The water splashed on me. The horizon was never deeper. I stared into the sea; and then into myself. I was sporting torpor in the most fanciful way by standing right in front of the sea, facing it straight! The water splashed again; perhaps, to rejuvenate me. I wasn’t satiated with life then. I wanted to break free from the limiting boundaries. The quest of being self sufficient, independent in all possible ways was the topic of the hour. It was the uncertainty of the future that was riding on me with anxiety and fear as its byproducts. The process was endless.
The waves – they never stopped. They had a timeless charm within that was getting reflected from without. I was still standing. I failed to obviate my stolidity; it just had to surface. It was free now. Yes, quite ironically, my stolidity was free; not any other emotion. It was freer than what freedom is. But was it independent, too? Or was it merely free? The sea is free; but not independent. The sea is not bound by any limits – it’s free. But it certainly depends on the rain cycle to persist – it’s not independent.
Was I the sea? Or was the sea me? Was I really free? Can I ever be completely independent? The sea was biting me in thoughts, just as a cat does to a mouse before swallowing it up. Even the cat is dependent on the mouse. Then, who is self sufficient? Me, you, the cat, the sea; who? Or nothing is? Are all the claims of independence and freedom as superficial as they sound after scrutinizing them? Perhaps, the universe is independent; it envelopes all the dependence in a darkish space to celebrate its own independence. But am I, the minutest fraction of the immensity of the universe, independent? Or as lethal as it sounds – ‘in-dependence’, just as all its other parts?
The water splashed on me. The horizon was never deeper. This time, I splashed my way through the sea; to celebrate a similarity – the state of helplessly being in-dependence!
- Mihir Chitre
mihirmumbaikar@gmail.com
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Light
A pond lay at the bottom of my garden,
Frozen, surrounded by moss
With colossal creepers clawing for space.
Unreal yet full of character.
I would stare at it, struck by its force.
Ghosts lie at the bottom, they whispered.
I pretended not to be scared,
But the summers never dried it up.
Then one day, this labyrinth disappeared.
The sunlight in my garden, hit dust.
Not the frozen pond, with creepers.
Probably it ate itself up, tired of growing.
I did not know, I refused to know.
My mind has stopped racing.
- Janvi Gandhi
Janvi.87@gmail.com
Frozen, surrounded by moss
With colossal creepers clawing for space.
Unreal yet full of character.
I would stare at it, struck by its force.
Ghosts lie at the bottom, they whispered.
I pretended not to be scared,
But the summers never dried it up.
Then one day, this labyrinth disappeared.
The sunlight in my garden, hit dust.
Not the frozen pond, with creepers.
Probably it ate itself up, tired of growing.
I did not know, I refused to know.
My mind has stopped racing.
- Janvi Gandhi
Janvi.87@gmail.com
Independence Dom!
"Dom!", I spat the word like a cough lozenge out of my window, but it bounced off the grill and plastered itself on my dust-crowded window-sill; the aww ricocheted off the walls of the next building and washed over me like a glass of water thrown into the wind: Dawwm, it said.
"Damn!", I tell you. Damn the consonance. Damn the way these vowels play a Parnassian in my brain, a sound cage I cannot break out of. Who is to blame?
"Dom!"
Yes, Dom is to blame. Can I take the liberty of calling you by your first name? I will do it, too. I cannot free myself of you like the Muse did, shutting you out for twenty years. Would I do it, if I could? No, I am the monkey on the back of your virtuosity. I am the conscientious thief of your artistry, a thief that takes in small portions, never in gluttonous wholes; I pluck the eye of your Christmas Turkey, the n from Altermann, the glister from your key. I will lick the blood off the unicorn you killed, the blood Shylock didn't dare spill. I will clip the nail of your typing finger while you sleep. Your poems will be held together by this variety of absences! Why should I be free of you? I choose to be fiercely dependent on your words.
And still I blame you, Dom. Tough love. You had many women, Dom, but this man would outwoman them all. Even faithful Sarayu shall pall before the fierceness of my devotion, the submission in my crawl before your disdainful, out-of-focus stare. Free of homes and homeliness, wanderer, dreamer, you shall never be free of me. I shall outwit the cancer you did not treat and become your prime disease.
