The eagle soars high up in the sky,
Its wings spread out on either side –
A veritable picture of elegance.
From its vantage point it sees
A whole lot of everything,
Which is not in the least overwhelming,
For the fine print is obscured,
In the face of its single minded mission.
When it has circled the skies thus,
Until its precise vision
Has locked in,
On a prey that its hungry self desires,
That is when it swoops down,
Poised talons and all,
To claim its kill.
Here lies a path
That is well trodden,
And yet,
Almost a secret.
It is not that those who walk
Down its beaten track,
Are reticent story tellers;
As with any other collective
Of human beings,
This one too has those that are wont
To tell their story,
As repulsive as it might seem.
No, it is not that
There is a dearth of story tellers,
Or their stories –
If is more so,
The nature of these fables,
That keeps the curious minds
At a two arm distance.
So when it is that one strays
In the course of life’s journey,
Onto this exacting path,
There’s a momentary blindness,
Which warped in a time bubble,
Presents itself as endless.
Beyond this stretch of darkness,
Lies a vagueness of getting used to –
Getting used to the grey walls
Of towering, lifeless trees,
That crowd into the path of vision;
To the damp ground beneath
And the bleakness of the overhead skies.
Yet for all the drudgery,
There does lie ahead,
A path –
As unappealing as it may seem,
It does perhaps,
Lead to someplace, or something,
That isn’t as bleak as the beginning.
The death of a dream
Comes with a finality
That isn’t as evident
When it takes birth.
When it was nascent,
Still a fledgling,
Not quite ready to take flight,
You breathed life into it,
In the silence of the starry nights.
The wind whispered your hopes
For the young one,
It wafted across the valley
Carried by the birdsong.
And that is how it took shape,
Slowly, across the span of a lifetime,
A wisp of hope dressed as a wish,
Indeed, an incandescent dream.
And now it lies extinct,
Smoke emanating from the dead tip
Of the extinguishes matchstick,
There is no death knell,
The ocean’s darkest swell
Rises above to quell it,
And it is gone
Just like that,
As if it never existed.
The city comes alive,
Even on nights
That are meant to be quiet,
The nights with the darkest skies –
And yet the city thrives,
Glowing and vibrant
In its own lights.
But even then,
Amidst the forced revelry,
There are those,
Who exist quietly,
And unapologetically so.
The canvas isn’t uniform,
In how its rendered
By the various artists,
Who have a go
At painting life
Onto it.
For every dash of colour,
There is a white patch of snow,
And a dark blob
Of the dullest grey,
Perhaps unwelcome,
And yet nevertheless,
Unapologetically there.
The colour of a life
That was once pregnant
With budding promise
Nipped brutally,
Is midnight black.
The shape of that life
Meanwhile,
Moves from a point
To an oblong patch
That always follows
A step behind,
Unsure of its place.
The soul sits upon a ledge
Quietly observant,
Of the onrush of emotions
Entirely unpleasant,
Unable to decipher
Their true meaning.
Life itself
Is a motely being,
Holding together
This trinity
That boasts not
Of any glory,
Instead – ignominy.
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The slender stick
That you dug into the dirt,
And watered every other day,
Till it sprouted leaves,
And started growing,
As much towards the light,
As it did towards the darkness,
To find itself a firm hold,
While basking in the glow
Of the world around.
And now that it knows
Its place in the world,
You can retreat into the shadow
And watch it take over.
It used to be that rubbing a lamp,
Could summon a powerful genie,
The granter of wishes from three to many.
It has come to be that pressing a button,
Can invite a destructor so very strong,
As to remove every vestige of peace
Your mind has ever known.
The modern genie grants no wishes,
It isn’t friendly, jolly, or funny –
The modern genie, on the contrary,
Is a sense that pervades
Your room, your home, your heart,
Filling your every waking moment
With a feeling akin to dread.
The new age genie doesn’t do your bidding,
Instead, it lulls you into complying
To widely held norms, societal best fits –
You find yourself unwilling,
Or indeed unable to press the button
That will silence it.
For knowledge is everything,
Or so you’ve been made to believe –
Ignorance is bliss only for the foolish.
Your heart swells with pride –
You’d rather be in turmoil, but wise,
Than at bliss in a fools’ paradise
A message on a paper
That was folded and placed
Within a clear bottle,
And tossed carefully,
Onto the crest of a wave
Riding back into the sea,
A true world traveller,
Catapulted into the air,
Thrown back onto the water,
The sun, moon and stars,
Celestial observers
Of its endless sojourn.
Did the message lose meaning
As time passed by,
Did the hand that hurled it,
Forget it in time?
Would a year or five,
Make it less alive,
When it was finally retrieved,
From captivity?
Two eager hands
Held the bottle,
Both wet and slippery
And a touch jittery,
As shaking fingers,
Unscrewed the lid,
To extract the treasure,
That lay within.
A chance draught
And a mistimed opening,
A lethal combination
For the message in the bottle,
As the ink returned,
To the depths of the sea,
Free at last,
To taste the glory
Of unbridled flow.
Gone with the ink
Is a message written
On a piece of paper
Once long ago,
Or maybe not so –
For who can ever know?
Did the message lose meaning,
Now that it is no more?
Will the hand that breathed it
Into life, and set it forth
On its unknown, unheralded journey,
Ever perceive, even slightly,
That it is lost
Forever more –
Blue ink wedded to the blue sea.
He twists the stalk
Of the wilting leaf,
Rather mercilessly,
Crushing it almost,
Between his fingers,
Till it comes undone,
And the deed Is done,
The leaf is parted
From the branch, and the tree.
He looks at the leaf
Now held in his hand,
A lifeless remnant –
Dismembered and unwanted;
Before he tosses it
Into the wind,
He crumbles it
Under the force
Of a tight fist.
Nothing that’s worthy remains,
Of the doomed leaf –
Its broken relief
Lies scattered,
On the reluctant ground;
There is no dignity
For the likes of it,
In life, or in its void.
You’ve wondered long and hard
Whether to go down,
The well trodden path
Complete with lamp posts,
And the occasional resting spots;
Or the one that is so forgotten,
That it has diminished to the point
Of near non-existence.
You have wondered about them both
In almost equal measure –
Although to be fair,
You’ve gone down the one
Quite far along,
To see if it’s worth treading upon,
And yet the pull of the other,
Tugs at your heartstrings
Like a long forgotten lover,
Who turns up at your doorstep,
A red rose in hand,
To ask you out.
There is so much allure
In this clandestine encounter,
That you pause in your tracks,
To turn your back on certainty –
And take one step forward,
On the journey down
The long forgotten
And yet, once beloved road.
Chasing Sunshine 