क्या कहूँ?

मैं तुम्हे नही जानता हूँ,
तुम जो अपने ही खून में डूब रहे हो ,
तुम जो गिरते हुए भी किसी अपने को ढूंढ रहे हो,
तुम जो थोडी देर में चुप हो जाओगे,

मैं तुमसे बहुत दूर हूँ,
अपनों का फ़ोन कर चैन की साँस ले रहा हूँ,
और ये भी सोच रहा हूँ की 'तुम' मैं भी हो सकता था,
अभी अभी मेरे सपने भी मेरे साथ खामोश हो रहे होते,

तुम्हारी आंखों में मैं ख़ुद को मरते हुए देख सकता हूँ,
तुम्हारे साथ मैं भी अपनों को खोज रहा हूँ,
और थोडी देर में तुम्हारे साथ मेरे कुछ ख्वाब भी मर जाएंगे...
हमेशा के लिए
शायद मैं तुम्हे बहुत करीब से जानता हूँ

I bleed slowly along with the city that has provided my hopes and dreams.
It gave me music and lyrics.It gave me sports and stories.
It gave me my Identity and my culture.
I die too some.
May our death make it a safer India for our children.

Sikkim Travelogue part -1

If I say it's been long pending, it would be the understatement of the year. I finally decided to put the rough notes I have on my Sikkim travel in the year 2004 as it is. So forgive me for all the bad grammar and misspellings . I hope you have as much fun reading as I had on the tour. To those who were there with me on this trip, hope it brings back some good memories.
I have broken down the post into 3 parts and would be posting them throughout the next week.


1.Chaotic start

“Tum chale jaoge toh sochenge ,
humne kya khoya , humne kya paya.”
Once aboard the train back home, I ask myself this question ‘cause, strangely, I am going back with a heavy heart. Perhaps it's not so strange after all as u feel sad when all the good things come to an end. They have to . Then you remember those things and its your choice whether that you do that with a pang of sadness or with joy and thankfulness.
I am, right now, blank with no memory floating back to make me feel its presence. All my thoughts are as if waiting to explode, shower all their charm and over whelm me. So I have decided to take a plunge and pen down all what I can remember about this trip so as to relive those moments. Take it as a last, frantic try to gather sand in your hand, to fill yourself with nostalgic fragrance and to hold it inside till u can.
What rushes back if I think of the start of the trip, is the calls we made on 21st Dec. in order to meet MC. The chaos of ‘will he , won’t he’ (perennial M.C., more of him as we go along). And finally the decision to go alone to Renukoot, in order to board the train along with VG. Of that journey on bus to Renukoot, all that comes back is dark early morning and a bit of cold. I would have thought nothing of that chill had I known what was coming. The train journey, the guy in that matching sweater (damn!) of all the colors in the world he comes up with the same color as me.
Once we reached Calcutta( sorry , its hard , its Calcutta for me whatever may be its new name), coming out on what we reckoned a street and which was in fact the station, we were just confused due to a car standing in front of us. It was the first time I saw that people can take their vehicles right up to the station or at least have got the facility to do so.
We haggled our way to a taxi and as I sank back inside. Every thing took a back seat and a sort of apprehension started creeping in – an apprehension when u visit some one’s home for the first time, more so when u don’t know the person. This was growing stronger ‘coz of what I felt about this trip from start and telling u what I felt involves a little story titled ‘fifth rider’ .

