Forgotten Poetry...

If I had the depth of these blue waters
if I had the mildness of the white clouds
If I had the colour of your soul
If I had the purity of white snow
If I had ember of your eyes
If I had your thoughts like dew on rose
Would you think of me as I do
Would you be me as I become you?



In the open sunsoaked fields of your soul
let me run across the windswept grass
soak in the young orange rays of the sun
Kiss the bright faces of nodding sunflowers
drape the blue-green of peacocks in my eyes
drink the mist from your eyes
In the open sunsoaked fields of your soul
Let me still my fluttering butterfly heart!

Have you seen gray clouds on a moonlit night
And wind whispering sweet nothings to midnight flowers
On such a night when i crave absolute silence
Tie a boulder to this body
And let me sink into the blue -green depths
Breath that ties me to this body, drifting
Heart rest now, let the blood turn blue
Then i will surface a new soul
From one depth to another
No more body, not a mind
Just absolute bliss just absolute soul

Have you seen gray clouds on a moonlit night
And wind whispering sweet nothings to midnight flowers
On such a night when i crave absolute silence
Tie a boulder to this body
And let me sink into the blue -green depths
Breath that ties me to this body, drifting
Heart rest now, let the blood turn blue
Then i will surface a new soul
From one depth to another
No more body, not a mind
Just absolute bliss just absolute soul

Sleep come to me a necter in jeweled vessel
Sleep come to me a vision in smoky veils
Sleep come to me as i be innocent again
Sleep come to me to remind me of my eternal sleep
Sleep come make me dead to this world
give me dreams of past and future
To make my present rest awhile.

silence, thick like the dusk enveloping the mountains
Of green young moss on ancient rocks
Of placid ponds heavy with floating lotus
Of dust settling across the sunbeams like gold
Silence, thin like breeze on high snow clad peaks.




2007

Time

Time woven with autumn leaves whispers on lonely paths
An empty winter noon brimming with echoes
Moments, thoughts weaving time with green shoots
Warp and weft of silver noons and silent nights
Time woven, then frozen in memory
A cosmos floating in the blue of eternity...

Who am I?

We speak of water conservation and mostly water is a commodity used with caution in Northern India. Suddenly there is a lot of water every where! No need to conserve as the raging rivers threaten to submerge more and more villages and towns in their wake. Clouds have pitched their tents in the sky and refuse to budge mostly. If the weak sunshine streaks the robust hibiscus in my lawn, it quickly sprouts three or four double whorled red flowers, opportunities! We all wait for them! A bright magenta rose swings like a happy child in cool breeze and Earth is like an over fed child, calm and lazy, not even bothering to sprout a few stray grass strands. The chill shrub has shed all the tiny flowers it was sprouting and a crushed onion that I had pushed into the soil with my toe has dissolved in the mush. Mango tree has a sodden bark and sparkling leaves. Nature it seems is too powerful, these months it used to be sweltering heat and this year it feels like Winters! One earthquake and whole villages and small towns vanish into the belly of this live Earth. Like a vibrant, willful mind this Universe works. Hindu scriptures repeat again and again that Universe is within us and we within the Universe. Microcosm and macrocosm are entwined. In a way this is the most beautiful thought as when we drop all the resistance, the world and all that appears external being a part of self, can there be a more relaxed state of mind, heart and body. If everything living and non living is us than what a peaceful Universe it is. No element is outside the self and therefore no friction, agitation or resistance!

Reading about an old eighty-year-old man it felt that there is much beyond our understanding. Such sages have always been in Indian subcontinent. They broke the gross link of mass and energy and fed directly on the all pervading energy. There are various energies all around us only we do not know how to tap into them. But just sustaining on the energy is a short term end goal. The bliss seems to reside in realizing what we are doing here as a speck of intelligence absorbing, assimilating and internalizing the stimuli? Why are we doing this? Even when we appear very primitive with our short History of existence as a race, there is simple beauty about us, just like that rose swinging in the breeze. Maybe this innocence that shine forth now and then is the only reason why nature allows us to live on this planet that we have vandalized so brutally.

Haze and Comprehension...

Since the illness three fingers of my right hand have turned dark and the skin has become thick and gets wrinkled when immersed in water. It is almost as if death had touched my hand through this illness. I had to take out the two rings I wear and even generous massages of cream is not helping.

Soil is wet and giving under the feet, just too see how much it gives in under my weight jumped on one feet , landing on the heel making a little impact on wet soil. A yellow butterfly flits through the branches waving in wind.

Walking through the mall, watching families enjoying meals and window shopping strange thoughts converge on me like tiny arrows. Is this all that life is about? Little enjoyments, an outing in the mall, an expensive meal, a nice dress rustling against the skin? Stupid thought! What is one supposed to do with the hours and moments? Rear children that came through the linear progression of life. I know of a dimension though that takes one away from this run of the mill packaged happiness, that is meditation. It is another plane altogether. The difference is one is with the self, no stimulus from people around, just the self and cessation of thoughts giving way to a stillness like that of a moonlit pond. A pond that spreads and spreads to envelope the being. The physical senses dropping like autumn leaves in a breeze, silently. It is kind of having the opposite of the conventional or traditional sense of fulfillment through things material.


Sometimes how strange it feels that we experience and translate these experiences and are so eager to share it with other humans. How lonely is the existence, it portrays even when we are always surrounded by life.

