Lonesome in Bombay

So much for one thing. The pier of dangerously commuters throws itself off at Victoria terminus (err..CST). I jump off at a distance close to another local making its way into the harbor. This is usual; I then navigate my way across this hopelessly growing crowd into subways towards the conjoined streets, dangling on the end of the land. I like the bylanes that stands on the causeway juxtaposed to some makeshift shops on the pavements selling ancient mariners compasses to gross bangles to abstract handicrafts. You’ll find it all here under the same place. Stone by stone, laid out in exquisite kiln, arched windows and gates, Victorian church, oriental gardens to bring the light back into any building. The streets never fail to enchant me all over again, lamps rusting in glory, old birds flocking on fountainheads, fluttering in endless sea.

After a long and comfortable tip toeing around streets I got to main Colaba where the fun begins with café Mondegar open on all days serving snacks and drinks, The inside of this café is divided into classes a close chamber for a comfort friendly crowd and the one open for major fraternity, vastly foreign, I sipped in Irish coffee and moved on. Not much for a coffee its all the same. One cant fail to notice the starry eyed hawkers on bylanes selling you almost anything priced three fold the regular ones. Never mind I’ll still have one. I picked on my lenses to shoot some of the remains of the place. Moving ahead there are lumps of bookstalls, eateries and loads of ethnic stuff. Streets are bustling with a Czech, Indian and an Estonian or maybe English, this is one thing that sets this place apart from rest of Bombay, exchanging odors and brushing shoulders like an exodus, the idea of Bombay an idea of its soul.

Besides the culture here there is shopping, an indulgence here. Food is in abundance and so are the drinks. Just a distance from café mondegar there is one unanimous name Leopold café, it stands to witness the massacre on the causeway last year. It server great drinks and food not to mention the endless guests it welcomes all following different styles of sipping on coffee to drinks to eating pasta. There is fun to be there, there are too many languages I notice I found India written on guides for information to tourists. The crowd never fails to discourage you to come here but it what sells on this Colaba memoir. Café is synonymous with a sentimental appeal to enchant the coffee lovers and beer guzzlers thrown in with a mild chit chats to. It appreciates that hard earned drink you have. Bullets in wall are still there for the reckoning and the grief it stands for.

Moving across the land’s end, causeway a mix of Indian culture ornate on an imperialistic British architecture is overwhelming. Parsi buildings, Muslim traders, Hindu vendors, Christian cathedrals, Universal streets all crosses into one big heart of this city of hopes and dream. There is assaying “survive Bombay, survive world”. It is true to the test.

With all the fond memories of Bombay of five years back minus the camera, i see no change to what I saw to this place. But there is another Bombay wounded on heart stained by righteous terror strike. The signs of omission are not here to stay. They will find the winds on harbor, dissolving it to seas.

The cynical BJP

Ever heard someone getting sacked for honest and earnest research that materialised into a book. News channel today ran this news all over the dashboard, who is getting sacked? Jasvant singh of BJP. He is a man who has been with this party for over 30 years and seen it through its thicks and thins. This is case yet another desperate attempt by this party to jerk itself off some bitter truths. As they say, "we will never let the cause of hindutava diminish and fade away, we will fight unto last drop for the Temple to be build at Ayodhya", but they never really asked who wants the same. Not that all of our nation is biased, but then they take issues selectively that penetrates into clouds of unawareness and anarchy, creating an explosive balance, the peace then swiftly shifts.

Under the projection of the Moon

In the wake of a dead nervous system, things getting chaotic to the sorts of being ugly. Resorting to the anarchaic shot of herbs was never so stimulating ever before. Food pipe thinning against jarring smell of misleading smoke. Suddenly swarming smoke that hang in ground above my nostrils revolting yet captivating in neurotic appeal that lifts me up from the ground, a surface of reality to hook me upon relinquishing silence where my fan is fiercly whirling to fracture and phone tip toeing, barely 8 inches away from my tip toeing pen. the only savious i am left with. Differential letter and shapes i seem to scribble and keep on scriblling.
Moon never seemed so closer and everything seems utterely chaotic.such is the fear of being chaotic as if its not right thing to be and being forthright is not pretending. I wish i never stop but that blinking notorious phone takes my mind away from it.
Right i am back at it again, screw it, where am i. okay, got it i am at my desk, wondering if i ever left.wondering at what my hands are being subjected to, go on write more.

No way its not.

I win back.

Still..frozen, my hands stammering mildly at nods to acknowledge the situation. While moon pops on blankspot on my my eyes.Suddenly shinig out of visible happiness. but i guess its not, i doubt if it has ever been like that. No wonder i see it smiling on my face, simple smile. Whaoo its such an obstrusive kistch.I am taking it a bit closer and it seems to make faces at me.
Still all alone wrapped in apolythiene of solitude. I see it clear a kind of a sharp rancour traps me for being it competitor on somedays. Certailnly one of the closest. Such as distrust and parody of my eternal melody that reigns supreme. I keep on forgetting my song. My flight seems all to take off far into promising vacuum- Just as it zips me across noise. Suddenly discordant noise and peace seperates from me and primary element takes over clustered into parcelain sheets all sliced into whites.Strange i dont see any pain, yet chaotic all over.

