September songs - The coordinates beyond dates and time

"तू कौन सवेरा है मेरा , 

मै उड़ने लगा तुझसे मिलके 

मैं मैं भी रहा, तू तू भी रहा ; 

कुछ ऐसे घुला तुझमें मिलके 

तू पलकों पर , उड़ता है मेरी 

- तस्वीरों सा -

- तकदीरों सा -

तू आँखों से , रिसता है मेरी 

- जज़्बातों की -

- ताबीरों सा -

तू चूड़ी कंगन झुमके की 

झंकार सा मुझमें बजता है 

तू बंसी के संगीत सा है  

मुझमें हर्फों सा बसता है 

तितली के तू पंख भी है 

पेड़ों का हरा तू रंग भी है 

तू बरगद की छाया भी है 

तू शीशम के पत्तों की खनक 

तू शाम के दूध की प्याली में 

केसर की तरह घुलती हसरत 

तू कोहरे से लिपटी खुशबू है 

तू ओस में  लिपटा पानी है

जितनी तुझमे मेरी है सुन,

उतनी मुझमें तेरी कहानी है। .

तू एक बरसता लम्हा है 

चंद करोड़ों सालों -सा 

कभी तेज़ बहुत तू चलता है 

कभी हौले से मुझमें ढुलके 

मैं मैं भी रहा, तू तू भी रहा ; 

कुछ ऐसे घुला तुझमें मिलके।" 

ताबीर  = meaning, interpretation

हर्फ़  =  alphabet

December songs - Stories you carry within...

जाएगा भी तो कहाँ 

तू ये कारवाँ छोड़कर ?

तू ये कहानी लिए ,

बैठा है किस मोड़ पर ?

पलकों पर तेरी 

- जल रही है -

हाथों पर तेरे 

-बदल रही है -

Photograph clicked at: Lbsnaa, Musoorie, India

Silence can be music.

Silently approaching winters 
and suspended fog over fallen dew
bubble in me
- tales -
of train journeys,
of coffee.
of ink.
and sometimes you.

Silence
is not always
the absence of music.
It just depends
on what you choose to do.

Either you reach the music
hidden in 'their' silence.
Or you let silence make music
every moment, inside you.

Photograph: Clicked @George Everest, Musoorie

The said and the unsaid.

"कैसे मैं तुम्हे कह दूँ बोलो ,ये  बात नहीं अल्फ़ाज़ों की 
ये रसमुलखत का खेल नहीं, ये बात है बस एहसासों की 
आँखों में मेरे ये रक्स करे  
मिल जायेगी इन पलकों के तले 
- ये रिसती हुई -
- ये उड़ती हुई -

तुम बस छू दो इसको आँखों से अपनी 
- दानिश मैं नहीं - "

How do I speak or write to you?

This is not a thing of words.

This is no play of alphabets.

This is just something to be sensed

- Known -

- Explored -

- Absorbed -

It dances right here in my eyes.

If only you come searching

You shall find it

Beneath my eyelashes

- leaking - 

- flickering -

Yet intact.

If only you could touch it with your eyes

Because I am not

- direct -

Picture source: Clicked by me on the way to binog hill, Musoorie
रसमुलखत : An urdu word meaning alphabets
दानिश  : Direct

The song of the missing words.

I wondered-
" why he never talked,
all this time 
- in laughter - 
- or in cries. -"

May be he just waits. 
Silently 
for his season. 
For I had seen 'spring' in those eyes.

And I had seen
'spring' 
- swimming -
- brimming -
- coming - 
in those crystalline eyes. 
Photography- One of my garden clicks.

The law of everything.

" तू क्या ढूंढता है ? तू क्या जानता है ?

तू किन कायदों को, लिखा मानता है ? 

 रुका तू कहाँ है ? बुझा तू कहाँ है ?

तेरी आग तो तेरे अंदर कहीं है । 

तू सैलाब भी है,बस समंदर नहीं है । 

जो उठ जाए खुद में,तो किनारों को तोड़े ।

या पिघलाए धरती और पहाड़ों को मोड़े ।

वो संगीत तेरा,तुझी में तो है बस

चल अब देखतें हैं,

इसे कौन,कब,कैसे पहचानता है । 

There is a law of everything.
But then, do you know?
Have you cared to wonder,
who writes it?
There is gold and fire in every being here.
But then, its all about
- when -
and
- who -
ignites it.

Photography: https://www.instagram.com/p/BITC09dBonM/?taken-by=gazalbharadwaj

Its all about what we are made up of.

