MOMENTS - 2

 Moments - 2

There are moments,

When no words spill,

There is only silence,

That alone speaks,

To find that ardour,

The heart alone seeks.

A  deafened world listens,

As the bow moves,

Back and forth,

On the strings of life,

The player fallen prey,

To an everlasting strain.

On the stage the pantomime,

Struggles to keep alive,

His rhythm and rhyme;

As a muted world gazes,

At his desperate acts,

To make his silence speak.

The colours on the canvas,

Spread rich and bright,

But the sightless world seeks,

In the dead of night,

All that passion that had flown,

Now nowhere in sight.

The muse in the midst,

Of his musings sat,

His eyes closed,

In his silent world,

As the listless world outside,

Wanders to and fro.

As the warrior wields his sword,

The poet plays with his words,

Mowing down the barriers,

Of the body and the mind,

While the world finds it self bound,

To the tethers on the ground.

MOMENTS

Moments

It is when the light and darkness meet,

When the day and night merge,

It is when twilight reigns

In that moment you submerge.

It is when the man and woman unite,

In the shadows of the night,

The silence broken by a moan,

In that moment of ecstasy,

And the ride to fantasy,

The stillness after the storm.

It is when I held your hand,

Ever so delicately,

Lest my heart stop its beat,

And the moment took my breathe away.

And as I led the blind old man,

Right across the street,

That gentle pressure on my hand,

Told me many a tale,

Where light was only darkness,

As the moments ticked away,

And as a smile lit his face,

I knew he was there,

In that moment of darkness,

Lit by divine grace.

Every moment, a lost moment,

And they pass you by,

They have frozen in time,

Though the clock keeps ticking away,

Defined the meaning of your life.

THE JOY OF MOTHERHOOD

THE JOY OF MOTHERHOOD

I write this on the eve of the first birthday of my grandson ‘Moksh’. I was prompted to write this by a mail which I received from my daughter. She rang me up in the morning and asked me to read her mail at once, she said “Dad I just wrote a poem and I want you to read it immediately”. I was pleasantly surprised, for I had thought her very earthy, very grounded for her to indulge in such pursuits. Emotional she is, and she would express it with a good hug or through tears in her eyes. But with the birth of Moksh I found a new resolve, a new strength, a new purpose on her face and in her movements. She seemed to radiate a happiness that seemed beyond definition and I understood that it was ‘The Joy of Motherhood’.

All said and done fathers do love their children with equal passion and they also do express that in different ways, they always project that element of protective cover in their actions. But the bonding between the baby and the mother starting with the umbilical cord can never be replicated in any other relationship. The birth of the child brings in that fulfilment, a deep sense of release after having undergone the pain of labour of pregnancy. She sees a part of her, her very own in her arms when she holds the baby after birth. The bond strengthens as she continues to feed it from her own body. I as a man cannot fully understand the emotions that she undergoes, I can only watch the subtle changes that come over her personality and try to understand but can never experience.

Thus I have watched my daughter over the last year change, into a woman with a passion, a purpose and a face lit up with a sense of fulfilment. She had also found a way of expressing those emotions in the form of a few lines which she thought would be etched into the memory of her child as he grows up to remind him of the love she will always have for him. A fitting gift from a mother to her child on his first birthday, What better gift can there be?

“To Moksh my son on his first birthday

As the year passed me by,
I looked,
For a purpose to standby,
And now I look to see
the future in your eyes.
My purpose today my son,
Is to widen your horizon,
To be able to see the stars,

Invisible to the naked eye.

Happy Birthday Dear Moksh.”

(written by my daughter Svaathi) 

AN ODE TO ‘THE SPARROW’

Nearly a month ago there was a newspaper report which said that sparrows are rarely sighted nowadays and as per the latest census of sparrows based on sightings there were only about two thousand and odd of them in Chennai and were seen only in certain areas of the city. I read it and did not think about it very much at that time.

