The Demise of God

The death of Krishna is disturbing. Krishna, who had been my reason to believe in Hinduism, dies too at the end. As I finished another interpretation of Mahabharata for the third time, my heart is filled with agony. My belief in Krishna made me feel that I can have a niche in the religion. I can be somewhere between a staunch fundamentalist and intolerant secularist. I cannot be atheist. Somehow, I always managed to escape the death of the super hero in the earlier versions but this time my heart is filled with grief after reading about his death in detail. Krishna, the strategist dies the meanest death possible in the history. He dies like a commoner when the arrow of the hunter hits him. Unlike Duryodhana’s and Karna’s death, when petals fell from the sky on their bodies, Krishna dies an unknown death; his offence being breaching dharma at various points and here I was illusioned to believe that Krishna is the super hero of the history. As a ritual of my life, I visited the Krishna today; I looked into his eyes and asked him, ‘Are you here?’ I am deeply hurt to know that Krishna was mortal too. There is a sense of emptiness, too personal to explain in words. At Krishna’s death it’s Karna’ lines which give me some sense of relief, I see it now: this world is swiftly passing. Ironically, I know deep down that when I would be reading Mahabharata for the nth time, I would still be asking Krishna for all the support to read about his death. Such is the illusion created by Krishna.

Maddu-The Oblivion

A pleasant reflection,

Shining and sheening,

the divine mirror, giving life a meaning

the ramble began.

The deepening eyes, the inviting soul,

Drowned in them, I forget my role,

The beautiful 'soul', with an angel’s role,

Flashes the smile, and I am speechless for a while,

and the soul was at inflection.

From coarser and hoarser, the 'sorcerer'

flew with it to the wonderland

The asymmetrical curves,

The serpentine journey,

Travelling for a distance

I reach the brewery to begin the 'poetry'.

Poem on 'poem'? I am perplexed.

Dipped and soaked,

Here I am, in the invisibility cloak,

The delirium begins, away from them,

Away from the sane, who pushed me here.

here I am with the insane who loves me here,

I wish to die in the oblivion, Oblivion to the obvious,

I wish to end with the ‘oblivion’.

P.S. The poem is dedicated to my Friend, Philospher and Guide -Madhushree Munsi

Destruction...

The deceptive smile, and my receptive smile, one blow And I die again. I have always enjoyed the consequences of death, the macabre ghastly death which just washes away all acquired in one blow; the imperfections, the negativities and the unsolved. It takes away all, the unwanted and the wanted, and I am left to create again. There is a catch in this. I thought that I was born to acquire again, afresh, the better acquisitions this time. The vicious cycle continued till the time I understood the futility of the process. Acquisition was the byproduct. Understanding futility was something in which I should have been interested in.

The Power of First

It is that old stone I have preserved when I have thrown several of those precious gems in the lake. My leanings in this expedition always ask me to preserve it, the power of first as they say. That optimum perfection which is attained when the mind shuts it’s door and the bond is built up through a single channel. The one stone which my mind says is worthless yet I am stuck to the one, clear the dirt hoping hopelessly that it would turned to one of those gems I threw the other day. What perplexes me is this strange fixation for such a long time and the gems haunt me sometimes making me realize what a fool I have been for all this while. The realization also has a discovery of inner strength which says stone or gem; it’s the first that matter.

Stress!!

