nature | the light shines the brightest

I walk

June 15, 2017 § 1 Comment

I am that guy who walks with long strides and short, through cities big and small, towns with paddy field boundaries and villages with a cross road or two.

I am a small force of my own, an object small, determined to walk however far, I don’t know to what. I push through the heat, through the cold, through rain and sweat, drenched, past churches, temples, mosques and elsewhere where people go to seek the divine, but find a human in between instead.

I have no faith,

It just is.

I have hope,

It just is.

I see gorges, I see rivers free, I see the deep valley cut clean. There’s a whisper, there’s a flap, there’s a flurry, there’s maybe a prey or a predator, but all I see is a quietude, a slumber, an afternoon rain weathering away the rocks as if to measure life sans time, in a moment that lasts itself beyond reason or rime.

There are no boundaries, except those we draw on our own. And we draw, we carve, the lines that are roads, the way to homes we build in tiny geometric shapes plotted on plans and maps, surveyed and claimed as humanity’s own.

I walk under the sun, I walk under the street lights, I walk through firefly lit starry nights. I watch the match boxes come alive, at tea stalls and humongous complexes with tiny ants rushing in anxiety to fill another day with they know not what, but call a purpose.

I walk past the malls and the neon light boards that insist that the you can’t resist what is within- racks of the same, machine made and mould. There are no rats there, just spiders and cobwebs that escape pest control.

The five-o-clock sea breeze squeezes and chocks its way past the sepulchres of everyday life that form a maze with no end, either way. The crows scavenge and steal from the fortnight’s garbage. There’s a rot somewhere, and a nervous laughter all around, no one wants to stir the tea which is already too sweet.

I hear the music play, a coy bride on her wedding day, being apparently given away. I hear the songs of parvenu faith, blaring aloud, thumping chests to twirling moustaches, a goddess is demure when the nine-yards are draped.

I stride, and I leap, I run. There’s nothing in my mind, but the next step, and then another.

I believe in hope.

It remains alive through the dreary monsoon days, the harsh Madras sun and the opaque Himalayan cold that eats into your very bones. It lingers on, like the taste of your first lover, which you try to recount, to remember the day you were first together, young and silly, tangled limbs and messy sheets.

My strides strong and long, never weary. The feet yearn for more, a mile, or a furlong, you can call it whatever you want.

There is no corner they leave unthread on the dirty beaches in my city, with faded boats casting long shadows under which stray dogs rest, under which young lovers hope not to be repressed.

There’s no nook which they not pass by, the crevices in the jumble of rocks destined to become sand, the burrows of wild creatures which hide and prowl only at night.

I seek hope, for I believe in it.

Every road has a memory of love, of grief, of pain, of laughter and others’ memories. There are stories that speak through abandoned shoes and neglected rosaries, there’s always someone who has been here before- wanting to be set free, searching for faith in sand castles and abandoned temples. There are moonlit shadows that smell of cheap wine and rum, lovers in revelry, lost souls washed ashore who cannot burrow like crabs any more.

Some paths split, taking you afar, others which come together to bring worn shoes home, torn to be mended by hands varicose and alone. The streets cut each other at ninety degrees, but there’s always that cul-de-sac which lies forlorn.

I yearn for hope.

There’s a twilight which lingers on, like a long-lost memory. There’s a watch forever stuck at half-past three.

I walk.

I am that guy who walks with long strides and short, through cities big and small, towns with paddy field boundaries and villages with a cross road or two.

I have no faith,

It just is.

I have hope,

It just is.

rains, NEWS etc

November 9, 2009 § 20 Comments

Its been raining Chennai for the past few days. So no classes blah blah. Of course none of the national NEWS channels would have told you that many have died and many more misplaced and that schools and colleges have been closed etc(that doesn’t stop a few colleges and schools from working). Wrote a poem as well(in my poetry blog).

From newcamera2

More about the second photo later.

I do wonder why rains in Chennai/TN don’t make it to the NEWS. Someone gets crushed by a bus in Delhi and the media is all over the place, someone sneezes in Mumbai and its hot NEWS. I am just curious that is all. After all people with better discretion run those things, the fourth estate etc etc.

We have had a couple of political fiascos going on as well. MNS, breaking microphones and well even trying to assault another leader in the Maharashtra assembly. Cool. We can forget about peace talks and Gandhigiri with such people around. No wonder others think they can lay claim to pieces of our land.

And of course one poor politician getting caught at it. I am a CA student and well the IT act(well a part of it, for my level) is there in the syllabus and trust me, it is the most complicated thing I have never read/tried to read. As I commented – why don’t we let the IT department go after terrorists? (as per the act, illegal income is also taxable(correct me wise ones). But we all do know, the reality, if not the truth. Come on , where is 1.5 crores and over 2000 crores?