Peace out!

Eyes are staring hard at my letters on shapes and sizes it forms as if judging them. They are open and rested from moving, just as everything else is shouting at me verily to distract.
The views inside me shutting out rather too quickly as in hurry.Complaining of mild whirlpool my stomach shoots pain rather liberating, through eyes.

"ts so fucking a description about my body or something else..."I ask myself.

My thoughts are swaying outwards, freezing zero. What a terrible idea of winning hearts, if it helps, damn it be. I am sitting for a good 30 minutes and still i am glued to. What happened to me????
At this point all i care about is some misguided feeling trapped inside through thickness of my blood. Firmness of muscles suddenly made me realise i am sitting on ground beneath the wall shack into the wreck of my hostel roof and with me is breeze that is looking on me with love and watch me rise with it swaying on prnciples of harmonics.
Its only sometimes when i feel so strangely happy, non plussed by awkwardness of this word with myself. Whats on the outside of such feeling is that it is short lived, that we cant enjoy it for long, too much of this maks no sense. Instead being something in moderation makes one look on both the aspects with a sideway gaze to gauge it without contempt for any of these.

I have think for myself conciously, i want to be like this, everything seems to lose its meaning, my apologetic eyes sees me going through the heaps of uncultivated lies a manifestation of which is this weight of the heavy world.Starry-eyed dreams of unwaranted reality.

Before my eyes , lay a white sheet of ocean blanketed by surreality so thick it gets my vision no where.everything is bleak. That is slightly thinned by our struggle, throughout the history.

Sometimes i feel like being left alone inside a room locked , so i cant see other people not for the sake of some evasion but for the matter of shielding myself of screaming apathy around myself. I am unmoved.
I have no right to write all this that concerns no one for i am too fragile inside to be offended, save for some exceptions.

Poem for the unknown

The day sheds its warmth , unfolds into the dark

not long ago i thought, 

i cant no longer see the shining sun

and the beauty so free.

The echoes of the engine and moaning of the wild,

distant outbursts and phoney causes

laying down cold and waking up the same

with turn of dates i realised its too late 

too waste for all of my pain

i feared the part when we were together

missed you more when i knew i couldnt get you anymore

somehow it was fine to let go

the old musing went on

missing wreck was all i 

stumbling in the con of dark 

days went on like scorn

browsing novels, litting sensations

muttering fags, nothingness all i felt

forlorn musing continued on.....

I am a missing letter before battered eyes

struglling to find a vision

the sunshine sees through me the day

i held it with me right awake 

some distance before the miles melt

i walk through my dreams

all coming at once,as in warfront

ah!! it was bad.

i see morning smiling before me and i see you 

your eyes makes a jolly out of my life

i want to see that face forever again 

and i would never want it that way again,

if its not you.

