The journey

Rahul was on the beach.,  feeling the sand under his feet.  The grainy touch.  The waves crashing in synchronised chaos.  The sounds lending comfort to his ears.  It has become a daily routine. A task he has got fully used to. A task he thoroughly enjoyed,  watching  the sun slowly rise.  The golden hues of sun rays,  shimmering  like a  haphazardly cut mirror.  Just like any other day,  he was waiting for the sun rays to transform the waters to a  peachy shade.  The salt in the air was very perceptible.  It was his regular day.  He started walking slowly back.

Today,  he felt the urge to do something different. Something he had been yearning for ages.  A desire left unfulfilled. A desire which he believed must come to fruition right away. 

He was a kid. He remembered that day vividly.  The day his grandpa was telling him tales of the hills.  He was sitting in front of his grandpa's chair,  the old,  brown reclining one.  Grandpa, his eyes sparkling  with delight as he recounted  his youthful days and the grandson with the delight of learning something new.  Grandpa,  told him of the  day, the day when he went on a safari into the woods.  The woods were very dark even on a bright sunny day.  The woods had eerie sounds of bats,  and haunting spirits,  waiting to clench their grip.

Grandpa wasn't scared. He parked the Jeep and started the trek.  Rahul could feel his hairs stand,  and hear the rustle of dry leaves as his Grandpa went on.
Grandpa went on  to traverse the rocky terrain with a strong grip on the ground underneath.  Rahul wanted to know where Grandpa was trekking to. It was noon.  The rays weren't visible but the heat could be felt.  The trek was fairly challenging.  Sweat rolled across the face and palms. But grandpa was not daunted.  He walked till the destination was reached.  And today, Rahul decided to go there!

Rahul was now at the start of the trek.  He could see the dense woods.  It was the start of another day. He walked the rocky terrain, with his nerves pulsing with feverish excitement. He was  trudging up the rocks, not taking a minutes recess. The rocks were loose at times, so he stumbled and steadied himself. Bruised,  scratched,  a bit famished, but not any less enthusiastic.

Rahul was nearly at the end of his trek.  He could now see bright light, not too blinding but warm. The rays of the sun were casting an idyllic haze.  Now he was on a paved terrain,  rocky steps leading the way as the sun was slowly casting it's shadows. He felt cool breeze rush.  He could hear the sounds, not of dry leaves but of water rushing.  He reached his destination.  He saw the lofty descent of water.  A magnificent view .  The water descending from the jagged cliff,  frothing in a white mass.  He could feel the force, the force of water gushing.  He took a long breath and shouted in jubilation. The journey was done and the destination a memory to be treasured.

Brevity of 4

This blog is a collection of 4 line poems that I wrote.

I watched the sunset,

casting its rays on a shimmery surface

of water and moss

As she took a gulp from the frothy mass

I watched the dawn, 

babies cry and yawn

cradled in arms of a mother

whose rags were torn

I watched the noon,

sun in an angry swoon

as fumes of dust and chemicals rise

he gasps and coughs for a rupee 

I watched the night,

as moon dazzled on sea with all its might,

Plentiful, Serene and Bountiful

`cept for the sad eyes of a mogra seller.

#harsh #grim #urbanexperiences

Hyderabad chronicles-Post 1

I look at you. Dark and dingy,  even on a bright warm sunny day. You reek of death.  You smell of gore, Of violence and blood.

You scare me to no extent. There was a time,  a point of time when I used to look at you,  shiny yellow and blue. I found your presence bliss.

I found you to be a regular companion. Steady and unmoving. But then,  obviously,  like me,  you too enjoy a change,  in dress and style.

Unfortunately, you don't really get to choose what style  you may like, do you? They decide to deck you up when we have visitors in town. Sometimes bubblegum pink,  and other times a dash of white,  saffron and green,  with dirty red streaks here and there.
There are those days,  when it's just years of dust piling up on you, making you look older.
But today, you aren't old,  you aren't young.  You are just hideous. I don't perceive the old emotions,  the pleasant days,  when I found your presence to calm me and remind me that I am halfway through the journey.
Today,  I want to run away from you.  I want to go as far as I can from the echoing screams that have marred your presence, from the blood that is so gorily staining the prim blue seats.
I would rather not wait for a bus near you. I would rather not recollect the pleasant memories of school kids, stopping by with their heavy bags, heads tilting  with smiles and laughter after a regular day of bickering on books,  maybe some exams. I would rather not think of lovely old Sitamma who's no longer selling jasmine and chrysanthemums.