2. The fifth rider

There were 4 riders ,extremely smart , well dressed , riding on fine horses going somewhere, no one knew who they were ,where they came from or where they were headed to .A big news wherever they went , they produced an awe in the general public. So everyone noticed that they were really fine and acknowledged the sight they presented with praise and wonder. Now there was this guy who saw all four and thought “wow, I should be part of this troop “. He was a clever guy well versed in the ways of this world. He took his dilapidated self out on his carcass of a horse and followed them as the fifth rider. From then on if anyone wondered who they were or what did they do, this fifth guy will speak first “we are going to meet the king. We are on a secret mission”. The thing to notice is the “we” in the sentence. Thus he was able to count himself in, attaching himself to all the glory emanating from the other four and taking all credit to his measly self.
Of course the story is dramatic and not the real representation of the situation I was in. But It does tell how in this world most of the people are fifth riders who don’t work and blah blah….all being fallouts of failure of society as such and what not, but the story is the closest I can get to express myself, as my claim to fame was just being a friend of a friend. I hope I have been able to tell how I felt, always a dicey thing to do, satisfactorily enough. Even the fact that the situation was a little bit similar didn’t help my cause.
I tried to battle out of these fears, by boring VG with some poems of mirza ghalib, coincidentally on Mirza ghalib street and then listening on to all the babble of the taxi driver , all the while taking in the first sights and sounds of Calcutta. By the time we reached Mukundopur I got to know all about real estate surrounding the bypass road courtesy the driver. Alas! if I had enough money I would have invested it there. We met Sudeshna waiting for us wearing a gray jacket and a muffler. Not much change from the last time I saw her except a pimple beneath her nose. She guided the taxi to her home – a place which I must admit I was not able to associate with her at first. The house sitting pretty in a line along with other housed as seen from the street looked well set in rural back ground with grassy land and a few ditches along both sides of the path leading to it from the street. The path itself was of red gravel with small bricks and stones sticking out. There was tranquility about the place, serenity almost natural if u forget the fact that Calcutta is a hustling bustling city over populated as are all major cities nowadays. The house is flanked by small houses on either side. The gate of the house was exactly fitting the place with a mesh of bamboo sticks doing for the gate. Touching the gate was a staircase parallel to the Verandah which brought us inside the porch. Here we were greeted by a scowling dog, a ‘quasi pet’ as Sudeshna put it.
This was the moment I had been dreading and had at last resigned myself to . How would I be taken as? The proverbial ‘fifth rider’?

tu ek khayal hai

My attempt here is not as much to rhyme as to let silences and word gaps be as big a part of the poem as the words itself.


मैं तुझे भूला नही हूँ,

हाँ,
कुछ अरसा हुआ तेरा नाम लिए,
न लेने का वादा जो किया है ख़ुद से,
ये वादा भी..
की
तेरी हस्ती बस एक एहसास है,
तेरी बातें बस आवाज हैं,
तेरे वादे बस अल्फाज़ हैं,
तू तू नही ,
महज ख्वाब है, मेरा ख्याल है,

पर
मैं तुझे भूला नहीं हूँ,

अब जब तू सिर्फ़ एक ख्याल है
और कुछ भी नही,
कभी कभार तुझे सोच लेता हूँ,

कभी तेरे संग गुजारे एक दो लम्हे भी
चुभते हैं...
बर्फ से,
तो कुछ टुकड़े उठा कर,
सागर में मिला पी लेता हूँ,
तेरे खुमार में फ़िर दो पल जी लेता हूँ

(अल्फाज़ - words , सागर - wine cup , खुमार - intoxication)

Ya lagaa mat ilzaam

या लगा मत इल्जाम

या लगा मत इल्जाम की बेमुरव्वत हो गए,
या देख जान-ओ-तन से जुदा दिल जिगर हो गए,

धड़कता है बजाये दिल के, दर्द सीने में,
अब जानलेवा नासूर चारा-ओ-मरहम हो गए

आहिस्ता आहिस्ता उतारा तुमने जिगर में खंजर,
आहिस्ता आहिस्ता लहू के कतरे ग़ज़ल हो गए

तुझे महफिल में देख आंखें फेर लेते हैं,
ऐसे हुए रूसवा सनम, तुझसे हम हो गए,

तेरे दिलकश होंट, नर्म बाहें, गुदाज़ बदन
हुए हम जो जवान तुम भी तो हसीं हो गए,

तुमने भी था सोचा बदलोगे जमाने को,
'अभी' तुम्हारे बुलंद इरादे क्या हो गए?
- अभी
(बेमुरव्वत - Lacking Involvement, चारा-ओ-मरहम - cure and ointment, गुदाज़ - well mixed)
as usual comments are open :)