Landscape of soul

The changing seasons so much reminds me of the change creeping inside me. The change I am looking at for some time now to rejuvenate my nascent existence. A rightful season stay long enough to make it attached to our being and to feel nostalgic about. Yet seasons come and go and come back to repeat a pattern simplifying moulds of our conscience. I can see the winter in my face and it is just another season of hope that promises cold with warmth, sun shone upon my face that kills monotony of night when I wake up to stare out of the window blankly.
Life is not based on the rule not any not few but the lessons learnt. It is cosmic chain of events and I believe it’s equally hard to predict one event and its timing. Here I am sitting on roof of my home all remote into me looking to break the monotony of the evening, watching the sun go down. I remember back in school when I never stayed home in the evening always out with friends its and that but it’s all different now. They are all left behind.
A matter of being stuck in a situation where no one wants to be unless left to his own will. It has been an utterly desperate setting something like a conspiracy around me which keeps on impersonating my actions.
I certainly believe in power of oneself there can’t be no existence if there were no unreasonable men and for that matter egotism paves the way for altruism. In cruel times, the situation I felt so miss-fit in, I felt like I was chosen to dig my own grave. Through the times say for 4-5 years I challenged myself to take up something that can bury my guilt of not getting being able to do justice with myself. I rarely had the opportunity to break free from demonic possession of middle-working-class mindset, though I was miles away into my hood I cared for the safe road but somewhere the fear is deep rooted inside my bones, like the air I breathe.
Speaking of the middle class values my upbringing have been a sort of domain I believe could have been more of progressive and typically political. As for progressives are concerned in a general manner they kind of breaks free from middle class attaching themselves to the new world order. The order that need not be classified as rebellious but essentially revolutionized to bring across the change in politics and roots connected to the same, a qualitative argument between socialism and communism. I want to be one. The past has been a farce, still blazing echoes on inside. No one is to be blamed for it but the typically asking circumstances did it in.
Over and over again the ghost that was lost in time comes back to me to scorn me to drag me out of my bed threatening to unravel what is left to of me of my conscious efforts. I love this ghost because of its honesty in keeping me in tune with myself. Least, for its features. Valiant mourning’s aren’t any good to counter them instead I have chosen to get going steadily.
Back when I entered college as a fresher my anger used to be utterly devastating for me, it shattered everything in that moment of a fit, depriving me of some conclusive experiences.
To this day, I believe I am in search of what is mine, not necessarily looking for it but trying to discover in the process and if that comes good I embrace it and if it don’t- equally good, I learn. A small pie from the divine cake. It’s these small pieces put together form life. We are all surrounded by opportunities to make it big in our life only thing remains to be maneuvered is how to take it and when to. First step is always the most difficult, rest you can tip toe. One fine Sunday afternoon I was walking in a mango orchard, there was a serene silence, the one of within. My thoughts go inward and outwards both for the same matter; this is how I give myself something to rejoice on. Too much.
It’s some tenacity of a mystical sort that fringes me inside to do more and generalize my emptiness with my actions or in other way the emptiness reminds me of what I have to do, to sit myself up on the very outset of perennial ocean of feeling that open up horizons studded with stars and sometime blank sky. And I keep on staring into the blankness not knowing what lies beneath it, still something is so fascinating about it. This hunger will set me free from my cravings, someday. On that fine day I’ll know what it was to crave for something and not to have it; it will be very different from what I would have in that moment.
The morgue is more alive when it comes to really feeling good factor and I just pass it up as a regular parade. Well, someday it was up to me to make believe myself of my actions and accept them, and forgo the brunt’s of past to heal the future and I suppose that is it.
There are hopes and there is a need of action that have to be taken right away to accentuate these fluidic beliefs that I am garnering against my set of breeding, so watery that they melt every time.
I do deserve this & I don’t deserve this- goes the conflict in my mind. I choose to close it to ensure the intensity deserved for the moment. There are lots of things that are to be done and normally they come to my mind randomly. Like rain leaving some part of the body unwashed and others too wet to feel it. The whole body goes numb. Mostly it reminds me of my present state.
Insane feeling of rot, guilt they all hook up with me. Its mote tormenting then it used to be.
Like when I look at pictures of some old lost friends, I know what is wrong and what needs to be done. But it rarely materializes. As I know, too, I don’t have to. I am guilty of having lost they due lack of communication or out of my words, but I am not in the wrong.
There is nothing more complicated than a human relation. Indirectly it asks for honesty in a way or some. Working behind the scenes I am learning. Talking about the predilections, there is no attachment I projected for me that I could have not lived without as they say. There is just no one like that, I admit, I don’t know what it’s like to be that, I am learning……………………………………………………………

Taxi driver

                                              ..

Ride # 2

I had a bad day not because I feel like being strung out but because I had this paper in the afternoon which I had to write and write and keep on writing, seemed like centuries long. I passed up walking out of that morgue where I all I could see was crowd.

Here I am sitting in my room. After I hit high I have been coming to terms with I and myself because I feel me and myself are alike they want same things and I seems more of my prerogative. Our favorite joint hostel porch, I am with Amit, I passed up this time high on smoke in its whirling glory. I had this back when I puffed on second one and I felt myself getting lighter like when something breaks free and the rush you feel out of yourself, this is damn right. I duck for support and by the time I walked in here I was in vertigo. I see my things coming to me one at one time and then rushing in. Just same as I felt my heart swinging medley to me like I am going to bid goodbye to myself.

I am feeling little shaky and week, my songs are changing too frequently because I m feeling a little uneasy .Just then my phone beeps “oh it’s some text”. I think I cannot figure out what I want right now. Sometime, like this time, myself think it want her as something I didn’t have. Not as far as I can remember. But at the same time I don’t want her extravagantly or as something is due on me. I want her freely as this wind. Myself is in altercation with I and I see it winning.

My soul and body are at floating levels alien to one other to feel it all now.

There is a force when you think you are up for this game that will never leave you free it’s heady. I don’t want to see you like this” said I to myself. How can I love you when you left no time for yourself to love me? You think I do this and that for us. But I don’t want to do things. I think it’s absolutely waste to make someone understand so much to the point you never told you so, no point left.

Welcome to my life.

I don’t want to take any shit not anymore not that I want it but because not from you for you don’t know what it’s like. I have said much I have tried to hold on much and much more I cannot go on more insensitive this. My dreams are coming true when I see you not there in them I see you remote and into yourself. Now I would like to hate you a little. I resist it but can’t help it. I give it up I cannot balance my anger towards her insensitivity. How can someone be so blind? Well I have no idea of this.

I look inside to gather what I miss and I see nothing that I can recollect and I let it trip. Such was the rush of the blood and sudden surge of throwing up.

The deceptive thing about feelings are that once they are strong you generally know what to do but when you let them slip sideways it’s a real tough task to get off the hook of the vicious circle.