In the windmill...
  - mass meets mass - 
  - acceleration feels acceleration -
  - force knows force -
  - energy becomes energy -
We all transform. Don't we?

So You?
Do You know?
Have You seen, heard, known, touched?
My elements and my atoms?
Yes, I am the wind.
Fast, slow, warm, cold, clear, hazy
Contained in myself and yet free.
Free.
Have you seen, heard, known, touched?
My harmony?

Its all about what we are made up of.
Its all about what we shall become.

Photograph source : www.capstoneinfrastructure.com

Temperature inversion...

Temperature inversion.

Is She there around,
hung as moisture in the air?
Is she suspended in that nothingness,
now only in the memory of
Him, the Emerald Leaf.
Or in His dream.
Years back she was real.

The Emerald leaf-
now cold,
now numb,
shivering in that long 
wintery night.

Is that her memory or her dream
who meets him
as moisture
every dawn,
hears the silence
of his words,
condenses,
and becomes the dew drop?
Limpid, pure
radiant, smiling..

He calls her his dew drop.
She calls him her emerald leaf.

Temperature inversion...
Photograph source https://www.pinterest.com/pin/491525746809202908/

That small building on the mountains..

Dear Man,

Here lie the remnants of that small building you once built.

I just came back to this place today, to collect some of them.

Here it stood.

Small, but strong and beautiful.

You had built it with passion and love.

decorated its walls, painted its windows.

The sunlight from those hills would touch it each dawn

and it sparkled, smiled, gleamed.
The mountains smiled back.

If only you could take off your glasses and see,

those cracks could have been mended.

For you were the one who had once said-

that "time heals all"

I thought you needed time

to feel those cracks and mend them.

That architect in you I had known.

Yes you came back again.

I thought you were to show me, 

that our building still stood firm.

for those cracks had been healing,

dissolving in time.

But, I found you had buldozed the building.

and built there a multiplex.

May be it will give you more comfort.

These mountains out here,

they still stand testimony

of....
 of both the creation

and death.

What do I do with these remnants now?

These remnants of that small building

That small building on the mountains

you once built.

Those brown twinkling eyes...

With this post, I intend to discover the change that creeps in the vision of a child of seven to a young girl of nineteen. As a child, I always loved the night sky, and I would spend a lot of time observing it. And, though I love it still, but a change has crept in ‘the vision’ of my two brown twinkling eyes… and this change encompasses the truth that all elements of the universe have a common soul and are connected… happy reading…

Those brown twinkling eyes...

Those pair of brown twinkling eyes would observe daily, The vast sapphirine night sky. Without an inch of ennui or tedium, they surveyed it daily. They knew every change it made. They were aware of its ineffable hue, of the glimmer of the innumerable stars it held, of the gleam of the countless constellations and galaxies it possessed, they knew it all. There would be something in those eyes, I’ll like to mention. An innocence. An enchantment. A spark. A dream. But, something else too… something like clouds heavy with unshed rain, something so overwhelming, that it would overpower itself and make the lips cry aloud to the vast unsuggestive blue-

“You are so beautiful. I wish I was a part of your world!”Today, those eyes are twelve years older. But, they’re still brown. They still twinkle. They still have that enchantment and gleam, that spark, that dream. Just two days back, when I made a very crucial decision of my life, those two brown twinkling eyes took me, after a long time to the topfloor of my house; and I got reminded of those childhood days of mine.

I stood there holding the railing with my warm hands, gazing at the night sky. A blast of a strange neutral air blew towards the east; the east which harbours both day and night, light and dark, hope and despair. I had just taken a decision. And a big one. I was at peace now. The breeze blew swifter. My hair and the blue gown I was wearing drifted me ahead. I felt myself borne onward along a mighty current whose source seemed to be in the very beginning of things. I was flying. Flashed before those two brown twinkling eyes pictures of the past; when I had learnt to ride a bicycle, when I had scored a hundred in a subject for the first time, when I had sent a gift to a friend as an acquaintance so as to see her smile, when I was declared my school topper, the investiture ceremony, the shields… everything was as fresh before me as it was then, years back. My heart pounded with joy.

And then, as the breeze touched my ears, I heard a melody, a melody on the guitar… a memory brimmed those two brown eyes and they burned with tears. I was crying. Those tears trickled down to my palm, by and by, and in few moments my palm was full of drops of those crystalline tears. I saw a glitter on my palm. It was a glitter from my tears which shone brighter than the Sirius, The Ursa Major, The Orion. I was reminded of all the stars and constellations I had seen till now. There was a twinkle again in those wet brown eyes. And there was something else too; something so overwhelming, that it overpowered itself and made the lips cry aloud to the vast unsuggestive blue-

“ I am so beautiful. You are a part of my world.”