Farmville- well am jobless enough to afford getting caught up in something for a while. So yes, apart from the NEWS channels, this has kept me going(and tweeting and blogging as well). I get detoxed pretty fast, so am not worried about getting addicted etc(though it did feature in my dream yesterday night, does that count?) .

Anyway its been 20 years since the Berlin wall fell. It showed that people can rise together and get what they want. We can learn a lot from history, but ironically the only people who learn it(you and me) don’t care about it(the least popular subject in schools I think).

Once upon a time, I used to dream of making a world a better place etc, but when everyone hung up on making things bad, you can’t really stop anyone. So anyway, the present gen. will long be gone, it won’t be gen. X or Y it will be another one, but surely a human one(hopefully nature doesn’t watch movies/listen to humans-2012?).

What most of don’t realize is that, it is not the planet which needs saving, it is our race. This rock has been here for aeons, what makes you think, a bunch of petty creatures can destroy it? Human vanity, nothing else. And remember we are part of nature as well. Intelligence does weird things to you, like making you think you have too heavy head. Just use it, stop trying to praise it too much. *and my comp is usually on for about 12 hours a day 😛 *

Lots more to say, but this post is just a random one, so let me end by remind you of the Great Super Heroes Challenge, just scroll down, you will find it.

A dead leaf

September 1, 2009 § 23 Comments

He held the dead leaf in his hand. Fallen from its plant, it was left to rot and fuel its own origin.

Or it could be picked by a wind. It can fly away from here, it can sail to the lands the winds choose and finally i might settle in a land of paradise, forever in a new joy or..

..or it might end up in a land as dead as itself. It will then stay there, till something swallows it or lifts it again. But one which is dead?

When it was alive, it was bound to its plant. It nourished it like its brethren , it was one among all, acting like how all expect it to. But is this what a passing eye feels but never the one held? Maybe it is held thus, because it chooses to?

But doesn’t one dream of the birds in the sky, at least when one is young and can race the clouds? Is it that dreams are meant to be dreamt but never sought in life? Is it just, is it fair to just die? Is this how frail all this is?

Is this a continuum, where the memories are buried and memoirs forgotten, sooner or later?

We strive for living, we fight for survival, we work together, we rebel, there are new beginnings , there are old endings, a fresh burst of air here, more heat there, one for all, all for one, will it be in the end, that we all will come alive, like actors talking a bow as themselves and being applauded for the parts we played?

Is this all a fantasy, these endless possibilities? Is our imagination a tool used to lead us from reality, which might shock the living out of us? What is living, if we are to die a baseless death? But isn’t this what we see and learn? How is this real? Can there be something bigger which we are a part of?

Is it love, that we die for? Is it misery that we live for this long? Do we all wait for the day, when we open our eyes no more? Is it that the quest we go on, offers no more, for the recesses have long outrun the excitement of the path, unbeaten?

Are words capricious fabrications, just to easy the pain of knowing the inevitable ? Is the mind there only to paint a vivid misery when in joy and a blunt happiness when in sorrow? Is the past only to be a seed for a morrow and today a retrospection where we dare to water that seed and tomorrow the day when the leafs do peek again, a visage fresh and innocent that the first brush with the polluted air does font it of earth?

So much for a dead leaf. What beauty can there be in the dead? For once dead all that remains is to rot. But when alive, all that remains is that we die. But when unborn, when a dream, all that remains is to brought alive. Call it optimism, call it human vanity, call it that I try to hide from reality and maybe it is true but I will dream anyway.

I may fail again and again. But I will pick up leaves again and in them see much more than what I need to. It might all be a soothsayer’s words, but at least there is hope of a better morrow. The plant may not remind us of the leaf, but the leaf sure does make you search for a plant.

I believe there are magic flowers, do you? Even if you don’t I do. I can feel them, hear them, see them, one day I will get to them. When I do, I will show them to you, I will not get angry or take pride for how can own that which is already owned, unless it is a meek being or I elude myself by calling it is a gift. When a leaf is plucked another one might grow, but there is more to be given for that to happen.

You can hold water in your palms but can we stop it from evaporating? Only thing left is to put to use while we still hold it.

In the end, I walk this road alone

July 13, 2009 § 18 Comments

In the end , I walk this road alone ,
People have come and gone ,
Some have seen and some have shown,
But in the end , it is me walking alone.

Roads meet and diverge,
People leave or converge;
Horror, grief, misery
Or joy,happiness and serendipity.

Yards and yards of verses written,
A few steps here and there beaten.
Fresh dried leaves swept away-
By men and dry winds of May.

In the end , I walk this road alone,
Despite all that went underneath ,
Firmly I still stand on my Feet.
In the end , it is I who walks alone.