It was therefore a pleasant surprise when in the morning I heard a chirping sound on the balcony, an unmistakable sound. I knew that it was a sparrow so I tip toed and peeked into the balcony. There it was sitting on the grill and chirping away and was soon joined by its mate. A sighting which gave me immense joy. I realised that I had missed my feathered friend all this while. The last time I saw a sparrow was a few years ago and that to under tragic circumstances. As it chirped and flitted across my drawing room it suddenly came within the range of the ceiling fan, was hit and dropped down dead. As I slowly picked up the lifeless body, took it to corner of the garden in the colony and placed it there, I was overcome by a sadness which I am unable to explain.

I watched both of them as they tried to build a nest in the pocket of my trousers which was left there to dry. I could not afford losing a pant and thought that I would give them a better option when I hung a pouch there for them to build their nest. They did inspect it for a day or two as I watched their efforts. I was hoping that they would take permanent residence there but after three days they did not come. I am still hoping they will return as I wait for the chirping sound in the mornings. I am waiting.

Sometime ago I had written ‘An Ode to The Banyan tree’ and posted it in my blog. Even now I remember the Banyan tree with fondness and due reverence. The two banyan trees that come to my mind are the banyan tree in front of my school on whose branches we used to climb and swing down its branches, and the great Banyan tree in the Theosophical Society in Chennai which is more than four hundred years old and could accommodate more than three thousand people under it.

Imagine a tiny little insignificant sparrow sitting somewhere on one of the branches of the banyan tree. Both have left their imprints in my life. The Banyan Tree has symbolised all that was parental and overwhelming, evoking feelings of reverence and awe, while the Sparrow has symbolised all those undiluted joys of childhood.

So it is with sadness I watched them go, one with the sorrow of having lost a parent and the other a sadness at watching your children grow up and go away.

                                                   

An Ode to ‘ The Sparrow’

My dear little sparrow,

Where have you been?

It’s many a morrow,

Since you were seen?

Have you been robbed

Of your little nest,

A place to comeback,

And take some rest?

A place you can call,

Your very own,

Watch all your kids,

Till they have grown;

And finally one day,

They would fly away,

To find their own mate,

To find their own way;

As you sit gazing at the sky,

You hear your mate’s far away cry,

Then you spread your wings,

Soar away once again.

So it was with joy,

And a strange sort of thrill,

I watched you sitting,

On my window grill,

Then chirping and flitting,

From wall to wall,

Searching for a corner,

In my dining hall.

Soon you found,

There was no space,

You flew away,

To find a better place.

So I hung a little pouch,

On the balcony wall,

Hoping that you would find

This closer to your call.

Oh! where have you gone,

My dear little friend,

For there are no nests,

In and around,

Have you been driven away,

To a far off land,

Or have you just gone,

Never to return.

The pouch still hangs,

On the balcony wall,

And I wait every morning,

To hear your chirping call. 

A MATTER OF OPINION

A Matter of Opinion

Let me not sermonise,

What is right and what is wrong,

For your life is only Yours,

Its for you to live and die.

Who am I to tell you why,

The grass is green,

Or blue is the sky,

You may think it otherwise.

As I sit on the shore,

I find the sea so sublime,

You may say it frightens you;

As I listen to the waves lash,

I feel the stirrings of the soul,

But you may say,

Its marking time.

So who am I to tell you why,

For your life is Yours,

Its for you to live and die.

When I listen to that soulful tune,

As it comes floating from afar,

The song of that solitary reaper,

Evokes a melancholy in my heart,

Memories of a day that made us part,

But I know you will say,

Its nothing but a woman’s cry.

So who am I to tell you why,

For your life is Yours,

Its for you to live and die.

When I stood and gazed,

At the painting on the wall,

In wonderment of the hand

that held the brush,

And brought to life

all the shades of the sublime,

You just stood, then moved on.

So who am I to ask you why,

I had stood and you moved on,

For its your life and you decide.

