This rage is a cover
Pacifying the guilt
lies all over, pointing fingers on air
Even a death isn't enough
for them to learn
what life couldn't teach
and all the lies
they preach
will soak
in time
will soak
in truth this life would bring.

An old tree with lemon shades
Yellow leaves that fall with grace.
The citric sun, and the arid heat.
Old secrets breezing through the stone buildings
It's summers here in this land of Djins

If rain comes, it should wet our soul. And when it comes, we will breath-in Shillong, every single time skies don't seem blue. Memories of cold , sad pine winds will bring us peace through the lonesome roads where dry leaves fall. Pain would rain on us, for in our lives we lost the meaning of happiness in this pursuit of rain. A little bit of rain and a little bit of memory will keep us soaked, together, in pain.
And those paper boats of hope, from shattered water bodies will float. Towards the eastern sky where we once promised to kiss the rain.

You rise like the sun in the darkest depths of my insomniac mind. Each day, you shine, like a river under the moonshine. You shine, across my lonesome valley. Of broken promises and pain. You run through my veins. Many deserts that I have crossed, years lost in aging, drifting indifference,  now weep. Now weep in rain. Rivers born in sand lands, like questions raised in time, now melt, melt to the sea. Sand dunes turns to crimson clay. And it shapes a dream, safe. Safe enough to be real. No questions, no doubt; no fiction, no half measures. Just an overlapping image that increasingly melts into another like an array of  songs with similar chords. Almost like an eclipse that shines through the edges of darkness like a ring. There is room to breathe. Room enough, to refute cliched notions of degrading poetry under the roof of regularity and peace. There is room for thought. There is room to create. Room for love, life and beyond. And, there is room to feel strong.

Colour blind.... I wish I was.
Colour blind.... I wish I was.
Nevermind.... I wish I could.
Bullet proof...I wish I was

Questions deaf...I wish I was.
Answers numb.... I wish I was.
People blind.... I wish I was.
Nevermind.... I wish I could.
Bullet proof...I wish I was

Ridicules .... never understood
Sarcasms.... never learned
Humiliations... never heard
Insecurities... never felt
Colour blind.... I wish I was.
Nevermind.... I wish I could.
Bullet proof...I wish I was

A little short...can't read the signs
A little slow...can't reach the line
A little dumb....I wish I was.

Bullet proof...I wish I was


Prompted by 

Memories are always more beautiful than living them.

Noboborsho

Another year silently passes by
and we keep forgetting
the promise those yellow fields sang

Walking through the streets
million miles away
Where the wind brought some of us
Many years ago
I see the fading stories of blood and mud
buried through the sands of time

New. White clothes. And sweets.
Packets full of gifts
cant buy the time that has decayed
A generation forgotten,
who keep staring at the evening sky from the posh balconies, where they surly do not belong.
who keep drifting away all day, and more so, on this day to a place they called home.
who keep holding on to the silver water and the silver fish and all the silver moonshine they left behind.

And then, a generation that fades away
almost ashamed of their identity.

Out there on the other side of the country
the river fades,
There are lot of poems . Lot of poets too
many who write better things.

But the feeling and some of the people who have felt the suffocation
the pain of eternal fading
are now forgotten.

yet another year
another day
another new dress
and a little bit of holding on to the mother
more sweets, gifts, a movie or two

She still stares straight into our eyes
frail as ever.




P.S : and i forgot the bugging SMS -es...... this is really a tribute to the man, Mr Ghatak, you live.

There is a Shillong in Delhi today.
There is a memory of forlorn mornings in spite of the sunshine
There is a Shillong in Delhi today.
There is a memory of Knopfler winds.

Of Many Delhis that I have lived.

Summer rain brings memories of many Delhis I have lived in.
How the colours slowly faded away into a more tranquil greyscale.
How the noise, and the noise makers, with all their exuberance, faded into an Alexi Murdoch song. How the scorching hate and parched indifference gave away to shaded green alleys of hope and deserted corners of memories, I want to treasure. Safe. How in stories of rapes, in broken homes and brokers and landlords, in quarrels and endless money sucking machines there was still a reason to smile. How in love, lust and pursuit and in drunk, dead nights of self inflicted pain and in lonesome travels across the country, there was a joy to return, every time I returned. How illusions of loneliness, magic and failed sessions of Robert Johnson's marijuana ended with realisations and definitions of a life I wanted to live. How in rain, in hunger, in insomniac hours of work, bitchcraft and warfare, in flyovers and David Grey, there was hope breezing still in my face. How July kept raining down the empty, pensive streets of C. R Park. How every place had a story, every face had a tale to tell . How every December had a new song to sing, every Autumn a poem. How the people around me gently morphed into hazy portrait of thousand passer-bys and there was so much space to breath.  It is indeed interesting, how Delhi in all of its wistfulness of mornings , in silence and falling leaves, in time, became my very own.

Sundays, fallen leaves lay across the street
Sundays, them afternoons I seek
Sundays, when ragpickers dream
Sundays, the Hawkers are asleep

Sundays, when the city breathes
Sundays, window full of dreams
Sundays, when summer's around
Sundays, gets a little colder than it should.

