Prose on a cold dark night

I'm a poet trying to write prose
A blind eye that cannot see
I'm the lovely red rose
that knows just to be


What do you do, when your true love, the flame that burned in the solitude of your soul, goes silent? When you know all the notes that make up the most perfect music, but your mouth refuses to sing? When there is a river flowing in your heart...but she flows quietly on a soft bed of sand?

I have written, in pangs of desire, longing and sorrow. My heart was the sacrifice I offered to the idol I worshipped. In the dull light of hunger, I sat in front of her cruel form, cutting my burning heart and bleeding words to appease her. She never heard me. My thirst for love, beauty and truth grew coiled like the incense I burned. But the idol was silent.

Yet, I took a perverse joy in the whole affair. In bringing my heart to her and let it die a slow death in the light of her cold stare. I felt myself rising with each sacrifice. I felt I was somehow higher and more evolved compared to those who never saw the idol. I magnified my own dark shadows with the flickering light of my intellect and my imagination. I rejoiced as I saw them throw fantastic shapes on the walls.

And then, one day, the hot air from the plateau reached me. My heart stopped aching, and I was confused. I threw my idol in ager and shivered at the shadows on the wall. The sweltering heat fuelled my soul, making me sweat...beads of salty perspiration, pearls of truth seeping out from my very skin. I was alive. Alive but confused, like the newborn who doesn't understand that it has come to this world.

I had dreamt of this very thing all my life. To experience and to feel what I have seen reflected in the many words that I have read. To feel in my heart the light that shined in the heart of every poet and every lover. To see with my own eyes, what the eternal lover sees forever in the night sky. And yet, now that I had it in my hands, I wrote no more.

I always believed in a love that was blind. Light, the only teacher we have to help us see, is himself blind. To see like him, our eyes must seek blindness. And it is thus that my love came to me. But what I did not expect was that, truth is not seen by just blind eyes, but a blind soul.

I see now, everything, every single sensation that a man could experience in a lifetime. I'm at once happy, sad, thirsty, satiated; I'm in harmony and in chaos at once. What I see is not an overwhelming spectacle, it is a simple heart, that silences everything.

So, I bleed words lesser now. Is it because my love has been fulfilled? Is it because my muse has left me? No. It is because I do not write to impress, to tempt or to share, to bare. I do not write in the pangs of hunger nor in the joy of satiety. I put pen to paper not for you, my reader who is reading this; not for her, who makes me writes this; not even for me, who sees it all. I write with no intention of influencing. I write with no influence.

I write, because it happens. I write, when it happens. I write, like my pen - picked up when it is time and sealed when it is done. I do not imagine or create a world - they merely appear.

Like the rain cloud, I gather my nectar in silence and when it is time, I pour it all out. Like the rain cloud, I do not pour at the will of any God or man - especially mine. Like the rain cloud, I do not shower a drop of false water, even if the earth shrivels in drought.

When the idol is broken and the Goddess shines in the poet's every living moment, he speaks only truth. And most of the times, that truth is silence.

The house of words

Through the many doored house
My song walks through,
One
door
at
a
time

It knocks on an ivory door
and opens it with laughter
A word comes out of it
Pleasure.

It knocks on a silver door
and opens it with a smile
A word comes out of it
Wisdom.

It knocks on a sandalwood door
and opens it with pride
A word comes out of it
Elixir

It knocks on a golden door
and opens it with silence
A word comes out of it
Truth

It knocks on a glass door
and opens it with tears
A word comes out of it
Love

It stands in front of an open door
Laden with all the words
No word comes out
No
word

The unstrung bow

Timid thoughts, do not be afraid of me. I am a poet. - Stray Birds, Tagore

These silent thoughts,
ruffling behind my closed eyes
like pretty feet
running behind closed doors...

Where do they go?
Whence do they come
What do they say
in their footsteps of silence?

How do they stand
and stare at the sky,
while i scratch my head
in the grind of the night

How do they dream
of dreams and sleep,
while i stroll along
listening to the street lamps

How do they run
over the hills; under the dale,
while my feet stay
grounded to the clay

How do they speed
arrows to an unknown target,
while my mind lies
an unused bow

Arrows have sped.
The bow lies on the ground.

The valley of dreams

Illusions are sometimes the most safest of refuges. A refuge which we would never move, if only reality did not pull us away, like an angry mother pulling a child away from the delicious earth. Like a play acted out behind closed curtains, they unfurl, the dreams...in different colours - red passion, white love, saffron games, violet fears. And in all those dreams, there is a single thread. The crystal thread of hope. Hope of a union, a touch, a look. Hope of you.

