The Fizzy and The Still

she sits on the low veranda,
the night her only companion,
crickets lustily cheer her silence,
and the moon valiantly struggles through the leaves,
covering her in pebbled light,
making a chessboard of her cascading black hair,
her thoughts are distant and random,
of fleeting memories,
snatched conversations,
of the bitter and the sweet,
her mind as if browsing in a book store,
fleeting about,
easily bored, easily distracted,
both fizzy as well as still.....

Weather the Bride

the first little signs,
wish the dohar was thicker,
the morning cup a hot chocolate,
my baddy tshirt warmer,
the very first signs,
the grass crunchier under my feet,
the air nipper,
the early sun, welcome on my face,
these are the very first signs,
signs that winter is upon us,
how my heart yearns to sing,
my feet to gig,
for the weather is a bride again......

Blinding Light's Blindness

its a clear full moon night,
and silver is streaming into my room,
like a lord the moon dominates the sky,
lighting it up and bathing it in its shimmer,
alone and aloof, yet mesmerisingly  beautiful,
its benign presence, soothing and calming.

soon the dawn shall arise,
and the moon's aura shall fade,
its existence obliterated in the blinding light,
but though none can match the sun's power,
does the sun know what it feels,
for two longing eyes to rest on it,
watch it for hours and feel peaceful within.

Dawn

it was early when my sleep seem to fade,
in darkness to the balcony I shuffled,
sat eyes closed and heard a hundred birds wake,
as each of those birds flapped its wings and rose,
so did my heart quicken and my energy soar,
and together we lifted the veil off the night.

Rain

its pouring,
a grey blanket of water,
washing away the blues,
the dust,
the grime,
the trees and the leaves,
the bylanes,
of my city,
of my mind,
washing away my sins,
my regrets,
cleansing my soul,
my thoughts,
each raindrop,
a potent key to my freedom,
so I walk in this pouring rain,
drenched, yet on the path to bliss.

Being a Friend

a friend,

for listening, or refusing to listen,

for pushing me on, or pulling me back,

for watching me fly, or keep me grounded,

for making sure i win, or learn if i don't,

for being there, or letting me be,

for letting me cry, even crying with me,

for watching me grow and growing with me.

Touch of Grey

is the world more tolerant,
or i, more patient,
is everybody in a bigger hurry,
or i, slowing down,
is there more inequity all around,
or i, finally seeing.
my joys are more subtle now,
that fleeting side glance,
that shy half smile,
the way the morning sun lights up a new leaf,
the distant call of a peacock, seeking love,
or how the dew soaked grass crunches beneath.
i wonder is everything changing,
or is it i.
i guess the world is still the same,
so its just i, touched by a little grey

On Holding Hands

By holding hands we
Talk
Tell
Share
Quell
Beg
Seek
Be strong
Be meek
Seduce
Sigh
Laugh
Cry
We keep a distance
Or narrow the gap,
And sometimes we hold hands for no reason at all,
Just like that for the fun of it all.

The Flight

Sunbeams fuel its awakening,
morning dew bathes,
noisy crickets promise to nourish.
It gazes at the new dawn,
wondering what it will hold.
Like a spring it snaps tight,
leaping into the void,
its feathery wings kissing the wind.
It soars, it leaps, it swerves and dives,
a tiny bird, leaving its nest
has taken on the mighty skies.

Pursuit of hapiness

it flashed, and in a blink, was gone,
but its essence hung in the air, floating, wafting,
like a wave washing the shores on my mind,
its sweetness, its purity, its calmness,
soaking the barren sands,
awakening in me a new life.
i feel a sense of peace, of well being,
i long for its to linger, or appear again,
your magic smile
a glimpse deep into your soul.

Distant Connects

Travelling for work can be a very lonely experience, locked in a cocoon of unfamiliarity, strange people, strange places, strange food, strange everything......
So one ends up making friends with the smaller joys that are otherwise overlooked.
Sitting on my hotel's window ledge I see the rain fall, pigeons flutter, freshly washed leaves sway under overcast shies....
These small small things are always familiar, always there, waiting patiently to catch your attention and remind you of home.
All one has to do is throw open the curtains and let them in.... 