The smoke seems to feel my lungs and take me on a ride with winds so silent, I feel weak as weak as the smoke and yet there is something that is liberating about it, smoke rises above us thereafter.

BY  Zaki Hasan

CAUTION: (This article may seem broken ,disturbing, bizarre).

Always something

besides an empty road i saw glance of u in a single breath
i could not but hold on to the breeze
blowing yet silent leaving me cold
thought i care not for a single moment
and then i wondered up the skies
all seems blue as blue as me
no one cared to know enough
still remains to be discovered!
i look for answers of my own concience
and find them blowing in the wind
catch up with one or two
and close my eyes to rest few
i want to hurry up easing this unnamed feeling
inside me i just wanna know i am complete
like raindrops on my smothered eyes
blinding the despair inside.

Untitiled

Sunset at hostel

Exams started well on the scheduled date with first paper through I am waiting for the second to come over so that third maybe mugged up well like others. And so on.

The winters are on full swing since some 15 days and it is a chilling pleasure to sit in your room and watch those winds blow past the window pane. Outdoors are calm, soothing like an isolated plain stretch of desert which once used to witness rush. College campus blooms in winters with hardly anyone to witness the cold. The corridors once swarmed with students now stay mooted waiting to boot as soon as the semester begins. As a hosteller I am lucky to live close by the college which is 2 minute walk away. Exams came way too heavy on the winters with no time to enjoy the weather. All we do is sit and sleep and if time allows mugging is there to the rescue. No studies. The great engineers to be.

The semester are like fall, the season only blooms at the end when there are escape. We resort to text or cheaper versions. Tests are sometimes pissing. The span of these events always sends alarm signals ringing. They never been a burden to me but there timing has of-course been a bone of contention between no. of agreements and things that I need to do on time. For the record sake I have been through almost seven odd semesters in this college and like every time else my next move has not unraveled onto me. I sit back and lament on what I would have been doing if I were not here. Deeply annoying. But that’s the way it has been for over 3 years.

With all the perplexing delight to write this piece I am thrilled to think of the exams when they are over. There are lots of plans in place once exams get over. In the meantime New Year arrived too.

Past month (December/08) saw me accepting many changes .There has been sort of romance about everything giving way to my exasperations. In the turn of events stumbling onto different indulgences writing from reading, photography from movies, pure physics from magazines (not from textbooks mind you) mathematics is in the synchronous pipeline .Blogging from writing, someway interconnected. Time to take a leap, mates.

Someday I am suffering from chronic a headache instigated by the ugly textbooks that lay all around my room .My room is now a corner to abandon all the trash coming out of studies. My bed, desk stands and laptop are all book stands now. The place where I sit is an electrical hazard with all kind of wires you can imagine running freely anis tropically. There shall be no wonder if I get shocked out of this mess.

Time to inhale some fresh air.

Love

2008: A photo essay

Electric hazard or running anarchy?
(Almora ,December)


Travellers
(Nainital, December)
A trip to remeber.


Shy guy from Himalayas
(Almora, December)



Tree unioun


My window



The ghats of Benaras : May
there is so much to this place than just being a ghat
something to remember for a long time.



My longest ride: September 2008

Goodbye 2008: Myriad musing

At the break of the year 2009 everyone was too busy on phone greeting each other blankly or gladly.The greetings were either forced or they were light hearted , letter one makes some sense.Out on streets chasing darkness with booze and high pitched sound systems the mantra is to lose control.There is too much done to celebrate new year.
The shine comes into play well ahead of a new year eve when we start to roll out the plans for that big day .....ooops night to correct it.

Everyone starts dreaming about the things they will do in new year and how they can make use of it in the best possible way.Its all good but people still dont get over the silly notion of "they will keep on doing the same thing they did on the first day of the year" good or bad -it sucks.

I was with some friends at the new year do in my hostel room , i called it do becuase for others it really was the same and i cant take the fun away from them just for the sake of being clear.some friends gathered with booze (that is the only thing you cant miss at such a party- and you cant say no), the only ceremonius concoction.I sat there with them in my room with no music, non-sense all over the place.It felt like we were given a lifetime chance to celebrate this momentous day and it will be our last day on this planet. Part started and everyone got into gear, especially my friend Akhilesh known for his stupid laughs at every point of the conversation no matter what it is. you'll see him chuckling and trying to expect the same from others. Well there we were with him Rohit and Seemant(meaning- one who never talks sense)

I was a little out of everything ,though i made a cool company but i was thinking of something else that was running my mind and i could'nt get it out.

Back again , hostel drama again.

"i know ,you know who is the mole " said one friend expecting a gaffe from me.
I nodded in affirmation .
"you have to be part of the crowd where some shitheads lead you to shit in your own home"he continued .There was lot of doubt clearing as the clock struck past 00:00 everone then greeted almost everyone.My body still aches because of the pain.

"I dont give a shit now(to all that happened and will happen) as i m out of this"said I.

