Healing with Hurt

Music moves us all. Even those that are deaf and blind. And they say, music has no language but we're not perfect humans. 

I am not. 

I was always biased towards Hindustani music, ghazals, and old film songs in Hindi, Malayalam, and to a certain extent, Tamil.

All that changed. One night with Varsha... Her choice of English songs and Western music is just like her passion in culinary skills, teaching, sketching, painting, and writing. Her versatility and range of music kind of covers an entire universe of artistes I never knew about. 

It all started with few questions like "Who are your top 5 singers in each genre and language?' and ended up with me loving Hurt by Johnny Cash. 

What a voice, what a feel... This is my new anthem. This is similar to all the Suzannes, River of Dreams, Bob Dylan, ghazals, and Bawra mann put together!

Listening together to world music, soft rock, and hard rock, with her pillow close to yours is something that I should've done long ago. Well, here's to more such musical and enlightening nights with my greatest love...

Just two blinks

No personal milestone of mine has reached the annals of this blog but you and I deserve a place here. For, this is where my life and love explodes and implodes simultaneously.

Two years is certainly a short time in the history of marriages and anniversaries. Nothing BIG most would say. And I agree. 

Nothing is BIG enough to come between us.

But we know that the years we spend together and the sense of time we feel don't matter in the end. 

It's the intensity that matters. And we know that these two years were the most intense period of our lives... We went through the roller coaster ride that took our collective breath away...

We loved everything the world threw upon us, we loved everything we threw ourselves upon! We witnessed new lives being born while few deaths were encountered too. We won some, and we lost some.

We understood and accepted each other along with each other's tiniest and tidiest quirks, idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, OCDs, and what not! With tender love and care. 

Your colors and paints made love with my words and dreams. Together, they became our greatest muses. They intertwined and formed our fantasy-filled world. 

That world where magic is normal. Where magic unfolds and blooms when you open your kohl-lined eyes to doodle and paint the canvas of our lives... Where my love for ghazals and your passion for world music spend evenings intoxicated in each other's rhythm.

That beautiful world where all your loves and all my loves became our common loves. And we nonchalantly look at so many staring wonder struck at our Utopian marriage where there are no masks, no pretenses, and no secrets. A marriage that would've made him proud! 

Us... A companionship like none other. Almost otherworldly for mere mortals... A companionship where your painting fuels my words and my words give you courage. A companionship built upon conversations and healthy debates that rival Quora and Facebook combined! A simple relationship where our gods and demons sleep peacefully side by side... 

A companionship where we witness other marriages crumble due to lies, or crack due to untold truths, or hold on to masks of happiness that veil years of sorrow, regret, what ifs, secret affairs, and what not. 

My love, you complete me and I include you. Our yin and yang complete and complement our cycles of love, life, and longings. 

But I am afraid on this day... Very afraid. Afraid not whether my words have failed me but have I failed my words!?

An epitaph on Devraj... Mortal words from a candle to the sun

Devraj is no more. In his physical body. Rather, I would confidently proclaim, he attained his samadhi in Thiruvannamalai.

Thiruvannamalai… That place where words are never enough. They make no sense in front of the silent sage’s ashram; they’re not needed in front of the majestic mountain.

Ever since I stepped on this sacred soil way back in 2005, I have had the privilege to meet with few souls, who’re truly blessed.

Prasadji, Devraj, and Swamiji are three interesting characters, quirky and enlightened in their own ways, I guess. While Swamiji appeals to your seeking intellect and Prasadji appeals to your whimsical, musical, loving heart, it was Devraj, who touched your soul directly with his measured words, with his loud silences.

A nondescript man always shabbily dressed in a four-pocket shirt and dirty ochre-colored mundu with a jhola slung over his shoulder, he was the seeker I thought I’ll become. I may someday, if I am also as blessed as him.

Here was a taxi driver from Toronto who spent six months in Toronto and six months in Thiruvannamalai ever since he stood astounded at Ramana Ashram in 1974.

