one night stand

We stand facing each other

in a cosy corner

of a lavish hotel.

We argue over arguing

in front of a few known

and a lot of unknown people.

We try to knock some

sense out of our tipsy senses.

You crack a line and I- a smile.

A little prayer slips off my mouth

as I extend my left hand

to catch you just right.

A hell of high spirits

is there in the air

and baby heavens

in your eyes,

while your innocent face

bathe in the moonlight.

People sell water bottles

for 200 bucks

as if it will even faintly

extinguish what’s burning

in there.

You set yourself straight

on the backseat

quietly ask me to behave

and just pass out.

I could have almost

calculated it,

if I’d not been bad at maths.

An elephant in the room

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

and you’re trying to spot it, far in the forest.

It prefers to stay inside rather run out to you,

because running requires lifting all 4 feet at once.

It has big ears but useful only for fanning, without your words.

It has a huge trunk that waits for you to introduce first.

Its wrinkled skin gets goose bumps with just the thought of your touch.

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

silently thinking how you’d call it, post your booming fit of laugh.

Here inside it feels lighter without the sunburn,

but deep inside - the 50 pound heart is getting heavier.

It expects your vague realities to be poured in not less than a gallon.

They make its favourite cup of tea, especially on a hot and dry evening.

Just offer them without any peanuts, as elephants don’t like them.

An elephant is parked on the leather couch of your living room,

hoping to see you before it turns into a stone, into a statue.

While its big wet eyes give a chase to the quarter moon of the night,

the eerie quietness stays and refuses to go away.

Unlike the people who go away.

They always do when they give

a fuck about the damn elephant in the room.

Listening beautifully

I can’t count how many sounds I’ve heard all my life and never listened. But I know listening is beautiful like no other. We were born with two ears and only one mouth because we’re meant to listen more than we utter. And silence among all screams is the loudest. It certainly conveys volumes. So, it can’t be ignored. Apparently the word LISTEN contains the same letters as the word SILENT and share a perpetual bond. 

I may not be able to put the wonderful silence just before the dawn into words. Or the quiet and calm just after a storm ends. Or perhaps about the silence that hums when you don’t have an answer to the question you’ve been asked. I have listened to the hush of a country road at the late hours of night and it’s one of a kind. The silence when there is an expectant pause of a room full of people when someone just about to speak, is thrilling and inexpressible in words. It just touches the human shaped emptiness and poises itself as a well-informed entity. The most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house. For some, this silence is to die for.

If only, you’d listen to it carefully. 

Paradise Turns Perfect Paradise

Sometimes it is okay to chase the sun with the windows down.

Your voice is the only thing carrying across the highway,

disobeying every speed law that you ever thought to enforce upon.

Sometimes it is okay to cross over all the hills, in hopes to get somewhere more beautiful.

Where the sun sets in its full glory and that is the only direction the compass knows.

This is it.

My last journey of 2012. And the very first of 2013.

Elevated at six thousand eight hundred and something feet, we swished quietly to McLeodganj and beyond.

Drove for about 12 hours only to be welcomed by a silver light of a winter skyline, beautiful enough that I didn’t remember where my home is any longer. The clouds were floating in, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colors to my sunset sky. The stars were beginning to shine. The moon was beginning to sprinkle its inner light. The foggy windows around me were only telling me that it’s the only place I ever wanted to be. The place is believed to be the land of peace and hashish abound. 

Trekked further to Perfect Paradise. There we sat with our legs stretched out besides the struggling bonfire and my lips shrank to the serenity in low temperature. Cupped the gracious Old Monk in my frosty hands when the shrill winds cut straight through the layers of my clothes, then the skin and got wrapped around my bones. I tilted my head towards the starry sky and let out my feelings with a deep exhalation. My feelings got translated into soft fog before my spectacle glasses. I wished if I could fold the sky like a newspaper and keep it under my armpit. 

the place itself is a home to a thousand mystical questions and answers about beauty, the right, the wrong, and the deserving. And music of course. Wonderfully noted, octaved and naturally composed, this place sings its own melody on a ‘high’ note.