There was a mild trans fusion music runnig in the backdrop of bonfire that was lit in the middle of the stretch in campus.I sat around there bidding goodbye to the times taht passed and trying to figure out what it is that really makes me happy.Conclusive of all the musing i did there is perserving effort in all my plans abot my future and present.

My new year resolution - "carry on the work where i left it , get clear of the clutters in the backyard"

Taxi Driver

Ride # 1

The eyes glowing so like a bulb, I feel weak and the body a little numb. I say this at the brink of my heart pounding out of my fucking mouth. I make sense of myself, being in place of others makes more sense than a little while guilt and pride strikes you all along.

I now walk in the brazen, cold wind, what if I wasn’t there too often.That would be right, but was enough to drive the pleasure out of it for while. It was a way out of the blank

I sat there with 3 more- Amit, Shubham and Rohit – the partners in drive joined by out Treasurer Mr. Guard, passing up the grass. I waited there on the edge of chair for the trip to start the rip. I lit it on a point of a light. The trip started with me in the driving seat. The taxi is a test of to hold on the ecstasy of trip while it move a full circle, then you can pass up the urgency of lungs to breath. You puff on and on wanting more than before, pulling up the hunches. The smoke passes up though the nerves liberating the tied soul .In a moment a myriad of curiosity passed before my eyes.

The rush of blood to my head shoots a bit.

That’s what I was craving for long to loosen my buttons. That was awesome. We had this going for a rough 30minutes and then took a break. Shubham laughed his wits out even out seemingly straight stuff. We all let it go a bit more .Someone pulled the last one and let it drop.

Lights out!

The reasons

I am on the edge of my bed, its 3 am in the morning I woke up halfway through with my sleep I can’t sleep. The reason I don’t dare to know. I am overcome with intensity of hurt crushing me narrowly in silence of the night. After all it’s a collective thought / feeling. There are only few people around that makes it a point to feel lonely about something’s and brood about it later on, as I did for myself. It’s a vicious circle, that old feeling of guilt kicking in and walking alone.
Finally I can figure out the things that happened to me in time around, it’s all the part of providence and life, doing all bits to teach lessons.
Awake when half the world is asleep, no one stands beside me .I am just through with a meaningless drive – after an illicit walkout into a person, equally harmless in routine. Control of nerves was what I learned and how to put too much of my face in there, jokes apart. Sex is sex, after all.
Closely chasing onto absurdity of details of events, people some of the truth began to tumble out, emanating righteously. I saw through lies and phoniness of my friends. The most annoying details I saw in this all was snobbery people resort to in time of face off with themselves as if they can’t take what they stand for.
There are no claims like “I am your best friends” and so on or someone coming over to me with all his/her heart poured out to me about anything at all. I just fear myself dead in the wake of the day when I think about the friends I chose to be my friends. I wish I can come back and remove some from my life. Thank god life offers you with no second chances.
The usual reference to the friendship so far has been a couple of names, because I never felt such paucity of a real person called friend even before followed by all what I am.
I look at this in another way the sooner the better, situations reveal man to him. So have I taken a leap in this quest it’s yet to be seen?
I feel handicapped when it comes to judging people they have their own pretensions disguised as particular attitude towards specific things. Just like a person who knows she doesn’t love you and hangs on to you pretending to do the same.
It’s face of death, like strangling someone to death on a comfy bed. Why everyone is so busy pretending to be what he she is not and in turn losing what one stands for.
It’s their own free will to chose and they chose to be losers. I can’t help it.
Loss of something brings something back to you, in the turn of events.

Measured feelings

After a cool breezy 4-year haul of my life that I enormously loathed, pricking out a couple of high points is a fairly easy task easier than putting together a Sudoku .Throughout the entire period of four year constraint I failed to embrace a change ,too dreadful to be true of sorts.
Lord saved me some grace.
In the meantime I hardly understood the pretensions they (people, most of them) so gladly displayed .As if a page torn out of a hardy boys’ thriller, something missing in between the lines for their own good. I despised the casual vanity and conceited hanging of some people. The dialogues I shared were lost in a heady mix of too casual utterances some even turned blatant of their egos. Hurting both sideways like someone got hold of my balls. I never seemed to care about despair it all lead me too. It went on all along.
So little too late.
After a long period (which I don’t remember) I met an old friend, who was around home for a short run of vacation. There was an air unease on both the sides, with each of trying to come up with some exact response to the ongoing rambling. He was heavily absorbed in the facts of his own being and couldn’t care less. We really had a great time when we were in school, all that is now toasted for some obscure wilderness in time that went by.
At most of the time my conversation with friends were forced with all the naïve experiences and feigning attributes to the moment in which we shared our words. It was more of my impulse to share what I got and about what I feel. I constantly feel the absence of such a person around me.
Overrunning the facts left me a bit of quandary about the way I pitched things for myself. Slowly and surely I entered into a trance. So much, to my fragile heart .It seemed like ages since I was out there. Over and over again I kept on stumbling on to stones even more weathered. Finally I landed into a zero space that was shut off from rest of the previous hurts and new opportunity, which really made me enjoy a string of heartbreaks. Meanwhile there was a shift in power, a steep shoot in terrorism, victimization, unemployment and the once raging bull finally eating the grass .I sat still in the times of even heavier turmoil. I always felt strongly critical of the policies the government, because of the wide open non-uniformity. ”It’s not going to hurt me” said I to myself. Better late than never.
It was really disheartening to see some of my friends struggling to get a decent start at work. After all these 20 odd years education only to train the minds that in future will not be able to decide for their own good .The immensely talented pools of youth trained by some unskilled obsequies class. Obvious mix of results follows – unprepared minds, going haywire faced with decision making. The ills of the system leaves a deadly trail on the tracts if the young fellows .What a shame.
Overpowering, now I am driving out of home with precisely nowhere to go, atop a hill I sat after cruising some miles. The dense mist of air is supremely thick and cold here. I step back; I am alone here surrounded by a city. I strung out the gloomy thoughts and feel a placid mist of nothingness taking over me.
Turning a cynic.
Over past a month I am working towards a dream that I see coming closer to me still unformed in my eyes growing stronger than ever. My hunger for creative expression going haywire all at the same time. it takes hours to figure out what exactly to write about and shaping my writing pieces grows into a huge task again. Reading is less frequent nowadays with only a couple of novels at the desk.

