अमरता

मैं पानियों पर लिखता रहता हूँ एक नामुमकिन सा स्वप्न
इसे मुमकिन करने के लिए ना ही कोई कलम बनी है और ना ही कोई रंग 
बस कोरी यादें भर हैं
समंदर की चंचल लहरों पर उकेरने के लिए

पानियों पर ही
 लिखा जायेगा मेरा इतिहास
ना अमर होने की इच्छा है
और ना ही याद रखे जाने का कोई  मोह 
ओस की बूंदों की नियति तो
रोशनी में चमकना 
और सूरज द्वारा निगल लिए जाना ही होता है

रोशनी तब चमकती है
जब ऊष्मा उसे निगलने को होती है
जिस उष्णता ने मुझे गढ़ा है
किसी रोज वही मुझे चमकाएगी
और निगल भी डालेगी. 

.......................................................................................
इस कविता के अनुवाद के लिए मै अपने मित्र प्रमोद को सहृदय धन्यवाद देना चाहूँगा. कविता एक वो होती है जो कवि लिखता है और अपनी भाषा में लिखता है मगर जब अनुवाद होती है तो वो अपने आप में ही एक अलग कविता बन जाती है जो कभी उसके मूल रूप से भी अधिक सुन्दर हो जाती है, और इस बार भी यही हुआ है. ये अनुवाद मुझे अपने मूल कविता से भी अधिक सुन्दर लगा.

Immortality

I write on waters, a chimerical dream

No pens to draw, no colours to be

Just plain memories to etch

On the fickle curves of the sea

My history would be on waters

No desires of immortality

No charm of remembrance

A destiny of dew drops

Sparkle in the shine, to

Be devoured by the sun

The light sparkles, while the

Heat devours

Someday the warmth that maketh me

Shine will devour me too

rattle...

I hear the rattling of the tracks as the train passes through, playing with the wind, piercing it through. It seems like piercing through me too, drawing familiar memories from the past just trying to eke out a space within me. It seems like a journey which was never to be, always beckons me, always calls out to me, holds out a hand and I see myself running after it in the hope that sometime I would be able to catch it. But it always out paces me, it travels fast than my memory, my imagination and my impersonation of the future.

During times like these I always imagine the people, on board of the train, what would they be like, what hopes and aspirations do they carry within, what makes them take this journey?Perhaps a beloved awaiting for a reunion, a mourning, a search for new vistas of meaning or perhaps to begin life anew,  to deny hunger and the spaces which it occupies around , or the need to exile oneself from the memories and the decadence one felt around the spaces one occupied or just an aimless instinct of the traveller to reunite with the beauty of the world which surrounds.

I talk a lot (part 1)

I have heard this thing time and again, people come over to me and tell me "you speak a lot" and this comes in various ways, sometimes manifested in their body language, through the movement of the eyes trying to look away and to find an escape, through the fidgeting hands and legs which seem capable of moving but have been obstructed in some ways, through the changing contours on the faces of people which keep on hovering between the spring and the fall. I have heard this as a complaint, as a compliment (yes speaking more can be compliment too sometimes of your liveliness), as an excuse to divert the issue, as a way to tell you that its time to shut up, as an authoritative gesture to assert one's self, to quiten some one, at times to impose tranquility in absurd situations which demand silence more than words since the words themselves are futile (in these moments it is the situation which speaks rather than the person). It sometimes comes in the garb of a culture, sometimes as history and also one can not leave out psychoanalysis and then politics. In discourse it also means that one has to provide spaces for other people to make their points to present their opinions and also to listen to them.

Listening is an important art which needs to be cultivated and it comes with tolerance and with acceptance of the other, but strangely the allegation or more say prescriptions of me being loqacious still abound even when I think I have been able to develop this art of listening to a great extent. I would like to keep a finger of skepticism on me too but I think the idea of writing this in itself means that I wish to understanding this phenomenon through understanding conversation i.e. listening and speaking.