Sundays there is a room to think
Sundays, when I sing.

Cigarettes, cigarettes burning bright
like a diamond in my hand
If only this pain I inflict
could wipe away yours. And.Cigarettes.
Cigarettes keep burning bright
like a diamond in my hand

There's nothing like a puff of goldflake in your small, sleepy room as the parting sunlight streams in through the plastic curtains, sober, like it was still January; listening to Eva Cassidy's Autumn Leaves, after a heavy , late , daal alu bhaja lunch on a lazy Thursday afternoon, contemplating increasing price and ads against cigarettes,dreaming of a possible Himalayan holiday, waiting for my salary that never comes.

He's in the right place
He's in the right place
He's on the left side of the mountain,the right side of the mountain.

And all the songs I listen
shape a meaning I have never known
Every time, every time you come back home.

Six years. In pursuit of yellow.
yellow afternoons.
yellow broken bridges.
yellow love and yellow memories of faith broken, sunflower years
yellow dawns
and yellow waiting of hope and beyond.
Its true. The star is shining bright for you.
yeah, it shines forever more,
for you.

You, my love, are real. This pain I feel tonight without you Is real. As the train rolled out of the station And cradled you to sleep, Every mile you travelled was real. Every mile , You traveled away, took you closer to the ashes of your past that has forsaken you. Every mile , You traveled away , brought you nearer. Every mile between the two cities are traces of memories and longing - we secretly treasured, but were scared to share each other. The pain you feel today is real. The images you see are real. The rusted roads of dust and forgotten pebbles are real. Your dog that doesn't recognise you , the familiar crowd at the university, the corridor of your hostel and lonely corners you once spent hours pondering, crying, thinking, talking to yourself are all real. The tea stalls, and the rocks, and the department buildings and the endless sky is real. You’re indifference is real. No fantasy, no fairy tale. No magic, no spell. For once in my life, You, my love, are real.

Open the door to my room
back from the railway station
roomful of memory songs

Love is the absence of it. 

Your silence falls over like a cold night in the valley of rust
As the cello bleeds in through the years of deceit and rage,
You dance to the darkness
You dance to the darkness of the night you bring.

Your silence falls like a stone into the deep blue sea
And it ripples a thousand Lorca’s moon
As you  dance to the darkness,
You dance to the darkness your eyes sing.

Your silence sings a silent gypsy rhyme.
Songs of innocence and acquired lessons in time
You walk like the wind, in a crowded road
Alone.

And when the day is done.
you  dance.
you  dance to the darkness,
You dance to the darkness of the night you bring.

Of remembering and forgetting

And you kept losing yourself
for years
like a stranger in the mist
only to come back
and sing
a more soulful song


A song about things you have learned
and things that shaped you
into everything I ever
longed for.


And all the roads that we have walked on parallel worlds,
And all the days we spent staring by the window
As we grew up and years passed by
separated by miseries and many strangers who faded with time
in delusion and despair, met. The roads they met in love.
They met like the dawn ,
they met in shades of dusk
they met like the waves of memories painted in truth and silence.


And like those driftwood that return to the shore,
two souls, hippies at heart,
in rust and in shadows
now ache
now ache for a home called love.

Painting my worst memories of life is the only thing I have learnt,
my intimacy with loneliness and trouble is an old one.
And every troubled night we spent in separate worlds, we were together
you're my loneliness, my darkness, I so love.

Brothers in Arms

These arid valleys of miracles, and despair
Are home now for me
but my home lies in mist coloured mountains
and valleys of green
Some day I'll return to
my valleys and rain
You did not desert me
my brothers in arms.

Distorted 

A year of Aik Alif and many songs that touched our soul.

A year of change

-A shift from shinny glass walls to humble dark rooms of innocence and wisdom.

A year of fresh air away from sloth , frustrations and decay.

A year of revisiting, rediscovering Delhi with all of its soft, enduring eyes

A year of silent travels.

And the inherent contradictions of a traveler's mind
of losing yourself and coming back home,
of forgetting and remembering,
of trust and faith broken shadows,
of rain and recklessness,
of green simplicity and darkness,
of love
and other assorted wisdom

The loneliness of pine trees
The forgotten milestones
The road side huts forever
and yellow bulbs of hope
unnoticed and Ignored
As we all pass by
every time we're on the road.

Often the best stories remain untold. And when they eventually unfold it becomes unfathomable how the roots grew inside the soil, for years. How with every new storm the branches grew stronger. How the leaves, in rain and in sun, with time, slowly turned wiser. How the shades became cooler through the wisdom of the leaves. How it silhouetted across the crimson canvas with every setting sun. How the streets that were once visited, then forgotten, were revisited again . How the places and people and the music that were once loved, the poems and prose and the assorted rumblings that were once written, in memories, and in pain and how a decade of desert wind that once  breezed in through our arid years of youth, now, had a reason. How in this age of the utter confusion and mistrust, and phony reasoning and rhyme, we finally found us.

