Penury

It has become necessary for you to climb the corporate ladder

and quit in time when there’s a safe stack of money ready to hold you if you fall;

when you begin to chase long lived dreams of staring at the stars in multiple countries

from under canvas tents, atop motorbikes and by campfires.

Should I throw away what I shouldn't have had in the first place

with the only means to chase my dreams being the ideal fall

of chasing sunsets and sunrises, meeting new people

and dining on different tables, settings with wine, tea and cheese?

Would the world say I followed my dream by deciding to throw away a luxurious life

that I never wanted

or that I settled for the penury that I deserve? 

Image copyrights in the picture itself. 

~Hemu

Home

  How could I forget that night? It was exactly ten days since my grandfather had passed away. I was close to 1400KM away from home at Bombay, unable to sleep; merely staring at the wall a little before midnight. There was a sense of melancholy and wishful dreaming over my head. My teammates were fast asleep, heads buried in makeshift pillows. It was January; the floor was as cold as ice but yet, vaguely comforting.

  Silence screeched as the wall suddenly lit up to life, reflecting the warm hues of an oriflamme presence somewhere. The sound of the crackling rose up to the second floor apartment where we lay as the fog lifted, disintegrating into nothingness in the face of the bonfire built out of all which held people back.

   Bhoghi, the harvest festival, had dawned. It was midnight as heavy drumming began to sound, awakening the sleeping souls to stare out into the dark; where below, there lay a mound of light and lilt. Smiles cast invitations even when we couldn't see. We ran, our flip-flops slapping the bare mosaic flooring. The sound of the dholaks and laughter intensified with every step of ours, the excitement building. I rolled out only stopping to a reckless halt before the fire. The flames, a feet away leaped about, taller than I was, a fourteen year old girl in disarray. A Sardar, otherwise camouflaged by his beard and black turban smiled through it, holding out sweetmeats to me.The flames blazed higher, smoke spiraling into the vast sky charring the past and ready for the future.

    Slowly, the other state gymnasts descended the stairs and gathered around smiling, laughing and chattering away. Girls who would otherwise be dressed like dolls before the floor exercise performances began to dance in baggy pajamas and disheveled hair holding hands. My hands slowly slipped into theirs, strangers I didn't know in a place I wasn't really acquainted with. All I knew then was that the sound synced with my heartbeat and that the dance came from within.

It didn't matter that midnight in a strange place that I was holding hands and dancing with strangers. It didn't matter how close I was to the fire that night because I didn't feel any heat, only the warmth. It didn't matter that night that my grandfather was dead. I learned to laugh out loud again after a ten-day hiatus. It didn't matter that I was celebrating the festival away from home because, that moment in the dark when all our eyes met lingering with joy, shining in untamed light, I felt at home.  

Source: GOOGLE IMAGES. I do not own this image.  

~Hemu

Of Dances and Dyslexia

Way too many titles await patiently to be crossed off an old list on a cupboard old
and yellowing paper
while being stuck with a story for more than a month seems the trend.
More stories waiting to be read dance in sporadic instincts
and the list isn't patient anymore.
The letters dance and jumble among themselves
Tales are getting mixed up.
Good story it might be in itself
or I'm down with dyslexia creeping in at twenty-two.

Thanks Bill Watterson.  

~Hemu 

What next?

What next, they ask me? What next, I ask myself a lot of times. I know just one answer to it, which does no justice to the question itself. 'I don't know.'
What are you going to be in 5 years? In ten years? Fifteen. Fifty. I still tell them 'I don't know'.
The vague outline of vision that education offers is so faint that sometimes I have to trace it and chase it around to find out where I'm off to. To meet whom? To earn? Or to learn? These are just only a very few of the questions that keep popping up in my head.

   Life goes on. I was enrolled into a school when I barely learnt how to walk properly before teachers asked  me to 'sit down' in a place. Just when I was learning how language and sounds roll under my tongue, I was asked to keep quiet. (I'm still told the same, mind you.)Maybe it was for the good, I was trained in the basic 'skills of civilization'.. like every other kid. Ran through primary school, secondary, senior secondary and now college. But if I look at the net result as to what I have learnt and what I want to be... I think I'll have to un-'study' most of what I was taught.

 ('Don't talk back to your elders.' - So, what if they are teaching me something wrong? What if I'm being stuffed with something I don't want to know if I did know how it would lead.)

So, what do we learn? Or do we learn anything at all? Do we just study, score marks, get a well-paid job which most of us hate to be in, get married, 'settle down', reproduce, get old, die. Why do we have this pattern? Why do we have these definitive words like career, salary and life-partner? Why not unconventional ones like dancing, music, farming, one-night stands and hiking? When people ask me what I'm going to be doing next, I say.. 'Oh, Finish studies, work for a year or two, study for another two years, start my own architectural firm'.. when what I actually want to do is to let all of this go. Keeping ambitions aside and working towards a goal or what not.. I've probably forgotten how to live.