What can be the reasons for this? I would foreclose any psychoanalysis at this point since I have not been able to understand this phenomenon either through understanding of my conscious or unconscious patterns or through a history of my childhood. There might be something hidden there but I dont know if that does play an important role since our self is always in the process of formation and to pin point its determination from some events in history only would be a bit of a mistake. But still I would like to leave some leads if some body really wish to explore it from that dimension or if and when I myself find more reasons to do so. This event has to do with my stammering when I was a child, it was quite difficult to utter words and ages would pass when a sentence would be constructed. This stage remained I think till when I was five or something, infact there is an instance which is linked to this too. I think I was 4 or 5 I dont remember exactly, that was the time when new buildings were being constructed around my residence. There used to be big trenches and tanks which were dug up to store water for the construction. This used to be a playing field for us young children and we used to go their with our paper boats to float around. It was one of these days that I and my friend Pankaj were floating paper boats providing it sails to different directions, it was he who made boats and I joined in the fun since I never knew how to make them and even still dont know. But I used to be active in floating it and during one of these plays one of the boats actually went quite far away from our small hands and Pankaj tried to catch it and bring it back, he outstretched a bit far to actually fall in the tank which was deep. I did not know what to do, I could not catch hold of him and get him out so I went running to call my neighbour didi who was there, but it took pains to me to explain what had happened. But still we could manage to get him out. I still remember that event but I dont know still if it affected my speech, though we managed to save him and I got my sweets in reward but still the stammer after years remains. It precedes my speech and my beginning to the point that I can not override a person when that person is talking or intervene in between since it takes time to start and thus I have to patiently wait for my turn to speak but when I speak I also acknowledge that I talk a lot. How much it has to do with that instance I cant say but I would only take it as one reason of many reasons.

On a near death experience

The blood splattered all across the floor, struggling for the last gasp of breath
Hung in where it was the most unusual
will it come to me too with clasped jaws, where even a shriek would not escape me
While I might be stinking atthe margins or be at the centre of it all

Was it I who did it or it came through me?
While I still shudder at the sight, the pen gives way through shaking
I know it was an elegy of something which had died while someone was living

दिवाली के रंग

कुछ रंग  ढूढने निकला था घर से
हाथ में कुछ फुलझरियां  थी और पटाखे भी
मगर वो चाँद धूमिल होता दिखा
तारों की याद में

हर दिवाली मुझे एहसास दे जाती है रंगों का
कुछ पसरे रंग, कुछ बोलते रंग
कुछ मुस्कुराहटो में बिखरे उदासियों के रंग

कही टीम टिमाती रोशनिया, कही अँधेरा घने कोहरे सा
कही एक मुस्कान, कही एक लाचार सी हँसी
हर कोई लगा था रंगों को समेटने में
कुछ  खरीद कर, कुछ उसे भूला कर

भूला हुआ रंग भी तो समेटा जाता है
कभी यादो में तो कभी सपनो में

कही

चुप चाप इस गुम सुम रात में

कही से एक बूँद टपकता है

और कही एक शोर सो जाता है

कही एक नज़र खो जाती है

कही एक याद उभर आती है

On Nostalgia

It has been a nostalgic two months here in Rome, nostalgic for the same reason as all nostalgias are. For what do nostalgias claim, they claim the familiar, they claim images and memories from the past so as to dwell in the past and in this dwelling they somehow tend to bend the present towards the past. It is the tendency of making the present, which is not the past but still is the continuation of the past where nostalgias live in and here is what makes nostalgias different from memory. For memory can happily co-exist with the present, though at times rebelling against the presence of the present too. But nostalgias are also created, they manifest some lack within the present in which the human beings try to transpose their present over the past and in this process they somehow create the past too. But what has happened with me, is it a creation of the past or just the past itself which is trying to assert itself in times when the self finds itself alone with no transcendence in the realm of the other. Well, I would like to think that nostalgias live with both kinds of past, a transposed past and the real past since the transposed past itself is not mythic but comes out of a memory which is itself interpreted. It is here that we dwell in the realms of the interpretations of memory, since memory itself cannot exist outside the domain of interpretations, while we can remember events of the past but when it comes with the relationship of that event, it always happens in a context. A context i.e. our present and it is this character of relationship of the past with memory that nostalgia finds itself carefully secured.

