

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

-Often a city leaves a mark on a traveler because of its history, art, architecture, etc. But my first business trip to Bombay has left its mark on me because of the people I met there. Although my welcome to the city was disastrous, my farewell was equally bittersweet with the city drawing out my most tenacious self…while the people therein attracting my most gentle self.

If people are indeed the reason for all incidents in our lives, this post is dedicated to one special friend, who made my trip worthwhile, and who, I believe, was a strong reason for my trip to Bombay as part of the Divine Plan.

–For the monk who has forgotten how wise he is…

Love n Light!