A meaningless puzzle?

The universe does not care that you forgot to pay your water bill.

It doesn’t care about your promotion, your heartbreak, or the fact that you’ve spent the last three hours doom-scrolling through the digital landfill of other people’s curated lives.

In the grand, silent theater of the cosmos, your entire existence is a rounding error... a brief, frantic spark between two infinities of darkness.

And that, quite frankly, is the most diabolical joke ever played on a sentient species.

 

You’re a biological prank

You are a collection of atoms that, through a series of increasingly improbable accidents, developed the ability to feel anxious about its own mortality. For four billion years, life on this damp rock has been a brutal, red-toothed relay race.

Your primate and even reptilian ancestors dodged asteroids, outran predators, and survived plagues just so they could pass a baton of scorched DNA to you.

And what do you do with this hard-won gift? You sit in traffic and wonder if you’re "living your best life".

Biologically, you are a meat-suit piloted by a chemical-soaked sponge. Your brain is wired for survival on the savannah, yet it’s forced to navigate tax codes and existential dread. 

 

We are the only creatures on Earth that know we are going to die, and we spend every waking second trying to pretend we don’t. We build cathedrals, write symphonies, and launch rockets into the void, all as a desperate "I was here" scratched into the bark of a tree that will be cut to be a piece of paper that’ll be shredded in sometime.

 

You’re a graveyard of ambition

Look back at history. It is a long, bloody ledger of people who thought they were the protagonists of reality:

• Ozymandias had his statues; now they are stumps in the sand.
• The Romans had their eternal city; now it’s a picturesque backdrop for tourists eating overpriced gelato.
• The Genghis Khans and Napoleons burned half the world to ensure their names would live forever, but a million years from now, the sun will still rise over a planet that has forgotten the sound of every human tongue.

We are standing on a pile of skulls several miles high, and we have the audacity to find ourselves "unique." Every war ever fought, every empire ever raised, every "unspeakable tragedy" is eventually reduced to a thin layer of compressed carbon in the Earth’s crust.

To the universe, the fall of a civilization is no more significant than a gust of wind blowing through a canyon.

 

You’re ‘scientific’ silence

 

Science used to be a comfort. It was the torch we held up to the darkness. But the more we learn, the more the darkness seems to grow.

We discovered that we aren't the center of the solar system. Then we found out the solar system is a speck in a galaxy of 400 billion stars. 

Then we realized our galaxy is just one of two trillion in the observable universe. We are living on a "pale blue dot" suspended in a sunbeam, surrounded by a vacuum so vast and so cold it defies human comprehension.

And then there is entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the ultimate cosmic "No." Every star will eventually burn out. Every galaxy will drift so far apart that the night sky will become a perfect, terrifying black. The universe is heading toward a state of maximum disorder, a "Heat Death" where nothing happens, forever.

The universe isn't just indifferent to you; it is actively erasing the possibility of you.

 

So, where does that leave us?

If history is a graveyard and science is a countdown to a cold, dark room, seeking "meaning" seems like a fool’s errand. 

We look for signs in the stars, but the stars are just nuclear furnaces millions of light-years away. 

We look for purpose in our work, but our work is just a way to trade our finite hours for pieces of paper we can use to buy things to distract us from our finite hours.

But here is the twist: the punchline that makes the joke worth it.

The very fact that you are a glitch in the system is what makes you a god. In a universe governed by cold equations and dead matter, you are a point of light that can think. 

You are the universe’s way of looking in a mirror and saying, "Huh, so that’s what I look like."

The lack of inherent meaning isn’t a prison; it’s a blank check. If the universe didn’t give you a purpose, it means you don’t owe the universe anything. 

You are free to invent a meaning that is entirely, selfishly, and beautifully yours:

• Meaning is the taste of a perfectly ripe mango or a peach or a strawberry or a blueberry.
• Meaning is the way the light hits the floor at 4:00 PM on a Tuesday.
• Meaning is the irrational, defiant act of loving another person even though you both know it may end in grief.

We are ghosts driving machines made of stardust. We are the only part of the cosmos that can laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

To seek meaning in the "big picture" is to miss the point; the big picture is a vacuum. The meaning is in the pixels. Maybe.

 

That’s it!

The crisis ends when you realize that "mattering" is a human invention. The universe doesn't need you to matter. It just needs you to be.

You are a temporary arrangement of matter that has been granted a backstage pass to the greatest show in existence. You can spend your time worrying about your seat, or you can watch the performance before the lights go out.

