Cheesy love

If only wishes were horses, I would’ve ridden the whitest of clouds to rain on you. With my heart as my only steed. 

If only I could make love to you without using words as my crutches. If only you knew that online is my favorite word when I see it below your name.

Well, come inside.

For inside me, is a place that I call home. A place that’s neither heaven nor Earth. This home has a morning rainbow outside our bedroom window. From our porch, you can watch golden clouds that rain cheesy love sandwiches for breakfast. Out near the horizon, on vast meadows, we sow our love to bear fruits in summertime.

So, please don’t sleep. Not yet, my darling. For when you sleep, my words feel drowsy too. 

Then, they want to be:

• The stars you see in your dreams
• That sound you utter… When you wake up… They want to moisten your thin lips.
• The lyrics of your favorite songs when you sing
• And, the silences in between.

Let it flow

Even if I am in a state where I am schizophrenic, I'll be loving you. 

So let it flow. Let love flow.

Today and tonight. 
Midnight and mid-day. 

Let it flow with each pulse. 
From my palm to your wrist. 

From me to you, who I've been in love with 
All this while 
While you've been elsewhere 
In your own heaven and hell 
And Earth in between.

When our love's lake was frozen still
I bloomed as your lotus 
With my leaves detached from your water.

May I say that I miss you? At times?

Imprisoners of time that we are... 
Few more moments with you won't hurt
Neither you, neither me, nor my love.

Can love be so liberating yet tied up? Together?

Will it always be you in me and me in you? 
Afar?

Please hold my hand as I close my eyes 
And take my last breath
My last sip
My last dip in the holy river.

Don't worry, 'cause I'll die soon in your arms. 
My body will be
Carried away on this hammock of our dreams.

Not a day goes by 
Without you haunting my mindspace and heartscape
Without you knocking me down. 

Not a night goes by 
That I don't feel your moist skin,
Your warm touch,
Your deep sighs. 

Not a morning comes by 
Without me wishing...
For your love,
Mysterious like you but eccentric like me.

Maana ke hum yaar nahin...

Every once in a while, a song hums into your life and takes your breath away. Previously, I had fallen in love with Baawra mann and Dil toh bachha hain jii...

Those songs were and are a significant part of my life. Baawra mann, in fact, has become an anthem of sorts.

Last week, I saw this hidden gem of an unknown movie titled Meri Pyaari Bindu. Very filmy, very narrative, and yet, very poignant. 

The movie slowly but surely grew into my psyche and established a personal space there; mind you, it's not a great film by any standards but it had something that involved me. 

Maybe the story was very relatable and, in parts, it was very predictable too. In spite of a very badly characterized female lead, the movie held its own.

The song. Well, the song. Is it just that? 

It made me want to walk in the rain with her. Holding her hands and stealing glances every once in a while... 

This song is an ode... 

To all that was possible. 
To a mysterious smile, which only the observing heart catches. 
To paths that were left incomplete. 
To love unrequited. 
To the field beyond right and wrong. 
To the crevices and cracks where it lies wounded and curled up. Like a cat.
To the only kind of love that lasts. Outlasts life itself. 
To the yearning and pain that takes the taste out of tea, the bite out of coffee, and the fragrance out of a flower.

To pasts real and imagined... And to that surreal boundary where they meet.:-)

Peanut and Pixie

We are not all beautiful.
We are not all ugly.
Each one of us simply is.

Lao Tzu had pondered over this long ago as did I on that fateful night. If everyone is beautiful, what is ugliness?

Well, Cookie had just given birth to Peanut and Pixie. 

Osho, the noble, proud, and caring father of the two, was watching me handle the two just-born kittens with shivering hands.

Nihilism and all other isms took a back seat in my train of thoughts. That moment in time, when I held them. Close to my chest and deep in my palms. Like an old, long lost lover, who you still hold on to for your dear life. 

Their closed eyes, shivering bodies, small and soft nails, and swaying gait made way for a whole set of new meanings that life offers. 

I realized that miracles aren't made; they're born every day. 

New life when it kicks in in any form is something that you can't explain with words. But a certain word made sense to me that day: Spectacular.

The insignificance of all our lives on this planet and elsewhere in the Universe didn't matter. All that mattered are the two new lives, who entered our lives that night. 

Since that day, the songs have stopped, the music is milder; all we want to hear are kitten noises even in our much deprived sleep.

Stillness

The hill looks like any other hill. But just like today, it has beckoned millions to it since time immemorial. Mahatmas and siddhars and maharishis and seekers and sinners et al.

The Ramana Parayana that starts after the abhishekam and aarti breaks the enforced silence and self-imposed silences in the samadhi hall. Every once in a while, you could hear an air horn from a rickety, rusty bus. Or a peacock crows. The breeze is still but brings a waft of camphor and sambrani in distinct waves.

Ramana's piercing eyes stare at you from all four walls and like many others felt, you still feel his presence here long after his samadhi on April 14, 1950. 

Behind the samadhi and the ashram, the hill looms as a great answer to all seekers of truth. Covered by low-hanging, rain-carrying clouds, its peak is invisible. Night dawns; lakhs of devotees circumambulate Arunachala during the full moonlit night...

