Yet another new year
Is back with the old baggage
Of fears and cautions
Prejudices and bigotry
Lurking shadows of
Diseases and death
They tell us
To hang on
To seek hope in
Science and prayers
Look for silver linings
And healings
Lost love
And musings
While prejudice kills peace,
And pride our compassion
While hate spreads
Like wildfire
Our comforts get
Traded and sold
While we lose our voice
And rights
Like Jesus
Or phoenix
Maybe they will rise
Just like balloons
Filled with their breath
Those little street urchins
They bear testimony of
Our collective failures,
Our naked emperors
Maybe their balloons display
Everyone’s lost smiles!!
#2022
Betrayals
Time betrays
People betray
Family betrays
Life betrays
You betray yourself too
The true story
Isn’t the words said
The true story
Is never what is seen
It lies in what stays
Unsaid and unnoticed
And in life unlived!!
What betrays silence
Is the word
& what betrays the words
Is the silence
Between said and unsaid
There is a pause
A void so dense
Yet so empty
Bereft of trust and emotions
Post Rain Night Walk
After long last
The rains have come home
Sound of rains
Like music to the ears
The city roads and trees look happy
Finally a complete wash
And a chance to come clean
Washing away all the dust and grime
The cars roofs and leaves
Glistening with water droplets
Finally clouds kept their promise
They brought down water drops
To trap light and refract away
To create sparkling dots
Mini stars on the ground
Amidst all the darkness
Love in the Era of Dating Apps
I wonder how does love fare
In the era of dating apps
Earlier love came gate crashing into our lives
Annoyingly when we least expected it
It sat as an unwanted guest
Messing up all the time lines
It waited patiently for its turn
To unleash it’s charm
And make its way into our lives
I wonder how love copes now
In the era of dating and speed dating
Has it become impatient?
Does it move along with our swipes
Swipe right you may find it
Swipe left you may lose it or vice versa
With Apps and profiles
As the ultimate gate keepers
How will it ever get to gate-crash?
Is love at first sight even a possibility?
There are always damn screen and filters
And best edited profile pictures
And then when you personally meet
With ample room for expectations
And disdain
Does love leave the table politely?
Earlier love would linger on
And maybe even stalk
And now it ghosts
Earlier there were no promises or forever
But yet love would haunt for life
I no longer know how it works
When we lay all our cards on the table
Hoping for a fair game
But then it turns out
There are no rules of the game
Love remains a situationship
Waiting for an upgrade
It is always a clean slate
No misgivings, no messiness
Light as a butterfly
Love flutters in and out of life
No surprises anymore
No confessions either
Love in the age of AI and Apps
Has turned out to be a smart love
With racing heartbeats in rings and watches
No broken hearts, no unrequited love
Nor platonic or overtly lustful
Love itself has become a need
A box to be ticked
The more you chase it, the more it eludes
That hope – the next swipe might
Bring it to your table right?
Keep at it!!!
Knowing love, it will still turn up
To upset all your plans
Staring right at you
Sweeping you in a twister storm
And then dumping you
Totally broken but warm
It will teach you to smile and sob
Only love can teach love
It is a shape shifting algorithm
Making an absolute fool of
Even the wisest one!!
Let’s Talk About The Weather
So finally here we are
Talking about the weather
The most safe topic
Not so long ago
But Alas! No longer is
Who would have imagined this day?
We are not just being
Robbed of a decent weather
But also a safe small conversation
Which now ends up in a rant
Look at the sheer number of folks
Ranting about the European heat wave?
