Castle of Time

Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too.
-Henrik Ibsen 

I'm building our castle, a little each day. Every day, brick by brick, stone by stone, I'm building our castle a little each day. With the foundation of your selfless love, the care, the caressing and in awe of your power to sense the subtle nuances of the theater that is me; to know am flawed and still love every detail of mine…For you, I'm building our castle a little each day. Enshrining our memories and keeping them fortified, letting our sunshine peek through the little windows and the cracks made upon drying, trapping our moment within the fortress of its walls; I'm building our castle a little day. For the sparkle in my eye when I see you smile, the silent joy in finding a part of me in the flawless you, the selfish happiness that I need search no more, and the emptiness that fills me when you bid me adieu, the urges to turn back just one last time, did i tell you, for me, I’m building our castle a little each day?

So when one day you are gone, or I have no choice but to leave, our castle will stay. Through the cracks doubting its worth, and the tiny windows that once questioned its stability, the world will see our moments radiating out. And if my wish were to come true, they’ll enlighten our lives with the brilliance of the happiness we once shared.

Though bodies apart and souls away, untouched by time,  you and I and our memories will stay in the castle I’m building, a little each day.

Let me.

Let me give you all I have, all I can
Limitlessly like the pouring rain..
Through you, let me replenish my dying soul
Like the sun's first rays cleansing the doubtful clouds..

Monsoon, you beauty!

And monsoon is also when you understand how truly beautiful it is to be the solitary traveller.

It rained all night today. There's an added beauty to the city when it rains. Life just seems to get a lot more meaningful. Sitting in the balcony, staring at the dense black sky that seemed to hide all there is in the heavens and beyond, I thought to myself:

More often than not, maybe we should take some time out. No matter how busy our lives get, would it harm to take a moment off for our lonely selves just to stare at the vastness of the firmament contemplating? The stars seems to sketch their own portraits.. do you too wonder what stories they are dying to tell? Once in a while maybe we can excuse ourselves from being utterly crazy just gazing at the stars, believing that time has taken a perfect halt just for us and understanding how small we really are in comparison to the universe. Yet, how huge a difference this small entity, say you and I, can make!  Aren't we too tiny a speck in the galaxy of time and space? Yet, powerful beyond measure?

I hope it rains more often.

Looking Through the Invisibility

Through joy, love and boundless ecstasy, through pain, agony and pangs of separation, through 21 years of my eventful existence I have learnt how life functions. Not a master of the art of living, but I have learnt more than just a little.. And the more I learn, the more aware I become that what I know is only the beginning. The beginning of acceptance of the intangible, impalpable yet extant mysteries of life; the inexplicable, densely elaborate and yet intricately woven cobwebs that we all are housed within.

Of all I learnt, the most excruciatingly difficult were the lessons of acceptance. Possibly because before I learnt to accept the rest of the world the way it is, I had to accept myself the way I was, the way I am, and the way I probably will be for the rest of my life. To see the world in gray, with no clear distinction of black or white requires a soul deep and brave; one that has been through the extremities of life; situations of life that you and I wouldn’t want to find ourselves in. while extending gratitude for the gift of good fate, it is also essential for you and I to learn these lessons from people that have seen enough to teach.

The world isn’t perfect, neither am I. unfortunately for me, it took me one too many instances to learn that. To embrace the fact that people are different, to understand the people that are different, to comprehend that there could be a heart-wrenching, nerve wrecking story behind the beautifully sculpted elusive smiles on their faces, and the eyes that once gleamed of joy and hope are now dry because one too many tears of silence and sorrow have already been shed, takes time; it requires an elegance of the heart that only a few have. Achieving such depths in soul might take a lifetime of comprehension, but it is our responsibility to strive towards such elegance. All we see of a stranger, and sometimes sadly of our closest associations is what is skin-deep. More often than not we refuse to look within them, and to see beyond what they portray,  just as the resistance we show in shedding our own masks.

 I’m convinced that if all of us take just a moment; stop being judgmental for the tiniest fraction of a second and rekindle the already extant courage within us to embrace their worlds just as easily we embraced ours, we would all have different stories to tell. Stories devoid of hatred, pain, abuses and differences.. differences that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and if extant by fate or accidents of birth, differences that we as human beings should not have let grow; differences of social status, wealth, opportunities, abilities and sometimes even the very chance to live by choice.

I’ve learnt that there’s innate beauty in empathy; in largeness of heart to accept and love.  That it is okay to enjoy the gift of destiny, to be able to go to a pricey restaurant and savour the customized dishes waiting for you as long as you do not refuse to look beyond its glass doors to see in the eyes of the ill-clad man how disadvantageously he wishes to forge ahead through just one more day. I hope someday, we can all be the hope in the eyes of many like him. That we can all, in our own little ways, curb the hunger of at least one person a day.

Life’s has not been very easy; no one ever said it is going to be. With boundless happiness, i have also known limitless pain. But knowing pain, i learnt it is not always destructive.  There’s also constructive pain; it solely depends on the sufferer in what direction life moves forward after having been halted for a while.

Then there’s love, and the vulnerability that comes along with it. Being vulnerable is a beautiful thing; to give your heart away to a stranger without knowing in entirety what the future holds. Love is an amalgam of all things beautiful in a single entity- courage, hope, optimism, nostalgia and the sudden surges of melancholy. You can be wrong in love, you can make mistakes, over and over again, and sometimes still not learn, because for once you are letting your heart speak, for once you're listening to only what the heart has to say. Love can break you, shatter you beyond repair, destroy you. But give it that one chance, because while it lasts, it IS beautiful. There's pain associated with love at all times; may sorts of it. The pain of separation,  the changing wavelengths, the stings of possession.. the pangs of separation will eat you alive each day, but when it does, let it.  Let it claw deep into your soul and bring alive the romantic in you- the writer, the artist, the poet. While love lasts, it will complete you, like nothing else ever did, like nothing ever possibly can!