So, stand on your tiny rock. Look up at the billions of cold, dead suns. Feel the crushing weight of history and the terrifying scale of the void. And then, do something purely, pointlessly human:

• Make a cup of coffee. 
• Hug a friend. 
• Write a poem that no one will read in a thousand years.

The universe is a vast, empty house. But for a few decades, you get to be the one who leaves the lights on.

You, matter

Consider the dust mote floating in the shaft of afternoon sun.
It navigates the air like a hull-less ship on a frantic ocean,
obeying currents of heat we cannot feel,
turning invisible the moment the light shifts two degrees to the west.
You're not so different from that suspension.

You're are the brief interruptions in the long, monotone hum of geology,
flickering with the same terrifying brevity
as a match struck in a cavern larger than the dark.

And yet, imagine the silence of a library without the turning of a single page.

Imagine the ocean without the friction of the wave against the rock.

There is a strange, quiet weight to being small.

If the universe is a sprawling, infinite fabric,
then you're the tension in the thread,
not the pattern itself, but the strain that holds the weave together.

Think of the comma in a sentence written by a giant.
It has no sound of its own,
it is merely a pause, a breath, a tiny, hooked mark
dwarfed by the nouns and verbs that surround it.

But without that pause,
the meaning collapses into noise.

To be insignificant is to be the vessel, not the water.

It is to be the dark space between the stars that allows the light to travel.

You matter not because you persist,
but because for a fraction of a second,
you're the only place in the cosmos
where the universe could look at itself and ask,
“What am I?”

Presence

I am rediscovering that life's profoundest meaning is found in raw presence: to be rooted in the world through vivid sensation and fully alive within one's own physical self.

What we inhabit now is its bleak antithesis: a state of semi-conscious languor, a perpetual, desensitizing bath in the digital amniotic fluid of dopamine's relentless cravings, spikes, pursuits, and collapses. 

We become deaf, mute, and sightless to the world, nourished only through the narrow conduit of calculated algorithms, subsisting on intensely processed, ultra-palatable, bite-sized content. 

In this abandonment of genuine work, we simply atrophy.

True living demands engagement: to craft what is real and palpable, feeling its texture pressed into our fingertips. It calls for the painstaking, humble effort of observing the world in its exhaustive detail—memorizing its myriad names, listening to its ceaseless, ordinary hum. 

It is about an unending fascination with the minute mechanics of existence, moving beyond the fleeting thrill of sensational, superficial explorations of the grand philosophical questions, the facile sampling of grand experiences, or the tentative dabbling in grand relationships.

To live is to embrace the effort, to accept the work. It is to extend oneself outward and discover the world echoing your existence in countless dialects: the welcoming melody of the Red-Whiskered Bulbul, the brilliant splash of the Cardinal's orange, the scent released by the fragile, tissue-paper blossoms of the Tabebuia Roses tree.

In a million subtle ways, the world affirms: "You exist. You are here. You are present."

The path to ecstasy begins simply, barefoot in the grass.

It starts by anchoring firmly to sensation and to our own body, so that when our existence brushes against anything external—the strange, curious shapes of the world—we know precisely where our boundary ends and where its mystery begins.

47 and counting wishes

The light shifts. Always shifting. 

And in its changing, I find you, 

Over and over, a constant, 

Yet ever-unfolding landscape. 

Not just the woman of 47 yesterday, 

but every intricate layer beneath.

I see the younger woman who first captivated me, 

A flicker of unburdened joy, 

A certain fearless curiosity in her eyes that still sparks, 

Sometimes, when she thinks no one is looking.

And a bit older woman who built, 

Stone by careful stone, 

This quiet sanctuary we inhabit, not just walls, 

But a shared understanding deeper than any foundation. 

The one who wrestled with shadows and emerged, 

Not unscathed, perhaps, 

But richer, more incandescent.

There are moments, 

Brief catches of breath, when I glimpse the quiet woman, 

The one who sees beyond the obvious, 

Who navigates currents I sometimes miss. 

And the fiercely tender protector, 

Her heart a vast, warm ocean for those she loves.

We've walked through seasons. 

The sharp clarity of winter, 

The hesitant bloom of spring, 

The long, generous stretch of summer, 

And the reflective hues of autumn. 

Each one leaving its mark, 

A subtle deepening of the lines around her eyes, 

A new grace in her movements. 

These aren't just years passing; 

They are layers accumulating, 

Like the rings within an ancient tree, 

Each one telling a story, 

Adding to the profound, quiet strength I lean into.

So today, as the sun begins its arc, 

Or perhaps as dusk gathers its soft cloak, 

I honor the women inside you. 