I hope you disappear.  I hope the new development schemes HUDA comes up with,  may push you off into thin air,  transforming you into rubble and concrete dust.  Dilsukhnagar bus stop, I hope you don't exist. 

Ides of March

So here goes my first poem on the blog


'twas the Ides of March,
As we study the verses of the Bard,
Learning English with an appetite large,
While Few said  theatre was absurd.

' twas the Ides of March,
As we watch our teacher enact,
Caesar saying, Et tu Brute?
We students loved to take charge,
Pretend to be on stage like fools with skulls cracked.

'twas the Ides of March,
When I fell in love with the bard,
No soothsayer around,
We were jumping up and down,
Friends in the backyard,.
All of us free of negative charge.

It's the Ides of March,
Tonight I recount,
Memories of school afresh,
A student devout,
Dedicated beyond measure,
was there any greater treasure?

Thinking back of the sweet days,
When all you had to do was feign to act,
Miss the days,
Of ignorance and lack of tact,
When 'twas on the Ides of March.

Air /Time Travel ?

So a very late post in this year, could not really find time for blogging.
So this piece is interesting, because it involves contribution from a friend. We tried out a style of writing, which  can be colloquially called yin yang, opposite streams of thought, with me being the quintessential pessimist(to all obviousness) and my friend the optimist.


Leaves are strewn across everywhere.  I smell the fumes of acrid plastic burning.,  or maybe it's human flesh.  I just don't know.  I am confused.  I am totally lost.  I am unable to see or hear anything.  I try looking around. My eyes finally decide to let me see.
What do I see?
I see that I am no longer in a chair strapped in the aeroplane.  I don't see the elderly lady with her golden frame spectacles.  She was annoyingly chatty in the journey.  I was glad that she dosed off. I knew I had to bear her noisy chatter for 11 long hours.  I knew I had to be nice to her,  because that's what I usually do. Moreover,  she's probably scared to death, of flying like I am.

So every time I board a flight,  I remember airplanes getting  hijacked or crashing into runways.  I realised very early that I had a phobia,  a phobia to travel by air.  I get anxious,  I fidget a lot.  Sometimes I just play with the foldable footrest or sometimes I just take my pen out and pointedly stare at its tip,  with an intensity that ought to have burned it.  And then sometimes I try looking out through the tiny window.  I do it like a ritual,  cos everytime I book a flight,  I make sure I get the one under the aisle.  It makes me feel assured.

One of these days, I was reading a blog on social media,  which talked about runways that shouldn't exist.  Runways that open up into the sea,  or maybe exist around cliffs or mountains.  I just sit back assured that my flight  is going to land at Bangalore. It's one of the safest airports.  So I can sit back and stop hyperventilating.  I don't know when I drifted off.  I don't know when the flight stopped.
I don't know why I am no longer in the flight.  Nor do I understand why I smell flesh and blood.  I hear screams. I am in a pool of blood slowly losing whatever energy I mustered.

I couldn't even look down to see how badly I was hurt because of the shrapnel lodged in my collar bone. The last thing I remember is clutching my GLBT (Galactic Low Beam Transponder). The old lady had kept trying to take it from me. Obviously hers wasn't working and i guess she was having trouble finalizing her destination. I had made my selection before i boarded because of how anxious i get on flight and focusing on anything becomes difficult.

The sharp noise in my head was receding but the screams around were getting louder. What were they saying? Either something was wrong with my hearing or the voices around were speaking a completely foreign language. The word 'miles' was mentioned repeatedly. Given the surroundings, I was clearly miles from where i had intended to be.

I finally managed to get the shrapnel near my neck. Thankfully, I didn't bleed to death. A piece of cloth tied around like a scarf seemed to hold fine. I gingerly got up on my feet and got my first full view of my surrounding. This was not Bangalore or was it?

I had read that one of the possible origins of the name Bangalore is Vengaluru meaning military hold or township. Possibly barracks from over a thousand years ago. That's what it looked like. The strewn leaves, that burning smell which i just figured was boiling lead that was being poured to make cannon balls.

It dawned on me then. The old lady, the chatty old lady .. She kept trying to tell me something and wouldn't let me focus on my pen or the footrest. I found my GLBT lying near my back pocket. As I picked it up, a dread came over. I knew what the old lady had been trying to mumble through her toothless mouth. I had selected Bangalore alright but the arrival time was  wrongly typed. It said 3 PM, 14 Feb, 1016. I had landed in Vengaluru, in the middle of the forest clearing that in a thousand years would become MG Road.