Perhaps these dreams are mere aching of the limbs; chemicals in the veins fuming at their inability to vent. Perhaps these dreams...are mere aching of the heart. Emotions raging through like a kid lost in the fair. Or, perhaps these dreams are mere aching of a soul. The thirst of the simple joy that one finds in the unspoken word. Perhaps, these dreams and the pain of separation can be explained. But then, the chirping of the sparrows, too could be explained.

Love is an enchanted forest. Today I have lost my way in the chasm of separation. With closed eyes I hear, the murmur of dreams, a stream not faraway. Sometimes, in these dreams, I look back. I see the distance that spans dream and reality. It is the width of an eyelid, but what a chasm lies between the two. It is two inches between the hills of hope and death, but if the valley stretches to infinity under them, would you jump?

Dedicated to JAB and the Pied Piper of Hamlin!!

Where is this chap?
Not seen him no sign
Is this what you wonder?
Then let me tell you tender

Off I'm gone
off to a wedding
And I got no cause to whine
Cause the wedding is but mine

So if you feel like it
and if you feel so good
Then what I would suggest
is that you become my guest

10th June 2007, Seshadri Mahal Coimbatore
1st July 2007, Belson Taj Hotel Coimbatore

Born again...

I was pretty young when I began this particular journey. Almost underage, for something like this. I remember almost all incidents that pushed my life in a particular direction. But this one I can never recall.

But it is this that made me write, write truly and passionately. It is this that made my life living. It is this that burned as the fire in my soul. A simple philosophy, an ideal, not entirely mine. Borrowed, a bit from Bharathiyar, a bit from Guna, a bit from here and a bit from there. But it has now become mine.

It was not easy following this path. I have never got a word of encouragement - for everything else that I tried, I have received some encouragement, but for this, there has been nothing but dissent. Friends, foes, relatives, everybody. Even from those who were once the idols in this journey.

To love a woman, to love and worship Her. To hold Her as the living Goddess, the muse who will grant the boon of immortality. To find one, who shall fulfill the prophecy in the words 'kAthal manaiviyE sakthi kaNdIr kadavuL nilai avaLal eythal vENdum'.

It seemed a simple quest - most of my close friends corroborated it. Women after all want to be a muse, want to belong to a man who has passion. But then it wasn't that easy.

My wrong decisions, failures, disappointments were many, I will say unashamedly. I've made decision that were blatantly wrong. There were some that seemed like the morning sunshine before they turned dismal. Rudeness, indifference, warm and sad denials, heartless desertions...all of it. Of course it is not like I'm some honourable martyr either. I too have for my share played with hearts, been wicked, stony. After all its a full circle.

And every time I was broken and beaten, I heard the same ideas. "Why do you keep getting hurt?" "No woman is worth so much." "Your parents will find you a nice pretty girl anyways." "Maybe you are not cut out for it..." Sometimes sympathetic, sometimes indignant, sometime angry, sometimes sinister. I never could answer any of them. I listened as if I agreed and in a few months, it was the same old story again.

And then, one day, I had to travel, to Hyderabad, a pilgrimage. Even on the eve of that day, I heard the same old lines. "You should stay away from women, you tend to get hurt invariably. I'm telling you its nothing very great...in a woman." But I walked on.

And I never looked back. Today I can stand here, from this blog and say to each one of my friends, who with whatever intentions dissuaded me and to the few who are still skeptical - "I believed and was rewarded. and I shall be rewarded even more." Even as the bhattar's words were made true by Abhirami the night She threw Her ear-ring into the skies, my own faith shines true as the full moon on a new moon night. Defying logic and convention. Even as the rules were bent that day because of Her infinite love, so they are bent today.

For what I hold in my heart today is not a precious gem, but a pure and simple drop of the rain, the smell of the fresh earth, the life of the wild breeze, the light of a brazen sun. A single drop of life, fashioned by chance, crafted by time into a fire that burns in me, keeping me alive. What I hold in my heart today is not the stony, stiff, fixed idols that now lie broken in their false temples, but the Goddess of dust and sand and rain and life. A true Goddess, who does not sit in Her high throne, but instead dances and plays and sings and frolics. A Goddess who has no false bearing or grace but laughs at Her own faults and creates a new world of shimmering joy everyday.

Now I bow to you, my Goddess, my love. I offer to you all my thoughts, my heart, my life, my soul and blood in a single kiss that shall stretch from the beginning of time to eternity. I offer to you all that I have in this single simple kiss that is pure as a dew and is filled with nothing but the sunshine of your love. I seek no more knowledge, no more wisdom. I do not seek words or art or the ways of the wise. I seek no more absolution, no teacher, no path, no truth. For I have gained you now and here...and I shall gain you with every living moment of mine.

Life

Tiny plant in pot
Has two new yellow flowers
And dead leaves below.

P.S. First post from Hyderabad! :)