Comprehension


Sun in the sky dipping the horizons in butter yellow
Blowing breath over the Earth
Birds painted in the stark blue, diamond silver wings
Life condensing over the land,in seas
Tadpoles in the puddles swim in the drizzle, limbs congealing next to placenta
Grit of soil, delicate fragrances...
Becoming a part of me till the sun expands my lungs and filters life
Hair beneath numb fingers, turn copper
Under the butter yellow sun slanting through the wood and leaves...

Krishna

Just now the lawn is being dug by the laborers, they have dug deep and soft soil is strewn across the place. There is a chubby little child with silver amulets strung around the neck. Jayani gave these kids her colouring books and colours. Later, she was admiring herself in the mirror wearing the white ruffled top and blue jeans, she says" mamma, do I look alright?" I cupped her face in my hands and then placed a hand on her heart, this was time to instill a fact. I said till you posses kindness in your heart here, you will be the most beautiful face. If the heart is kind there is always beauty on the face. Am thankful she asked this and seems she did take the meaning seriously. Someday when my grand daughter asks her the same question, she might be able to draw on this security of keeping kindness in the heart.

Yesterday, we were watching this dance drama on Krisna, as Janamashtami is nearing these festivities about Krishn's birth are peaking. Bhagwat Geeta is 6000-year-old epic and it is so contemporary that it can fill one with tremendous zeal to live and fight most difficult circumstances. Krishna is Lord Visnu's incarnation. In Hinduism, there is a trinity of creator Brahma, preserver Vishnu and destroyer Shiva. Vishnu, it is believed, takes incarnations to establish righteousness. Krishna is the avatar who broke all the rigid rules of the society and in the battle of mahabharat where the five Pandava prince were denied their right to land, encourages all kinds of foul play to get even.

Draupadi, the very strong female character surpasses all present day feminists in her courage and conviction. She is Krishna's intimate friend and also wife of the five brothers, who take turns month-wise to enjoy her company. This woman makes sure that her five husbands go to war with the deceitful Kauravas, who cheated in the game of dice and subsequently tried to defile Draupadi as she too was used like an object in the game of dice. She is the enraged queen who is dragged by her hair as she has been won by Kauravas. She berates her husbands and denounces their right over her, claiming that a married woman is not a thing that can be owned. How many women in today's world be so forthright. Mostly all over the world there is just exploitation in all the interpersonal relationships and no justification is ever demanded for all that is wrong.

Sometimes these epics magnify all the things that we take as normal in our existence.

Meditation

I meditated yesterday after a while and discovered that the deep meditative states require a lot of energy.It was wonderful though, feeling weightless and in a state that words cannot describe. When I am in that state, I don't wish to come down. If I compare that state to something that I can put into words, I can not think beyond the beauty of nature.

There was this brook with pristine Himalayan sky reflected in the glacier waters. The peace was unbroken except the wild woody calls of hill birds. Women and girls would sometimes manifest from the deep forests carrying dry pine leaves on their heads. They carry these needle-like leaves and spread them in the cow shed. There were marble boulders, green where the moss grew and breeze held all the mysteries of time. When you sit on Mother Earth in such a sacred place, you can let go of all the senses and become one with whatever intelligence there is.

Long ago just closing my eyes beneath the dancing leaves and rolling clouds brought me in touch with the creator, am amazed how easily the beauty of creation is put within our reach just slipping away from the mundane and slipping into the subtle.

Pic: A woman carrying vegetable in Himalayas

Is living a Dream?

Water descending from heavens and Earth getting saturated. Never seen such ferocious rain. If there was no place for water to go, there would be flooding indeed. When and how does the gentle song of rain on roof turns into a subtle violence?

What a dream kind of existence we have, if we really see, that is. A blue-green earth floating , we don't know where in vastness. A sun that dazzles brightly, transforming itself into all kinds of cells, sap, and blood. Sometimes when am able to really see, I wonder how we humans can drape things with false seriousness as we do. Everything feels like a massive play, just play! What can it be if you do not have an idea about where this planet is heading to? What happens to this intelligence that we call 'me' and if it is this fickle, how can we have any serious past or future.

Still nature seems so serious and involved in all the things that spring out, morning glories are blended just perfectly, violet with magenta and a shade of indigo, mangoes have right sweetness and fragrance. Jasmine twinkle in the nights, tiny insects are decorated with the most delicate patterns? Why so much of effort for something that is drifting into an endless vastness?

As a child I always raked my brains to figure out where the end of Universe would be, how was it possible to have something that didn't end. My father would say it is like numbers, they go on. This somehow would never make sense and I would imagine a boundary marking our milky way and the next galaxy. Guess the question and the curiosity still remains, unanswered. I do not know now but another perpetual quest of mine as a child was to look for 'amrut' the nectar that would allow humans to live indefinitely. I still have some magazine clippings pasted in old revision registers.My plan was to feed this elixir of longevity to my family so that they live for ever. No am not hounded by this quest now, life is beautiful when you can give. When you are on the receiving end, it might loose its beauty. For me to live like a tree is to live forever. Sometimes when I go deep looking into a leaf or a twig admiring its minute beauty, there's a strange sensation, maybe we are a dream, a cosmic consciousness, a dream also snaps off sometimes just like the dream last night when a loving octopus climbed on my shoulder and rested on my cheek. Another when I freed a calf to drink as much milk as it wanted, being loved by the cow. I felt the octopus touch, gentle and loving and then I raise my hand and a little statue of a deity-Hanumana, manifests in my hand and I give it to the octopus. Maybe we are just this-a draem-or why would we be clueless about where our Earth headed to?