Personal Life Moment: Poetry 'At All?'

I had written this on 26th December 2016

That was the time, I had just begun the course of healing myself after a really hard time in life. I was without work, without love, without ambition and without health.

My surgeries were over but I believed I could be back in OT any moment without notice. I was getting better, but I didn't know it then. I had felt that I had lost everything except that I was still alive.

It had been just a month after I moved to Bombay to join work. I found solace that I could be by myself again, even so for counted moments. It had become difficult to believe and think about future. Because, I felt that most of my plans had come down crumbling in the past.

In the series of these falls, I lived some of the best moments of life too. I learnt to love my family like I did as a child, once again. I learnt to love, whatever little I had been endowed with. And I learnt, that this little was all that mattered.

I had come back, a little more wise. A little more cautious. Careful, that there are no norms, no standards and no formats that we could all fit into. So, I came back, knowing it was okay to be unsure, and it was okay to lay back and give life a chance to let you live.

I've tried to put my 'then feelings' in a poem called 'At All?'

At all?

The hazy life that I look into, with shades of colour and those of grey

What’s going to be the path like, no one is likely to say

I find it funny, when they know for sure

Their names and games, their curse and cure

Who really knows the trueness of nature

For, is there really any truth or lies at all?

We tend to crave for motive & meaning

I step back to hold my head and have myself leaning

In the arms of destiny and ventures of time

To humbly realize that I am just a speck of grime

In the universe of infinite and expressions of mime

For, who knows a speck could be the whole after all?

Its endless, the dilemma which always plays blind

With insanity and questions rolled into a mind

Chances to succeed are near over

If I let you and others, on my heart, hover

Then again, the question remains

For, is there really any success or failure at all?          

Snippet: Love-Hardened Honesty

To the wishes that come true and the love, that is found
And to the sleep that evades me with the thoughts of a man

And to every story that finds a beginning

I speak these words of passion & compassion,
Of turmoil & pain, of madness of the rain

Words of truth, devoid of delusional disdain...

That I'm as honest as I could be,
And that, I've never been the same

Poetry: Pink Lipstick

I put on a pink lipstick and curled my hair

Wore my heels and slit in my skirt, without a care

Chin up and chest out, I walked towards the ac cab

“Ooooh the traffic”, my senses vibrating

Didn’t matter really, I was in the 1% slab      [1% people who paid income tax in India]

I scrolled for bits of news, looked at some twitter

Checked the time & cursed at the Dadar litter

Working in a ‘prestigious’ corporation

I am the upper caste middle class ambition

who praises modernity and vouches for equality

Just before dissolving into my vanity,

My eyes fell upon a despicable old woman

Shrouded by poverty and bespoke of filth

Ideally my attention should have given her its silt

But I just happened to sit and stare

Hoping she wouldn’t see me in an avatar

That is probably of an alien who’s raided her world

Holding on, I kept at it – feeling pity, my eyes ajar

She slided her glance and looked directly at me

Incase she could, in my heart, see

Ashamed and guilty, I looked away

Dare not to look out, my head would sway

Tears of humiliation trickled down my cheeks

As I asked myself, so what if the GDP peaks!!

That woman spoke no words and yet

She sang a saga for millions of us

Only if we listened through our hearts at times

Stopped the drama, chucked the fuss

She sat still as a stone

And yet sent chills down my spine

I imagined the reality of her and me standing in the same line [The idea of India – Constitutions confers us political equality – the line to vote where all irrespective of class or caste stand to cast the vote which has equal power]

The mirage of equality shattered, the illusion of privilege knackered

my arrogance and pride put into place

by who, the one who probably had little solace

I screamed in my head and felt enraged

My heart was conflicted, my spirit was caged

She brought down the shining India in one glance of an eye

Do I exist as is, or a stigma of a reality?

I sat in the cab numb and stooped

Low enough and yet to continue

In the dream of a glass building

Making graphs & sending emails undue

Silently ignoring the voice that stood witness

to the paltry of many, and the abundance of few

Sleepless nights I tossed and turned

Wondering if a poem could be churned

To call for attention and to seek some life

In the lifeless concrete and relentless strife

Of making it big and having it all

Of paying those bills, and delivery on call

Of playing up such passions, that compete like rats

We’re human, there’s richness of emotion

Is it okay if I don this hat?

Stuck in a vicious loop, the questions never seem to end

Somewhere as I type, the letter begin to bend

As my eyes narrow and my heart starts to sink

No use of lips that red and those so pink

If they don’t smile to those who need it the most

Those in the middle of deserts or waters far away from the coast

I forever ask myself, where do I begin

Do I continue to shun or blindly sign-in

Those eyes will never leave my sight

Perhaps, their powerlessness was their might

Answers to these questions may forever remain obscure

I am relieved I could ask at the least, if not endure.

Poetry: We're bound yet we're free

Prelude:-

Sometimes I want to jerk open my eyes and see the other side,

The side where everything happens but we know nothing of it

Sometimes it shines but mostly so dark

Its invisible yet leaves its mark

Its hollow as hell but dense as earth

As if it hid memories and secrets that we could unearth

Hanging on the threads of time

It feels like nothing has moved, yet everything’s new

We don’t know who we are anymore

Time was still and yet we flew

I can go on and on about how I am and what I know

But feelings & memories are hazy as dew

It would feel okay to admit

this is how things work

But it would’ve been better to know

that the pain wont lurk

I imagine that life will turn out all right

There’ll be love and laughter and a lot of sunlight

But hey there, there’s always been a box kept apart

Of shocks and surprises that often break a heart

And then there’s breeze of hope and lust

Which makes falling in love a must

Because there’s promise of you don’t really know what

But at-least there’s promise alas, of some sort

Then again I wonder if it’s the weakness of human mind

To want to want, familiarity of a kind

We are just slaves to an invisible hole

Hollow has hell yet dense as soul

Hidden with patterns and secrets, our memories and dreams

Filled with fear & rage, tears and screams

It contains memories, of who we were and who we are

Of those who are close and those who have been afar

Its this crazy plasma of perceptions

built on muddy minds and emotional interceptions

that makes us want what we want

and makes us want, what we cant

In a way that is unique to you and me

In a way that we are bound and yet we’re free