Feelings,emotions and fears,
Guilt,traumas and tears.
Cloud racing and jocund company
The vibrations of a human symphony.

Paths which lead and paths which feed,
Paths filled with actions and many a deed.
The heart goes a way and the mind another,
The road,indifferent , which in concrete is better?

Decisions, desperation and conclusions
People,words and aspirations.
Dreams and ambitions,
Floods and indulgence.

In the end , I walk this road alone,
If not today , someday,
Let me choose a way,pray,
Which I feel in my way.

In the end , I walk this road alone,
People have come and gone,
Some have seen some have shone
But in the end, it is me walking alone.

The light shines the brightest

Beyond indifference

June 30, 2009 § 16 Comments

Evanescences -the grin of happiness .
Yet beyond the smile there does lie ,
Tales of sleepless nights and endless fights.
Brawls with oneself ,as if the image in the mirror ,
Was afraid of what it saw in reality .

Some sort of truce ,
Even though the parties refuse ,
Is reached . Lest the wakeful
Hours be all too flee bitten by the scorn
Of the impatient self – impertinent .

Moments of madness ,
The bizarre gesticulation of reverberations ,
Endless syllogisms to accept life as if bound –
Painting the mind as a knave, who is chained by fate-
So that the misdemeanor of man’s whims
Can by buried , in a colloquy of ad libbing .

Yet something does ring ,
The cords of human ingenuity ,
The urge to break free,
See beyond the tainted tree
Of illusively constructed postulates
(The blasphemous baits)
And see the truth – still alive ,
As it is in the venerable roots .

Gravity maybe unseen,
But upon the ground we lean,
The feet do feel , the seal
Of some grave connotation,
The power of a greater imagination .

If being bound is an ambiguity ,
Then to break free a felicity .
The joy of appraising
The truth , the ego less divinity ,
The knowledge of belonging to infinity.

If only indifference could be smut ,
So that , it could be ignored like dust
Upon a windowsill ,cleaned with a cloth
Every now and then , when
A party is about to descend .

Yet its presence daunts and drapes
Into our very jovial spirits
And forces contradictions
To become an addiction .
By the presence of such negations ,
The mind loses its calm serenity
And hustles and bustles ,
In hope of finding a serendipity –

As if miracles can be whipped out of nothing ,
As if the Ether was detached from the weather
Of the stars and the galactic wars ;
Yet in the indifferent, the indifference seems
To take up a perch and poison the self
To divulge and indulge in its inaction-
A devilish penance .

For all that , belief is the quintessence –
the belief in yourself , in the waves
Of self trust , where you believe
That the light shines the brightest .
Where the path of ego less divinity ,
Leads to understanding of this transient Mortality
And the gory of indifference and its capacity .

The indifferent blows a conch
As if the final wars of the world
Were to begin at this new dawn .
Yet the glories of the understanding
And the sun’s first light ,
Kills away the plague within
Just like the dusk rays smother
The nonchalance of the day
And brightens the moon for a night
Filled with a serene , calm life .

The camphorous smile amalgamates
Into a deep deep profound joy ,
The belonging bound with understanding
causes the mind to feel the zest ,
The acceptance of life and the rest .

Mad moments ,capricious deeds –
Finally a epiphany to bring heed
To the one always known ,
The song of the one soul .

The light shines the brightest

Clouds , mountains , valleys and buildings

June 10, 2009 § 11 Comments

Another hot tourist spot in Ooty is Doddabetta .

Amazing scenery is not free any more , the count your heads , eating bajji and drinking tea , as if you are a terrorist who is trying to blow the country up , by not paying Rs 5 or 10 whatever it is per head ( I forgot to mention , the same is true for the flowers , they charge Rs.30 for the camera in the gardens and I am pround to say I shot enough to get me value for money 😀 , don’t get it why they need to charge for cameras , cameras don’t dirty , they tell the truth , if there is garbage , then the photo won’t look good – forget charging for the cameras , encourage them and you might see the amount of littering going down ) .

Anyway considering we didn’t go any where off beat ,as this was more for us clearing our city-ed heads , this is what happens .. But at least the telescope view was free – they showed me a cross and claimed that to be a military hospital in Coonoor , for all I know that could have been a cleverly made mark on the other side of the telescope .

From ooty trip

That just about covers every angle you can see from there , see I told you , it is just a view and nothing else , but well a thing of beauty if forever ( well something else is forever as well – Chennai and this stupid climate , sweaty! Hot! ) .

flowers…whats the name again?

June 8, 2009 § 38 Comments

Ooty has a few of gardens and the Botanical Gardens is one . And though this time I was determined to try and learn the names of the flowers , I managed to forget that I was supposed to try and remember 😉 So anyway lets see who can tell me the names 😉 And if you think a photo hasn’t come out properly , then it is because I was “experimenting” 😉 {actually I couldn’t see how the photos came about because my camera forgot its shade and got an memory card ache , thanks to the glare 😉 }

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Once I had a dream that I was a bird

May 24, 2009 § 21 Comments

From new camera1

Once I had a dream that I was a bird .