During the last day of the year, I got to drench myself into a space, so occupied, so absorbing, and weirdly small shaped hole in the universe. The space certainly got so engaging that plunged me into the ocean of meanings. Far away from the bustle of concrete jungle into the peripherals of serene mountains. Picturesque taste was complimented by Tibetan flavours. That literally sang symphonies in the mouth.  

The morning heat brought with it the vibrancies of purity and newness, and I stood still for a while inhaling just the peacefulness. It's afterall the secret of life. I found myself lost in the oblivion thought of the faces dimmed out and mazed out and doped out and out there for me to search, at the silhouettes of the hills in front of me.

‘How was it that the birds sing, that they gloriously fly, that the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning,that the sky is not just blue but ohh bluest of blues, that the pleasant air love idling in the trees without a purpose, that every evening blooms with the songs of peaceful hymns, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?’ 

Walking down the hill in the day time and stumbling back by the bright moon light in the streets of unknown neighborhoods was more than enough to stuff my chest with immense pleasures. When there is crowd and noise, I feel there is some trouble waiting to blow up. And when there is silence and people are like localites of Mcleoganj, there is just perfection and nothing to fill the air. 

After 3 days, the time when I sat next to the driving seat, the rearview mirror framed the exotic collage of my new year. The mountains have left me feeling renewed and more content. I sat mutely among the series of sighs and the awe  just dripped from the corners of my eyes. Passing by the serenity I was positive than I’ve been for weeks, as if something has been given back after a long absence, as if my eyes have opened once again, as if I am tuned to savour the pleasures bestowed upon me, until the time I come back. Only if I had the talent to put the beauty in words... It was mesmerizing.   

  

The best of everything was the company I had. It was fresh, crazy, clever, eloquent, well-informed with a knack for adventure. That is what I call good company. In reality it helped me living a dream. A dream where paradise was a perfect paradise.

September

You sneak out of the window and all of a sudden it’s autumn. Every leaf on the tree flutters to tell noticeably that it’s here. Days get divided in equal dark and equal light. The air becomes crisp and you try to smell hard. It smells smoky. And you don’t know what to do with your recently orphaned august daydreams. So you tuck them between the pages of the brand new notebooks and leave them hanging on the branches of up reaching trees. And you set them on fire until the trees are smoldering red and orange and yellow.

It is here to stay for awhile like an old friend, you’ve been missing. Sitting under the blue skies it will settle in your favourite chair and take out his pipe. The afternoon will get filled with some dense smoke and the stories about the things he has done since last he saw you. The sun would love to warm the back instead of heating the head.

Possibly you’ll look back but that’s not where you would want to see yourself. Oh so nice and golden sun will set with a promise of less miseries. You would look forward for the times ahead, sitting cross legged.  It is the time of transition. The silent thrill in your chest will simply take you through the evening.


Under the bright moon light with not so nervous fingers, stitch a blanket of warmth for yourself. Because the air during the night gets increasingly crisper. Violently sparkling stars would be quite enough reason to awaken your dreams, once again. Your own September dreams.

This time, keep them safely in the shelf next to the window. And don’t let them ride the wind.

The nightlife

The sun might forget to shine, the rain might deny falling but the day religiously makes its way to the night. The sun gets enveloped by the apparent horizon. Like hues on a palette unite together and let the dusk, a thief, steal everything. It then paints the sky selfishly. The reptile darkness comes out of the underbrush like a silent snake.

With its poisonous bite, the earth gets without colour. And there they come out, the countless stars, hanging like a poem against the black board. The world gets somewhat lit by the rich light of star dust. 

And it becomes the time for the hungry insects to flush out from their hideouts. They creep in search of food. They crawl out blindly in a crowd of thousands like them. They meet each other. Sometimes it’s in the form of bright, flashy colors; sometimes it’s in the form of mimicry—looking or acting like dangerous insect. They don’t know each other but they know their common intention. They curiously feed on one another. 

The night gets deeper, without the color, without the sound. In the silent darkness two hungry insects eat each other's spit. They happen to exchange thoughts, desires, blood, sweat, saliva and lust. Two hungry insects survive the night by eating each other's appetite.

With the dawn twilight the envelop opens once again. The colors, the sounds come back to life bit by bit. The insects then once more clothe into human beings.