On Ragland Road

On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day

On Grafton Street in November
We tripped lightly along the ledge
Of a deep ravine where can be seen
The worth of passion's pledge
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts
And I not making hay
Oh I loved too much and by such by such
Is happiness thrown away

I gave her gifts of the mind
I gave her the secret signs
Known to the artists who have known
The true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint I did not stint
I gave her poems to say
With her own name there
And her own dark hair
Like clouds over fields of May

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had loved not as I should
A creature made of clay
When the angel woos the clay
He'll lose his wings at the dawn of day

"Us against the world, deal?"

"Deal. FREAK!"

He could hear the sadness in her voice subsiding as her jocular words quivered through the phone in the cold air. How long, he wondered, before she would break down and call him again.

"Ok. I have to go now. But I'm right here ok? I'll be up in any case. Bloody project is never ending."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure you'll do awesome."

"Yeah. I hope so too. Gnight k. Love you."

"Love you."

Red Pill

There is safety in the herd, for sure. There is societal appreciation, career progression, lineage building, and weekend trips to the spa. But all along I keep on asking myself, (and here I quote J.J. Abrams in his reboot of the Star Trek franchise) "do you feel like you were meant for something better? "

It all boils down to a choice. We choose to regret not having tried something out for the security net of all of the above, and then some. Happiness versus Stability. It's funny how I always seem to find the two mutually exclusive. There is nothing wrong with them co-existing. "Contentment is not always stagnation", I hear myself advising a friend.

But choices must be made. And as has been said earlier, there are no wrong decisions. Or right ones for that matter. There are only choices. And a choice that closes a door always opens a hatch.

I made my choice. I elected to stray. Maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't. And even if it does, that's just passing through the gate: the going thereafter will only get tougher. No matter, it was never about it being easy. It is not important what choice you make, whether the road is long and hard, or whether you don't even succeed. So long as you are doing it for yourself and not what others think of you.

Am I scared? More than I've ever been. The unknown is a cold, terrifying place I've never ventured into. 17 years of continuous education had laid a stable secure life for me. With one decision, I'm plunging it all, myself notwithstanding, into the abyss.

But if not now, then never. Here's to one helluva year.

Once Around the Sun

John Mayer and Regina Spektor play out blues and jazz respectively as the city races past at one in the morning, Indian Standard Time: the old city centre, the rivers that run by the great rural conurbation, past walkovers and flyovers and underpasses and great shiny metro stations; they all blur as the guitars solo and the pianos crescendo.

To be twenty five and young and old.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."

Think Different

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

It Goes On

Wading through past memories with technology as my aide
I'm caught in a current of history leaving sorrow in it's wake
And daunted by the future, the great beyond and all unseen
"It goes on", I softly whisper, and onwards I proceed

Bunk

I took a day off today. My first in about six months. I called in sick. It was a lie.

I'm still working from home though. There's too much that needs to be done. But working from home for a change is welcome. I won't go into analyzing if my efficiency has increased, but my happiness certainly upped itself a few notches. That has to count for something, even these days. The good autumn weather outside my lovely balcony does not detract from that. Office sounds get to you after awhile. Phone ringing, printer running, chai-boy calling, sales-target chasing, gyaan dispensing sounds. Now I have birds chirping in the tree just outside my window, construction (hammer-saw-generator) sounds from the colony below, a touch of traffic here and there, and an empty large space feeling that can only come from a place called home.

Precipitation

He was awoken by the sound of thunder, and then the constant thrashing of water striking his windowpanes at terminal velocity kept him awake. He turned his head towards his side as he reached for his phone which he always kept nearby to tell him the time and then flopped back down on his pillow and sighed. It had been several days since he had slept well, he had always been a light sleeper, but of late there had been something nagging him, something that he couldn't quite put a finger on.

He got up to take stock of the weather outside, stepping out onto his balcony to face the spray of rain bouncing off the parapet. From his vantage point he could see far into the distance and marveled as the lightning raced the rain towards the ground in the distant horizon. Trees were clinging on for dear life as they were thrashed about in the wind and pieces of garbage were being driven down the streets below like tumbleweed in the old Western movies his father loved.

There was not a soul to be seen awake. Mother nature had reclaimed the city, if only for a little while. It made him think of how easy it was for things to regress with the slightest loosening of order. At the whim of a butterfly in China, a thunderstorm could brew in his backyard. And not just nature. People too are not so different from ancestors past. We often talk about empathy and charity and hold ourselves with high ideals and a sense of right, but at the end of it all, when the chips are down, everyone thinks for themselves. An Animal Kingdom veiled only by concrete and steel and complex textiles. We live in a Savage Civilization, at best. Where we mask our hunters instincts with words and fancy cars. And we keep spiraling downwards.

Maybe there is hope somewhere in all this. A shimmer of light off the water covering the world around him whenever plasma united earth and sky for a moment. Silver linings, lights at the end of the tunnel, these are all things we were taught to believe in.

He shrugged to himself as the night wore on, and decided to go back to bed to try and sleep.

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain."

Summer in the Garden. It's been almost four years since I first came here, just over two since I've left. I look back with wonder at the way time has passed and all that has transpired since the first time I came to this city. Two years in one place is a long enough time. Four years away from a moment even more so.

"I became a soldier, so that my son could be a farmer, so that his son could become a poet"

Any Dream Will Do

I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain
To see for certain what I thought I knew
Far far away, someone was weeping
But the world was sleeping
Any dream will do

May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming, and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do