Time Is But A Stubborn Illusion

You arrive
Time is peace
Pretty, pretty, pretty; the world seems so
Colors explode in the corner of consciousness
I fear if I touch they will explode into million suns
So this is what it feels like to love
For times like this, God created us

You leave
Time is chaos
Pain, pain, pain; the world feels so
My phantom heart bleeds your name
And I will again drown in your absence
So this is what it feels like to die
For times like this, we invented God

A Primer to Scales of Measurement*

 Nominal Scale (Identification)

1) A female teacher died during poll duty due to Corona (allegedly)

Gender: Female; Occupation: Teacher; Cause of death: Corona(allegedly)

2) A Muslim Auto-rickshaw driver converts his auto-rickshaw into a makeshift ambulance

Religion: Islam; Occupation: Driver, Cause of action: Humanity (hopefully)

Does death identify Gender, Occupation and Religion?

How someone measures humanity; in empty words of leaders or a common man’s action?

Ordinal Scale (Identification + Order)

1) India ranks now at position 2 in corona cases

2) In World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), India ranks at 142

              Don’t look only at number, look at what is being measured

              Sometimes being in the top three hurts so much

Interval Scale (Identification + Order + Difference)

1) Channel ‘A’ shows celebrity vacations, cricket and exit polls and has a TRP rating of 130

2) Channel ‘B’ shows death toll, the plight of migratory mammals and has a TRP rating of 70

Let us applaud ourselves for our absolute apathy

And enjoy our luxury while half of the nation hitch and hike between death and poverty

Ratio Scale (Identification + Order + Difference + Universally accepted starting point)

1) 211,835+ deaths due to corona till date

2) Oxygen Level follow below eighty, a person gasps for breath, while Oxygen cylinders wait to delivered after our leaders’ debate

            I guess when they rewrite history in few years about our greatest fight against the crisis

They might be able to change the scale of death and show the numbers dead in negative

 

*for death and its aftermath

Funambulist

An Acrobat moves on a rope
Like a century-old art hung in a somber museum
Life is a question of proportion; pay attention

Inside her head, thoughts form in unknown alphabets
Like shipwrecked hearts dive into azure evenings
or stones were thrown into a silent lake

Summer lightning
A sad breeze passing through Asoka trees
Sentiments balance on the golden silence of wings

You who ache for the calmness of a second
And yet hurry off on a rope for a change
Remember

Those words are only true, which do not insist on meaning.

Post No 4,07,00,00,001 on the Internet: Nature’s curve may not be exponential and other odd thoughts

As I write this article and made a search with keyword COVID 19, the search engine retrieved 4,07,00,00,000 article in 0.43 seconds. Why not another one?

Few of my odd thoughts are as follows


Thought 1: Nature’s curve may not be exponential

When nature starts to dance to the music of death, the curves it shows may not be exponential but in the current situation the articles/forwarded messages related to the topic are taking an exponential form. I do not have enough knowledge to explain why network-based epidemic modeling is a better approach than exponential modeling with R0. (The future reviewers/editors of my articles will be so proud that I am using the technical jargons of which I do not have any clue) However, those of you have any clue, let me direct you play a simple game based on the same theory. https://vax.herokuapp.com/game


Thought 3: Survival of the fittest. Don’t make it survival of the “shittiest”


In the unprecedented time we live in, I remember the scene from heath ledger’s iconic performance in Joker and the words he uttered “When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.”. I understand the act of panicking helped our so-called uncivilized ancestors to run away from wild animal attacks, angry spouses but in today’s world when we call ourselves civilized we should have minimum decency not to hoard essential supplies.


Thought 5: Remember those who helped us in our bitter times when the time gets better


Most of us will survive this and maybe in a few months, we will go back again to our old tantrums of hating Mondays, blaming system failure everywhere with our perfect hindsight biases. But I hope we will remember those frontline workers, doctors, nurses, the workers in essential services and all those common men and women who stand guard in this uncommon time.


Thought 7: A Certified Introvert’s Guide to survive lockdown
Most of the cities across the world are in lockdown and governments are taking necessary steps to ensure that people stay at home. A plethora of advice on creating new hobbies, learning new skills floating around in proportion to the growth of the virus.


My advice is to try to sit still for a few minutes’ a day without the constant chatter of the mind. I guarantee you, if you do it for 21 days, if nothing else happens at least you will be older by 21 days.


As of me, paraphrasing the dialogue from the movie “Seventh Seal”; "I will carry the memory of these times between my hands as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk. I will be grateful for the near and dear ones in whose prayers I take a position as per Heisenberg uncertainty principle."


