FROM THE TAIL OF THE INDIAN PHEONIX……..TO THE SANDS OF RAMESHWARAM

From the tail of the phoenix arises

Arises what is known in India as Agni

For it is the fire

That always lights the pyre

Constrains all the unfathomable power

Which rushes out like a light shower

So a person who was born

In a small island, blew the horn

To create India’s first indigenous missile

So that we may no longer be fragile

Chose to name the arrow Agni

For he was a man so bright

In every darkness he saw light

And lifted India so high

To a position no money could buy

To praise him there are no words

Because they are more precious than swords

All I quote are his words

And they are more important than his swords

And to this man born

Where Indians three high seas meet

I pay my regards  and tribute

Odyssey

One fine spring morning,

Cried a lady to a midwife's crooning,

To give birth to her loved son

Whose eyes shone like the sun



He grew to be tall and strong

Along the shore's rocky crown

Breathing in th ocean's salty breeze

Aching to concquer her turbulent seas


The boy slowly turned to a man

Took oer his lady along with his clan

To hoist her colours true and strong

And to sail the high seas singing her merry song


"All is well and our course is set

The wind is true and i shall not fret "

Captain, said one of his clanlet

"Hence i shall go and sleep under my blanket"


His lady ran straight and true

Into a storm's hands so brute

He tossed his lady down every way

Playing with her using the oceans sway


The captain headed into the storm's eye

And asked god "why the rye?"

But all his efforts ere in vain

And sink did his lady gifting him pain


Every effort to save her though

Was in vain as the brute punched through

He and his clanlets had to turn their backs

Upon their lady in blue and cut themselves slack


Devastated was the captain for is loss

He did start smoking every grass

Every spirit did he drink

To try like his ship, for himself to sink


The will to fight had alll been lost

An empty shell was all left of the host

Untill, a new dream was sighted upon

And chase was ordered without a frown


The captain forgot that the lady was probably someone else's

And in love he chased down a useless scone

To only find himself further broken

In a false hope of some grand token


He only found his dream sailing away

To another man, unworthy in every way.

The captain remains at a loss

For now double was his loss


Now he sits and waits in an abyss

For his rescuer, like an oasis

in a desert full of mirages

so that there can be some peace in his garages


Till that time

He shall lie in the sine

Else he shall wait for his chime

Leaving his footprints in the sands of time.

BEGINNINGS OF A HORIZON

So far men have travelled

Yet so much left to unravel

But, today is a day of celebration

Because you have come a year closer to cremation

Through each summer, rainy, winter and spring we pass

To learn throught life’s class

That the spring of our youth shall never last

One day will come when we will be past

This day of celebration

For we shall realise

Will bring us very close to cremation

Fear not Oh! Little rose

For you shall not be flooded away by the hose

That waters you

Because in every spring at its bloom

Has the infinite power to take away gloom

Just like the moonlight soft and gay

And as the spring blossoms in may

Live life to the fullest on this day

For you shall forever

Come a year closer to cremation

This life is itself the sweetest

Just like the gentle summers tempest

And all that happiness you can get in this life here

Is just like no other brother

For in the company of your loved ones

You shall see the heaven’s

But alas!!

All that is good or bad

Shall have an end, and that is so very sad

But still the anguish of many

Is not felt by us sonny

But on a very special day every year

We complete a revolution around the sun

And that my son

Brings us a year closer to our cremation

YET TO GO

A dawn's early gaze

Over an ocean's lazy haze

Awakening an osprey in his nest

To another days bountiful fest

A nations flag on its pole shall rise

Serene in its cities’ skies

A placid morning is all we own

The seeds of a mighty plant just sown

Before we face life-looking like an old crone

and before being blown into a full blown cyclone

Back to its nest is the mother unruffles

Feeding its breath, keeping its sound muffled

The sun is out in his fiery force

Just as we begin life's main course

To find ourselves the best we can

In every endeavor of our life span

With the journey yet to be undertaken

I can only hope it is not all forsaken


A nations flag on its pole shall rise

Serene in its cities’ skies

A placid morning is all we own

The seeds of a mighty plant just sown

Before we face life-looking like an old crone

and before being blown into a full blown cyclone

Back to its nest is the mother unruffles

Feeding its breath, keeping its sound muffled

The sun is out in his fiery force

Just as we begin life's main course

To find ourselves the best we can

In every endeavor of our life span

With the journey yet to be undertaken

I can only hope it is not all forsaken

Fight or Flight??

