Legacy

A man is what he thinks.
His word is a record of his thought.
A record is a memory.
Memories can be passed on.
What is passed on is a legacy.

My words are who I am.
My words are my legacy.

The Happy Prince

Some...

Some emotions are beyond words
Some skies are beyond birds…

Sometimes we must just lie down and feel the sky’s vastness,
Sometimes we must just feel each other’s presence, in silence…

Some defeats are more precious than big wins,
Some sorrows are dearer than joyous times…

First small shaky steps are more difficult than final confident but dangerous strides,
Scary roller coasters are safer than real life’s rides…
Some realities are better as dreams,
Some silent, dark, deep, mysterious wells give more peace than fresh, clear, melodious but noisy streams…

Sometimes you love straight roads, you don’t want them to end or bend,
There are some poems you just don’t want to end…

The Happy Prince

The Prayer

Nobody like me was ever born.
Nobody like me will be born.
I am the finest.
I am the Best.
I am the past.
The future.
I am the Beginning.
I am the End.
Who care's what they think!
I truly believe...

I AM THE LEGEND!

Success Revisited

There was a time I dreamed of an expensive royal car, a posh large comfortable house and all such imaginable luxuries. That was the time I used to think all those were the things men worked and lived for. An important part of the meaning of success for me was to be able to afford the best and the most expensive.

These days I wake up in the bathroom. I mean I sleep on the bed but the moment I wake up, even before I open my eyes, I am in the bathroom, fishing for my brush with one hand, fishing for the geyser's switch with the other and at the same time trying to protect my eyes from the early morning glare. There are times you find yourself brushing your teeth sitting on the pot. Needless to say I do all this because there isn't enough time to do this all at their own pace. I wake up at 8.30 and I have to be in the office by 9.15!

I believe and consider myself to be one of the privileged few in this world because I love my work. In fact, at times, I feel sad at the end of the day because I have to quit something really interesting I am doing and return home and I badly wish, may be I could get to the bottom of this before returning. But I can't, the peon has to shut the office :(

It is on my walk home that I have the time to look at and admire the beauty of things around me. To feel the evening breeze on my face and the twinkle of glowing golden lights in my eyes. This walk are the most cherished few minutes of my day and though I want to reach home soon, I want this walk to last as long as I can make it last and so, I drag my feet and enjoy every moment of it. Trust me, this is the time of the day when I pity people who ride cars. Poor rich people, they can never enjoy this walk.

Couples are sitting, cuddling each other. I love to see the expression on their face. How happy they look, satisfied just to be with each other. I wonder how cute and treasure-some these moments they spend with each other must be and smile at my thought. Sometimes in these couples or outside one of the 5 star restaurants I spot a made up damsel. For a moment I become jealous of her possessor and wonder whether I will also possess someone like her someday. But its only for a moment because the next moment I wonder whether spending the most treasured few minutes of my evening with a woman I hardly know in an expensive restaurant just because she is beautiful, worth it? Is that dinner, no matter how expensive, going to have the taste of the dinner my mom has made at home and is waiting to eat with me? That dinner with my mom are the only 15 odd minutes I get to spend with her, I don't think I would trade them for this.

And with these and similar thoughts, with a satisfaction of having done something worthwhile with my day I return home tired, just to spend those 15 minutes with my mom before I go sleep. Its only an internship and I am not even getting paid right now, but please answer my question, what else is success?

The Humor in Terror

You are hearing continuous firing, a blast every few minutes. You're not on a battlefield. You don't live on the border between two tense nations. In fact, you're sitting in your own home which you believe is in the safest area of the financial capital of your country and the capital of your State. Whether it is the Vidhan Sabha, the Mantralaya, the Police Head Quarters of your State, the Naval Forces, any of the Courts or any other important building, it is not more than 15 minutes walking from your place. You don't know whether you will survive or how many of the final minutes in your life are left. How must a person be feeling in such a situation? What are the thoughts, emotions and reaction of such a person?

I had not spoken to my aunt heartily in years. Not because we did not meet or did not have each other's numbers but because I had stopped seeing anything in common which would bind us together anymore. Even after a lot of thought I could never think of anything all these years to talk to a 60 year old woman who spent her days taking care of her 90 year old mother in a village I had left 15 years ago. This was the woman who's told me bedside stories. She's done almost everything a mom does for her child. To me, she's my second mom. Yet, I had not spoken to her.

