Irony and life

The next step you take
will carve you in the determined
mould of time, for life
is an irony, peruses those
who steps in it with their
courage following them like
a shadow.

Every act, every step feeds
the shadow while the light of
life embraces the turn of hope
to burn it down in an unending
tragedy.

You who take the turn know
not, you who knows is lost in
the metaphor handed over from
history, action breeds counter-action
where every dialectic opens up another
where all survives where none do

Yet like Sisyphus you turn back again
and again the toiling masses stitched to an
imagined fate, revealing the 'bitter-fruits'
and the flicker of the underground which
glimmers our night sky 

Take the step you must for you have
a date with the passing smile uncovering
your lips, shared yet dispersed, of the time
when irony will reveal 'life'.

...and it snowed in Rome

the snow evokes various kinds of responses….while I woke up with a start with a knock on my door, half in a dream, half in the sleep with the expectation of the snow somewhere couched deep within…to wait and see what the world was supposed to reveal on this day when the expected snow was supposed to arrive…but as with the start I woke up, the snow seemed to be like that…it was supposed to startle you, to awake you up from your slumbers of the various assumptions we had made about it in the space and time when it was supposed to exist and to appear….it was just to be an apparition, sometimes a lovable one, at times a strange one, at times of something or someone we never comprehend, at times it plunges you in the depths of the memory to remember the never remembered face, to create all the stories which might never have existed in the first place….perhaps we never expected so much, the news papers and the media started digging in the archives for the last time it snowed for such a long time and we were told it was 27 years ago, people started to look at the cameras whether or not it could capture the moment which was as transient as the look in the camera’s face, they started rolling over their foto albums to the last time when the house across to the street gleamed of the cupcakes which only adored the cream on the table sometimes sweetening the mouth, at times craving for the water to melt it away…..the moon had not melted for once and the cotton which had accumulated along the pathways, as if to clothe the world a new was itself surprised at all the colors it could never bear witness to, the sun had been gently covered under a forgetting where only the clouds used to play hide and seek, the chairs outside restaurants where there were rarely any visitors had their first guests, willing to wait for orders which never arrived, still sitting patiently maybe for a cup of warm long coffee and a smoke which would melt on the ashtray and mingle with the mist in the environment…..yet some memories of the snow managed to steal in those small glances, surprises, cheer,  squeals, frowns, anguish and a sense of irritation which just carved for only a moment a face like its own, where slowly but steadily in the very creases and wrinkles of the skin it was settling down, maybe to be remembered years apart when it will happen again…..it was kissing the umbrellas for those who never wanted to touch them, as a sludge it was settling down on the shoes perhaps telling us that sometimes its good to walk slowly, sometimes its good to slip and not fall to remember that all paths are not steady, sometimes the sludge we gathered around will never be cleared even if we don’t remember them……and yes the memories slowly also must have scraped through the tiny pores of the shoes where socks at once would emanate in a secret smell they never desired to touch and feel….some hands were trying to touch the snow, to cast it to the other though as much more lovely as us and yet with care and concern and yet when it caressed those hollows in the hands it froze together the more as if in a size of a ball giving us an immortal sense of creation of our own…rather than melting slowly in the distance, it kept freezing in time, it kept holding on to the only hope it never had…..and the trees were more than happy to bear a burden where they would hibernate from their little greens which was left and the brown ones just were left wondering for the leaves they shed last autumn for they too wanted to caress it in memory and in dream…….for once the world slowed down, the buses refused to run, the cars had their windscreens moving as trying to wipe out fastly the only nightmare they never guessed was coming their way…..the bells in the distance stopped ringing for the moment and watched silently as the world turned white…..the roof tops making spaces for the new arrival and slowly but with gentleness and all kindness refusing to allow space for eternity for new visitors came ever knocking on the door seeking spaces for themselves…..the woman on the street who always had the small paper cup in her hand with some 20-50 cents and some times euro coins in them had to huddle in the supermarket which was willing to provide space for the moment and yet it was bad business for her…maybe the snow took away the only way she could have had food for the day……in the distance, on the bridge when the snow playing with the winds were travelling hapahazardly knowing no destination tried to play with the face and plant a kiss on the brow but the cap had already opened its pores for it to melt in the head which refused to depart from its own heatedness and its own absurdity, but the bridge opened vistas and new roads where strangers moved no one  knows where, unbounded by destinies but bounded by the same destination, to only cross for a tiny moment and yet the only moment which could bound them together….and the snow flakes like cakes wanted to cover the only destination where human beings knew they moved, a sense of displacement, a sense of journey of removing themselves for here and now and yet couched in that presence…it tried to tear away the railway lines, tried to hide it away where all seemed white and the trains for the moments did not revolt, it tried to slow the time and bury the distance as if everything was to be found in this one moment….yes this was what happened when it snowed in Rome.

कुछ यादें जो नहीं होती

कभी-कभी हम कुछ लोगों को जानना चाहते है, क्यों यह शायद हमें भी पता नहीं होता...शायद एक याद ही बसी रहती है जो कि होती नहीं ..शायद कहीं एक नाम सुना होगा जो बस जहन में भर जाता है और निकलता ही नहीं और उन पलों में आपके सामने आ जाता है जिन पलों में शायद आप उसके रु बरु नहीं होना चाहते...मगर ऐसा क्यों होता है हजारों नाम सुने लगते है पर उनमे शायद एक दो ही ऐसे होते होंगे जो ऐसे बैठ जाते है, कितना समय गुजरता होगा हमारे अन्दर इन्हें पैठ होने में पता नहीं, शायद कभी न जान पाऊं , कितने भरे स्थानों को, कितने यादों के बीच समेटती हुई, सरसराती हुई, अपना स्थान बना पाती हैं ये, यह भी शायद नहीं पता...मगर इतना जरुर होता है जब उनके कहीं अपने अन्दर होने का ज्ञान आपको होता है और आप हाथ बढ़ा कर उन तक पहुंचना चाहते है, वे होते ही नहीं ...कभी कबार उनका अस्तित्व ही मिट जाता है, या फिर वो वही मरीचिका हो जाते है जिन्होंने आखों में वे सपने डाले थे जिनका पीछा करते-करते कभी हमने अपने हाथ फैला दिए थे उस शून्य में जहाँ एक चाह थी उन हाथों के छुए जाने कि, उस आवाज़ कि सरसराने कि कानो तक, हवा में एक अभिन्न सा स्थान बनाते हुए, उसे टुकड़े-टुकड़े करते हुए मुझ तक पहुँचने कि, आखों में वह आकृति उभरने कि जो सपनो में केवल अलग रंग ही भर जाती थी, जिसके आकार और सीमाएं अनंत ही जान पड़ती थी और रंग अपने आप को बाटते-बाटते थक ही जाते थे.....अब फिर वही एकाकीपन है, वही शून्य, वही अनंतता निराकार जो मेरे कैनवास में फिर से सिमटने से मन करते है और शायद कभी नहीं सिमटेंगे....दूर से उसने संदेशा भेज दिया था दुनिया को कि वह अब जा रहा है , बरसों बीत गए उसे मेरे पास आने में ...कहते हैं ध्वनि तरंगे सिमट जाती है इसी वातावरण में निरंतर के लिए, पर जो उसने जाते-जाते कहा था दुनिया के लिए, क्या उसमे मै अपना रूप तराश पाऊंगा, क्या उसके चेहरे कि सीमा उभर पाएगी, क्या इन गूंजती आवाजों को  तार-तार करने के बाद मै वो शब्द पिरो पाऊंगा जिनमे मै कभी नहीं था मगर जो मुझी तक हमेशा पहुंचना चाहती थी?