To a visitors eye the vast expanse of my house looks charming, even beautiful under the circumstances, but what do they know of a the turmoil raging beneath? What will you do when your parents refuse your love? What would you choose between love and life? People often argue that there is little difference between the two but unless faced with the choice you never know, how deep the ravine is or how wide the canyon is. Would you leave the love of your life for your career ahead or  would you leave your life’s love for her? Such thoughts often hide behind the politest of smiles to any alien soul. Taking such decisions is always a cause of pain for someone or the other and not making a decision factually destroys me, so what do I choose?? There is evil in both options and choosing the lesser of the evils doesn’t make it a right thing to do so that decision was itself a nightmare to take.


                Do I forget those lovely sparkling eyes, that gentle laugh, those long black tresses, those pink flushed cheeks, the lovely blush, the tender caring heart, the witty voice, those taunting and yet loving retorts, that playful tone and all those loving times we shared so deeply so that I could stay away for a time and make a future, a rich, comfortable, bright, not-needing anything ever future for us. But to leave her even for a heart beat’s span is not something that heart agrees to. The question that both her and my hearts ask is for how long is that “time”. “How long so I have to keep my heart ripped off without yours to keep company?” she asks but alas I have no possible answer. I stand cursing myself for making her weep, watching the strings of pearls roll down her cheek I think ‘no boat can stay still in a rocking sea’. I wonder what I could do to solve the crisis. Long I ponder over my love’s fate and my lives’ own route. Only to realize I can take neither course of action without ripping my heart to pieces, and wondering which one of the evils to choose only to realize that I have run a full circle and back, right to the start of the turmoil raging in me, “To fight with my love or to take flight for her??”

TROUBLED

Only the deepest of love can bring about the deepest of hatred and only the heights of hope can land you in fathoms of despair.

"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life". What would you do when the love of your lives begins to ignore you. When she tells you that she doesnt want to even look at you? all hope seems lost when this happens

                She was ignoring me, not even looking at me. She just walked past me as if I was nothing, a no one. I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that I had been dumped. I raised the bottle to my lips and took a swing, felling the warmth of the single malt spread through my limbs on this icy winter night. The night was as cold and cruel as her eyes were when she shouted at me “leave me alone. I hate you”. She hates me. All the diplomacy I tried through our mutual friends failed and faced with the hostility that a novice climber would have faced when asked to scale the K2 without any help, the hostility a traveler would face when asked to cross the Thar Desert with just a bottle of water. The chill I felt emanating from her when I asked her why, made me wish that the Russian’s would put me into one of their gulag’s in Siberia. The fury of her response made me wish for the hottest part of Sahara for that would be moderate when compared to what I was facing here. The extent of her emotions made me feel that heel would just be a walk in the park. And just like the calm after a storm she settled into indifference, she blew me off completely. We worked in the same team but she never even  as much as looked at me. It was as if I never even existed. The girl I love, was just becoming the girl who didn’t even care a damn, but I couldn’t even get her to look at me now. Her thoughts occupied my head all day long but it looked like she wasn’t even wasting a thought on me. Not even a thought of a thought of me was crossing her mind. I had to get her back and for that I had to do something before she totally erased me from her memory. I had to do something before I ceased to be even a memory of  a memory.

                The next day I showed up at the office after staying awake all night thinking of her. I hadn’t combed my hair, or shaven myself or even ironed my shirt. My friends and colleagues were surprised on seeing me that way. I was usually meticulous. To put what everyone said in a nutshell ‘I looked like hell’. The hangover was just passing over thanks to the two disprin I had taken in the morning. I passed her in this disheveled state thrice by lunch, but for all of my efforts, all of my modifications to look more miserable: loosening my tie, putting a dead beat look on my face, she neither acknowledged me nor even gestured that she might have given a dam about what happened to me.

                The next thing that I did as soon as I got to my apartment was getting drunk. Then I drove over to her apartment and started banging on her door. The pent-house apartment was isolated from the rest of the building and also had an expansive open area in front of it almost like a porch. The door was answered by her roommate. The roommate told me that she had left the apartment to stay with her aunt, whom i know she hated. She was choosing that evil aunt over me, I wondered what I did to have deserved that. Unable to do anything else, I borrowed another bottle from her and she very generously lent me a single barrel jack Daniel. I sat down or rather slumped down in the expansive courtyard right beside her door recollecting the beautiful conversations we had on this rooftop. Of the time when we watched the Leonid meteor shower, the consolation that I was able to provide to her when she cried her heart out when she learnt that her granny had expired. This was a private heaven for us located away fourteen floors above the ground. I toasted to the thought that now the same piece of real estate had become a personally tailored and customized piece of hell. As I emptied the  1700 rupees bottle of whisky in a toast I fade out and passed out cold right beside the door in that embracing chill.

