BUON NATALE - MERRY CHRISTMAS

Its Christmas time again.

Come to my mind Christmas Days of long ago.

As a child again I enter into the spirit of the Christmas stockings hanging, waiting for gifts.

Passes childhood, and I look down the nearer years.

There rise before me remembrances of days on storm-tossed seas, where waves beat upon my ship.

I recall again the bitter touch of winter over the plains of life.

I also remember the Christmas days ablaze with lights, verdant and fragrant with the evergreen pines, echoing with joyful carols and celestial harmonies.

My recollections are of contrasts like those of life- delight and melancholy, penury and relief.

And the pictures are full of faces, some of which may be seen no more.

I miss the clasp of vanished hands; I crave the sound of voices stilled.

As we grow older and older, there is a note of sadness in our laughter.

The recollection of each passing year brings deeper regret.

Circles are broken, families are separated, and loved ones are lost, but the old world sweeps on.

Others come to take our places.

Smaller hands than mine write letters to Santa Claus and hear the story of Christmas on winter nights.

But, still sparkles the Star in the East.

It pierces through the darkness of shrouding night!

When the clouds bend to kiss His hand, let us not lose our chance.

Let us make this a new birthday of kindness and love that shall endure.

That is the Christmas hope.

Let us give to it the gracious expression of life among men.

And still I feel bad that I haven't any gift to give Him except what I already gave Him -- my heart, my love, my life, and my forever gratitude.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

You and Me

This is a very special poem for me. For the first 4 lines I thank my dearest friend Susan Joseph.

You: Saw you this morning
With that look in your eyes…
I hate to see you looking,
Lost and lonely…

Me: My mind is grazing
Idly upon despair.
I fail to retrieve harmony
And my core seethed in pang.
Someone led me through
The silver fields of rapture
And flawed my love,
Upon the flowing rails one day…
Beneath the gray clouds,
I sat and wept forlornly.

You: A tear drop veils your face
From my vision.
Past then became a haze
That kept shadowing my mind.
And my wings are tied with
The strings of misfortune.
I long to free them,
And plunge into the pain in your eyes.
But I bear in my soul,
The burden of my history.

Me: My love was a flower
Which withered away.
But the odour remained
To bedamn the moments down.
No ray of hope
Ever struck my oriel.
Cuddling my pallid dreams
And silent ails,
I pass my days in exile
In the clink of decay.

You: Life took me through days
Where sun never rises.
I jaunted through
The garden of earthly delights.
Then beheld your footprints
In the sand behind me.
Failing to find them,
I savored the essence of
Repression and amnesty
And dozed off.

Me: The lunatic imprisoned in me
Rises in rebellion.
Following a laughter,
I burst into tears!
Dark sea is roaring
In front of my eyes.
Deep asleep in me is my vision
In the table of accessories,
I’m searching for
An instrument of painless death.

You: I’m burning in the thought
That you are alone…
Why cannot I be near?
Why cannot I do anything for you?
Will your eyes shower
The tears of clemency?
Will your credence
Return to me forever?
With prayer on my lips
I await your riposte.

Me: I’ll come sailing
The vicious sea of time
Passing the tower of relics
Covering light years.
With tattered dreams in my soul
And ravaged vision in my eyes.
Will your arms shroud me,
Within the warm ramparts of compassion?
Will you offer me the love,
I long for eternities?

You: Wait beneath the rainbow
I swear you my love!
Let the gleam of my eyes
Be your salve.
Let it be with you,
In all your solitude.
As the gloom of fall
Crimsons your cheeks,
To give wings to your dreams
I’ll come.

2 Colleges and Myself

Dark clouds were up in the sky when I bid farewell to the college. That college, the one which got used to my footsteps as I passed by for the last two years. Yes, it won’t have to hear my taps again. I know I was not faithful to it. Never thought of loving it. Never held it dear. Never found it special although I was possessed by the one I studied earlier.

My mind was full of questions when I entered it first and the questions still remain. “What have I gained from this college?” I think. Still no answer…A post graduate degree, is that all? No, it taught me never to get broken when you are desolated. That no friend is ever reliable. That no enemy is ever perilous. That no truth is ever final.