GITANJALI - AN ANJALI

AN ANJALI TO GITANJALI

Born in Meerut on 12^thJune 1961

Died in Bombay on 11^th August 1977

Yesterday I was cleaning and rearranging the first of my bookshelves, taking the books out dusting them and putting them back in their rightful place in the shelf. They are arranged more or less in chronological order with the date of purchase and the place on the first page of the book. They help me travel back in time as each book has a tale to tell apart from its own. I skim through them before placing them back. I stopped as I took out the book ‘Poems of Gitanjali’, kept it apart for I wanted to go through it again and I did. As I went through it at night I could not help control the emotions that resurfaced once again after a lapse of twenty eight years. Yes, this book was presented to me by one of my friends when she visited us twenty eight years ago, the date 19-4-1984.

I am named

GITANJALI

After the famous book of Tagore

I wish and pray

Oh! help me God

I so live that……..

I live up to the name.

In his introduction Pritish Nandy writes, “Gitanjali went through the prolonged agony of dying of cancer, but not in vain. Her poems are a testament of youth in all its courage and faith. Only by knowing she would die could Gitanjali have achieved these poems which speak for all who have died young and to all who grieve for them. For the rest of us they have an uncanny power of putting life into perspective”.

It appears that her mother found these poems several months after Gitanjali had died, hidden under the mattress in the little corners of her room.

When I go through these poems which I have done a couple times before I am moved by the utter simplicity of the language and the extraordinary in ward journey of a child who was only sixteen, who had loved life and all things around her and ultimately accepting the finality of death – a conscious death one may say. And when she went, she went finally in peace with herself her only regret being that she would be leaving behind her grieving parents and friends. Some of the poems also reflect the extent of concern she has for people awaiting a similar fate as hers. All the poems are introspective, there more than a hundred of them. There are no pretensions which a lot of us resort to sometimes to sound authentic, the poems are pure and come straight from the heart. Her belief in God is un wavering and she speaks to him often and that was her constant source of strength till the end.

I can only reproduce a few lines here from a poem titled ‘Farewell my Friends’

“It was beautiful

As long as it lasted

The journey of my life.

I have no regrets

Whatsoever save

The pain I’ll leave behind.”

Or these lines from the poem ‘Dreams of a Dying Heart’

“Beneath the heavy

Load of pain

Beneath the emotional

Stress and strain

Beneath the ache

Lies a heart

Inside this heart

Lie the dreams….

….the dreams……

Of a dying heart

Dreams of a……

Budding flower.”

I suddenly realised that this is the twenty fifth anniversary of her death, this month August. And why does this move me so much? Coming close on the heels of my last posting on Akash Dube  who also died young of the same ailment, it makes me wonder at the kindling of the inherent strength in them which helped them face the finality of death and accept it with dignity.

The wonderful foreword to the book written by Pritish Nandy sums up saying “Despite our different Gods, our different perceptions of life and truth, each of us walk the same way. Poems like Gitanjali’s occasionally light up the darkness and show us that all sorrow is universal. Just as love is”. It was he who had first published Gitanjali’s poems when he was editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India.

Need I say more. Tagore would have been proud of her.

AKASH DUBE – THE TERRY FOX RUN, CHENNAI 2012

AKASH DUBE – THE TERRY FOX RUN, CHENNAI 2012

26^th AUGUST 2012

The weather Gods smiled today after having shed their tears last night. The morning was beautiful, cool with a faint inkling of a drizzle after last night’s heavy thundershowers, in the pristine campus of IIT Madras. The crowd was already there in the open air auditorium with the Army band playing, waiting for the run to start. Today for the first time since the ‘Run’ was started by him in Chennai he was not there physically, but his spirit hovered around as you watched the faces of the crowd gathered there. It was a fitting homage to an inspiring soul. One could see the joy and the sense of satisfaction in the eyes of his parents who were present there, his dreams having been translated into a reality.

I repeat what I had written in my earlier posting ‘Akash Dube – An Obituary’

“He represents the indomitable nature of the human spirit. How I wish that we can make our life as authentic as his. May be we are too comfortable in our situations”.