Close your eyes and just sit. Chumma iri. Be as you are.

The aroma of mysticism and esoteric faith combine to give you a headiness at Virupaksha cave. If you're entitled, you may hear Aum vibrating all around you.

Just outside the ashram, bohemians, backpackers, and sadhus share tales and tea and lives. While cattle, dogs, monkeys, and peacocks are fed by few kind folks like Devraj, I sit and try to be still. 

Still, I am not still.

This was actually written in October 2016 but posted only now. :-)

Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye

"Are you her chosen one?" he asked himself. 

Long into the night, as he tossed and turned through yet another sleepless night, he pondered upon his eternal question, "Are you a victim of circumstances? Of life? Of ras leela?" 

"Are you blessed by just arriving at the right time at the right place? 
Or, are you cursed by arriving at the wrong time at the wrong place?"

Silence. 

Just then his refrigerator's compressor kicked on.

"Do you deserve to be where you are now? 
Do you deserve the role(s) you play? 
Is your role sustained due to fear? 
Are you irreplaceable? 
Are you just her 'also love'? 
Or, are you her passion for life?"

More silence.

"Are you just another throw of dice in this random universe? Are you the method in this madness? Are you the order in this chaos?" he asked himself. 

Deafening silence.

Finding no answers, he burned inside. Nothing could quench his thirst. Nothing could deliver him peace. Nothing could deliver him what he seeks though he seeks what others have sought before and attained.

If he wasn't the one, shouldn't he leave? Make way for love to bloom as it should? Is he an obstruction that only he can destroy?

Shouldn't he make way for two souls who yearn for each other?
Why is he just a witness in his own love story? 
Why did he expect her to say: 
"No matter what, I would've always chosen you."?

He switches on the TV and surfs. There is nothing better to do. His mind hums and drums. He listens to old classics on the Mastii channel; one of his favorite songs is on: "Chalo ek baar phir se... Ajnabi ban jaye hum dono..."

He watches and listens to few more songs. Songs that bring about associations of the past.  

Meanwhile, over her wallpapered doe-eyes on his cracked Home and Lock screen, his Asus zenphone screams, "It's 1 am. Go to sleep. Try at least. There's work tomorrow." He craves for a vada pav. He smiles and brushes away that impossible wish.

Loud silence. 

A train's horn breaks it, as he lies down again. He looks at the pillow she left behind, as he breaks into a cold sweat. He sniffs her pillow and that kurti she had left upon her stuffed toy dog. They still smell of her perspiration's odor mixed with her deodorant's scent. Always a heady mix for him. A dog barks in the orchard adjacent to his building's compound. Few more join in the howling party. 

He had barely slept a wink when he heard a neighbor washing clothes in the balcony diagonally above his flat... Now, a familiar and punctual sight and sound. It was time to get up. Rub those red eyes. Stretch that neck and move those heavy shoulders. To go to work. His only dreaded constant.

Going through the motions without her by his side, he laughed on the outside. All his wisdom and his knowledge deserted him like morning birds that flew away. 

He wanted to be with her. By her side always. As her one. But he was alone. Again. 

And this time, for the first time ever... He felt lonely, too.

After a long time, a mood piece. I love writing mood pieces. :-)

Lovecycle

She's every man's dream come true.
But only for a few.
Because the rest lost out on her essence.

Her valleys and peaks
Want me to be a cartographer again.

And I shall mark the equator and the poles                       
With my ship sailing through a thousand and eight storms
On her...                  

Passion is something she's never known;
It's a history that she's yet to witness.
For what she's seen is not even a fraction
Of what's awakened inside me.

I am becoming a better man
And all because a painter painted 
Love 
On my heart.

My eyes burst
Because they couldn't take it all.

And then I closed my eyes 
To see her 
Staring back through her paintings.

Her sighing heart waxed and waned 
To measure her love 
But our frequency was higher. 

My heart stopped.
Her heart beat.

And death was certain.                       
For it's who could separate their bodies...
But couldn't tear apart their souls. 
So it gave up at Shiva's feet.                       
 
We found us there.
Our lovecycle completed.

A dreamer's dream fantasy

I have fever. 
An intense, cold fever. 

I dream of her nipple, 
Her extended goosebump,
On her satiny skin.
From her areola, my warm breath sends out a ripple.

The breeze howls through the sliding window.
While I slide her camisole off her tattooed back.

But is it me she dreams of? Is it her I make love to?
Or, are our bodies remembering them?
One by one? 

Her moan escapes through the half-unhinged noise of the bathroom window.
And the exhaust fan shoos away our body heat. 

As our otherworldly cats try to meow in our cold balcony... 
We climax as one.
Sitting up together without stopping our perspiration,
We script each other's fantasy. 

Stillness quivering, our fever slowly subsides.
 
Is this love our fever, pain, or something like it? Or, only a bit more...
Is this my very bedroom, my very life?
My dream?
My troubled awakening? 

Is this all a part of another dream from which someone else hasn’t woken up? Yet?