The visible, 

The unseen, 

The woman I know so intimately, 

And the beautiful mysteries I am still privileged to uncover. 

You are not just time lived, 

But a profound, ongoing revelation

Of spaces that can form a human.

Sun-drenched birthmark

Speak to me of the celestial sun spots etched upon your skin,
those pale, hushed constellations, seemingly so far.

Unveil to me the commonplace nature they hold for you,
how they often fade into the tapestry unseen by hurried eyes.

Stars in the sun's bright gaze? 
Who spares them a glance —
Who truly perceives them,
save for me,
in this nearness where our very breaths entwine,
and the rhythm of your heart echoes within mine.

With a gentle touch, I chart the landscapes of your being,
seeking the silent narratives held within each birthmark,
on this warm afternoon's embrace,
where tenderness rests between us,
a drowsy warmth, curled and content as a sun-drenched cat or dog.

Not alone

Today 

has ended tomorrow.

 
Yesterday

I buttoned up and refused to leave the universe anyway 

but alive.

Apricot skies. Strawberry fields. Libraries.

 
You're not alone. 

You have me along with these.

The withering

On a rainy day, faraway

a withering flower 

whispered a poem.

The winds of the mind 

carried it afar

via words

burdened with their own weight.

For where medicines

and meditations may fail

Words work.

For they carry...

love,

the warmest of words,

the lightest of feelings.

The winds stop, 

the clouds pour,

the body pauses, 

the soul cleanses, 

the mind cries.

The poet always 

loves, and 

tries.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Yesternight, as I grappled with a throbbing headache, my partner "surpgifted" me with one of the most thoughtful and wonderful gifts/books ever. The book helped.

It's truly a poem on everything. :-)

I am only halfway through it but it's really unputdownable. One of the best books I've ever read...

Here's my humble contribution to the dictionary:

• Assisong - the act of assigning a song to a person, to yourself, to a slice of life, to a situation, or to a place either in the past or present.
• Citalgia - the emotions that pour out of you when you think of the city(ies) you've been to/lived in and the memories you made there knowing fully well that you may never go back there/live there again.
• Restalgia - the emotions, and dare I say, saliva too, that pour out of you when you think of your favorite restaurant(s) and your favorite food from there knowing fully well that you may never get to eat there again or that that restaurant(s) has closed down/may close down soon.
• Quitenjob - the feeling that overtakes you during your last few days at a workplace while you're serving your notice period, or as your contract period gets over and won't be renewed, or if they've served you a notice period.
• Asgoodasitgetsintend - the helpless feeling when the love of your life gives you a last hug (which you don't know is the last one at the time) and you feel like this is/was as good as it gets till it lasts/lasted and then it ends/ended one fine day like everything alive dies/died.
• Surpgift - the surprise gift that beats all other gifts because of its meaningfulness and intensity.

My Bangalore Days are over

Bangalore, a city that evokes different and distinct emotions for different folks.

 
For me, it only evokes memories... 

In 2002, when Ani shifted from apna Vasai to work at HP, it was still HP. Bangalore was still Bangalore. Wind Tunnel Road was still like a tunnel made of old trees on both sides with canopies closing in above. 

The whole city was still green. There were no frothing lakes. HSR Layout and Sahakar Nagar were simple-but-far-from-city-center residential layouts with mud roads. Yelahanka was like a satellite town. 

The airport was still inside the city with green fields surrounding it. ACs were not a necessity yet.

Ani has his own share of memories in Bangalore: him meeting a few loves of his life and finally marrying one of them...

I certainly have no nostalgic memories of Bangalore without him though. He meant Bangalore for me.

 
Now, I'll only miss its weather. Which is also soon leaving the place like he is.

Bangalore never meant food joints or pubs to me. It was the only place I felt I always had a second home. Home was where Ani lived.

He certainly was Bangalore's non-resident resident, if that makes sense. His interactions with the locals and the city culture were minimal and if-and-only-if-required kinds. But he did make a few lasting or memorable relationships here.

This was the city where we shared Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Practice, Breaking Bad, most seasons of GoT, and beer together.

This was the city where we made long trips braving city traffic to collect pirated DVDs of A or B-grade thrillers, slashers, and a few good films together.

I have seen the city being abused. Seen it grow without any direction.
Now am directionless. In Bengaluru. 

For there's no place called home here anymore.

Bengaluru without Ani is just another dying city in India. For me, he made the city come alive with love, laughter, and hope.

Now, I hope that I can call Lisbon my second home soon. Hope he makes it BIGger there.

Return of the prodigal son

He's back. Confucius. 