But then one would have to understand what is it that nostalgia demands, does it as some say demand the same kind of past or even the interpretation of it or does it actually demand its recreation in the present or does it actually demand a different present itself. Actually it can be both since as one can say that nostalgia takes birth out of certain debilities that the being finds in the present, so it might actually be an attempt to overcome those lackings within us, rather than that past. But so is human being constructed and I would believe truly so, that we dwell in the realms of emotions as well as those of reasons and both come in together rather than as separate beings.

Transcendence

I still dont know what to call this poem of mine, the very first one when I started writing and thought I could put my mind to words and start creating something, but as always it has been a struggle and more so when I look back today from where I started. But still for the moment I would like to call it transcendence....

.........................................................................................................................

Standing together we sail on the sails along the creative imagination of time

and move beyond the chimeras of hopes and horizons

so relish in the confines of time, the past is ever present but ever to be forgotten

you reached beyond the time to the suns and I to the time unknown

see the absurdity of reason it still calls us, wants to engulf us

the countless bounds of time still call me with their enamouring heads

the saga  of age still calls us, denounces us for being an outsider

the beauty is still heart warming, the nature is still enchanting

the people are still the same, the smiles are still the same…….

But the pain remains……the glow remains……the hope remains

सत्‍य

स्‍व से ऐसी विरक्ति में

जहाँ सत्‍य

प्‍यार की उष्‍णता से भरी भावनाओं के साथ

तुम्‍हें उकेरते हुए नसीब की

विडंबना बरकर व्‍याप जाता है

वहाँ जीवन का संवाद बहुत मुश्किल था

अपने ही तनावों में धँसा मैं, तुम्‍हारे सत्‍य को अपने में खोजने की कोशिश कर रहा हूँ

तुम कहाँ थी ?

सत्‍य में, अनुभूति में या खुद मुझमें

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सहृदय धन्यवाद् मेरे मित्र  प्रमोद जी को  इस कविता का अनुवाद करने के लिए. 

emptiness

Staring into emptiness, I had lost count
of the times I have been broken, Torn
between ever widening words and ever
extending moments of silence

Deep depths do not exist for desire, for
where a life has forgotten abyss

फिर कहीं

फिर कहीं  रंग घोल दिया यादों  ने
फिर कहीं पत्ते झड़ने लगे

धीमी होती इस रोशनाई में
फिर कही बादल बरसने लगे

एक प्रस्तावना यह भी

कुछ पुराने पन्ने पल्टे अपनी जिंदगी के और उस पर जो 'काला' जम गया था उसी को समेट रहा हूँ इन पन्नों पर उस काले से जिसे कभी न कभी तो खो जाना है. लेकिन क्या वह कालिमा भी खो जाएगी जो इस पन्ने का हिस्सा एक शब्द की तरह नहीं पर याद की तरह है?

Truth

The dialogue of life, in alienation with self
where truth pervades as an irony of fate,
with cuddled emotions tracing you was difficult

Mired in my own tensions, trying to locate your truth within
Where were you?
In the truth, in my senses or in me.

Deserts

Meandering across the great deserts, in search of foresaken waters

one just tapers out like a lost stream

trying to explore the crevices of hope

a sense of lost identity,  a sense of oneness

how does it feel to be etched in memory?

to be known as an archive, as a lost dream

शायद

सतह पर फैलता है शायद कुछ और
इस इंतजार की इन्तहा है शायद कुछ और
वक़्त रुक जाता कभी कुछ और
साँसे लेते हम भी कुछ और

on hope and poetry

How does poetry emerge or how does it manifest itself? This is a question which I have been grappling with, even while writing or even reading good poetry and I just have not been able to find the reason for it all. I hope to reflect some day when I feel confident about myself and the writing which I do, because though the words do speak to me, but most of the times they elude me and some times you only see their traces and a few symbols around.

This post is simply meant to put things into perspective, to put memories in their place and to put words to where they belong. It is about 'debts' through their manifestations and also through their absences. Generally speaking I feel that poetry emerges out of a conversation, a conversation with the self, with the other and maybe sometimes with the other which has just housed inside the inner essences of being, not to be separated, which works at times as the alter or which sometimes walks with you as your shadows or sometimes it caresses you in the sublimity of presences.