   I want to attend or go to an educational 'system' which lets me enjoy the freedom I already possess, I want a 'job' where I don't want to sit staring at a laptop screen for 8 hours straight when all my heart lies in the last few lines of the book I read that morning on the train, I want to fall in love with someone who is willing to spend time on crossword puzzles, tea and sufi music- not through a profile that talks about his height, weight et cetera. Is that who one is? What happened to the soul one had? Knock Knock. I'll be surprised if someone does open a door to that one.

      The saddest part of it all is to know you're on a path that you don't want to be in. The problem lies in staying on this path that you like and are comfortable with and not on the one you would love and feel completely passionate about. Where 'identities' such as doctor, engineer, architect, farmer holds no meaning. Where craziness, joy, love, kind, stupid are the probable tags... and I want to live there in that world where salaries don't contain any meaning, where educational qualifications mean nothing... where only what one holds, loves and stands up for makes sense.

  I'm not there yet, but I know I'm changing tracks. It's going to be difficult but to learn to live in the moment is a long term dream I hold, as paradoxical as it may seem. Next time someone asks me what I am : I hope to answer the question to myself first.

 What am I going to do?
Roam through roads I haven't set foot on yet. Travel. Read. Write. Design. Sing in public washrooms. Eat farm cheese. Play Frisbee with my dog. Break a couple of roads. Get into a bar fight. Fall in love. Dream. Sleep on bare ground staring at the stars.

What am I going to do?
I'm going to live.


~ Hemu

Image from the internet : 

http://vi.sualize.us/toburnthreadswho_am_i_to_imply_black_and_white_portrait_painting_art_picture_vMcC.html

Rain dance

I opened my eyes to the lashing waves growing in unison,
syncing somewhere, to the calls of it's long lost waters.
They crashed, livid,  on the rocks jagged in it's shape,
not caring enough if it'll hurt, not bothering if it'll kill.
The azure spread ahead, merging with lines I couldn't see,
throwing about grey blotches of clouds, mizzling against the skin of my arms.
I stood rooted, under a pavilion ancient, taking it all in,
sights I saw and the sounds I heard.
Sea brought with her, winds so loud,
singing a song I had never heard before,
blowing into my ears secrets I haven't known so far,
telling me to get out and see all that I've missed.
I saw the music travel through the blues and reaching the black I wore,
which, held the drops of the misty drizzle concealed,
as the afternoon sun refused to show..
throwing at me a wash of blue and light, at my face.
I stood there against the slapping drizzle through the small marquee,
trying to pull me out, and away from the diary and a pen,
while I stood rooted looking at the foam hit the rocks,
staying on still until air broke it's soul..Staying..
until he beckoned me out.
Beckoned me out to listen to the tune of the wind,
the joy of rain and the price of the sight I saw..
He beckoned me out. Out of what I thought and held.
I flipped the diary on the granite table so wet,
and walked out into the open to hold his hand.
How long we were each other's hands I barely know,
how long we talked in hushed whispers, I never reflected.
His words reaching me in, one word a time,
one syllable stretching into echoes into the empty mind he recreated.
I clung to his shoulder in completeness, dancing to the whisting winds,
and the beating waves on the sands hidden, beneath travelling wetness.
 The moistened air held me to him, his hand gluing us together,
as he made me realize what I had just stared at for so long.
Terpsichore, it felt like, all elements bringing him to me,
as he further wet my lips, the call singing like an unknown force,
not to be heard, but to be felt. To be electrocuted with.
 I danced and danced, until my legs became too tired to stop,
I closed my eyes to take in the moment I had lived through,
to breathe and feel his smell upon my neck,
I closed my eyes to him, for that one moment, outstretching my hands,
to welcome him to reality. To feel the wetness seep through my skin.
An eon passed as I opened my eyes to see the agaze of my friend,
a smile on her lips, a question in her stare.
I ran into the shelters, grabbed my diary and ran downstairs.
Not looking back. Not looking up.
But only the ground, because it kept my feet fixed to the earth.
Not like him, making me fly.

This was my entry at Saarang Writing Awards 2013

The Trance

When in your arms, I danced like never before..
With my heart running wild but my prancing movements so slow!
I stood under the light, for a second and not more,
As my body twisted under your control to catch you smiling at me,
on the dance floor..
The world around me faded,
And in the dim, I saw some light..
The only light that I saw, which was you...
The music didn't cease, I didn't move
Yet in your arms, I saw my legs so limp jump up into the air,
and you carried me, and saw me still..
A lot of faces forgotten,
A thousands of thoughts passed by..
Without the depth being encountered,
Nor acknowledgement for it's momentary presence..
Yet, for all that happened,
The memory of time ticked, remained in the dark shadows of the anonymity.
A collection of mere glances, smiles and whispers, I clutched,
As you led me away from the floor under your feet so colourful
into the darkness of the night and the breeze's message.
I felt your breath upon my neck
I realized the smell of you...
When still in an embrace so tight
there, our lips did meet..
In vivacious energy and the graceful movements,
of the dance that did proceed..
I sank into the ground as an unknown mass of mere flesh
for, my soul went, there, with you.
And only after you opened your eyes to look at me did you realize,
that you were lost too!!!

~ Hemu