Winter Past

Footsteps.

Fog steps.

Fog. Steps

in, leaving behind its tangible, melting

coat. Voices all muffled,

scuffle amidst the fireplaces.

Gently. And
outside,

the bloodless, dense limb wraps

the grey city of doll houses;

squeezing it, caressing its

green pools of hazels and birch.

Crumbling crusts of brown sticking out

like tongues mocking at the absence of

snow. It is quiet. Still. Till someone,

inside,

sips, in the middle of their hot

supper, its frosty fingers sunk somewhere

in their murky soup.

Paper People teach us what Art can achieve

Carving cities in your flesh, skins tickling your mind;

Their lives but leaves of apparition in an erudite rain.

They are monochrome people, who live in a flat world of white paper and black ink. We all know them, each of us in a different way.
But their weight is either heavily light, or lightly heavy.

And they are, for me, one of the best parts of Literature.
The first is, of course, the extraordinary beauty of the syncopation of words, of the power of the tiniest sentence to evoke the most striking images. And then is this - this whole plethora of people that come out of these spaces and times within the lines, and soak into your life as if their presence has always been there, albeit invisibly.

They haunt you, they soothe you, they comfort you and inspire you, they lead you towards and unexpected catharsis. What makes them extremely relatable is, on one side, the expertness of the writer with his art, and on the other, more importantly, the subconscious awareness that they are not entirely fictional. They would have stemmed from some experience of the writer, some experience of another living being just like us who has metamorphosed them into paper people. It is this sublime comfort that even our deepest experiences, sorrows and joys have all been experienced by others, in different levels and intensities that lingers with us. They are an ambiguous hint that all human experience is shared experience, just not shared at the same time and same place together.

And that, to me , is one of the greatest achievements of art - to bind humanity in an invisible thread of awareness of each other and of themselves, and bring in a sense of solidarity on the subconscious level.

Bhutan - A Picture Diary

What better way to bring in the new year than with travel and dance. Here's the photo story of my new year trip to Bhutan.
HELLO 2016!!!

A Deeper Answer to India

Perhaps, all that is happening is still stemming from the insecurity that colonization had sowed. The past definitely has answers.

If only we take the trouble to look.

Some say we are tolerant, and others say no. 

But more than the fact that it could be a political agenda to defame Modi Government (of which I was and I still am a supporter of except the middle men who assume their power to interfere with ridiculous views), what makes me cringe is the names of people who are taking the respective stands.

If you take a stand, you need to prove that you have already applied or are applying that view practically in your actions.

But all we see is very wise manipulation of each one's personal conveniences.

Those who say one cant make a big deal out of singular events, are the very ones who are making a big deal of other singular events that do not sink with their views. 

Are you trying to say that if it is just one life it has no value?

Those who cry foul at sour grapes hardly get off their ass when the grapes are sweeter closer their own home.

Those who try to speak the truth for the betterment of all (optimistically assuming that is the agenda of everyone) are ridiculed as unpatriotic, and those who fake blind love are agreed with more.

How exactly is a country supposed to progress if you refuse to see its loopholes? 

Where is the question of defamation? 

Who else are we mass Indians conditioned to actually listen to, if not film stars?

What other form of protest can an artist take (taking into account the 'stand' that most of them have here.Yes. Face the truth), other than return awards? 

There is some bad in what those in power are doing, and there is good in what those that aren't in power are doing.

Accept the grays, instead of painting everything black and white.

Everything should not be 'OK', as long as it does not bang on your door or disturb your sleep.

And there is a much deeper answer as well, to everything, and it is in the past. 

No one likes what happened to us during colonization, but it is a fact that cant be erased. 

Yes it happened, and yes we are still dealing with both the negative and positive effects of it. 

And as you see beneath the skin, you see the actual wound. 

It is the killing of her self respect that India is still trying to deal with, which is why she erupts at small little incidents. 

She is still afraid of being robbed, of being burdened, which is why part of her is fiercely, and sometimes impractically, possessive of her 'identity' (culture/values/religion and everything else), and part of her is trying, probably way too hard, to shake everything off and find her place in the 'new' world.

The calm 'thinking' middle ground has not been stuck yet. 

Or of it is, it is painfully hidden and unacknowledged.

And at this point of extreme social and political upheaval, we have to find the common ground. Which is, quite simply, taking into account that in spite of all developments there are countless Indians who are hungry and homeless.

We maybe tolerant of many things, but we cant still be tolerant of hunger and poverty.

Unless every citizen is fed, unless every 'Indian' has a simple roof at least to stay in, I, as a common citizen, find it hard to accept the shallow patriotism raising its head everywhere, irrespective of what 'party' it is.

We need pride, not shallow ego.