                Damn it, I was cold, I was dripping wet. Someone with a very bad sense of humor had just splashed cold water on me. I looked up angry and asked “was it really necessary?”. All I got in reply was a goofy grin and a smart ass answer “Yes, for the state you were in, Yes. By the way how’s your head? On ice?”. The guy taunting me was her roommate’s fiance

and a close friend of mine. He carried me into the apartment and plonked in front of me breakfast for hangovers consisting of scrambled eggs and orange juice. He said “I’ve called your office and informed them that you won’t be coming in. Stay here. Use the day, use the bed, get some rest and clear your head bud. I’ll get going I’m already late. See ya.”

                Mid afternoon and I found myself looking at my phone, my head in a much better place after sleeping thorough most of the morning but my heal still in the same place as last night: In deep turmoil. I started reading through all the messages we had exchanged, her cute smileys, her challenging and yet taunting words, her playful replies and her voracious language. All of still stored deep in the memory of my phone, right from the time when she had lost her way reroute to that dingy restaurant where we were supposed to meet for our first date. It was when we were still in our final year of study and I ran out of the restaurant to collect her before she panicked. The date in itself was a very short dinner but the very long walk back to the restaurant from where she was when I picked her up was worth remembering. I cherished the moment when she replied to m question of another date through a text even though she was across the table from me all the while acting as if she was considering saying no. The smile on her face at that moment was what was wonderful and I was sincerely hoping to regain at least some of that.

                The call that night was purely out of instinct and need. She answered the call but before I could speak she started shouting “Its over, I told you to leave me alone. I don’t want to even talk to you” in a tone that was more heart wrenching than anything else. She disconnecting the line still ebbing that fury from her that I could feel it at the other end of the line. I didn’t even have a chance or the courage to answer her after that. I realized it was done.

                Fine, I decided, If my life had left me, I wouldn’t let life exist. I began planning. It was early next day when I started consuming every bottle of spirit I had stored in my apartment. I drove in that state to office wishing some policeman would pull me over and effective prevent me from doing what I was doing but it looked like I wasn’t that lucky. Every person in the office looked at me disbelievingly; a few brave gentlemen came over to try and stop me from creating a scene and tried to restrain me but instead they ended up being involved in a brawl with me and one of them suffered a broken nose. By the time security came over and dragged me into my boss’s office most of the damage I had intended was done. The words I was waiting to hear were spoken ten minutes later. I was fired and I was asked to clear my desk out. I went over to my desk cleared it and in the process of clearing my personal files from my office PC I loaded a ‘software’ onto the company’s system. Every person from my team was watching these proceedings from outside my office. I saw contempt in every one of their eyes and that was all the justification that I required.

                I was sitting on the railing outside her apartment, at the edge of what was our private heaven. I was watching my last sunset on this planet. I wasn’t gonna be alive to even see the planet complete one more rotation. The reason for my living was her. As an orphan I hadn’t loved anyone else, but her. She was my life but she had left me, my life had left e but physically I was still living, my heart was still beating, my lungs were still drawing air knowing that they shouldn’t.  I looked at my watch waiting for the ‘software’ to take  effect and destroy the company  that had turned all my sweetest of memories into the harshest of them ever possible. That revenge of using a virus was a sweet one. That company had affected my life and I was infecting them. That job was now done and I had no other qualms.

                So I slipped happily from the railing towards the waiting abyss below, the thoughts of her lips on mine, that feeling was all I was feeling  as I rushed towards the unforgiving stone below me. I had tailored my heaven and hell and I had tailored my life so far but the outcome wasn’t happy. I hadn’t felt in my heart  for al my life until she came along but  the first time I did it wasn’t worth it. I was the man who built my life only to have it collapse, I couldn’t start over so the only choice was to end it. The last thing I thought before I landed was the feeling of her soft hands lovingly caressing my cheeks while giving me a kiss suddenly somehow turning into the same hands that was trying to choke me to death. And in those last moments of my life i tell her through the world "Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. --I shall feel it"

The Drama of Destiny

Over the mountains mighty hold,

Through the dungeons dark, deep and cold.
A traveler, on a crossroad stands,
In search of fairies land,
For a city built on ageless sand,
To the tunes of an eternal band.
But, is this a game being played by destiny’s hand?

Enticing to the thoughts sway,

Influencing the route of the man's way.
"To infinity and beyond" making him say,
To reach his destiny his hair turned grey,
Giving him solace was the love he found,
To which he was mortally bound,
Making him regret all the ones he lost.
feeling death's chill like a cold frost,
He remembers all the heavy cost,
Of a journey that left him a broken mast,
Only to be replace by new wood,
so over his journey he did brood.
Going through life's memories,  like a file after file,
Saying "Its  the journey that makes the destination worthwhile".