Finally they are getting back at the whites
For not having acs which they never needed
It is equally fun to watch
Europeans learning the ‘DIY’ ways to cool off
Turning the fan away might be just the trick We Indians or rest of the world never learnt
Or putting aluminium foils on the windows
Or using other ways of coping and cooling
Or simply sprinkling water on strangers
Weather is certainly getting
Stranger and stranger
Blowing hot and cold
Bringing rains and droughts
Most of us are ending up
Under the weather
Once upon a time a lovely talking point
Now it’s best avoided
We just cope…we cut trees
We just cope
We buy more cars
We just cope
We wage wars
We just cope
We want all our luxuries
Yet we struggle to cope
We end up on a dream
Summer holidays
Only to find destinations getting hotter
Most tourist spots closed
Our list turns listless
Tired, we feel lucky to find a place
Under the shade
A stranger finally looks at you
And asks how’s the weather?
You paid for this remember?
For that hottest spot
Under the very super hot weather!!
A Closure
I am not sure
What is A Closure?
Which everyone looks for?
Is it a signalling to end a phase of life?
Does life have such demarcations?
Before and after phases
Before school, after school,
Before marriage, after divorce?
After birth and before death
That’s the lifetime we get
We keep dividing into moments
Phases of growing up, coming of age
Falling in and out of love
Getting married, becoming a parent
Then the lonesome empty-nester
We keep drawing lines
Or adding chapters to our lives
While erasing the past which keeps
Receding faster, Doppler shifting away
Memories fade but hurt remains
We can’t get over traumas
Yet we call it PTSD
From the moment of birth to death
It’s just a few odd years
When we scale it
To the age of the Earth or the universe
We can’t even predict
Where the grim reaper awaits us
When we will close our eyes
The curtains will fall
And the drama will end
The drama of our life
That will be the true closure
Two dates in the bracket
Will define our lifetime
And of course
The perspectives of people
Who loved to love us
And who loved to hate us
While we were caught up
In their ideas of love and hate
The drama was never ours
We were mere characters in
Lives and dramas of others
Time does strange funny things
Somewhere in the future
One might get resurrected
In some random conversations
In another drama of not our making
A dead bright leaf also gets
A chance at immortality
When someone clicks a photo
Or paints it or turns it ornamental
In the Camus Universe
Existence has no purpose or meaning
And here we are purposefully
Decimenting and reducing each other
To almost nothing
Or whatever suits us
Then we seek a closure
Closure from hurt
Only to begin again
Another drama
Hoping for forevers
Which doesn’t exist
Soon I will be gone
And so will you be
We will be either villains or heroes
In shape, perspectives and
Narrative shifting world
How about seeking a fresh start
Maybe begin again
So where were we?
Yes…A closure…
Climate Chaos
Some blame it on nature
The sun’s activity cycles
Some blame it on human activities
Unprecedented cutting of trees
And encroachment of lakes and forests
So I guess Earth is playing it fair
It blows too hot, dry or humid
And just when humans start complaining
It blows hailstorms, cyclones and rains
With water water everywhere
And nowhere for it to go!!
My house help lamented the other day
That I was spending a lot on house plants
She hinted jokingly that money could help poor
Ah!! The fallacy of existence
I could only smile back and say
They were my buddies who gave me free oxygen and beautiful flowers for free
We take the oxygen we breathe much for granted
Just like the clean water we drink
And the gravity and the magnetic field
And also the sun and the moon
And of course our sole planet earth
While we spend billions to find exoplanets
With a hint of the existence of life
Perhaps, we deserve this wrath of nature
To reset our perspectives and context
Nothing is unlimited and forever
And everything follows
The law of reciprocity
Hate begets hate and Love begets love
Eye for an eye has blinded the humanity
Yet we refuse to learn
We make it all about profits and money
Climate chaos will be good for climate insurance
Rich will get richer and poor will become poorer
Except for the few who will be paraded as hope
The model examples of rags to riches tale
The dream after all needs to be sold
To keep nightmare going!!!
Going Solo
It didn’t take long
To go solo
Be it movies
Or restaurants
Or museums
Or a bookstore
Or treks
I don’t even remember
When it began
Perhaps during my college
My long solo commute?