You call her up and you tell her that the situation is worse and that you are safe. How come you called she asks you. You tell her because that's what they show in movies these days. You're supposed to call people close to you just before dying. She's angry but she laughs at your humor. She warns not to crack such jokes after the laugh though.

Then you go to your CD Rack and try to pick up something to kill time. Unusually, a person like you who usually chooses flicks like “Sarkar” or “Johnny Gaddar” or “Gladiator” chooses movies like “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron”, “Bhagam Bhaag” and such stupid, non-sensical comedies.

In the evening you're too bored to sit at home. You go out with your family in your car with all the windows wound up. It's about 8 in the evening. The time when this area of the city is usually flooded with people and vehicles on their way home. Today, you see there is no soul on this road. There is no car except yours. All this while you were only insecure. Now, you're scared. You know no one can possibly live like Will Smith in “I Am Legend”. For the first time in your life you feel, sense and understand the meaning of the sentence “Man is a social animal”.

The next day, you go on your job like usual. The Oval is a park reserved for walks, cricket, foot ball and leisure. Usually full of people using it for those activities at any time of the day. Today however, it has a new game and new players. Pigeons. I don't know what their game is called, all they always say is just “Gutar-Goo”.

Only 5 out of the staff of 35 has turned up to work. Half in the day, one of your colleagues receives an SMS on his phone from another colleague saying firing at a certain spot has resumed. It's a spot very close to your office. Everyone decides to go home. The moment you climb down, you see hordes of people shutting their shops. Everyone in your office's building is watching down from the balcony. An old peon says he's scared he'll die. Young people around laugh at him. “Oh c'mon Mama, you're over 70, you've lived your life. Besides the terrorists won't kill you. They'll think its a waste of bullet to kill you. You're almost dead anyway.” Everyone including the peon laughs at this humor. He sees the truth in it and makes a face showing how he'll look if he's shot dead.

One of the colleagues asks me what am I going to do. I'm the one who's going to have to cross 3 main streets minimum to reach home. I tell him I'm planning to stay in the office building itself. He says he'll accompany me half way. We decide to go.

On the road, I keep each and every of my senses awake. I know, a bullet might come and strike me from any direction, any moment. I remember each and every face I saw during that walk. I remember every single step and everything that I sensed with any of my sensory organs including the red dupatta of a girl which touched me while she passed away.

Crossing the Oval for the second time I sensed some movement behind me. Two men, well built muscles, wearing chains in the arms and the neck, usually signs of masculinity, virility and style, were holding hands. That was a grip of trust. I slowed my walk down to be in the same line with them. When they start walking by me, I realize they're laborers who earn their living by doing some job which requires their muscles every day. I just put my arm on the shoulder of one of them. Our eyes meet. We're in this together.

I am supposed to be on a diet. After reaching home safely. First thing I do is open the refrigerator and eat Ice Cream from it and then the Chocolates. Any of them could be my last. And you might think I must have been serious the entire day but funnily, I was singing all the while.

My conclusion is that Terror is good. Terror is good because it teaches Humor. May be you'll die, but let's at least die laughing. It teaches you to tell people you love that you love them the most, to die without any regrets. Its only when the death is at your doorstep, you realize how much life there is in every moment. You realise what are things you truly love doing, in my case singing. I know people can't bear my voice when I'm singing but henceforth, I won't care much. I enjoy it and I will do it as I can.

I am not scared of death. I am privileged to have survived. Privileges are not to be demanded like rights. They're to be enjoyed while they last.

A Marathi Poem says:

“Mrityu mala nyayla ala...
Me tyala mhanalo “Tula Shambhar Varsha Ayushya”
Toch Chat Padla
Mhanala, “Kay Ha Manushya?”

Crude English translation

Death came to take me away
I wished her a 100 years of life
She was surprised
She said “What kind of a man is this?”

The Anniversary!