In case you liked this article, do read my other imaginary article on “How to play Sudoku with imaginary numbers”

Wildflowers not Roses

Next time show me a wildflower near a stream
Roses in a vase do not sing the same song as me
No more I want to go to viewpoints and
stand in line to take pictures in front of monuments
I am happy to sit across a old railway station and watch passing trains

Never ever I want to go to water parks
Let me go back to river in my village to collect my paper boats back
No longer I want to dance in a concert in a daze
I am happy under a moonlit night in your assuring embrace

And in case I do not pick up phone or call often
May be I have gone back to write postcards and believe waiting is fun

Last song of the Season

This last evening, as the season ends

And the sunrays retreat from the sky

I think of the grapes who are dreaming to become wine someday

When the clouds pass by the window of your room

And as you look beyond, everything seems to pause for a moment

I think of the sharp arrow of time which pierces our hearts every now and then

Tomorrow when morning sun arrives

And we realize everything is same but yet different

I think of the life counseling ‘spider’ gave to ‘suicidal fly’

The whalebone which I wear on my neck dreams of the blue ocean

The tiger claw charm on my wrist digs deep to quench its thirst

My memory of you is my privilege and my peace

“There are thousand places we won’t visit

Many things we will not know

A lot of faces we won’t see

Myriad emotions we won’t show

We have one life, an infinitesimal fraction of time

To understand whole eternity

Amongst zillion possibilities, we have only one story to follow

Never knowing how it unfolds”

Thoughtful Grenade

For once in a while, I want to be a thoughtful grenade
Rather than distributing shrapnel around, want to deal with your smiles
For once in a while, I want to make the promises which I can keep
Once in life, not to torn your heart into pieces when my time comes to leave

I want to be the thoughtful grenade,
Upon my chance arrival in your arms, I will sing a lullaby till you sleep
Then I shall roll down from your sleeves and then jump into the ground
And start walking away silently not creating any clamour around

Just for once, I want to save you rather than destroying.
And to become harbinger of hope and not cause ruins of your peace
And if possible can explain to you, before I leave,
Love is just entropy-wrapped reality

The painted veil

Next time let me be a wind chime in a tree

So that I will have some other ambition rather than being free

The new me, won’t be afraid of passing time

Nor your absence from my decaying life

Still I will have the freedom to sing your song when I want to sing

And when someone asks me about my achievements in life

I will not have to look through my resume

And yet I can proudly tell how the raindrops taste like

What are heartaches made of?

And why did Monalisa smile?

Festival of Insignificance

Last drops of this night, flowing through this vein

Thinking of something and yet saying something else

Heart yearns for your words even after we say ‘goodbye’

And as I walk back home, trying to remember things unsaid

Who knows when all this begins or when all this ends

No one can know the concrete shape of things

When the hand shivers before the knife strikes the heart

Love was all that can be in shivering of your hand

All through our lives, we keep running, trying to give meaning

How simple it seems, yet it is not

To define things and yet to keep them unexplained

What is this life, nothing but festival of insignificance 

Use of being

What is that longing called, to find one’s use in scheme of things?

To be a cause of someone’s laughter and excuse for your existence

What is those bundle of feelings are called

A mix of anger, jealousy, affection and anticipation

Which come and go as you count the seconds during heart’s deprivation

Those memories which you create of things happened and imagined

Impervious to circular time

What is that obsession to find meaning in things ?

And believe that what is unsaid may not necessarily be unknown

Is there a line beyond which our stories merge together?

Or is it just the immortal time making fun of mortal illusion

If I were another

I was upset, because I did not get the promotion for which I worked hard
Somewhere in a corner of this earth, a farmer was tying a rope on a branch

I was sad, because she did not reply me back
Somewhere a coffin-wrapped-in-triranga came home with a letter in pocket of his shirt

I was angry because I was delayed in this traffic for hours
Somewhere a villager could not carry his pregnant wife , in time, to hospital

I was crying, as my life was not going according to my plan
Somewhere a girl child was thrown into a well as she was a girl

Once upon a time

And once we were discussing hobbies
I said, ‘You know, I am good at running’
She asked, 'running away or running towards?'
I did not like the question. So I ran away
Now I think I should have stayed

And once we were talking about Life
she said ,'God has a plan for all of us'
I disagreed and said ' It is random and has no meaning'
After all our Gods died young
Now I think,she should have listened to me

And once we were debating on philosophy
I said , 'happiness is reality divided by expectations'
She argued and said 'It is not that simple to define'
When all the expectations gone and still I don't feel infinite
Now I think she had proved her point

And once we were playing cards
she said , 'you know, love is like card game'
You have to play the right card at right time to win
I said , 'I don't like this game any more and I quit'
Now I think, I should have bluffed and kept playing.