The last poem, if I say that I do write poetry, or if it is just a pretence which I have carried all along, which can be manifested in the overly complicated usage of words which sometimes meander across the pieces of paper just to be lost as a tapered stream in the desert. The desert seems to be devouring it all the while, but maybe the essence of this writing itself is to be lost, to be heard only by losing all its essences. It can be manifested in one of the attempts I made to convince myself that all was not lost and maybe that I am not living in a paradox, a paradox which I might be facing but which I dont wish to see or to be more gentle to myself a private space which I have created to myself where I wish to retire after the drudgery or life and its struggle just leaves you with enough strength to look back, to collect some traces, to collect some shells from these immense coastline of life. Now the attempt....

Fragile conceptions, malleable beliefs and brittle loves

mellifluous presences, inconsolable griefs and detrimental destinies

soporofic ambitions, insoucient desires and craven idleness

sullied hopes, recalcitrant memories and recluse dreams

why write when the pen does not talk to me,

words don't feel for me and the paper refuses to cast me in

These are more about words, rather than a poem trying to find its way through the reader where words speak more than the writer, and here I think I build a pretence that its not me but the words speak but most of the time I know that its the writer who himself is speaking and maybe his whole existential situation is laid bare when he is writing here. The question which always stares me is about transcendence, transcend my own situation to which lies beyond and maybe let the words do what they seem to be capable to doing, rather than me always making an attempt. These are difficulties of writing and these are my difficulties, when in the exploration of the banal you sometimes turn profound or seem to turn profound.

But let me do justice here and why did I start to write this in the first place, it is not to explore what has been done in the passages above but to do some thing else and this is my contradiction and my problematic that whenever I sit to write with an idea in mind, it some how tapers out, takes its own course to emerge as something else. Still I insist to say what I will and what I should.

The last poem hope, was not completely mine. The last three lines have been written by someone else. It was my poetry in search of some completion, maybe even in search of an ending or of new vistas. I myself have troubles with putting an end to what I write and sometimes I feel the last three lines might be the most beautiful things which could have been said, which I in my own world some where could not comprehend. Somewhere I could not comprehend the simplicity which lies around us which is quite beautiful and which needs to be contemplated upon.

So where does it leave me. It tells me something, that we need a dialogue, a conversation to transcend our immediate and maybe even put some lost colors to our words and also to our existence. I would wish to thank all through this space who have been behind and keep on encouraging me to put some words to where they lie, which I try to do in my own way and most of the time I do fail. But these conversations do help me, they do allow me to reflect, to ponder and create a world in which I feel am at home and it seems that all might not be lost. Though this home alienates me at times, it presents before me essences which I would not have cared to see. I think I have said a lot and as always am struggling to find a completion and ending and so would have to leave with something which is abrupt.......

Hope

  Standing on the shores of time,  oft i wonder flowing with the breeze of the hour

 where have the ships of the future set forth to,  where are these sails destined to.

 Looking at the endless horizons of hope, where hope rests like a cuddled child

where the drowning sun stands in idyllic beauty, faking the enchantenment of eternity

Do I need to hear of the stories untold, or the past unseen

do I trace the imageries of messianic beauty or let my senses exult

Let me go beyond the freedom of the free, where enchantenment lasts no more

the spirit evokes no memories,  where emptiness and nothingness are not the mastery of the idle  

Where the tree from my window tells me that I am a part of wisdom and that I have to run after it no longer

where love surrounds me and everything seems to be talking and passing a lot of radiance

Today I feel I should stretch my arms in happiness

and learn great lessons from the most simplistic things that I see around

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Special thanks to Manisha for the last three lines and thus completing this never ending poem.