Yes, it pains when you invest all your hopes and dedication and gains frowns as the interest. It pains to hear the unpredictable words from allies. It pains when you are misjudged. It pains when your honest voice ends up as a wail of hyena in the dark depths of life. Yes, still it pains…

My Bishop Moore as I told earlier possessed me. It still makes tears come to my eyes. I feel again like the child just entering the new world breaking the pupal shell of prejudices. I still stand on its courtyard with eyes filled with wonder. The hopes I cherished when I first entered it to the anguish I pampered when I left it.

Never felt that its so great a place to study when I studied there. But when I behold now, behold to the past, I know my love for Bishop Moore. Although there are sore events to be remembered the contentment that my college offered is unaccountable. The plans made overnight for the coming day. A new celebration each day. Escapades to library. Mischiefs at hostel. Celebration, celebration and more celebration.

I’ve always felt that my college is a living thing. It has emotions and language of its own and I’ve always understood what it conveyed. As Chetan Bhagat said in Five Point Someone “Although I've graduated and passed out my mind is still there”, its still at my dear dearest Bishop Moore.

I could finally cry in yesterday’s rain.

I was watching the weeds outside and the flowers dried and faded stirring in the monsoon. Eliot’s “Waste land” was remembered. Rain was pouring over everything. Over the dusty lanes, the pain of yesterdays, the truth of today and the colors of tomorrow.

Yesterday’s rain took me away to childhood. While I was looking at the flowers I felt my long forgotten childhood delicacy, a feeling of weightlessness. As a child again I reach the damp courtyard of memories, of school days, of the red gulmohar trees.

I remember the rain as it spattered shining droplets over me and passed giggling. I remember the smell of rain, then the dreadful thunder, the bumble bees, the childhood fancies…

When we have to miss all what we consider the most precious, dearest to heart, we’ll realize that we have grown up. And all this adulthood cannot provide the serenity of childhood. All the life cannot give me back the monsoon days I miss, the reopening, the first school days, the smell of new books, of damp classrooms, of friendships cherished deeper and deeper at heart.

I needed the rain to wash away thoughts of something lacking, instead it brought to me the thoughts of awakening…memorizing that I’m incomplete without my past. Red anger to blue sadness, yellow fear to black despair…

I was walking back in a path which is long forgotten, an abandoned railway track with grass growing between the rails. Trying to believe that I’ve not lost anything. It was an old fairytale, perhaps, Cinderella. Yes, I’m trying to believe, that I’ve never lost my opal slipper.

The moist air chills the tears on my cheeks. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the rain, then my anguish would be over, and I could finally forget. But I’m relieved that I could finally cry in yesterday’s rain.

A Prologue about myself

Yes, it’s my birthday- April 16th

I was born in April, the month of scorching sun and summer rain!
Perhaps that’s the cause of myriad of emotions in me- from blaze to drizzle... but I too don’t know my self well. I don’t know what I say or do at times. But I never did something intentionally to hurt someone. That is my policy of life – live and let live!

I’m fond of many things-things of no relation – April showers, dark chocolates, capsicum, fresh tomatoes, lemon, music notes, menacing smiles, innocent mischief, UFOs, pyramids of Egypt, sci-fis, mysteries, metaphysics, philosophy, robotics, opulence, neuropsychology, politics and so on…a person who loves Da Vinci, Einstein, Paulo Coelho, Octavia Paz , Sean Connery, Hitler, Socrates, Eliot, Fidel Castro and Rushdie at the same time.

But above all I’m a character in search of an author…I’m a letter alone in a dictionary…searching for its word, shifting its place from one word to another, yet unable to find its own word…lost and lonely…yes, mine is a tanha dil. Kaun jane is anjane raste maim kya doont rahi hai, kise doont rahi hai…mere yeh safar to sirf tanha hai…but still I celebrate each moment of my life. I’m a paradox who ironically laughs at life’s adversities. I celebrate my triumph, collapse, exhilaration, anguish, insanity, misery, pain, ecstasy, severance, reunion, memories and nostalgia. I celebrate life. It’s great to be alive.

When I was born my nation was free already, free from autocratic powers.
The old fashioned dictators were dead and forgotten. World nations have started to build up their future from the resources they looted or what remained after looting. The nations which were more or less lost suddenly flourished and developed. But my nation still remained in the atrocious state of quagmire and cinders.

I know I’m living in purgatory fancying that I’m in cloud 9. But I abide this fate of living on earth with the euphoria of corporal mortification. I’ll tarnish myself to make this world a better place to live in… And then I’ll rise from ashes like phoenix. Like the refined gold from the smith’s fire I’ll return.

to be continued