Too loud a solitude

This night arrives like all other nights, in my vain

Your cards, my bluff; Let us bet each other till eternity’s end

Your hair, my eyes; Let us search ourselves in its temporary darkness

Your fingers, my heart; Let us sing a song resembling our broken appearances

The remnant darkness of the night climbs down from my tired eyes

Somewhere I must be present

In those fluttering of eyes, when someone is in deep sleep

And thinking of the things afraid of reality

I am Minotaur; you are Theseus in this labyrinth

Running over same old ground

Morning dreams reflecting on evening sky-light
Old city, new roads
Where will I reach , if I keep walking
In a new dawn or a new night

What did gravity ask to the man standing at the edge of cliff
What did the sparrow say to the north wind
And what did those eyes filled with night ask dawn
Is love real or just an illusion?

Whom shall we blame
If our shadows blacked out in every sight
We have been defeated
Defeated by the illusions we keep

In some corner of heart, memory burns
True negative or false positive
Did you find my madness in your lips?
I think I lost it in last night's kiss

Monachopsis

Eight corners, twelve lines, a space enclosed

My kingdom, my dreams, my beginning and my end

The slow passing of time through veins

And the never ending tic-tac-toe of fate

Why they call it freedom
If each bird is chained to its own sky
And what do raindrops tell to the earth
Before they plunge into their death

Sometimes one addresses to its future self
Explaining things that seems out of place
But it is difficult to make someone understand
When the only language you know is silence

But again who knows
What someone is capable of
Send me a note may be
If you ever get out of this maze

Happiness is a verb

Someone once told me that happiness is a verb

We have to keep looking

In mutual misunderstandings, roles we mastered to play

Old letters, half-finished sentences and the time passing by

And our midnight silences and sighs

May be life is what life is

Promises and disappointments; the search that never ends

May be after every hard fought battle, we will remember

Knowing that somewhere

We will be praying for each other

Before Sunrise

Coldest night of the year, the city shivers

Even the streetlights refuse to show their face

Seems they are on a strike demanding less working hour and more wage

I trace the hurried footsteps of dying light to reach her address

There she is, sitting by the window, reading this poem

As I approach she smiles

May be I smiled, cannot remember though

Who knows it really happened or I just imagined it too

Dilemma

What should I write about, whom should I write about

About the tomato vendor who is counting the day’s earning
Or the motorcycles standing in attention

Clothes hanging on the line, fighting with each other

And become silent as the rain approaches, waiting for their respective owners

Unperturbed to the world around him, the drunkard sleeping on the road

Or shall I write about the immersion procession for the elephant God

A madman joins the celebration and starts dancing his unsynchronized steps

Which may have been adorable if he were a child but now he is just butt of jokes

Perhaps time remains same, but how our perception changes over years

He continues to dance and beg for food from the kind-hearted souls

Who have come to bid farewell to their favorite God

Nothing comes to his hand except emptiness which silently hangs in air

The tomato vendor comes and puts some tomatoes in the madman’s hand

And in gratitude he bows his head as if Elephant God has taken incarnation

Or shall I write about the longingness that weighs upon my heart

If I were a poet, would have ordered the clouds to take my message to you

But when cheaper alternatives exist

Why start a conversation through moody clouds

But the dilemma still exists 

An Ode to her

Her soul is made of ancient stars

In her face lies the secret of first rays of sun light

Beautiful than any imagination

Her smile can defeat the darkest of night

Her heart holds all that is true and fair

The last stand against all the in-sensitiveness of world

Silently she fights on for what she believes

In her mortal frame she holds a heart of a dragon

Her sorrow is her strength, tears her armor

Unbreakable her will against the randomness the great shatterer

Beyond this mortal place and dying time

She is meant for immortality 

Evening Star

Come my evening star, show me your face
Free me from this seven thousand years of wait
Guide me to the land where you live
Let me sleep a while under your beautiful spell

Long I have traveled under the endless darkness
My soul is weary and crumbling by
My strength is falling, come make haste
This time lost I won't be found again

Like old days, we will travel on butterfly wings
Under smiling stars and morning sun
I will count the dew drops and your smiles
And you will sing me the song of Beren and Luthien

But some part me still wants you to keep distance
Do not want you to lose your immortality for this mortal man
I am in eternal turmoil between sacrifice and desire
How can my insidious heart seek your eternal fire?