Love affairs, sleepless nights and a year later

"An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception."

Harold Loukes

Harold and wordsworth can wait, what about my definitions.
Love doesn’t seem to stay with me in any form and in any manifestation. Not long ago I wished I could love over and over again not bothering to look through anymore. Infectious, I may call it for obvious reasons once you are involved it’s tough to do without it or at least some one is at loss (partially).
Like you can never do without a Sunday morning sunshine, filtering through the narrow pass in that window of your, taking over the senses just when you wake up fresh out of your night-mere. You look around find yourself clinging to your sheet like an old rug never gave up; still in those pajamas you put on TV and make yourself a cuppa with your head humming like a drum off the last night’s hangover. And you, of course, forget the excruciating altercation you had over the bar with yourself. You can listen to yourself, still, without your phone numb and suddenly out of nothing you get back on your feet to grab your phone to dial a number. That is half formed in your memory but somehow you press harder on the keys and pressing the call button.
By then the cord of his rambling existence began to unravel for this moment in time when he himself had too much to care about. He believed he will never want to see her again so much as he knew. There were no false dreams, no love, no efforts to reclaim what he seemingly lost, since the last time they saw each other. Only for the time he felt he was too naïve to have looked at her the way he did, he realized he was being awfully exhausted in his share of free sunshine and he shrugged off from sharing it with anyone, just no one no more.
The cacophonous electronic beep inside of his ears one after another and punctured his patience even more. The beep now went on hold and….

“Yeah”
“I thought I wish you a happy birthday”
“Well thank you, why did you bothered”
“How are you doing?”
“I am great and you”
“I am great and it’s a great morning too”
“Where are you?”
“I am around”
“Hammmm”
“Finally I did heard what I was missing and you know what it never made any difference but the thing is that I didn’t said a single word to make it up, maybe I could have, but I didn’t see it happening to us and it made things just a bit like jungle and At the end of the day it had to happen. Why did you do this to me?”
“I hated liars, I told you”
“As if you entered an agreement yeah but that was meant for you can’t you see now?”
“Whatever I am not in for this today”
“Today is not you day”
“I killed it! And I am out here”
“Good for you! I know, you so much wanted it”
Say something (longer pause)
“I am not able to get rid of you”
“You will”
“Have you”
“Next question”
“I just did, I’ll hang up”

Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…… went the line

“I’ve lost it”

No one tells you how far you can go chasing that one big dream that never materialized (debatable).
Risking all what you have got to trade for them becomes an obvious alternative, rather cruelly crushing of reasons but that’s how it goes.
I go back to my bed to romance with my Engineering articles and my core loneliness with vestiges of my hopes intertwined with cynicism.
Its Nov. 2008 life has come full circle since then. I wonder why it (my life) screeched to an amusing halt for some time. Maybe because it just never sleep.
And move over oldies? He was right, when he painfully sung..

“”No one knows what it’s like to be a bad man
To be sad man behind blue eyes”

I’ve lost! The good part is I’ve lost her!! The bad part how did I lost her?
Maybe I still don’t have the answer.