To Burn or not to Burn, That is the Question of the Diaries

The customary cleaning for the festival has begun at home.
After a very, very long time I had the chance to get the entire stack of my diaries and notebooks out to clean up the shelves. Needless to say, it was quite amusing to see almost 8-10 years of my life, all collected in little piles.
I couldn't help but sit and start going through them.
One by one.
Page by page.
Goodness!
So many emotions.
So many memories.
So many people who have blurred out of my life and so many who have stayed and yet are hardly recognizable in their present souls.
So many memories, incidents, and experiences.
It was quite overwhelming to see everything that life had given me.
So many happy moments and so many not so happy ones.
They have all been a part of the journey and all have made me who I am, and yet, as much as I tried to honor and respect them all for what they were at the time they existed, I couldn't help but feel that some of them were a total waste of emotions and time.
That sounds equally childish to you as it feels to me, and yet I can't help but feel that I could perhaps have gotten better moments had I not been so blinded by feelings, ideals, ideas of creating utopia, and baseless faiths.
Well. If it weren't for those experiences I wouldn't have the maturity (Don't laugh. I know I still have a long way to go but am learning!) that I hopefully have now.
Theoretically, I understand and maybe even appreciate.
And yet, practically, I cant help but feel why on earth I would have squandered my precious confidences.
Its also quite funny how my own emotions have changed and morphed -  sadness and pain, to anger, then to frustration, and finally, to nothingness. Happiness, to memories, to mere little tingles, to nothingness. Some incidents were even out of my memory's reach now, and if not for my diaries I perhaps might not have thought of them ever again..
I pictured myself, 50 years from now, hopefully alive with all my faculties intact, reading them again on an empty afternoon. Or perhaps sharing it with some other people. Would I laugh? Cry? Or not feel anything at all?
We all seem to go through similar journeys. We all seem to go through similar lessons and feelings and experiences. It is sort of comforting to know that I am not alone, and also quite saddening to realize that my condition is not as unique as I had thought it was.
Well :) It is all life, all a part and parcel of it.
At this moment, as I am caught in a dilemma about whether to keep all of the diaries or probably burn away a few awfully painful ones, all I find myself asking from life is not to keep me away from anything, not to take pity on me and spare me all that life has to offer and all that the condition of being born as a human has to show and reveal.
All I funnily find myself asking, is give me more, life!
Give me more of everything, enough to fill a million more diaries.

A Creative Conversation with the Epitome of Inspirations - Krishna

You are still as far away as the rain cloud you so proudly paint yourself with, and as near as the tickle of a peacock feather on my cheek.
Before I could start thinking about the concept of God, you were there - as a bit of imagination, as an invisible companion to have conversations with on the terrace, and as a daydream to paint away on sunny solitudinal afternoons.
Though at times I was wary of you, I remember I never was fearful of you. With dance you grew closer and through you I got my first introduction to various other emotions. What I loved the most about what I felt was not just the awe and the amazement, but the utter sense of you being so human and so complete in being a human in all your emotions, relations and dealings. There never was a crust that I had to break through to reach you or strive to get your attention and grace on me; you were always something that existed alongside me in life - as a concept, as love, as trust, as a prayer, and sometimes as a visible absence.

My perception of humanity was shaped by the sort of 'humanness' I saw in you - something grand, something intense, something in control yet sensitive and vulnerable enough, something boundless and blissful and something inexhaustivef. These are the qualities I look for on a universal basis, probably in everything.

Though I do not understand some of your decisions and your stories, and nor completely agree with some, I know it doesn't offend you; you probably did all that you did (or your writer told all that he told about you) so that the mirage of perfection is broken - you are so perfect in your imperfections that it does not feel awkward. And you wanted us to know it.

Were you happy as a child ? Did you go stealing all the butter and food because you were a spoilt and pampered brat, or did your mother, by any chance, try to discipline you a tad too much from which you wanted to break away ?
Did you really leave Radha because you wanted to protect her honor as a married woman, or were you just scared to accept that love and so you found the glitter and comfort of Mathura easier to deal with ?
Did you really manipulate the war with your clever little lies, or were you just desperately trying to keep everyone at peace and it all worked like a brilliant stroke of luck?
Were you really magnanimous to marry 16,000 queens or was it a kind of penance to assuage your own guilt for having played with the feelings of thousands of maidens in your youth?
More than anything, how did you manage to become so personal and intimate, that your recantations in the Bhagad Gita remain as one of the most universal texts on our inherent nature ?
Who were you, Krishna? Do I believe what people say or what you say to me in my reveries ?
Is it necessary to be sure of your existence and what I am given as facts of your existence? Do I always need facts ? Aren't you already existing in all of us, not just as a spark of the divine as we keep telling ourselves; but as the human nature itself, with all its glorious things and all its not so glorious things (as we perceive it )?
And is that what you were trying to convey to us all, when you said that we are in you, and you are in us?

Tenderness

                                                          Larkhall Park - My soul space


There are these moments in life which you somehow forget to fill up. They stay open, bare and are often invisible until some other moment nudges them out of their burrow.
Like looking at an old doodle done seven years ago and slipping into the same space of mind effortlessly.
Or looking at an old photograph and hearing a voice inside your brain.
Or when my mum calls me from the kitchen for dinner.
There is something about that voice, about the way she calls, and the texture of the tender care in a simple syllable that speaks volumes more - 'The dinner's hot and tasty.' 'Its your favorite.' 'You have not eaten for hours.' 'I am tired and sleepy but I can wait until I've served you.'
It is these little things that carry so much meaning than grand displays that I miss the most when I am away. And it is these spaces that I want to hold more of.
The blood beneath the skin.
The blue in the nerves.
Or the tiny 'gulp' sound when I drink water.
It is odd how time seems to stop during these little getaways. Everything blurs, the sights, the sounds, the sensations of everything around melts as these moments gain a strange weight and hover over me. And often these spaces come unheralded, and yet blend in beautifully.
Back in London for my graduation ceremony and a few performances, it feels like everything in between hangs in another space. Its like touching a familiar unfamiliarity. Or an unfamiliar familiarity. Or maybe I am losing it.
It is gong to be formally over, my course, with a formal ceremony of robes and smiles and congratulations. More than the course, I wish we all could look into (really, really deep into) the whole experience of it, and congratulate each other on the particular period of time that has been intense both personally and artistically in some way or the other.
I am listening to the same songs I used to a year ago on the tube. And walking on the exact same spaces and trying and tracing the exact same steps.
It is not the spaces but what we leave of ourselves or what we find of ourselves in those spaces that make it significant for all of us.
Or, maybe I am losing it.