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Friday 19 June 2009

Our poor man

The death bound did avoid the puddle, a journo wrote he saw
Just before the slithering men of rules consumed another raw

Wonder if he was human enough for by Jove he jumped aside
It's learnt no one gave a monkey’s for that leap loud and wide

Rumor was his only sin was calling the warder son of a whore
They also said that day the bum was clearly drunk to the core

The warder was a cultured man, so he chose an elegant word
And ‘you bastard’ was the last on Earth our hangin man heard

Was his twitching body a sign of life or was he just prison cred
For fellow convicts did ask the hangman if easy went the dead

They talked of him on smuggled pot while dreaming of the bar
Said he did not deserve the fate, you know how prisoners are

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Monday 1 June 2009

A walk in the dark

Happiness and truth are, as widely believed, contradictory. When a person seeks happiness, despite the probability that it might conflict with the truth, he makes a choice. 
It’s the nature of the beast within to build walls around this state and convince itself that nothing else exists. This intemperance, even when sought at one’s own cost, seems to be becoming increasingly tolerable.
This may well be to a great extent responsible for the resurgence of jingoism in its most potent form. The specifics do not matter to the propagators who are guilty of this self-gratifying and utterly reckless interpretation of the past and the present. There has always been a difference in perceptions on either side in case of a conflict, but this chasm is deepening thanks to the ease with which the modern day ‘experts’ are able to reach out to an audience equally willing to lend them an ear.
Individuals who, as they claim to understand it, in pursuit of something deeper end up imbibing a dangerous, almost psychopathic, understanding of either of these states. This distorted sense of freedom not only makes individuals ready to snap up things without though but also gives rise to a strange dependency on each other.
How much should then be read into words crying profanation, especailly when seen against this sort of self-indulgence.
The media, television in particular, in its twisted attempts of a bait and switch, has become a heaven for this emerging breed of know-it-alls. Half-baked opinions have become the order of the day. But, having said this, the importance of opinions can not be undermined. It remains the discretion of the organization in question who to take it from and this is where television channels, in their myopic view which seldom veers beyond TRPs, often lose the plot.
I have no particular fondness for print either, but let’s keep that aside for some other time for the intention of writing this is not to talk about the fast declining quality of journalism, which is probably now an accepted phenomenon.
Somewhere between the preacher n the follower exists sanity. And although many continue to reject the debris of impending disasters strewn around them, it’s becoming hard stage, for the optimist, to wade through.
Therefore, in most cases the call for a blood feud owing to victimization of some kind holds little water and is reduced to merely, and alarmingly so, a hedonistic exercise by those propagating them.The impact of the words of ‘experts’ of all kinds in pursuit of their sixty seconds of fame cannot be neglected, especially when the number of ‘mental wreaks’ willing to lap it up is greater than ever today.
So, what is this quest? Is this the quest of truth when facts are picked from the past to score a point just because someone can? More often than not such callus indulgences result in a gross miscalculation of the situation at hand and so potent is this stupor of deriving fulfillment with the inconsistent use of facts that often the perpetrators don’t even realize the gravity of it. Only the victims do, and they are termed, quite extraordinarily, the ordinary people.
Interestingly, as I write this, LeT Chief Hafiz Saeed has been freed by the Lahore High Court. Pakistanis believe he, as the Head of Jamaat-ud-Dava, has done a lot for the ordinary people. Indians say he’s a self-centered criminal responsible for the killing of many ordinary people. Perhaps they are both right.


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Sunday 31 May 2009

Against hope


The raindrop on my brow
Lost itself on my touch
Like a lover smitten
Melts-in sans wait much

Woes of living away so far
Were not to upset my spirit
If these forlorn tears
Didn't look raindrops a bit

No news from winds so thick
Nothing from the skies
Wonder if I breathe still
The life in her sighs

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When the light fades


I build myself again, again to go,
Leaving some gentle moments behind,
When the demons of solitude let me smile;
They desert me often, often they’re kind.

I find my answers, I breathe them in,
And keep them there before they hurt;
When the man in me erupts to rule,
I become a child, a child curt.

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Who am I?


Not a believer inside the mosque 
Nor a pagan disciple of false rites
Not the pure amongst the impure
Neither Moses, nor the Pharoh
Not in the holy Vedas
Nor in opium, neither in wine
Not in the drunkard`s craze
Niether awake, nor in a sleeping daze
In happiness nor in sorrow
Neither clean, nor a filthy mire
Not from water, nor from earth
Neither fire, nor from air, is my birth
Not an Arab, nor Lahori
Neither Hindi, nor Nagauri
Hindu, Turk, nor Peshawari
Nor do I live in Nadaun
Secrets of religion, I have not known
From Adam and Eve, I am not born
I am not the name I assume
Not in stillness, nor on the move
I am the first, I am the last
None other, have I ever known
I am the wisest of them all
Bulleh! do I stand alone?
-Baba Bulleh Shah




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Saturday 10 January 2009

Who decides?

Only now, on the other end of their happiness, I seek to depart from the old ways; in doing so leave some disturbance behind, writhing and moving ever so eerily to empty out a defined space only to see another hopeful get sucked in.

There isn't much I read in such judgements. All my life, with every thought, I have seen them take their own course. Easy, isn't it, to analyse everything right down to the last detail. Conscious decisions, all taken by the same brain, lead you. So, what's new you may ask? The way life unfolds leaves but little tags behind. And no judgement, made howsoever efficiently, follows the trails. In hindsight, and such a pleasure hindsight is, it all makes sense - to go back and think, to look far and think, to not think but feel - it all leads to just one question. Would it have been such anyway?

A mosquito came and sat on my arm and lay there a long time. I wondered if I should take the life out of it and perhaps waited for a reason to do so, it being a mosquito, strangely, didn't seem fair, but no pain came at all. A rare moment of deviation could have let it be there but it stayed and lived. But, again, in hindsight I think I chose the better option.

From all the faces in the crowd I picked one. I wouldn't know if it was the best for a long time. As it turned out, it wasn't even close.    



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