Money Matters

Money does grow on trees. In a way. And those that wish money grew on trees would do a lot better if they learned a thing or two about growing trees. Growing a tree is just like managing an investment. A lot depends on what one does at the very beginning. It's all in the basics. First up, one needs to make up one's mind what fruit one wants from the tree. Some trees bear fruits earlier than others, so one needs to be clear if you need the fruit in the very next season or you are okay waiting a few seasons or in fact you are looking at leaving the fruits for your next generation to enjoy. Ain't no good planting a mango tree and hoping for oranges.

Once the fruit is nailed down and you know which tree you have to plant then comes the next set of basics. One has to look for the right kind of soil, the right season and the right time of the day. When this all makes sense then one plants the sapling or the seed, waters it, puts a little fence around it and then walks away. No farmer worth his salt will sit and stare at his 'investment'. He will just let it be and find other things to do. Maybe after a month or so he may look in, check the soil, prune a few things,water it and then again walk away. He knows that if his initial decisions about the soil and the season and  the time of the day were good then the seed is doing its job and there is nothing he now needs to do.

If at all he has a role, its when something out of the ordinary has happened. If it has rained too much or hasn't rained enough, or there was a hailstorm or a heatwave or it has been exceedingly cold. He will then rush to his tree and do what he has to do. Yes, it is very likely that the severe weather took its toll on the tree and there is nothing he can do but its more likely that all is not lost yet. So he may water it or merely till the soil a bit or prune the branches or in fact, if need be, do nothing at all. There maybe times when after a severe shock, the tree looks quite dead. It has shed all its leaves and the branches are bone dry and bare. Many a person would be forgiven to just rue his luck and hack the tree down. But a good farmer would do nothing of that sort. In fact he may put in more effort, till the soil, fertilize it, pour in water. For he know that what matters in adverse conditions is how deep the roots are. If the roots are okay the tree is okay.

That is the essence of growing a tree and if all of the above has come to pass, then when the time is right the tree will bear its fruits. Not a day early, not a day late. Right on the dot. 

Unequal Equality

All men are equal in the eyes of god. But then some men think they are gods and that makes them above others. Gurgaon is full of men who think they are gods. Being god comes easy here. You need just one of the three 'p's, 'paisa', 'patronage' or 'pagalpan'.
With land being sold like it is, paisa is flowing like a river and flooding bank accounts, especially of those that never bothered to evolve and still think that honour killing is a sign of civilisation. Little wonder that these nouveau rich baboons strut around thinking they are gods.
Patronage, a hydra headed beast at best, takes on many forms. All you need is the remotest link to a politician, the police or a bureaucrat, past or present, and that gives you the license to be more than 'men', especially when it comes to any kind of rule.
And if you are one of those that neither has paisa or patronage and you still wanna be god then you can always fall back on the one thing that is natural to this region, the good ole 'aisi ki taisi' sort of 'pagalpan'. This path to being god is the preferred choice of the down and out BPO cabbies and the more down and out construction vehicle drivers.....

I have none of the three, certainly not in any measure that would make me feel like a god. And that makes me firmly a lesser man and if ever I forget my unequal equality, all I have to do is get into a car and step out on the streets. Nowhere else is the god-man divide wider than on the divider-less roads of Gurgaon. The divide stares at you, daring you, every inch of the chaotic maelstrom that passes for traffic in this city. The other day I couldn't brake in time for a rick that suddenly decided to take a left turn, right bang in the middle of my path. The traffic cop roundly dusted my knuckles. So what it was his mistake, he is a poor fellow and I should know better than to argue whose mistake it was. I ended up paying for the rick's repairs and also had to pay some 'chai pani' for the cop. A few weeks later I was patiently waiting for the lights to turn green when this massive SUV rear-ended me out of the blue. I was immediately reminded of that cop's 'rick' logic. Surely I am the 'poor' man here. So I frantically waved to the cop assured that I will get justice. The cop took one look at the Beemer, promptly saluted the unseen behind those black tints and asked me for my license !!!!!!!
Talk about unequal equality. You can never win on the streets of Gurgaon.