CALL OF THE METAL : I

One day on the packed sidewalks and lanes of the community centre in Vasant Vihar , i walked in silence and roar at the same time though i was with a friend i unconciously shifted to a dull and gloom all in myself .I could hear the people laugh and walk past me in a brazen kind of manner that was very full of feigning reasones and failing solitude.I was alone as a matter of fact i for no reasone had the excuse for being so cynical.Hanging out late nights have been a old hunt for me without much of sense .Somehow it reminds me of my being and it reminds me of what exactly the picture is like when one confronts the darkness.
I had been facinated by mere thought of shopping and i can go any length just to grab a place in the market full of shoppers buying happiness out of cash or credit whatever.I can always get up in the middle of night an go shopping.This time was very different i was not out on purpose, with myself stuffed with lot of apprehensions for the night ahead.I steeped out of my car with my dear friend and started to walk on the main street leading to the rear of the place that recieves the majority of the revellers,sat there on a fountain clutching on to a side-stone with a hand already busy with an egg-roll munching and i really wanted to go out in the middle loud and hard to sing a song by Metallica called "turn the page" but soon i realised it was a dream.
Later we stepped into a joint harshly done with loud interiors with an extravagance of a blacksmith workshop and they proudly call it Metal as if in desperate need of recognition.playing hard rock and sub generes satiate them dry.
I strolled ahead on a street leading to the main one and i see some more cafe's and bistro's famous for there ""Good entry regimes"" i hate them all for every reason possible.I really have a fond memory of this nature in south Delhi itself.
Loving the music i grew up have few takers and very few can stand it literally.for some reasons Metal soothes me and reminds me of presence of something strong that connects me back to everything. So lost i can only hope for a better place and more of such places and joints that really can make someones day.

TILL THE LAST DROP

Till the last drop of paint draws
The brushes won’t cross the line
Of hope and despair
The curvy innocence draws red
Still fresh, your smile dwells souls

A full stop for rest over
You are creek to jump into
The point on a circle called life
Bright strokes lit you alive
Setting forth a random array

No one tell what till you see the other side
Loose flakes fall from the sky
Struggling to form a life
Grey eyes covering the haze
Battered hands go up in sky
Folded in sigh

Hope against hope is yet to come
A season of cold is in full swing
Fallen leaves tranquilizes the streets
Crushed under the feet
Forays into a life of itself
Peachy with spots all over

Evolved is new time of the life
The perception never fades
Till the last drop of blood draws.

34 HOURS AT CHARBAGH

My good friend thought I was plainly joking when I reported to him about my stay at the Eleanor railway station of charbagh and he unwarrantedly offered a stay at his family house which is just a stone throw away from the passage that is less visited ,so nice of him, I would rather stay with myself alone why? Well that makes the experience complete without oneself needing any ease to chill and also making a company to our rich heritage of railways at least.
I checked into this enormously populous station with all the touchy feely crowd leaving no stone unturned in making one making a bad guess, with my good friend Rohit and so began our struggle through the dilapidated locales of the Ameenabad and nearby searching for a neat and clean hole in the wall, after several throws over we seemed to finally have hit the nail but only to be dispelled by the ever non-friendly locales and bad mouth hooligans walking the station and the suffocating locations. such a turn off! Finally I landed into a spacious and strikingly clean retiring rooms cum dormitory where my first impression was that of a grand Victorian lounges achingly poignant, to be seen in a classy movies or living out of some narrative. The Layout was simple with beds all lined up along the length of that space with desperately crisp sheets and pillows. there is too much of rush just outside of this room window making it look like an exodus.
The crony attendant was a lady with a rough neck and an interesting voice hoarse enough to keep off the unwanted travelers trying to barge in without a permit. She shoed away a lot of enquirers with a tone of a vamp in old hindi movies. Sure she was friendly. People here are from different groups and age mostly 40+ .

Travel is a basic realm of life which empowers our senses with real experiences desire to transform from one state of being to a higher degree of awareness, in all travel leads you to discover, share and most of all devise. The place is just a stop to connect further journey with the previous one. When stops become the focal points in journey they leave an interlude for a good part of the memory to preserve from all the other parts. Sashaying through the stops and halts makes all the difference in a well conducted travel experience.

My journey obviously had several stops since I boarded the train back to hostel but the moment where I lie right now is well poised to pluck a part that will be remembered by me for its simple being and an earnest two days, for I wanted to be here not because I had to but because I want to. I almost feel like a free bird jumping here and there without a single thread of social connections, too much absorbed in my own flight of thoughts and convictions, the loosely built dreams and broken efforts and more efforts coupled with my wows to see my dreams come through.

For the last seven days life has moved an inch closer to my sight my own reality exposing my naked central ideas to whom still cling to and my apathy of being what I mean to be, faring unprejudiced in this unpredictable life. All this time gave me an immense pleasure to walk free no strings attached.