It took 47 days filled with nerve-wracking moments of numbness. 

On our 4th first-met anniversary day, when I petted him in the alley he was hiding in and scooped him up in a bear hug of sort... my heart burst. With 1,000 and eight emotions. 

I've experienced and driven through a cloudburst before and now I know why it's called a cloudburst.

Watching Kukubera crying out tears of joy while calling out his name on video call as Andrew and I escorted him back home in our Snubby was the perfect start to an auspicious day. 

He's back home to his fellow companions, Skipper, Rose, and Honey. He's skinny now with no injuries of any sort and will soon be back in good health soon.

We're eternally grateful to Anand's 8-year-old son, who spotted him at 5:30 am when he used to go buy milk. We found him at the exact same spot where he said Confu will be... 

We fulfilled our promise of 10K cash reward but there's an eternal gratefulness that money can't buy.

We thank every single member of the Yours WhatsApp group and others who joined us in our search for Confu. 

As I had said, hope is the best of things.

Confucius, not just a dog

Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, says something to the effect of "All this just for a dog!" He says this when he realizes Verdell, the dog, had ceased to be just a dog for him. 

Confucius came into our lives about two years ago. One fine morning, he was just there in our compound: scared, timid, and a stranger. We believe he just slid in through the hole in the wall in our backyard. 

Vasu named him after the Chinese philosopher as he had an eternally confused look on his kohl-eyed face. 

It took him a couple of weeks to get close to us. He's a diabolical dog: multiple personalities existed inside him. Timid but brave, responsive but not as much as most pet dogs, expressive but non-barking, except when in our presence. 

He's more of a wagging, whining, and intensively-looking-into-your-eyes kind of dog.

He loved Vasu the most. 

He'll communicate via his whines and silent eyes that follow you. When you call out to him, unless you have his favorite morning food or Marie biscuits in hand, he'll just wag his tail and not always run to you.

We lost him on 10 April in front of Luna Pet Clinic as he ran away in sheer fright. He took off as if he was possessed. 

Since then, we're still searching for a piece of our soul to be reunited with us, a chapter of our collective life to be reread, a dog that ceased to be just a dog for us long ago.

We hope this is not as good as it gets. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

What am I?

Inspired by Who are you?

a mischievous whistle over a tidy river. 

the last arrow in your quiver.
an image that you finally delete.

a thought, you thought you could cheat.
a nameplate that you throw away.

a favorite song you've forgotten. 

a favorite dress made of cotton.

a battle you wished you had won.

your many loves hidden in one.
a sleepless night spent over a silly fight.

a dog's loose fur.

a cat's loving purr.
a faded garden of books.

your corner among many nooks.
the last scent of your past loves.

an old pen that you still keep.
a pair of Hawai chappals cheap.
a call of the wild.

still a growing child...

a snowflake made of fractals.

born of stardust, 

on Earth's crust, 

out of lust,
someone's living trust.
a human universe made of halos.

A hill of beans

Neither the problem nor the solution exists outside our minds. Our small, narrow minds. 

Climate change. Overpopulation. Serial killers. Abusers. Tyrants. Dictators. Wars. Famine. Floods. 

Most of these 'problems' are all caused by us but impact other life forms on Earth as well. That's the only true tragedy. One species causes the destruction of so many other species purely because of 'our progress', and not because of 'our evolution' is the real tragedy.

Most of the 'solutions' to these problems, caused by us, impact only us; that is also a consequential tragedy.

Our existence is a mere blip in time. All our history, nostalgia, and good old days, all amount to nothing. 

Just a hill of beans. 

Just like individual cells live and die in 'our body', so do 'we' live and die in 'this body'. 

Our impermanence is real. The flux is true. 

Birth and death are mere words in languages we've invented that have no meaning beyond them. 

We're just 'vibrations' that seem real only to dissolve into that which we emerged from. 

A million times

When memories dried and dead 
Are awakened
At night, as nightmares
Only to be forgotten again,
A million times...

When life cuts your 
Heart out to dry
Under a scorching sun,
A million times...

Know that love 
Was served to you
On the bleeding edge 
Of a kitchen knife, 
And not on a silver platter,
A million times...

Till an oven bakes love for you
Into perfection
A million times...

Ad Astra

A journey towards outer space is truly an exploration of inner space. Both are truly deep.

Both have basic and fundamentally deeper questions, which still seek answers irrespective of the questioner and when and where it was asked.

For I think, only when we journey into deep space we're truly beholding the journey on Earth too. How lonely, how transitory, how insignificant our life and its pursuits are.

