Times and Travels

There are many reasons to travel. To get towards something, to get away from something. Or maybe it's one and the same thing. There are also many roads that can be taken. I, like most of my peers, generally take the acceptable one. Am I one to forge a new path? Or traverse a lesser known one? Is it brave to go down the path I want to? Or do I simply become a well-worn character in the well-thumbed pages of a sometime popular book?

I asked someone once: Why are we so hard on ourselves? When all we can hope to find is a bit of happiness and when beginnings and endings are universal and inevitable, then why do we wait, think, ponder, worry, hesitate? He told me: We are perhaps striving to connect with our own reflections. Hence the need for an alien other. All I am looking for is a bit of that alien soul in whose eyes I might see my reflection and understand for once who I am. I have been quite a few things but I have a nagging doubt I haven't been myself yet. I haven't quite found myself. Have I looked hard enough? Have I just moulded myself so well in the role handed to me that it's no longer possible to break the cast? People, places have come easily enough. Perhaps too easily? No, that can't be it. I wouldn't be struggling then would I? There would be some semblance of satisfaction wouldn't there? Sometimes at least?

It's not where you go, it's who you go with. It's not who you go with, but how you feel. It's not you, it's them. It's not, it is. Maybe, maybe not.

Every journey they say is ultimately a journey of love and at the end you find yourself. They being crappy Hinglish films of course. Even disregarding such oracles, I find myself hoping to undertake such a journey. We all do I guess? Generalizations from myself to the wider world don't generally work. So without boasting of the audacity of answering my own questions and without letting the miasma of vagueness swirl too strong, let me say this. Feel is one of my favourite songs. There are certain lines I think have been ripped right out of me after a rigorous soul strip.

I don't want to die
But I ain't keen on living either
Before I fall in love
I'm preparing to leave her
I scare myself to death
That's why I keep on running
Before I've arrived
I can see myself coming

Some things need to change. This might just be the time. Can I be the person I think I can be? Can I take the plunge and come back up? I might lose. Then again I might win. I refuse to give up without a fight. I refuse to keep myself back from fighting. It'll be blood, sweat and tears. Which war has been less?

Journey, Foray. Call it what you will. A tryst with destiny, perhaps?

He warned me: There's a time and place for everything, even for philosophy. I do not agree,as usual.

Bon Voyage et Au Revoir.

The Pleasures of the Damned

There you go
The deed is done
Many times over
Its too late to go back
Or to remember if there was a beginning
This path to hell
Was paved with the best of intentions
Like all others
Look at all those footprints and you'll know
Its better to hang frozen in mid-air
Than walk down there
Us, them
The feeling is the same
Meaningless yet endless
Another time and it might have been different
Isn't that what they all say?
And they are right
Another time, another place
And that relentless sorrow
Would have been breaking dawn
Over that sea you loved
And those very footprints
Of lovers running in the sand
And in that tilting light
We could have carved our names
Faster than the waves could wash them away
Another time and that walk through
That leery, drunken forest
Would have been a dance
A fine balance between a waltz
And an eternal search for the meaning
And definition of us
Another time and you would be strong
You would live alone if you wanted to
Leave if you wanted to
Not give up
Not give in
Now just say these words
And take pleasure in the break
Of those mirthless laughs
There are many beckoning fingers
And outstretched hands
A grasping, gasping ocean
There's nothing you don't know
Yet there's always a new depth to sink to
Celebrate the fall.

Four Beasts in None

Lets not fool ourselves
I am asking for reassurance
So are you
And we both know only too well
Its a lost cause
All that we fear is true
Is,in fact, true
And its an unchanging,unyielding truth
Its beautiful how we spar with silence
Look into the mirror with a smile
And hold up our battle scars
To admire
That bright diamond glass
That we have been trying to crack
Will never give
And the other side
Which we see, feel , touch
But can never be on
Will always shine with that intensity
Which dazzled us in the first place
Its an alley of half-truths
We have condemned ourselves to
Hammering on the wall
Of the dead end
Thinking because we saw it move once
It might move for us again
That war weary flame of hope
Which flits between you and me
Lights the way but only so
We see far enough to know
We have to keep going
The end has come and gone
It followed right behind
The beginning
And we missed seeing it
Because the world called
And we answered like fools
Turning away at that very second
Which might have been the
Making of us
The ship that we heard carried
Ingots and sailed round the world
Left behind a wake that we saw
And followed on the pearl pure logic
Of love
We rode high waves but washed up
Like sand on the shore
Not far from where we stared
We walked ahead
Looking back now and then
To see only one set of footprints
Never asking whose they were
Both sure it was theirs
But terrified knowing
Whose pain would be greater
If it wasn't
A rocky road, a hill in distance
Crossing which
We won and lost the world
Because we couldn't decide
Whose claim was greater.

Arctic Chaos

Rough and heavy and still
Its such a cumbersome silence
That sounds like a dirge
And feels like being felled
In the dark.
The stabbing silence
Wounds over and over again
Till the unsaid words bleed
The silence molests
In a red-eyed frenzy
The screams go unheard
Till the weeping words
Sigh and die out
The silence broods
And breeds
Until the all consuming quiet
Takes a damning breath
Killing truth and lie
In the same, silent stroke.

Purgatory By-Lane

A storm came and went
While we were sleeping
And when we woke up
There was nothing around us
Just two blind beings staring into space
We tried to see each other
Tried to remember
But memory being tricky
Try as we might
We could not put things back
Exactly as they were
And suddenly that seemed to matter most
To place everything right
We mattered less
And as things fell in place
We fell out
Its me and you
And nothing else
Someone more and no one less
And all the storm took
Was replaced
But us
Now
I keep hoping
For another storm
That takes everything away
And gives us back.

Lest I Forget

I have a picture
Of us
Lest I forget your face
And that we were joined
In some passing moments
Of togetherness
A diary
Where everything is noted down
Lest I forget
What you said
And why I laughed
When the world asked
I had no answer
Why I felt the way I did
But someday
When memory fails
And I ask myself
I don't want the truth
So I'll take refuge
In this cover
Pictures and words
Mingling to create
A brand new story
Of how we were simply friends
Who met, talked, laughed
And left.

Post-Ifs

Would you mind
If I say I feel iffy
If I say we are as unresolved
As the Irish question
As inexplicable
As the Bermuda Triangle
As meaningless
As colourless green ideas
Would you mind
If I feel like I am not
Like I never was
When with you
If I say
Our words clash and ring
Like clamoring curfews
Making me feel ominous
Ours is a battle
Though we sing it like a duet
We consume each others words
Air, space and memories
Till someday
We'll be reduced to nothing
Reduced to saying
How we might have made a mark
If we hadn't met each other.

A note in February.

This isn't for you
Just like all those
Meaningless
Incoherent
Attempts at words weren't
Like that
Starry
Blurry
Eyed girl
Wasn't
She wrote it for
No one
Because she
Loved no one
She only liked
Watching the world play
The fool
And you play the world
Laughing your candyfloss laugh
I don't know why
I remembered her suddenly
Why I can't let her go
Of her words
Which weren't for you.