“I had a lot of questions when I came here first. Then, one by one, each question melted away… You have made plans? Well, let’s see you know! For you have your plans and then there is always a master plan…”

His words will echo throughout my path of seeking.  

Devraj was the first person Prasadji introduced me to in Thiruvannamalai way back in 2009 when I met the former at the Ashram bookstore. Devraj was instrumental in reintroducing Prasadji’s son to him after they had lost touch with each other for a long time.

Theirs was a friendship to treasure… Devraj will always get a packet of milk and tell Prasadji to make tea. They’ll rant about each other but equally care for the other a lot.

Devraj was an ideal sadhak. During the earlier years of knowing him, he would easily circumambulate the hill twice on the same day! That’s a 28 km tiring walk for a diabetic with overgrown toenails! During the later years, he switched to a simple moped as his legs started giving up on him. But, till the last day he lived, he would’ve fed all the stray cows, monkeys, and dogs along girivalam before having a morsel of food himself!

People like him are not born anymore.

He would never stay overnight anywhere if he must leave Thiruvannamalai! He’ll take the night bus both ways either to Chennai or Bangalore from Thiruvannamalai and return to his ‘home’ the very next day. In his earlier years, every time he had to leave for Toronto to stay there for six months before he could return, he used to fill a 10-liter can of water from Skanda Ashram and carry that as check-in luggage! He used to mix that water with the drinking water in Toronto before quenching his thirst! He made sure those 10 liters lasted those six months!

Towards the last couple of years before his passing away, he used to travel to goshalas in Bangalore and Chennai to spend a night and take care of the cows there. Such was his devotion, his compassion for all.

It’s a day of mixed emotions and feelings all blended and beat inside my mind’s grinder.

In the usual way, I am saddened as he’s left a void that none can fill. I no longer can hear that voice over the phone asking me, “Are you in the Ashram? Okay! I’ll see you there in sometime!”

But, in a weird way, I am happy to know that he attained samadhi near his home, his beloved mountain.

You’ll always be a lighthouse in my life, Devraj.

My journey of seeking got its biggest boost from having met you, known you, and spending a lot of my confused moments with you in silence and in conversation.

May your light continue to light my path and those of others, who were blessed with your love and compassion.

Aksar, ek chai par...

Aksar akele chai bana leta hun mein,

Kabhi akele baith jaata hun mein,

Auro ki yaad aksar kar bhi leta hun mein,

Par sirf tumse milne ki asha rakhta hun mein.

Yunhi aksar chai bana leta hun mein.

Humare haath mein kuch lakheeren nahin,

Humare neend mein koi sukoon nahin,

Humare raat mein thodisi chandniwaali baat nahin.

Humare hazaaron khwahishon mein ek bhi fariyaad nahin.

A broken record

Uske dhadakte dil mein 

Kisike dastak ka intezaar liye,

Phir gaya woh kisi aur ke ghar,

Phir ek baar dastak dene.

A black Innova sped across the Chennai citylights amidst flashing red and blue lights on police Innovas! KK croons Pyar ke Pal on 91.9. In that sacred space, Urdu blended with Hindi and touched his skin mixed with the aircon air.

Kisi aur ka dard apna ke,

Apno se mooh chupake,

Cinema ke sang roya woh.

Off late, life has been strange. I mean it was never a stranger. But yeah, it was certainly stranger than before. It beat him down and when he was a bit broken, it took him in its arms and loved him.

Ek marmik si katha hain uski,

Thodi poignant thi, 

Kahin thodisi poetry tooti hui si!

Kahin bachpan se uske khaas dost ki khaas khilone se judi si!

A feeble attempt at translating the above Hindi portions below; hamari yeh ek aur gustakhi maaf kar dena…

In his beating heart, 

Awaiting someone's knock, 

Again, he went to somebody else's house,

To knock at the door once again.

Facing someone else's pain,

Turning his face away from his own (kith and kin),

He cried along with cinema.

A poignant story is his,

A bit poignant, of course, 

Somewhere a bit of poetry broken apart,

Somewhere joined with his childhood's favorite friend's favorite toy, maybe!