I shall deride Sidharth Dhanvant Sanghvi in your voice as a weak dose of LSD.
My flashwords shall not let you sleep, I shall be a one-man-paparazzi army. Having wet my fingers-proboscises, I shall drink from your ink. I shall be the leech that will bleed you into health, that will rouse you out of death –
I warn you, Dom, you are not the only one doing the haunting; I haunt you as only the living can haunt the dead. Tie me close, Icarus, I am your waxen wings. I shall exalt you till your glory melts and till you fall to the sea. I shall prize you from your poetry.
At last you will borrow no voice, depend on no posthumous jamboree.
At last you will be free.
PS: The words are half mine, and half Dom Moraes's, lines or titles of poems, but that is expected; we are both Cancerians, and I feel this great affinity; and I will never forgive him for dying on me.
- Partho Chakrabartty
dropdeadman@gmail.com
"Damn!", I tell you. Damn the consonance. Damn the way these vowels play a Parnassian in my brain, a sound cage I cannot break out of. Who is to blame?
"Dom!"
Yes, Dom is to blame. Can I take the liberty of calling you by your first name? I will do it, too. I cannot free myself of you like the Muse did, shutting you out for twenty years. Would I do it, if I could? No, I am the monkey on the back of your virtuosity. I am the conscientious thief of your artistry, a thief that takes in small portions, never in gluttonous wholes; I pluck the eye of your Christmas Turkey, the n from Altermann, the glister from your key. I will lick the blood off the unicorn you killed, the blood Shylock didn't dare spill. I will clip the nail of your typing finger while you sleep. Your poems will be held together by this variety of absences! Why should I be free of you? I choose to be fiercely dependent on your words.
And still I blame you, Dom. Tough love. You had many women, Dom, but this man would outwoman them all. Even faithful Sarayu shall pall before the fierceness of my devotion, the submission in my crawl before your disdainful, out-of-focus stare. Free of homes and homeliness, wanderer, dreamer, you shall never be free of me. I shall outwit the cancer you did not treat and become your prime disease.
I shall deride Sidharth Dhanvant Sanghvi in your voice as a weak dose of LSD.
My flashwords shall not let you sleep, I shall be a one-man-paparazzi army. Having wet my fingers-proboscises, I shall drink from your ink. I shall be the leech that will bleed you into health, that will rouse you out of death –
I warn you, Dom, you are not the only one doing the haunting; I haunt you as only the living can haunt the dead. Tie me close, Icarus, I am your waxen wings. I shall exalt you till your glory melts and till you fall to the sea. I shall prize you from your poetry.
At last you will borrow no voice, depend on no posthumous jamboree.
At last you will be free.
PS: The words are half mine, and half Dom Moraes's, lines or titles of poems, but that is expected; we are both Cancerians, and I feel this great affinity; and I will never forgive him for dying on me.
- Partho Chakrabartty
dropdeadman@gmail.com
The Choice
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude” – Shakespeare
(Yup, I'm selling out, like we did in the tenth standard. No essay of ours ever began without a quote for those extra marks, did it?)
I'd heard it in humour often. How a man's (as in male's) life can be so hard and more often than not, it's because of a woman. Or even more often because of more than one. I don't really know if the theme brought out this article in me or if I would've written it anyway, but man! It's so hard to be truly independent.
Independence to me right now is the freedom to make a choice without having to regret it and without having to feel guilty. That's never going to happen, is it? I mean let's face it, independence sucks. I can see two sides of it already. I was told by my good friend that he's a 'true man' and he'll never give in to a woman, never do something to please a girl if he doesn't want to do it. Dude, you're never going to get laid! Sometimes you've got to suck up to feel happy. What! Did he just say that? I can't believe he wrote that shit! Ok, maybe there aren't enough people reading this to actually make that statement and maybe it's just my guilty conscience thinking it up. But I swear to God, I derive immense pleasure out of sucking up sometimes. Mom, here let me help you with the cleaning. Dad, let me take care of this for you. Here, I'll help you with the dishes. It helps. When you've attached yourself to someone so much that you love them a lot, it really feels nice to, well, suck up to them. I'm sure you know that. You just covered it with lesser demeaning words such as ‘adapting’, ‘adjusting’, ‘doing a favour’, etc.
