We don't get what we want!

This is an oft repeated line, if you don't get what you want, enjoy what you get. to say that i believe in this statement would be utter falsehood. i don't think there is a single other aphorism that hits a raw nerve like this one does. come on, how do you settle for second best? everyone who aspires for quality must abhor this line. so too, everyone who has been cheated in love, denied a raise or got a lower-than-asked for raise, or shunned by friends for no reason or generally been resented his success, his rightful place in the success pantheon. i know we don't get what we want, and that it is more often than not. but to say we have to enjoy what we get is bunkum. if we don't get what we want, we accept it and move on, trying again, like Robert Bruce's famous spider, to get what we want at another time and place. to enjoy what you get is to believe you are only good enough to be second best!!!

ready to run away

what do you do if people, especially your near and dear ones, are behaving like louts? i mean, if they refuse to understand you or find out why you were angry with them. they don't realise that only people who care are angry. only that makes you express your anger. the fact that you are worried about bad things happening to your closest ones, makes you protective and angry. yes. if they do not understand this, then there is something seriously wrong with them them. plus, i get real pissed if someone doesn't pick up my call, and then offers lame excuses for not doing that. it shows just how callous you are in your relationship with me. that you are taking me, my feelings, my care for you for granted. and i hate being taken for granted. no one is so busy that he or she can't return the call, or sms. being busy is a poor excuse for being lazy and not being committed enough to a relationship. well, all i can say is, such people will only learn the hard way. like, if picking up that phone call is the difference between life and death for someone at the other end.

you make me hope, again

you stir the embers
of discontented want
fly-ash longing
as if they had
never been stilled
by the cold of
intervening years.
you make me want
love
hope that all will be well
at least this time around.
you speak of longing, losing
of honesty
of being vulnerable
of being just the way
you know how to be
when in love
you speak my language
or that smattering of it
that i had long given up
for dead
remnants from
a season of hope
long ago
that told barbaric
tales of longing and pain
suffused into a dim afterglow
after the memory.
you make me believe
that love, want and need
and companionship
are possible
and not just the stuff
of dreams
you agree the body does not lie
oh! you speak my long-dead
language
much better than i did,
than i dare do now.
you make me dare to dream,
albeit with a certain dread
you distill hope from nameless
fears
that have all but paralysed
me.
you make me trust
the ways of the heart
however wrenching
however sad
however scarred
it may lead me.
you fill my despair
with quiet spirit.
can i trust thee
to share my void?

run away please

i was so afraid
after last night
and the long, intense
conversation
and the wine
and the ambience
and the flat-shoed
waiter wearing a
funny cowboy hat
i am scared
i will lose you
to the mist
like all those other ones
before.
i am terrified
you will walk away
from the conversation
just like switching off
a TV set after
a decent, sweaty round
of tennis.
i am afraid to fall in love
with you
because i know
it is just more heartbreaks
maybe the nth
in a series that began
truly long ago
in a time somewhere
in a land, far far away
in an age so innocent.
tell me you won't run away
like all those previously
tell me that it is here to stay.
every time i am done with the pain
comes another one.
oh! tell me this isn't
like all those other ones.

zonked!!!

you steal up
to close my eyes
to the pain
that will inevitably
follow
your passing.
i leave quietly
helping you cross
the road
feeling zonked,
as if hit by
a doomed meteor.
i feel
like a dinosaur,
just before its last days.

buzzed on summer cyclist!!!

hell!!!
feeling strange since yesterday.
that's what intense conversations
and summer cyclists
can do your system
i mean, the mental well-being
of an unattached, single mallu
male who probably thinks
high talk is the most safe
and sure-fire way to turn himself
into an adrenaline-junkie.
what next?
endorphin transfers;-)))
and more philosophy
on the lives and loves
of schizophrenic entities
like us?
you tell me.
btw, is that red ink supposed
to signify danger
or exciting times ahead?
whatever,
bracing myself
for the tora-tora!!!

jaipur blasts

i think it is high time we the people stood up and said enough is enough. i think it is time, we got together and zeroed in on every terrorist, their infrastructure, their supporters and their handlers, whether here or abroad, and exterminated each one of them. show them no mercy. any outfit or set of people who target civilians, defenceless and innocent victims of terror, should be crushed. we should, like the israelis do every time, seek each one of them out, and dip them in acid or some such thing, and throw them to their sponsors, just to remind them that they will not get away with such stuff. we must actively seek, destroy, prevent and subjugate all such terror mongers wherever they exist. forget diplomatic niceties and cross-border concerns. hit them where it hurts and keep at it, until their will, their spirits are broken and they will never ever attempt something like this in future. i think it is high time we asked tough questions of our intelligence set up, our political establishment and self-serving leaders. i think it is high time we elected people who will deliver on the security front. and not people who stand by and mouth platitudes and give excuses for their failures.

it is easy to be judgemental

i just realised how we all get trapped into that prism of being judgemental about someone just because they don't fit into our scheme of things. i think life is far too complex, and a person's experiences so varied, that we commit a grave error in judgement when we judge others, without going deeper and understanding the reasons. i hope to take a more nuanced view of life and people's behaviour from now on!

you made me distrust the night

and all its shades,
from light black to charcoal black to dull grey to peeping crimson,
with its endless capability for
choking the mind
off feelings of you,
only to let it slip in
unfocused
as dreams that plague
sleep with deep dread.

just once

if i could, i wish,
you told me, just once
that it was not all a dream
that you loved me as well
as deeply and as selflessly
as i did you.
is it too late to
let hope die
a past-perfect death
in kalaeidoscopic versions of you?

you made my world go around you, once

things were simpler then.
all one had to do
was love with feckless certainty
mutate want into boundless pain
leave the longing behind to the care
of icy waves
and,
preserve you in a state
of nameless flux.
now, with clarity
comes doubt,
a certain wistfulness
and a stabbing void
that refuses to
relinquish its tiny hold
on notions of you.

for whom the bell tolls

i have realised
that it doesn't need
five years
and forced separation
to distill the want
into a palatable mix
of fading recollection,
and dull longing.
but,
it sure needs five,
and surely many more,
to still the pain
and the screeching
comfort of your touch
on a rain-starved
afternoon spent in
reckless abandon.

dreaming up intimacies

you are all i have,
shreds of a past life
lived more in memory, and
spent trudging
at the contours of your
want.
i have this one
pretense to intimacy,
you tugging at my
shirt sleeve
just before we crossed
a road to nowhere.

this stretch is lonely

i fear this stretch
pushing thirty
with fewer years to go
and dying grey cells,
waning libido,
greying hair, and
a tummy to boot
i fear this lonely
stretch of the road.
another two decades
to go,
before i put in my papers
and seek eternal rest.
for all ye seekers of the flame,
this is the last reminder.

blinking in the distance

you disappear
ever so faintly
like a star
at the first sign of dawn
sometimes
i wish
the night
stayed on
for a mite longer
to prolong that
glimpse of you
a little longer