So now, every time I step out on these gods filled roads I take a deep breath and pray that my path is clear of all the gods and their brethren. Doesn't work all the time, but thats life.

Freedom's Struggle

A lot, if not all, that keeps us awake at night has to do with our wanting freedom from something, wanting to be liberated, be free. Many a times we simply choose to run, run away and hide. By doing so we think we are liberating ourselves. But ask any escaped convict if running away really helps. He may have escaped his cell but he is not free. He is still very much a prisoner. To be really free of his prison he needs to be free not of the cell that imprisons him but of the act that put him in the prison. His freedom therefore lies in that prison cell and he has to return there to find it.

Liberation, in that sense, is about running 'in' and not running 'out', running 'towards' and not running 'away'. This is contrary to what our instincts normally tell us to do, its contrary to what our fears, our doubts, our hopes and our desires ask us to do. They are in fact like doorkeepers who do their best to shoo us away and keep us from our freedom and therefore they need to be knocked away before we can hope to open the door to our liberation. We need to look our fears, our doubts, our hopes and our desires in the eye and then brush them aside. This is what makes being free so difficult.

Is it any wonder that so few of us are really free and liberated?

Knowledge's Worth

Adishankar was a well renowned scholar who had total mastery over the scriptures. But he was also full of himself and disdainful of others..
One day he was crossing the mighty Ganga in a small boat. Overwhelmed by the might of the river he began to recite the scriptures. The boatman listened attentively for a while and then gently asked the scholar what was he saying.
Adi, disturbed from his reverie, asked impatiently
'What are you saying, dont tell me you have never heard of the scriptures'
The boatman folded his hands and nodded his head
'Sir I am a poor illiterate boatman, what would i know of the scriptures'
'How pathetic' said the scholar, 'half your life is totally wasted if you haven't made the effort to learn the scriptures'
The boatman felt humiliated but knew his place so he quietly continued to row the boat. A little later the weather turned rough and the boat was buffeted by mighty winds and threatened to capsize. The boatman warned the scholar that they may have to swim ashore. The scholar was horrified and said he didn't know how to swim.
The boatman quietly replied
'Sir, I am afraid your whole life is wasted if you haven't made the effort to learn how to swim'

Looking for God

One night a priest heard strange noises on the roof of his temple. He was terrified.... were they ghosts, or djinns, or other evil spirits come to steal his soul, he wondered. With trembling voice he asked,
'who goes there?'
As soon as he asked the question he saw a face upside down in the window, a strange face with the glow of peace, it said,
'Sorry my dear brother if i scared you, but i am looking for camels'
The priest was astonished and angry, so he shouted back,
'Are you nuts, who told you that you can find camels on a roof???'
The man replied calmly
'The same person who told you that God can be found in a temple.' 

How the Cup was won

when sri lanka was batting we did more than a decent job for 45 over and kept them in check. But in the last 5 overs there was complete mayhem as they scored 63 runs and smashed every bowler all over the place. It was shocking to say the least. they made our attack look juvenile, even zaheer came in for a bit of stick and lost his line completely, bowling two full tosses one after the other and getting hit for a four both the times.

Anyway, the mood was quite sombre as clearly we had conceded a bit too many runs. 

Then came our innings. Malinga was all fired up and started shooting his typical toe crushes from the word go. Sehwag looked uncomfortable and poked about a bit before he was trapped plumb LBW by a relatively tame malinga special. Stunned silence. As expected Sehwag immediately asked for a review (again not even bothering to consult with sachin at the other end). The review was totally wasted as Sehwag was like dead gone. Malinga was on fire. One down with no score on the board!!!!! OMG, what was happening.... in came Gauti. mind you he hasnt been in the best on the nicks this world cup...