But at what cost? Oh my son, he's so good, he listens to all we say. He's going to marry the girl of our choice. “Oh my god! What did you say?” “Did you say ‘no’?” “Is this what we raised you for?” “Now I don't even matter to you, do I?” What did you raise me up for mom, dad? I know you're working 12 hours a day plus 2 hours of travel plus 2 hours of house work just to make a good future for me. So that I don't have to see the problems that you faced while growing up. But at what cost? When you decided you're not going to let the bad things that happened to you happen to me again, did you also made up your mind to make sure that you will let the good things that didn't happen to you happen to me as well? At what cost? Mom, are you happy with dad? Don't you think you could've done better? Don't you think if you would've hung around with him for a year, you would have got to know he wasn't right after all? Oh you did know that, didn't you? What was it mom? A loss of hope or a sudden surge of the same?
Why is it that I must be what you want me to be? Isn't that a waste of the person I am? Or indeed the person I can be? Believe me, I respect your wisdom, I know you're probably better equipped with that thing called experience to tell me what's right for me and what's not. But those were things that happened to you and to think you think they shouldn't happen to me is to be completely ignorant of the person I am. Maybe what shouldn't have happened to you will change my life if it happens to me. But with that umbrella of yours that you protect me with, I'll never feel the rain.
We kids will never appreciate the love you put into raising us. We're bastards who secretly wish you weren't around. We're so damn ignorant, we think we could so very well manage without you. We're people who want life to make us what we become when we're 30, rather than let you make us the same. We'd love you to guide us, not control us. Let us choose the path and tell us HOW to walk on it, not WHERE to walk. 'There's always time to change the road you're on'. Don't say, “See we told you that wasn't right.” I know. I heard. I remember. I wanted to check what happens when I'm not right. Are you pissed because I wasted a decent part of my life? Or only because you think that you have a right over me and that I challenged your authority? How often has it happened that you told us off for doing something you didn't like and that only strengthened our resolve to do it again? There's always a better way. Let go. It'd be an immense burden off us.
Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love -Mel Brooks
The first thing I made up in my 'not to repeat the mistakes my parents made when they raised me' book is: Not to be so in control of my children when I raise them. Never let them feel they're indebted to us, because my kids might grow up to be just as weak minded as me. They might not want to speak out, thinking it may hurt me. I'll be open. Of course, I don’t know where you hid that book of yours. I'd read it and probably be surprised to find the same entry. Maybe when I'm a father I'll realise the troubles of parenting and hate myself for writing this now. But till then, please, let go. I'm shit, the fault is my own. I could never say this to them.
“So I just go on like this
Feeding till in peace I rest
Not knowing where the goodness is
Smothered at my mother's breast.”
- Nikhil Kini
- nikhil.skinny@gmail.com
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude” – Shakespeare
(Yup, I'm selling out, like we did in the tenth standard. No essay of ours ever began without a quote for those extra marks, did it?)
I'd heard it in humour often. How a man's (as in male's) life can be so hard and more often than not, it's because of a woman. Or even more often because of more than one. I don't really know if the theme brought out this article in me or if I would've written it anyway, but man! It's so hard to be truly independent.
Independence to me right now is the freedom to make a choice without having to regret it and without having to feel guilty. That's never going to happen, is it? I mean let's face it, independence sucks. I can see two sides of it already. I was told by my good friend that he's a 'true man' and he'll never give in to a woman, never do something to please a girl if he doesn't want to do it. Dude, you're never going to get laid! Sometimes you've got to suck up to feel happy. What! Did he just say that? I can't believe he wrote that shit! Ok, maybe there aren't enough people reading this to actually make that statement and maybe it's just my guilty conscience thinking it up. But I swear to God, I derive immense pleasure out of sucking up sometimes. Mom, here let me help you with the cleaning. Dad, let me take care of this for you. Here, I'll help you with the dishes. It helps. When you've attached yourself to someone so much that you love them a lot, it really feels nice to, well, suck up to them. I'm sure you know that. You just covered it with lesser demeaning words such as ‘adapting’, ‘adjusting’, ‘doing a favour’, etc.