India win in Perth and first night of arranged marriage

Now if you ,the nameless unfortunate stumbler on to this blog, have had the even greater misfortune of going through the not so considerable archive of posts, you would know that I expertly navigate around anything remotely interesting , current, useful or intelligent.
No sir, I had rather u wallowing in my self deprecating humor than have u aware of this fsmawful mess of the world we live in. If you are about to say that you are already sufficiently aware etc.. save your breath , as I am only sane because I have tightly shut myself away from seeing the mediocrity we dwell in and have become one of the giants of mediocrity myself. Uh-oh I am again about to get into a state of consciousness. Time to close the shop.
Yeah, so sweeping under the carpet all the insightful and terrifically boring talk of my existence , I am breaking the tradition of letting you live in a fantasy land on my blog to mention a current event. No , Don't worry, I would never touch anything disturbing by a 10-foot pole. This is about the Indian win in Perth. Yes there are some things in this world which yet let us think how not f***ed up everything is, which ,believe me, it actually is.
So 4th day of the test match and we were letting them Aussies have it. Sharma bowled a sensational spell. I can bet punter would have sucked his thumb and called his mom later. O.k., I am being mean , he would have just cried quietly in the bathroom , on floor curled in a fuoetal position. So on this remarkable day,we get everybody out , including gilly bowled round the legs by sehwag and are about to finish off a big 140+ win. But then , Johnson and Clark start slogging. Johnson hits 4s repeatedly in a packed leg side field and clark pulls everything outrageously out of reach of groping fielders. In no time they have added 70 runs. Each of Indian players is shocked and angry and continues to bowl tripes at them, hoping they would hole out . Its hugely idiotic. Just bowl line and length damnit! they are tailenders for fsm's sake. By that time I really got annoyed and pissed off. It was just so plain stupid. The victory came soon after but the bitter taste that mediocrity, even though momentary, leaves, stayed for long. I just could not enjoy it as I thought I would.
And that's when I had this glimpse of how the first night of arranged marriage would be or have been for us unfortunate guys and girls who still go through it. I need you to be with me at this point. Consider that you are getting married to a girl/boy you have not really known more than couple of months or weeks. You go through the tortuous meeting of parents , horoscopes , uncomfortable questions. You bat well to deflect the relative of the bride/groom , you try to bowl your mother in law early else she deciphers you and starts hating you before its too late for her to do anything about it. And then you endure the endless rituals on the day of marriage which test your patience and with consummate skill you try to keep the irritation on those relatives from hell to your self. Why? because at the end of it is your prize , You , the 20 something virgin get to have that thing which us Indians love and are hypocritical about , sex.
So you wait and finally its over, you dream of walking to the stage and accepting the trophy of man of the match . But no not yet, apparently your friends are yet to leave and so are the devils(relatives) and imps(their kids) around your better half. Does it sound familiar? just skip two paragraphs above and you would know. Anyway, finally after cursing everyone to their eventual painful death , you get to the best part. Its called sex and its terribly awkward for two naked strangers who have never done anything like it before. Both of you get over with it, hide your face in the darkness and are relieved that it was over,fast.

At 4 in the morning , lying on the bed , seeing Harsha go all ga-ga and rub it into aussies by asking each and every Aussie player he could get his hands on : " I know this must be a new experience , loosing it at home .... " and yet pretending to be the most unbiased commentator ever, I felt just that. Big Relief that it was over. where was the joy?
It came after an hour, I said to myself "wow, even though it sucked at the end , over all it was worth it. We did it. Take that!"
a low 'Yes!' to myself was my celebration. Right then, I could imagine hundreds of newly weds lying on the bed at that very same moment and saying exactly the same thing to themselves.
I know we would be less jittery as we get used to winning more and more as would the specimens of my example as they get it more and more. The future is not that bad if it involves only the above.