As I said this, I felt my heart shone, as now it contained the sky in it. The light inside me was more illumined than the limpid moonlight that shone on my body. It was richer, more solemn, more significant and holy.

I lifted my face up to see the enormous azure sky.

Those two brown twinkling eyes now contained him, The Sky.

The Empty Street...

GOD HAS HIS WAYS.

For hours I had lain in a kind of a disturbed torpor and at ever-lengthening intervals, a flash of pain darted through me, like the ripples of sheet-lightning and thunder which had caused the lights of the whole of Pantnagar go out that night. It was 3:00 a: m and I woke up all of a sudden with a jerk and with my hands desperately searching for some water in that eerie darkness. As I got my bottle, I quaffed all its contents in no time. Only when the chilled water explored my guts, I realized that I was alive. My lids burnt with tears. The walls of my room began to make me feel claustrophobic and I ran out to the end of my wing, to the staircase and till I reached the window upstairs. The eerie darkness all around made me feel hysteric, and I felt like yelling out and weeping loud.

As I lifted up my liquid eyes, there before me was The empty grey street running outside the hostel.I thought that people walk on it the whole day. Lovers stroll on it and she hears what they whisper into each other’s ears. She listens to the transactions the businessmen make, to the fights between two best friends cycling over her… she listens to every one who walks on her. But, at night, when it’s dark and lonely, when people have reached their destinations, no one cares to listen what her silence speaks. No one cares to feel what lies beneath the sheet of smothered dust- that lonely heart which craves for just one listener.

“He hears me” she said.

“He?” I asked in amazement.

“ He, the vast shadowless blue sky… He listens to my silence. He knows that beneath this smothered and crampled dust lies a fire, a fire which lights the Earth’s core. I am not lonely. He too spends the whole night with me awake because He can feel my silence and because He cares…”

“You say He cares!” I exclaimed in sarcasm, “He never approaches to wipe away your tears, when you cry. He’s never there to celebrate your happiness with you. He’s so so far away…”

“Ya” she smiled. “ He never approached me to wipe away my tears. He just send the wind to do so. He never celebrated my happiness with me, He only smiled at me to tell me He was happy for me. His smile is the sunshine, the limpid bright sunshine. And when I see Him smile, it lits the candles of the answers of all the queries of my life. BUT, DOES NOT EVERY ONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO SUNSHINE?”

I kept looking at her trying to understand what she was saying.

“But, not everyone craves and prays for his smile. Not everyone is devoted to Him the way you are…” I still protested.

“But everyone has the right to it. I can’t own him. He is the vast azure sky. That’s how it’s written- ‘MAKTUB’” She whispered in an entreating tone.

“MAKTUB” I Said to myself. “It’s written” says Coelho in his novel, ‘The Alchemist’. “How true…” I thought.

“ So,” I asked her a last question, “Will it go on this way? Will God always keep you deprived of His love?”

As I said these words, the lightening and thunder increased all of a sudden and in a few moments, it began to rain heavily; as though The Sky himself wanted to answer my question.

“Look!” she said in a calm and satisfied tone, “THE FATHER TOUCHES THE LADY AND LOVES HER, AND CREATES IN HER WOMB, A MIRACLE CALLED LIFE. HE TOUCHES ME DEEP INSIDE MY SOUL, LIKE THIS THROUGH HIS TENDER RAINDROPS, AND CREATES IN MY WOMB THIS MIRACLE…”

“MIRACLE?”

“YES” She exclaimed, “THE MIRACLE, THAT I AM ABLE TO GENERATE LIFE AND SUPPORT IT. HE GIVES ME THE HONOUR OF BIENG CALLED, THE MOTHER EARTH…”

I was astonished. Speechless. Dumbfounded.It was raining heavily. The distance between the sky and the street had been filled by th raindrops. What the world calls a simple shower, is actually one of God’s noble ways that the smothered lonely soil could touch the vast mysterious sky and unite with him, so that the circle of life moves on! Really, God has his ways! And they’re beautiful.

I had got my answers. The unrest accumulating in my heart from the past so many days had finally calmed down. I walked back to my room humming these lines from one of my favourite songs-

“ Isn’t it a wonder,
That I can see, a change in me…
But I won’t go back, coz that’s behind me…
And after all, strong words are spoken,
My heart will never be, never be, never be broken…”

As I was walking on the wet street the following day for my classes, I saw a fresh green creeper emerging from the mud. I smiled and continued my journey.