But at what cost? Oh my son, he's so good, he listens to all we say. He's going to marry the girl of our choice. “Oh my god! What did you say?” “Did you say ‘no’?” “Is this what we raised you for?” “Now I don't even matter to you, do I?” What did you raise me up for mom, dad? I know you're working 12 hours a day plus 2 hours of travel plus 2 hours of house work just to make a good future for me. So that I don't have to see the problems that you faced while growing up. But at what cost? When you decided you're not going to let the bad things that happened to you happen to me again, did you also made up your mind to make sure that you will let the good things that didn't happen to you happen to me as well? At what cost? Mom, are you happy with dad? Don't you think you could've done better? Don't you think if you would've hung around with him for a year, you would have got to know he wasn't right after all? Oh you did know that, didn't you? What was it mom? A loss of hope or a sudden surge of the same?
Why is it that I must be what you want me to be? Isn't that a waste of the person I am? Or indeed the person I can be? Believe me, I respect your wisdom, I know you're probably better equipped with that thing called experience to tell me what's right for me and what's not. But those were things that happened to you and to think you think they shouldn't happen to me is to be completely ignorant of the person I am. Maybe what shouldn't have happened to you will change my life if it happens to me. But with that umbrella of yours that you protect me with, I'll never feel the rain.
We kids will never appreciate the love you put into raising us. We're bastards who secretly wish you weren't around. We're so damn ignorant, we think we could so very well manage without you. We're people who want life to make us what we become when we're 30, rather than let you make us the same. We'd love you to guide us, not control us. Let us choose the path and tell us HOW to walk on it, not WHERE to walk. 'There's always time to change the road you're on'. Don't say, “See we told you that wasn't right.” I know. I heard. I remember. I wanted to check what happens when I'm not right. Are you pissed because I wasted a decent part of my life? Or only because you think that you have a right over me and that I challenged your authority? How often has it happened that you told us off for doing something you didn't like and that only strengthened our resolve to do it again? There's always a better way. Let go. It'd be an immense burden off us.
Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love -Mel Brooks
The first thing I made up in my 'not to repeat the mistakes my parents made when they raised me' book is: Not to be so in control of my children when I raise them. Never let them feel they're indebted to us, because my kids might grow up to be just as weak minded as me. They might not want to speak out, thinking it may hurt me. I'll be open. Of course, I don’t know where you hid that book of yours. I'd read it and probably be surprised to find the same entry. Maybe when I'm a father I'll realise the troubles of parenting and hate myself for writing this now. But till then, please, let go. I'm shit, the fault is my own. I could never say this to them.
“So I just go on like this
Feeding till in peace I rest
Not knowing where the goodness is
Smothered at my mother's breast.”
- Nikhil Kini
- nikhil.skinny@gmail.com
Irony
She would run to her workplace, outrunning hunger.
She fought her way out through her children’s unwary eyes.
She would sell her sweat for a few pieces of rectangular paper,
And her sporadic smiles for her family’s succor.
A drunken husband and the bottles of destruction,
She struggled bare-minded to achieve a pseudo destination.
The days would enclose children’s demands within
And nights engulfed her needful and desperate screams.
Words were overrun and tears were restrained;
decrepit bones and muscles that had sprained.
She abstained from frolic and refrained from jubilance,
Ironically, she was never free but always independent!
- Mihir Chitre
mihirmumbaikar@gmail.com
She fought her way out through her children’s unwary eyes.
She would sell her sweat for a few pieces of rectangular paper,
And her sporadic smiles for her family’s succor.
A drunken husband and the bottles of destruction,
She struggled bare-minded to achieve a pseudo destination.
The days would enclose children’s demands within
And nights engulfed her needful and desperate screams.
Words were overrun and tears were restrained;
decrepit bones and muscles that had sprained.
She abstained from frolic and refrained from jubilance,
Ironically, she was never free but always independent!
- Mihir Chitre
mihirmumbaikar@gmail.com
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