Last night my computer wasn't really processing anything. Every time I started any application software other than Explorer, it gave away like a malnourished farmer from Vidarbha. Obviously you can't do much in such a situation, particularly when the time is 2 o'clock in the morning. As a result I just opened my blog and started browsing through. I was astonished to find that the last post is almost 3 years old and that all posts together add up to about 57 or 58!

It's been three years since I blogged for the first time ever. It will be foolish of me to say that I have never re read my own works. Call me an egotist if you want to but frankly no one's work gives me more pleasure than my own. I have read and re read and enjoyed several of these pieces over time. Sometimes they have thrilled me, sometimes I have been amazed at my own thoughts some time back and wondered, "Am I really the one who wrote this? Can I really write so well?" Sometimes the sheer beauty in language has amazed me. Frankly, most of the times I myself don't believe these are my own thoughts, my own language and my own words.

The story of my Radha in "Price of Innocence" still brings tears to my eyes; When I read "The Purpose of Life" I feel like worshipping the person who has written it. Its just so beautiful! There are very few things so well thought and so well expressed as that one! There are times when I feel may be I can write one of these things better now, things like "Being Great.." which happens to be my first post ever but I always control that desire. I want to keep them as they are, untouched. The reason is somewhere I think this blog is a record of my journey, of my evolution as a person and I want to appear as confused and as purile as I was in every part of it when it was written.

When a person writes something, the words he uses and the structure of his sentences speak volumes about the state of mind that he is in. When I look at older pieces, I find they have tiresomely long sentences. In fact the entire first paragraph from "Being Great.." is one sentence! They show how confused I am and how many thoughts are dancing in my mind while writing that one sentence. It shows that the person thinks too much.

The writing is, I believe, now more evolved. The sentences are short, the ideas, though less complicated, are now more structured. I still don't believe I have learned to express them better though. In fact, sometimes I feel my account in the word bank is coming to an end. May be I must get back to my newspapers and magazines and build it once more. I am not as emotional about my ideas as I used to be. As a result, an idea is no more a passion. It has become merely something that needs to be put down for its better understanding. I don't think it is either good or bad for me. It is not good because if I don't feel something strongly, I won't be able to express it strongly. But at the same time, not being emotional about it means it is clearer. It is more about the thought than the emotion. So its not bad either.

My journey of blogging has taken me in search of several answers. Posts here represent my quest about erstwhile questions in my mind and my erstwhile attempts to find my own answers to them. I will never say they are right or wrong. They are my answers, that is all!

I have tried to answer several quests from Greatness, Life, God, Love to the economic disparity between the Urban and Rural India. I have tried to show things like Child Marriages and the plight of Women in India as it has affected me with my Urban-Rural Background. What I will do next, I do not know.

Obviously there are regrets. The first being that I have never been able to write anything funny. May be I don't have that kind sense of humour and sarcasm but that doesn't take away the regret. Some time, Some day I will write something tummy wrenchingly hilarious. The next one isn't really a regret. It is mere misunderstanding between me and my readers. Some people accuse me of being a cynic. Of being difficult with ideas, their and mine an of drawing conclusions which suit me through their behaviour. These people find me difficult to deal with. They believe I always take a view which suits my existing bias or I try to bend my experience for my own selfish interest.

I will not say they are wrong. May be their way of putting it to me is wrong. I will say that I am difficult with ideas because I go too deep into them. I am difficult with people and their behaviour because I go too deep in trying to bring out a meaning out of it. May be the questions that occur to me as a result make me difficult, may be the fact they cannot answer my questions all the time makes me take a view, as is natural, to suit my biases.

I know it is an abrupt end, but this really was an extempore! So thanks for all the support with comments and emails. So far, so long!

Keep Blogging!
Prince

Nidhi's Eyes

They were satin white,
With two big black shining marbles in them
The Most Expressive I have ever seen
They said so many things at the same time
And yet, they were mysterious!

Like a straight simple statement of fact
Without any punctuation marks in it
Left free for any interpretation
Black printed ink on plain white bond paper...

You felt like asking questions to them
And you could be sure they would be answered
Answered yes, but not solved.
Answered not truly but only to your moment's satisfaction

Every time she batted an eyelid
It reminded me of rose petals
That same soft, tender, smooth look
With pink shades of fresh red blood flowing in them...