Love might not always be a presage of  better times ahead. It will end, and when it does it will kill you. the parts of you that you didn't know existed will ache in agony. Pieces of you will sing melancholy ragas that you can't harmonize into compositions. When nothing makes sense, let them be. Give things time, and just be. Because there's nothing more divine and more pristine as the very ability to love- the very concept of risking all you ever had in hope of achieving all you'd ever want!

*to be continued*

'Religious' debacle

When we planned to shift back to India in 2008, my country was definitely not the least communalist. Being a Muslim didn't make it all easy. I wrote this for a competition in school, not for the sake of the competition but as a medium of finally venting what I felt. With a few tears shed and these few words penned down, I felt calmer, but 5 years hence when I look around  nothing here has changed. 

Cannons, guns, tear-gas- everywhere around
People claiming lives on their religions’ ground
A world has come, of which never had I thought
They laughed at their glory, while the innocent fought..

To prove their blood, they began their war
Little did they know my belief was at par
What had I done in my old and young??
They ruined my race; their glory they sung!!

A convolution of bodies, for days it has been
Not a loving soul, for years I have seen 
I glance upon the pools of blood
Lamenting their deeds, my eyes now flood

Dreamt I had, of a marvellous world
My life I have lost, my dreams they have hurled...
Has it added to the gems in their crown?
Nothing can I do, but revile and frown!!

I believed they would aid me shine
Among the carcasses, they left me whine 
They shattered my woven dreams
As death murks, my silence screams

Estranged are our enigmatic minds
And folded with darkness’ blinds... 
They killed my folks while asleep
Sorrows after sorrows, now I reap!! 

They walked off with fulfilled dreams
Drowning us in bloody streams
What had I done in my old and young??
They ruined my race; their glory they sung!! 

My silent scream was loud indeed
They walked away with a well-done deed
Their wretched wrath the dawn did see
With love, so much dearer our worlds would be
    
The timeless virtues are now far dead
Where would my life in the future head??
Show me once more my ecstatic world
A world where the truth is no longer hurled!!

Gone is the insouciance of my youth
A populace destroyed by hearts of no ruth... 
What had I done in my old and young??
They ruined my race; their glory they sung!! 

Oh good Lord!! Forgive their sin!!
For I truly believe, they are my kin!! 
Do they bear hearts so cold??
Do they endure the sights they behold?


Vanished from my youth are those frivolous days
When I amorously extolled the flowers of May
The gardens have deflowered; the streets have turned red
I walk through the road- now the corpses’ bed

Peace and love have grown too old
Terror and death now unfold
What had I done in my old and young??
They ruined my race, and their glory they sung!! 

No caste, no faith, no creed
Teaches them to slay for greed
Let’s now resolve to start anew
For an enlightened world- for me and you!!

O slayer!! Heed the innocent wry
I have no tears left to dry
Let the divergence die aside
In a blissful Heaven we shall abide!!

Eternal virtues if we blend
This bloody riot we would end
I crave to travel the same old road
And gaze the old deceased religious node

Tomorrow is new; a fresh sun would bask
For nothing but tranquility I would now ask
Browse the lexicon for a word called love
It’s shown before religion, the virtue- love!!

Secret Rendezvous

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,the world is too full to talk about.Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."  

Rumi

 Written four years back, I can't quite figure out why or for whom!                                                  

 I stand in the battle field of life
All through the years, saw nothing but strife
My forfeiture's the talk of the town
In spite of the might, I fall down

My soul thirsted for your fulgent smiles
But every minute, you proved the miles
You weren't there, you were never here
Nowhere beside, no where near

As days drew their curtains, the more I lost
In my own very world, sans love, I frost
The dark times, the lonely days, the empty street
My heart bruised, yet hoped we would meet


As the night smiled n day died,
You would come, my heart lied
My silent wry was loud enough to hear
And yet to my need, you paid a deaf ear

Didn't want to appear so weak
I smiled, even knowing the future was bleak
I see the flowers smiling, all aglow
To the populace, never let my feelings show

Wouldn't ask you to indemnify
Because u are the one people glorify
The nefarious devil, my joy enfolds
Your true colors to me, u unfold

The good old days are part of history
N my trials to the world would be a mystery

Oh.. I hear the call.. a silent knock!
The mighty killer, death, at my tears mock
I leave my world with unshared pain
An untold story, I still remain...

Acceptance

With every step forward, the pain intensified..

Drenching her in sweats of hurt

A spasm of desperation taking over

Holding on to her glacial torso

In a cobweb of misery, rejection, failure

Happiness moving further away

As she stretched her arms but in vain

To feel the warm evening zephyr

Dying for a little sufferance

For the person she was

Than what they wished her to be

On knees asking for acceptance

As she stared into the vastness of firmament

She saw the vista fading

A horizon so bleak, so stark

Blinding her from all joy

Deep inside, a confused soul unvoiced

Trying hard to break away

From its solitary confinement

To a reality more radiant

In vain, the squelching pain

Bound her in a chain so strong

With every attempt to free herself

She found herself in stronger bounds

With tears running down her expressionless face

She drowned a little more in agony

She heard the melancholy raga

Reminding her of the things gone wrong

Yet to the world, she hid the pain

The pain of suffering, in her elusive smile

Draping her face in a well-knit mask

Hiding from the world, her unhappy self

She walked away among the crowd

Unnoticed, a stranger to remain

In a world so caught in its own bliss

Hoping the world was better than she knew..