On way to Meherabad

Yes, I am a good for nothing
I can only sing
songs without a meaning

Yet, whenever I sing
In my soul does love spring
with the majesty of The King.

Lonely as I may seem
I am merely His moonbeam
My world is His dream.

a requiem to an immortal song{a tribute to jagjit singh}

Translated from hindustani[honton ko choo loon main...]

let me touch the lips
let me kiss your songs

with a lifetime of love in my heart
let me follow the ritual
let me kiss your songs

like heartbeats sing forever in my life
let me caress the breath
let me kiss your songs

your world is eternal and i love you
let me live the relationship
let me live your songs

Twinkling Tears

Its her birthday and i don't know what to write.
She grieves.
She is not alone. Her family grieves with her.

She was his "little" darling
The star of his post retirement days
One could feel his love for her
even when he wasn't around

It shone in her eyes.
"Twinkle...twinkle..."

He is gone.
From the outer world to the inner world.
Unseen but felt.
Felt more strongly than ever.

I never met him
Yet I feel his presence more than I ever did in my daydreams.

Yes, she was his "little" darling-
My "little princess"

And she grieves
I know
And I can do nothing.

How can I even wish her a "happy birthday"???

HUM TOH HUZOOR SADAA....[A translation from hindustani...]

I live in an intoxicated state always
Joy or sorrow i bear them the same way

See the magic of her companionship
I say even the mundane things in couplets

Tell me,what's the matter tonight?
Her heart aches and my eyes are crying

Its been a while since we had a conversation yet
How well do we understand each other!

Replies....

She asked-" So there is no one in your life?"

I replied-"Everyone is my life."


They said-" You are humiliating yourself in love!"

I said-" I am illuminating myself in love."

Today

Most people are lonely.
Some say they are alone.
I say-"I am with God."

One morning....

I woke
to the murmurs
of my harmonious heartbeat

splashed!!!
My face with a smile

Looked at the sun
& scratched my stubble


In the kitchen
I found
the leftover
of last night’s MOON

&

dipped it in my hot morning tea

“good morning ”-it was her text message as usual

As usual my reply was a –
“”

I scrambled a couple of clouds
Spiced with her thoughts for breakfast.

“bon appetite”-
It was her message once again

Oh yes!!


Last night
we were in a
SPARKLING MOOD
& had made
yummy LOVE

Later
I
had her
kisses for dessert

&

She had a
BITE
Of my left ear

As the night got warmer & delicate
Her phone rang

It was HIM saying-
“am on my way home”


On the way back to
My home
I took a turn
Leading me on to a road of guilt

Her wedding ring
shone on my finger
burning my heart


I look at
My finger
bleeding
water melon


“tonight?”-its she
again

I smile & go back to sleep.

It would be just another night
but
a new one
like other nights

“so long” – I answer her
Siesta


Love?

The Apostle

“Tell me, what do You want from me?”- One day I asked God, who had been following me for years. The Old Man was taken aback. Having recovered His composure, He smiled and said-“ Whatever you could give me.”

I told Him I had no money to give Him for I hardly earned at all. He nodded.

I told Him I had nothing that I could call my own. Right from my clothes to the house that I lived in. “ Not even the girls/women…they always belonged to others!”- I added with a naughtiness that is all my own.

He smiled once again with a certain understanding.

“ Come on Old Man, You’ve been following me since I was born and You’ve seen me grow up to become whatever I have. I don’t need to tell You anything except that I must confess You’ve been a great follower. Everytime I have looked back, there You were… like a Disciple. So Dear Friend, could You be more specific about what You want from me?”

He simply looked at me for what seemed like eternity and then said, with that eternal smile of His-“ I just got what I wanted. Thank you.”

I then offered Him my hand and He took it in His and shook it.

I winked at Him, turned and started walking again. A few steps later I turned and looked.

Yes. He was there. Following me like always.

I shook my head and resumed walking. It felt good to know I had a Follower.

The Joker

[A translation of a song written in hindustani “ Haadson ke bavan patte…”]


Fifty two cards of incidence
A few hands you lose, a few hands you win
Those who do not understand this game suffer
The wise is truly “the joker”!

True, the table never changes
But if you play the cards in your hand well enough
Then the sun will rise within
For in the darkness dreams shatter

Those who do not understand this game suffer
The wise is truly “the joker”!

Fifty two cards of incidence
Fifty two seasons of life
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
A jack, a queen and a king

Thirteen cards in your hand
There are thirteen cards in my hand
So let’s play together
With these fifty two cards

Red and black
These wonderful pack of fifty two cards
They act in such colorful ways
The heart and the spade, the club and the diamond

Those who do not understand this game suffer
The wise is truly “the joker”!