How most individual humans' thoughts are similar to collective humanity's views: selfishness, utter helplessness, loneliness, past remembrances, reminiscences, the path ahead, the will to survive et al.

How the proverbial sins of the father (forefathers) affect the son(s)... Whether we are in orbit at the outer edges of the solar system or in motion on Earth, we're always in search. Seeking an end to our loneliness, a permanent home perhaps.

Where truly is our home? Are we not forever on a journey inside and outside? Aren't we always traveling without ever arriving?

Isn't this planet we think of as home also just a spaceship at the edge of the Milky Way, part of our known universe? Aren't we all truly just astronauts within, hurtling through space?

We have to make this journey count for no one else can do it for us. But I don't know how... How to make it count? 

the extent of infinity

days have passed

the sun has risen and dipped
in place of the moon
yet, i haven't known the extent
of my love for you;
you haven't known the extent

of your love for me.

yes, you. 

you, of the color of the earth
for even flowers confuse you for
home.
am just a-bee!

James Webb shows 
we're just markers on
rules set for us by time.
we had to collide:
even our briefest moment together
lasts the longest in our minds.

to spend a lifetime together,
you must want to spend an eternity
with yourself. 
And so like me, love yourself because of you
in me, me in you.

Like me, remove the walls around you
brick by brick
And let's watch love grow and 
bloom together:
in our once-solitary sanctuary.

let's catch the falling stars,
the distant galaxies,
and sprinkle them on all the stardust in our love,
while inside us,
we teleport
some magic,
some chaos,
and some poetry.

i hope to end
our life together,
like we started,
in truth.

May our love alone continue...
And, this poem too.

A poem to a poetry in motion

A word is not enough, 
Unspoken, unwritten is she.

A noble deed born,
Undone, done, reborn.

A seed, a flower, a mother,
Blooming, withering, budding again.

A wind, a tree, an ocean
Blowing, growing, burdening,
Again and again.

Her eyes contain the universe,
In which is my small world,
Which I try to capture
With my small words...

In which my love 
Is born, blows, blooms, grows, and with
Her each unspoken word,
It burdens itself.

For my words can't carry the weight
Of this entire poem.

This feeble poem on a
Poetry in motion, known better as the seed of the flower that becomes a tree, which burdens the ocean in parts. 

My cinnamom, my humble pride.

Thehraav

What a word!

Like I can make love to her and watch her orgasm.

And be still in her stillness,

Inside and outside.

Thehraav.

Ghar ban jaate hain...

Is kiraye ki bhoomi par
Kahin kiraye ke makaano mein
Rahaa hu mein.

Kabhi doston ke ghar par, 
Kabhi ajnabeeyon ke dilon mein,
Kabhi raaston ke kinare,
Kabhi nadiyon ke kinare.

Kabhi kis dhun ke leher par,
Kabhi kisike mutti ke uss paar,
Kabhi hosh mein,
Kabhi aaghosh mein.

Ab, koi yeh batlayein kii inn
24 makaano mein 
Mera ghar kaunsa tha?
Meri yaadein kahaan rehte hain?

Jab kiraye ke makaanon mein, 
Hum yaadein banaa lete hain, 
Tab, kya wah makaan ghar ban jaata hain?

Makaan mein jab hum kisi se pyaar karte hain,
Kisika intezaar karte hain,
Tab, kya wah makaan ghar ban jaata hain?

Ro, ro kar jab phir ek baar
Jeene kii ummeed rakhte hain,
Kya tab wah theekana,
Uss musafir ke liye ghar ban jaata hain?

Iss ghumti hui bhoomi par,
Ek chotaa sa aasmaan hum basaate hain,
Tab, kya wah aasman ghar ban jaata hain?

Gharonda kya deewaron se banta hain,
Kii chatt se?
Kii pairon ke neeche jo zameen hain,
Us se?

Jab koi makaan ke darwaaze ke upar 
Aapka naam likha jaata hain,
Tab, kya wah ghar aapka ho jaata hain?

Kiraye kii shareer mein,
Doosro ke mann mein,
Kahiyon ke sawaalon ko dhundthe hue,
Jab hum kahiyon ke jawaabon ko leker
Khud ek sawaal ban jaate hain,

Tab, kya wah sawaal aur uss sawaal ka
Jawaab ghar ban jaata hain?

Obscure Sorrows

Life's a wonder,

In life, I ponder.

Forever, the seas and skies

Outside and inside, my mind races into the 

Wide blue yonder. 

Even beyond her.

As the still mind wander(s),

And we grow through age and time, to each other, fonder.

I hear a sudden peal of thunder:

Sonder.