19/01/2008

नींद

नींद जब बिखर जाती है आखो में

तब  एहसास होता है,  की अभी कुछ यादे बाकी है

Memories

When the clouds keep calling the beautiful day

When the red blue sky waves across the horizons, and

the chirps of the birds mingles with the innocent laughter

Treat the day as it dawns on you, with care, with solitude

Trust the breath as it tastes the freshness of the morning charm

Caress the dream as it touches you in the night of life

For, in the silent soliloquies of life , when the song descends

ever so heavily on you, piercing through the heart,

These will remain as sweet memories,

 ever to be cherished, ever to be forgotten

Forgiveness and forgetfulness

Perhaps this is what love is and perhaps it is more to do with suffering with the one who you love and caring for the one who you love...it does not live in living in those memories which we want to immortalise for ourselves but it lives in those memories which have immortalised themselves in us, that we constantly run away from them....what remains immortalised in us is the human suffering but that is what we tend to negate all the time and tend to forget it.

But maybe forgiveness is what it seeks and what it aspires for, by forgetting it we tend to create spaces for more forgetfulness which means more memories which means more the depth they seek within us...but forgiveness is about not making that self which is suffering to be elusive of us but to have an ‘intimate presence’ within us. Forgiveness is about hope, it is about care, it is about dialogue with the part that is stinking, that part which tends to rot.

The most interesting aspect of the rottenness is that it has been due to us because we have just thrown it away, because human beings have discarded pain it comes in myriad ways. it seeks new inlets and new spaces sometimes having a surreptitious presence.

Pain is also something which makes life beautiful because it opens up those arenas of consciousness which we would not have cared to experience, those areas which would never have been explored if not for pain.   but the banality of pain lies in its beginning, because in its beginning itself it is so overpowering that it does not allow us to comprehend it, to make sense of it. It just ties us with the object of desire, the process of transcendence always takes time to come but when it comes it is beautiful.....

Ignorance

Restlessness sits awkwardly interrogating confidence in my own ignorance
of lives not lived and tales yet unexplored
Reason seeks its own part, mitigated always by human desires

what is this emptiness of, a void of emotions perhaps
of selfishness perhaps not reaching out to dark, disorder of humanity
of 'bitter fruits' calling out for a taste

Everyday I tame this restlessness with paens for the beauty
but it steals through the dark of my eyes,
coaxing, cajoling , persuading me in its nightmare,
to taste the one which lay as the shadows of beauty

Imagining I perhaps, these were passing dark clouds,
 whose tears would reveal me bliss, but ignorance it was,
 to believe of frailty, one whose marks stamped everydayness.

Apology

Simmering within its own creations of black, my chasm
has again failed to reach out to the emptiness beyond
I can't hold my own emotions, failure has again tied me down

Intellect was never my own, what do I show
to the world waiting, cling perhaps
they do, to my own dreams
Liberate me, my nightmare tells me

All a lie, I tell myself
my hands shake, paint
they do, a mask for an apology
to protect masks, of years hence fallen apart

Farewell

While the gentle night still sleeps, let me awake in my new dream
while the stuttering sublime music bades me farewell, I keep to the song

I desired for the moment of coming, while the time bids me away
I dread to open my eyes, frightened that they will not see you
I caress it, plead it, stay, remain as my elusive alter

Its time to go, but I press my eyes....
Perhaps! it will pass in my dreams

imprints on the sands of time

It has taken numerous efforts to break out of the slumber of life to start writing, to fill in those moments and those names to where they belong. For me, writing as an act is both opening and closing oneself at the same time, it lays oneself bare to the outside but in this act itself it hides. Imprints is about the small whiff of air, which when present, makes itself felt but also erases itself for what is to come. It is about the day which goes past everyday without giving us a recognisation of itself, about the life which is about leaving a small footprint on the sands without even calling out to be recognised. This very act of erasure itself is its telos. But before the final act imprints is about poetry, about sweet and "bitter fruits", banality and the dark and disorders of life .......

Imprints

                          

Working with a sense of oblivion, mysterifying my own existence

 a sense of detached belonging with my surroundings

on the shores of life, cautiously yet tragically, I leave my imprints on the sands of time

 my last signs of existence, my last presence, my last interface with myself 

only to be erased by the washes of the hour, creating spaces for more imprints

for more souls to tread the journey, to roll over my own soul, to be part of myself

in the unending desires to be heard through the eyes and touched by the senses

but these waves are my own

dancing through its own madness, its own pleasant agony

it testifies about the feet which were mine