P.S. Thanks Rajesh, for your contributions, and making this piece lively :D

Shopping Time !

Hi folks, so yesterday I wrote this piece, looking at the photograph that follows.

You decide that today is going to be okay. A normal day. A reprieve from the melancholy. The all pervasive sadness.

You decide that today will be the day you will buckle up and move forward.So yes! you decide to shop. Your idea of shopping wasn`t like everyone else`s regular shopping spree. You are one of those rare few who still believe that shopping in a mall or express shopping with a quick agenda isn`t a soulful exercise. You feel that shopping is an activity where you should use all of your senses to create a sublime experience.

So here you are ! Walking into the by lanes of commercial street, on the staircase display of a clockworks store. Time is limitless, isn`t it? You gravitate towards it, flock towards the store housing devices which let you find the time.

You are overpowered by the sudden energy of the fourth dimension. You were always fascinated by this store with trinkets of time. This place triggers your own biological time, You feel alive with the seconds hands ticking, the sand slowly trickling into the lower stem of the hourglass. The trumpets hanging from the parapet walls leave you energized with a perception of a roaring sound.

You seem lost suddenly in the midst of all time. Isn`t time a limitless entity, you wonder. International travels, regularly crossing several time zones, interspersed by longitudinal boundaries, you wonder isn`t time an entity that ought not to be measured. An experience of age, a beautiful flower blossoming, a butterfly metamorphosing, a passionate kiss of love,  can we measure these with ticking seconds hands? Isn`t it sacrilegious? You are breathing in a store which helps you find time, and you can`t help  but wonder, isn`t time too fickle to be measured!

With every grain of sand, that descends, you cant help stop thinking, that time wasn`t designed to be measured.

Looking up you notice the rustic brass lanterns. You have a wild thought, staring at the ape smiling with garrulous mischievous glint. You feel that blessed is the life of a night traveler, using these lanterns to navigate across marshes and swamps, yet untouched and unexplored by human technological developments.

So yes! this store with its trinkets, does make you feel like a time traveler, transported through time.

P.S. Thanks for the lovely photograph, K.

Disaster Preparedness in a Virtual World.

Before I start penning this down, these are solely my opinions and views. No harm, offense, disrespect meant.

So yes, We had floods, in the reportedly most developed city of South India. If a place receives unprecedented rainfall, in a reportedly measurable sequence, why was it so catastrophic?
India is a tropical country, frequented by depression and cyclones. These were events which at a national scale we are supposed to be prepared to encounter. There are posts citing the El nino, and maps demonstrating the  urbanization. It is true that the magnitude of flooding and water inflows were not anticipated but why is it that we had such a huge death toll?

Is it because there were too many gaps in the disaster management plans? I recount the devastation wreaked upon states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha by the Hudhud cyclone.  Now just in an year space, we have a catastrophic flood with glaring repercussions, However, we still need to buckle up and pick straws. Count the lives and disperse food packets.

I`m a regular office going citizen who has no idea of the governmental framework and policies beyond what I read out of self interest and learnt in my civics class in schools. However, the devastation of this magnitude observed in staggered manner with a cascading domino effect could have been dealt with in a far more efficient manner. The solutions could be borrowed from the nations which have dealt with frequent events like these. The lethargy and callousness was apparently a thing of the past, or do we still need more time?

I could see the benefits of virtual world unravel, as messages were forwarded across with the contact numbers and people using hashtags and posts to network and communicate. As a civic society, we hear heartwarming tales of grit, bravery and courage. Thanks to the city being a metropolis with netizens and the virtual connectivity, we could all find out, whether the people were safe in a relatively brief period of time. But does that negate the fact that we spent endless hours panicked and worrying about safety of our near and dear? I think it`s high time we buckle up for a stronger disaster management plan in such eventualities.

While I do agree the networking sites have provided us a  huge platform to share and like, and enquire the safety, I find it humorous that people used the same devastation to vent the frustration against the remarks of intolerance. Every other post is blazoned with cultural social and racial integrity. I admit that most of us take pride in nationalistic urges, but at the face of a sad catastrophe, bringing up intolerance indicates huge frustration and agonizingly low levels of acceptance.

It`s amazing that  Chennai is recuperating quickly and heading on its path to recovery. I just foolishly hope that the it would have been lovelier if the recovery period was more brief and the damage well managed.