Sachin looked in a better nick and played a couple of delightful cover drives and managed the place the ball well. Gauti was just looking to play straight and made no efforts to score. Things slowly began to return to normal. We survived two of Malinga's overs and then he came back for what would have been the last over of his first spell.. See this one off and we all would be breathing easier. The first ball  pitched on the off and swayed a little bit more and sachin flashed at it..... a thick edge, sangakakara collected easily and we were TWO down... and malinga took off..... he ran around the field like a mad man and the other srilankans chasing him like a pack of kids let off from school early.... he thought the cup was his.... so did I.... I mean Sehwag gone, sachin gone, 31 for 2.  WTF !!!!!!!!

In walked Virat Kohli.... btw AJ finds him HOT and is nuts about him..... if looks could kill then Malinga would have been dead.... Virat, with his panju blood on fire wanted to teach malinga a lesson... straight away he swung at the next ball and met air..... there was a collective groan and malinga had this impish grin as if he was having the time of his life.... i felt sick in my stomach and wanted to throw up.... just then gauti walked up to virat and whispered a few words..... sense prevailed and we saw thru that over and thought we had seen the back of malinga for a while at least. But sangakara was upto his tricks again and gave malinga one more over !!!!! 

Things were very edgy... we were ticking along but the bowling was top class.... and it was one ball at a time.... the good part was there were two young guys at the crease and they were'nt afraid to run between the wickets and despite a tight field they managed to find the gaps and make runs... nothing sensational, nothing rash.. just a ball by ball rebuilding of the innings.... the crowd began to find its voice again and it was getting noisy. I was getting compliments for my blue hair and my drink began to taste better. The run rate was creeping up but the two were playing sensibly and rotating the strike and going after the bad balls.... and just like that hope crept back in... it still looked a steep task, but doable.

Just then it began to rain in Delhi.... big heavy drops of rain... scattered for a while and then it began to drizzle... steady and persistent... the projector guy ran to save his equipment and suddenly switched off every thing.... people were running for cover and I didnt know what to do.... manmohan was packing up but he had ordered some tandoori kababs and wanted them delivered so we waited while the others ran back home. The caterers were more interested in saving the food rather than giving manmohan his kababs.... we waited for many minutes and finally manmohan realised that his kababs werent coming and we began to walk back home.... while i was walking and getting semi soaked all I was thinking is that we need these two to hang around for another 5-10 overs. Other than Malinga, the Sri lankan attack looked tame.... even murli wasnt turning much and while there werent too many loose balls, but there werent any killers either. Virat was playing the harder of the two, going after the bowlers while gauti rotated the strike... aj was ecstatic everytime virat came on the screen and right now I was liking him a lot too... he looked like he wanted to win the cup for us.... both were doing the job for us, fingers crossed....

So I was thinking that if by the time I get to manmohan's place and these two are still batting then we are relatively safe.... if not the we are in deep shit...

I walked into the TV room and the first thing I saw was DHONI......... WTF???????? Did we loose two wickets??? what the hell is Dhoni    doing on the screen... what about Yuvi??????? I nearly had a heart attack till i saw the score... three down..... phew small mercies... dhoni obviously had promoted himself over Yuvi..... is he MAD !!!!!!!. But what the hell..... atleast Yuvi was still there   :-)

Like in the semi finals, dhoni looked edgy, his face clearly showing the tension.... gauti took an unnecessary second run and had to dive full length to get back in his crease, the throw was a mite wide else Guati would have been taking the long walk back home.... and Dhoni was livid... he stared like he wanted to kill and waved his bat menacingly at gauti..... this was not the capt COOL we all know.... and couple of overs later it was his turn, he took a single that wasnt exactly there and again the throw was wide.... he was so livid with himself that he nearly crushed his own toe with his bat as he slammed it in frustration and anger...