The world was below me and the world watched me . I was a crow , who flew over the high horizon of the city . Many saw me as a scavenger but within they all longed for what I could do , roam the skies . Yet there is this urge within which I want to fulfill , which humans have already part done – fly beyond this rushing ether. As I see the moon rise ,even as the sun goes down ( to visit my cousins across the enigmatic sky ) my heart beats with pangs of pain , the suffering caused by the urge , the need to touch the impalpable( that moon and those distant stars) , if only to know that the world is tangible.

From new camera1

I see across the terraces , many with their aims set , they bicker with the certainity of security . And yet as time wans and nothing but the pale moon night throws shadows about , people become afraid and train their senses to the bright lights of their race’s creation . They never seem to think about the man who thought of those lights . The light shines the brightest , but the light is the substance , the sign but not the source itself . Even as it represents the origin , it is nothing but an extension. Maybe to us crows and birds the light is a sign of a reflex glory , felt every time it strikes our senses . It shows that one day the divinity within will purge us and start the movement towards the unseen worlds .

Maybe it already has in me . Never have we seen anything but the dawn , followed by the day , succeeded by a dusk and left incomplete by a pensive night , peaceful with a joyous melancholy . Maybe there is something greater in the universe , where in the trinities of belonging, i.e. instinct , person and thought are the mere stepping stones to enter into the castes in the skies . Or maybe there is nothing , but I need to see to believe . And sight can be the most prejudiced of all senses , yet at least it garuntees that there is something .

If only we can see beyond the zenith , if only our existence was enriched by thoughts beyond the stars which invite and inspire and reinvent the sense of belonging .

The sound of life woke me . Yet the world spoke to me . The vibrations of my thoughts left me to feel that I was in level with the stars and that which is not truly palpable is the one which is beyond. There is something beyond everything . The truth is the means to an end – yet what is the truth?

For whom the sun shines

May 4, 2009 § 12 Comments

Early morning breeze ,
far away the sea breaths ,
The birds chirp and fly , free.
The crimsons slowly appear to be seen.

Clouds race ahead ,
The world wakes and slowly comes alive.
Almost forgotten the day rises
From the depth of the night .

The clocks go on ,
The horns will honk on ,
The sellers will sell on ,
Tube light filled cubes stretch like a ray ,
Yet at the sight of the sunrise ,
All seems by the by .

For whom the sun shines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile everyday;
For whom the sun shines
Far away, for those who dare to smile it all away.

Walls built of stone and cement ,
Hours filled in thought ,all in vain , dormant .
Cries of war ,
Pains of lost wagers ,
Lives drowned in self pity ,
Birds who die as they can’t fly .
Lights that fade and blink their last days away ,
Roads that lose their path into dead ends ,
Bridges that collapse under life’s strains ,
Still there is someone ,
Who dares to smile it all away…

For whom the sunshines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile everyday;
For whom the sunshines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile it all away.

Winds of changes ,
Breezes that carry wishes ;
Colours which add life ,
Hues that fill the sight ;
Oceans that meet shores ,
Seas that have a deep and a shallow ;
A secret scent ,
A sweet bud ,
And of it is filled with a smile ,
At the sight , beauty , spirits arise .

For whom the sun shines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile everyday .
For whom the sun shines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile it all away .

Arms out stretched ,
Face high and pride less .
Belonging defined right ,
Beauty carved in the inner sight .
No clocks , no vaults ,
No faults , verses from forgotten songs .

For whom the sunshines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile everyday .
For whom the sunshines ,
Far away , for those who dare to smile it all away .

Day after day , far away ,
A perfect sun rises in the east ,
The genius who arose from the waters ,
Who cares for none and has no masters .
In a set path , to the beat of the song ,
Yet the magnanimity and beauty is never gone .

Every night is a prayer for a better sunrise ,
As the clouds run stray and open a day in May ,
The day may be hot and severe ,
Yet the rise on every passing is lovelier
To those who dare to see beyond vice
For those dare to arise with the songs of life –

For whom the sun shines ,
far away , for those who dare to smile every day .
For whom the sun shines ,
Far away , who dare to smile it all away .

The light shines the brightest

flowers…

April 21, 2009 § 17 Comments

Since I got my new camera , I got back to my old love of taking photos of flowers….I like this cam better than my old one , Its focus is better and the macros too is better(of course it should be ,considering there is a gap of four years between them) . I like the 4th and 5th..guess next time I should experiment more with the ISO speeds 🙂