The other day I was reading an article on growing stress and anxiety amongst today’s youth. The article defined stress as a situation when all the questions related to different aspects of mind converge together. Pardon me for the trivia but it reminded me of my physics classes in standard 9th when they taught me focus-the point of convergence of all the light rays from an object; the point which made the visibility of object possible. I am discussing it here because I am writing this piece in a stressed state of mind and all the experiences of my life have converged in to bring negative connotation to the word ‘focus’ in my life. For instance, I am stressed because my supervisor has refused to give me the reference letter for my doctoral candidature and I have no clue what to do about it. To escape the stress, I call up a friend, who says when are you getting married? You are already on the wrong side of 20s. To escape this, I disconnect the call.Sinding the possible solution of this answer, I call up the guy who I am in one sided love from quite sometime thinking that subtle romance might help me in coming out of situation. He asks me for my postal address to send his wedding invitation. I get a mild heart attack after managing to congratulate him. My maid calls me up saying that she has broken her leg and she would not come for days. This is a last straw and I completely lose my head. So the point of convergence include stress factors arising due to failure to seek admission in any good university, fear of losing friends in absence of a married relationship status, losing a possible source of emotional security in a month’s time, absence of romance in life for innumerable years, fear of physical stress because of doing all the house hold tasks. I think all of them together and they appear like entangled pieces of thread. I do not know which one to solve first. I am just incapable. I see DARK and close my eyes and tell myself ‘let it go’ but my mind says how you could put your admission in peril? How could you never think of marriage by this age? Why did not you tell him that you liked him? Why the hell you kept the maid at the first place? Why are not you hardy enough to solve all the problems yourself? I am bashed continuously by this force for another fifteen minutes. I take the knife, cut the entangled pieces into millions of pieces. They included my dream too and I destroyed them all in one go.

Rendezvous with the Renaissance man

Waiting in anticipation for that dull afternoon to end, Sia looked at the seat to her right. That empty chair which always brought to her all the happiness of this world. How she was reincarnated when she had come to know that the chair would not have dried ginger faced creature anymore. She switched the system off, went out of the building and was home.

These meetings always excited her. Conversations with a potential ‘renaissance man’ over a cup of coffee as it used to be when she was 21. Things have evolved now-progressive or retrogressive-she prefers believing the former. This was going to be a conversation over a glass of Texas tea with good music playing. Probably like one of those mesmerizing evenings in Katmandu. Mountains taught her to enjoy herself without a renaissance man. She learnt to talk to herself with panache, Pink Floyd playing at the back. She missed the fresh air here. That ugliness in the oxygen she inhaled. She was getting used to it in past nine years and the ugliness befriended her hatred. The ugliness always produced that urge to look for a renaissance. Those imprints of calming sea and the man waking fearlessly convinced her that the quest would end this time. Her stop had come.

She got down from the train and found herself walking towards him. That idiosyncratic look in black and shaved off head, those brown eyes which warned her earlier also but it was an adventure and she just cared about conversations hoping to get some reflection, some light in the darkness. They were walking and she saw the guard and the place. Reminded of the last experience, she decided not to go. They passed it but she had already clicked the picture. She knew where the conversation would be.

Sia has always been like that-a cat. She was loyal to places and all the non-living things around. People did not interest her much except for this quest. She looked straight into his eyes; she knew the man can be trusted for everything. The only assumption is that he is a fearless bastard. She knew the bridge is not to be formed but the streams have to flow in parallel. They would never meet. The eyes were deep though; honest eyes screaming at her, ‘I will not harm you until you permit'. He went out for a while. She sloshed herself, hoping to be brainless but she knew deep down her brain is too evolved for that. She could never afford to be a woman. Her softness was to be kept locked. She would take it out only for infants, probably for her kids someday. Her heart, soul and body would be shared by one. She believed in virginity of her thoughts.

She did not want conversation to end. She wanted it to flow. It was flowing.The Renaissance man was fading now, and it was just those brown eyes she was seeing. She wanted to drown into them. The conversation was flowing. It turned into soliloquy soon.She was turning the pages back,'Memoirs of Kathmandu'.

The quest continues. ‘Mountains and sea don’t meet probably’. Sia sighed

The Dark Red

And I wish to see you in RED

Here I am in the darkest red,

It’s still haunting me, the ghastly site. The crushed, crumbled remains, red in color. I could not differentiate if it was an organism or an organ. I could see the movement, the desire to be back again but that invisible force gnawing it, propelling it towards the destiny. The mass is whittling gradually turning into red, the free liquid. The red is spreading fast and I am scared to get engulfed in the redness. My eyes closed in fear and exasperation, I pray and demand - the past is to be returned to it or it reaches the future soon. The macabre present haunts me. The redness is waist deep reaching up till the toungue, the slimy ,salty liquid and I could see the source still moving, organ or organism- I still don’t know.