Every daily commuter
Is always alone
Though almost crushed
In a crowded train or bus
There is a constant
Inner talk with self
About a thing
Or millions of things
Or just an empty mind
Too fatigued to think
You don’t need people
When you grow up
So rugged
And then of course
There are betrayals
Of trust and time
Then there was beautiful phase
When my newborn boy
Became my extension
I was never alone
I was his constant
For that tiny life
I had brought forth
Into this chaotic world
I was never alone
Kids never let you be
Unless you play along
So often it would
Be the library or bookstore visits
Where I would sit solo
In line of sight of my boy
Far far away in the kids section
I don’t remember
Who exactly was I
Training to be alone ?
After the boy grew up
And flew off far far away
I made up my mind
To be the solitary reaper
Of my abandoned pursuits
I unearthed my buried self
In place of a girl in 20’s
Out came a woman in her 50’s
More calmer, confident and wiser
Much slower too
How I wish I could reach out
To that girl and tell her to go solo
The world abandons you anyways
Women are supposed to play
A second fiddle in everything
Wish I could spare her from
All the traumas and dilemmas
And of course all the tears
My dark circles are rightfully earned
But here I am in my 50’s
Carrying that abandoned
Spirit of my 20’s
I know it feels absurd
To those who never tried
(Or didn’t have to)
To stand up for oneself
And live for a while
Remember?
We have abandoned our earth too
Who moves solo in the dark space
And then there is the final solo act
When we depart solo!!
Kafkaesque II
Kafka wrote about it
Long before
World turned into
This dystopia that
Pre-dates Orwellian one
Was human condition
Predisposed to be
Such a nightmare?
Making up rules
In the favour of power
At the cost of powerless
Cohen famously sang too
“Everyone knows dice is loaded
And the fight is fixed
The good guys lose
Poor stay poor, and the rich get rich
That’s how it goes”
What kind of a matrix is this?
How do we escape
This labyrinth of our own making ?
We are the predators
We are the preys
Perhaps, human condition
Cannot be redeemed
Even though
Christ has been crucified
Wars have been lost
Upon which religions were built
We are spiralling
Nobody knows
But yet everyone knows
Trials are punishment
You never get a sentence
For what you didn’t do.
But you were charged guilty
And given a Sisyphean task
Of proving your innocence
A lifetime is spent in seeking
Justice and freedom
Validation and acceptance!!
Abyss
With all my courage
I try to fathom
The depth of the abyss
At the bottom
Of it are
Broken mirror pieces
Reflecting
The fractured
Fragmented world
And me
An Ode to A Photographer
Photography is a rare art
Playing with omnipresent
Light and Time
Capturing moments
That transpire magically
Just like a sudden flight of a bird
Or deep pensive prayer of a saint
Or something unsettling
Or maybe deeply political
Just like a dying child staring
At an approaching vulture
These are moments of truth
That transcends Time
A photograph rarely lies
Unless of course it is doctored
To peddle a lie
Ever since it’s invention
There have been warriors
Going to the ends and the depth
To capture beauty and horror
Their gaze becomes
The gaze of the masses
That’s the magic
They turn you
Into them
The gaze changes places
You become the onlooker
Your silence becomes complicity
Life of a photographer
Isn’t an easy one
Trudging with the gears
They make the unseen
And unknown visible
They unravel the truth
That hides in the plain sight
Leaving us to wonder
How did we allow this to happen?
Are we going to do something?
Photographs have changed
The world history
But photographers carry
The burden of Sisyphus
They must push the boulders
And the borders again and again
They must teach
The blind populace to see
And behold the truth
And not turn a blind eye
Again and again
Photographers have turned
Cosmetic over ages
They just indulge in beauty
Safety and narcissism of it
Yet there came along
A rare tall one
With a discerning eye
And deep wisdom
Who could stop the world
With one single photograph
Using simple Light and Time
To paint the undeniable Truth
An ace visual storyteller
Holding the mirror to the world
Leaving for the future
Stories that are imprinted
By light on the frames of Time
And memory forever!!
PS: In remembrance of legendary Raghu Rai who passed on to another realm today
Mad Decadence 