Truth eventually shows up.
How long can I wear this mask?
true faces do flash with time.
How long can I pretend?
How long till I comprehend?
How long will this consolation go on?
How long?
Ignorance is not exactly blissful.
And the sea of books that lay scattered on my shelf stare at me with pessimistic eyes. I slack. My days run through the thoughts of slackery and decay. My afternoons smoke away and melt into winter evenings. I slack.
I smoke a cigarette. I post a few videos on Facebook. Sometimes listen to them.
I slack. I dont cook anymore. I have not read a book in sometime. I sit hours watching the computer screen without moving my eyes. I slack.
I sleep well. I don't wake up through out the day.
My guitar always sounds dis-tuned. I play a wrong key everytime I start. My dreams ran away from me with every passing second. It runs away as I write. I slack. I fill up forms for exams I don't eventually write. I slack.
How long can I pretend?
How long till I comprehend?
How long will this consolation go on?
How long?

When dreams came running,
When dreams came running, from distant hills. 
When driftwoods came sailing,
When driftwoods came sailing to the shore.
When the winds came blowing 
When the winds came blowing through the memories of pine trees,
And all the roads that seemed to drift away
And all the roads that 
seemed to 
fade away
Came back home.

With You

With you, there is silence.
There is joy, there is joy in quiet places.
In old, forgotten corridors, lonesome roads, where people walk  no more.
With you, there is life. An essence of forever. A Coldplay song.
With you there are wide, open landscapes. A November sun.
Falling leaves of Fall.
A week-full of winter mornings
Helpless tears like Shillong rain.
With you, there is a mountain song.
A misty childhood dream. My first poem.
A radio station from a distant hill.
A rain full of guitar strings.
With you there is a house. A place wrapped in clouds.
A green valley in the backyard.
Yellow taxis that play purple songs.
They drive through the black rain roads
and bring memories back home.
Like those grey poems that float through the windows
in lonesome afternoons
And, with you, there is trust
For rivers, that have grown old together, must
Meet. Must meet, at the sea of love.

We are the MBA generation. We dance. As people die in distant villages trying to save their property, hills and forest, we call them terrorists and count growth rates. As the night falls, and the hungry children on the streets are raped,we dance . As people and policies regulating them turn absurd to the point that they seem mere joke, we dance. Dance to happy songs . We grow our hair, we grow our beard. Only to dance. Histories change to saffron, people turn to slaves under neon lights. We dance. As our libraries filled with war, and greed, and discotheques, tired and insomniac, burn through the ashes of midnight cigarettes,we dance. We dance, We dance -Fat and old, thin and bitchy souls- We join together, to dance to the glory of perverted old men at Ramlila maiden. As Ideologies and thoughts are torn and raped every night, as our post modern existential escapism shake hands with filthy cleavages of MTV roadies, we dance. We dance from night to dawn. From winter to September. We dance, as another dictator falls. As liberty increasingly means liberalisation, and democracy means oligarchy. We dance.
A generation of confusion and mistrust,
of lies, and decorated words,
with meanings more than one .
A generation of pretension
and dance.

As another dictator is killed, and the heroes of the war cant wait to latch on to the oil fields, I cant help remember " Instant Mix Imperial Democracy - Buy One Get One Free"

The socio-economic, cultural and environmental constraints imposed on societies through the growth process have over the years adversely affected groups which have not been a part of the growth story: the poor and tribals.

As another winter calls, shivering chimes from a distant land,

reasons, slowly fade into the mist of rhyme.

India Shining ?

Welcome to the saffron hell my friend
Where killers overnight change into saints.
Where human beings are traded for growth rates
Where development is just another sham.
Where rebels are made prisoners
Where prisoners preach law in TV
Where people support animals over human beings
Where some dance to Bollywood songs while others continue to die
Where Hitlers safely hide in every "developed" cell.

Welcome to the white capped kingdom my friend
Where dynasties never seem to end
Where robbers don't really need to pretend
Where every act of charity is screened
by the Price charming's camera men.

Welcome to the holy fields of peace my friend
Where people never cease to dance
Holier than thou, everyone screams out
Page 3 revolutionary waves transcend.
While the poor and the downtrodden
The tribals and the untouchables
silently cry.

Statements like I hate politics, I am apolitical are grossly resulting in an orchestra of confusion, thus creating a generation that loves dancing in the rain - whatever be the reason for celebration . While the word 'Politics' has experienced a linguistic transformation over the years, and has increasingly become a synonym for deception or trickery, Politics as a subject remains an integral part of every human life. While it is not necessary to explicitly follow a political party, an implicit political ideology is intrinsic in every human being. Knowingly or unknowingly , every man or women essentially contributes to a political process.

We have traveled round the wide spaces,

for ages

Reborn in many forms

at different times,

through different songs.

And here we are,

finally

in our humane self.

If this light fades away,

we will never see another day

and so,

will keep u safe in my heart,

will keep you safe

wrapt

in my soul.

Grossly translated Laloon Fakir's Hrid Majhare