THE OLD BOOK BAZAAR: WHERE JANE EYRE,KARL MARX AND ARUNDHATI LIVES

‘‘A book lover can travel the boundaries world over without moving an inch"

Picture this: books occupying almost every inch of the space available along the pedestrian on a stretch of more than 2 Kms on a Sunday afternoon simply makes for a visit from a booklover worth his salt. This is only one of its kind you can imagine or experience no matter how well you are travelled. The bizarre setting of the shops transcends you to a similar ecstasy that of a Kasbah in elegant landscapes of Morocco. The vendors are desperately trying to hand you almost whatever you ask for be it a preparatory rhyme or a book for the human anatomy, with a feigned perfection of that of a master librarian. Ask for a Jane Eyre and he will promptly hands you the hardcover classic from a 1960 publication and that too for just 100 bucks at maximum so that you just bite your tongue in sweet dismay of the unbelievable amount you just paid for a masterpiece. This is nowhere but the Old book Bazaar, daryaganj in picture for real long time now and though the times have battered the streets local administration plays mooted on the apathy of this landmark.
For a first time visitor this is a different place altogether, with a tonnes of stacks of books scattered onto the ground in makeshift columns as they practically begged us to be bought and land out of the misery. Bookstalls too busy churning out the books at any rate is equipped with experienced people of significant amount of titles and the reading trends. Just a curious eye and you can spot numbers of volumes ever printed and that again on an unbelievably small price.
The Sunday mornings here are bustling with activities of shoppers and bookies pitching in from different parts of the world digging for a title or two .Generic crowds here is common to spot going for anything that’s classy and old. I spotted some of the sepia tinted hard bound novels, rare works of all timers like Thackeray, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens lay on the sidewalk in a silence as if they were shouting for attention that was already theirs. I bought John Keats- the complete collection of the poems, Karl Marx, Thackeray, and it was a sense of possession of a great value. And adding to that it set free the volumes off the century old dust and dampness of a hush corner. The cover, pages and the hard bindings makes them for the breathless beauty they are only to be stocked in the library of great care an importance.
I, first, had been there at the age 15 for my textbooks with a cousin who always bombarded my imagination with idea of modest pricing and most of all the great titles. I said “OK so when I get to set up my own library I’’ put the name s of this place in my frames”. At that time I only walked these streets fir my texts or some random stuffs that are abundantly available on the streets there (mind you there is much more to explore there).
Some old faces whom I practically have memorized still sells the same thing and once I get to interview a guy, a newcomer to the scene, only of 15 named Ali casually asking him originally used classics and he was suddenly got more interested cutting me short “i don’t have these titles right now but if you confirm me the details the next time you visit here I’ll surely help with that” said he. But that clearly was for business adding to the details prices will be altered for the exclusive titles. And I am looking forward to hand him my list the next time I visit the place.
To buy or just to unwind at my own ease I come here whenever I can it sets me free from this society that is increasingly being intolerably hypocritical and let me be me, then I go back and being a part of the circle having no ends.

A BULLET IN THE VIEL

The romantics of the age when Ameer Khusro mesmerized the times with the eloquent honey tipped Verses transporting the audience to a new experience, the zero-journey to one’s personal side. When social boundaries melted to give way to a society which was not priggish in its essence. That was the era of greener pastures for the post modern fanatics and there are several lessons to be learnt from the way social threads were fabricated to pave way for harmony.
We have arrived in the age of neo-science and pre defined boundaries, amidst the chaos that is incorrigible, where life look for alternatives be it a humane bonding, the most trivial of all or everything else that is obvious. We love ourselves to the extent forcing us to view through a glass biased to reflect a brighter picture turning our eyes grey to the co-existence of rest of others. And then we do things which cut the flesh deeper than the knife.
Living in a free republic my right is to speak up, the equal opportunities or fairplay.Being taken for granted or having been forced to step back from what we deserve is the most horrendous crime a state can possibly commit. This is in urgent need to be wiped off the existence if we as society are to survive the going onslaught biased on religion. One may ask what is it to be the way we are. “It’s not much different than it used to be when we were brothers “I may quip in.
The crumbs of today, when global sensibilities are at a debate, yet mooted, are only signs of our insecurity and the how conceited we have become. Time check now!! We ain’t here for too long friends!!We can just see it through or shrug that’s everything behind us.
At the pace life expects us to catch on we surely have option than to turn non-feeling android operated by a programmed features like a television controlled by a remote ,like a man bent on his desires. We can switch off the television but we cannot stop us to get hooked on. A gesture of a smile when a stanger spots another one in the eye is now rare. A little effort will let us know what it is to be like what we are! And we can get answers that are but obvious.

A sunday afternoon and a cutting chai..

Breezing though my morning share of newspapers,a news declaring the coming of age of artwork what might someday could have reffered to have been kitcsh and grotesque now is revelling in the glory of modern culture that is shelter to the most deserving artforms these days.

i picked my cuppa sipped it half empty and steered clear of the page and i encounters a ruthless murder of journalism in name of commercial paper.The author of the article failed to appreciate even the smallest of the individual sensibilities while declaring loudly"the gang has arrived,you get ready to be massacred".Plainly i stand against cheapest of the journalism standards that are being aired 24*7 without knowing much the craving for real spiritual versions.

My cup was near its end and i just turned over to a newspiece saying "goodbye,wallstreet".Begging for a satire i found myself liking, i frowned at the hint of editing.

I am now about to end this romantic read and bid goodbye to some "wannabes good for nothing crappy papers".In the end it was a more balanced way of spending an afternoon.