It was sheer jitters.... the bowling was decidedly mediocre but we were not really capitalising as much as we should have.... nonetheless the runs kept trickling in and though the runrate was creeping up it never really went out of hand... and without much ado gauti got his 50, and he looked in good nick, dhoni was calming down and both began the rebuilding act, all over again...

Sangakara tried every trick in the book, rotated the bowlers almost every other over, even brought malinga back for a couple of overs. But things were looking up for india.... Just then we got call from the lawns that it had stopped raining and the system was up and running again. So it was decided to go back to the lawns... I was very very reluctant, the last thing i wanted was to reach the lawns and realise that another wicket had fallen... i didnt want to move an inch but everybody else wanted to go. 

Back in the lawns everything was soaked and wet and COLD.... but the game was hot and happening. We reached 150... then 175.... now less than 100 runs remained and there were 105 balls to get them in... the attack was looking tame... the runs were coming and the cup looked so close that we could feel it in our hands...

Soon we were 200 and thats when we realised that gauti had slowly and quietly crept up into the late 80s ..... woah.... imagine that !!!! imaging getting his 100 and that too in a WC final.... can it ever get larger than that..... and the way these two were playing, it was a no brainer..... soon gauti was on 97..... he was looking solid and we all were set to cheer his 100... he got a loose ball, short of length, you could see his eyes light up....he swung, one mighty heave.... wanting to send into the upper stands....missed it completely and middle stump was rattled..... LAME, LAME, LAME...... as he walked back you could see him swearing.... fat lot of good that will do, u silly silly man... u had glory in your grasp and look what you did with it....

Finally in came Yuvi.... 52 runs required, 52 balls in hand.... dhoni and yuvi met in the middle and exchanged a few words.... sangakara saw a glimmer of hope and brought in three close fielders... he was going all out now.... yuvi took his guard...looking a bit tense...all fingers crossed.... will he survive the first ball.... parera knew what had happened in mohali and so he did exactly the same... a low swinging yorker.... this time yuvi got his bat in.... PHEW !!!!!, two ball later he cracked parera through midwiket for a stinging pull shot.... look who is boss now !!!!! :-)

The cat and mouse game was on..... the runs required and the balls remaining were totally hand in hand, like a honeymoon couple... 41 runs, 43 balls..... 38 runs 34 balls..... then came a massive dhoni SIX,  looked like this newly weds were heading for an early divorce !!!!!

But sangakara is a fantastic captain.... he got spinners back.... suraj randive playing his first game in the tournament.... it was a heart breaking over.... a close runout chance,,, a closer LBW review, it was all happening out there.... at the end of that over it was 30 runs and 30 balls.... goodness me.... what a game.... next over malinga was back.... he threw everything he had into that over and straight away had FOUR DOT balls..... yuvraj had no clue what to do... just hung on to his wicket for dear life.... next two ball we made 3 runs....so now it was 27 off 24...... you could have cooked rice in wankhede... it was a cauldron our there, boiling and hot...

In came Kulasekara, this was the over that had to be accounted for.... malinga had two more and we were clearly having trouble scoring off him... yuvi was facing and straight away kulasekara yorked him... yuvi got his bat in and ran for a single... the next ball Dhoni smashed him for a four!!!! the stadium erupted..... my drink, which I had not sipped for I dont know how long spilled over but who cares...!!!!! two balls later yuvi smashed him for another four..... boy these guys were having fun out in the middle..... 16 off 18... and malinga was back.... man he looked as if he wanted to eat yuvi / dhoni raw.... first ball, yorker, yuvi gets his bat in and runs for a single... dhoni at the crease.... FOUR...... FOUR..... absolute utter mayhem.... malinga cant believe it.... neither can anybody.... just MSD standing there, waving his bat and seemly saying.... you got any more of those?????  

looks like the honeymooners are headed for a divorce. 5 off 12 !!!!

Yuvi facing kulasekara, goes for a single.... 4 off 11.... one stoke away now.... dhoni at the crease.... swings his bat... connects and the ball is sailing into the stands..... SIX..... and the cup is ours....