Hangover thoughts

Don’t try to hold me in your hand
I am the ocean
Please don’t burn me
When I am still alive.

The relationship existed only
In the mind
Please do not accuse the heart
For love’s failure.

You broke my heart and
I found my temple of bliss
Where the eternal lamp of pain
Burns ever so bright.

Neither can I understand
The desire of my silence
Nor the cry of my words-
How tight have you embraced me, my beloved!

I close my eyes and see
A little home
And a long road leading up to it
I should walk,let me walk, the distance.

A Song of Seduction

Your tresses-
your dark black tresses
falling over your nape…

Kisses-
Your wet long kisses
I merely stand and gape…

Your bosom… where dwells your heart
Heaves with the rhythm of my heart

As I bite your ear
Yes, my dear
Your fingernails press my skin like knives

As I caress your nipple with my thumb
You whisper-“ I am going numb…”

And they blossom
Oh! Awesome
As you rub your cheek against mine

And those kisses-
Those tongue twining kisses
And we delicately close our eyes

Your hand moves down between my legs
You laugh and say-“lets hit the deck…”

As I hear those words
I see two birds
Fly in a harmonious flight

One from your heart
And one from my heart
And they traverse our sensuous sky

Oh your tresses…
And your kisses….
Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm….

She has found her man and its not me.

Nobody talks anymore about her to me. Maybe everyone is being courteous or may be they have finally given upon me. I don’t blame them. Its difficult to understand my kind of love. It took me, myself a few years to come to terms with it. Those days and nights of turmoil and agony! Looking back I can sort of find a certain romance in those moments though.

Yesterday I saw a photograph of her sitting with her boyfriend watching the final of the world cup. She seemed happy. He seemed happier. I smiled and went out and ordered a glass of iced tea. The summer is in and the day is hot and humid.

I sat there wondering with a smile that was trying to prove its faithfulness. “ Does she remember me at all?”- and I heard a voice inside me say-“ Does it matter.” This response was followed by another question-“ Will I ever be able to forget her?” And again a voice inside me answered-“ Does it matter.”

She has every right to forget me in the same way that I have the privilege of remembering her. The heart has its own logic. I believe that both of us have a great understanding. Still.

In the evening as I sat with a friend over a pint of beer, I saw a young couple cuddling in a corner and once again I was reminded of her. And of course her man.

“ Is he the right man for her?” – I found myself asking this question. I had read somewhere that her family had accepted him so he must really be a nice guy. But I can’t accept him. I know that. I am not that large hearted. “ So would that mean she rejected you ‘cause she has a small heart?” – The voice inside me suddenly raised this question.

“ No. She rejected me ‘cause I had a small heart. A heart that was incapable of love. Its her kindness that she broke it. For it opened me up. Yet, right now I feel as if I need to break it again. With my own hands. Its not right that even after talking about my love being so pure and true I fail to accept the man she loves. Why is it that I can’t accept the person who makes her happy? Maybe my love is failing me. Maybe I have failed my love. I should learn to accept him.”

All these thoughts are going through my mind as I sit and talk to this friend and suddenly I tell him –“ You know I love a woman who does not love me. But it doesn’t matter. I feel her presence in her absence…”

He likes what he hears and says so.

How pretentious am I? Am I not merely fooling myself? He is definitely a better man than me. Maybe she could see through me. Thank God, she is saved.

I gulp down another pint of beer sitting with that faithful smile of mine. And suddenly the music sounds louder.

And I find solace in Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Holi Night

In the amber chamber of desire
I can hear the footsteps of tears
“This fire will burn you!”
And I hear the serpent smoke’s laughter.

“This fire will burn you!”
It sings as it coils the innocent air
And flies away
To sit by the moon’s fireside.

The moon smokes an ivory pipe
Scratching his week old stubble
And in a mocking voice repeats-
“This fire will burn you!”

“This fire will burn me!...
This fire will burn me!.”
I sing as I kindle the dry woods
Of my persistent yearning.

The Rhizome

Let me nourish my rhizome
The blossom does not last forever.
The journey has merely begun
Yet- the autumn is here.

Every experience is a secret
Unfolding in the recess of the unconscious
One is a hero of one’s own myth
As one rides into one’s own sunset.

The head is where the heart is
The heart thumps to be opened
And if the best way to open a heart is to break it
Then I believe it should be broken.

One man- one truth
All other philosophies are the death of man
There is no Buddha; no Avatar
If one can stand naked in one’s own eyes.

Pablo Neruda and Rabindranath Tagore

It was the second decade of the last century and Rabindranath Tagore was already beginning to be ubiquitous.The works of Tagore were translated to the French by Andre Gide,and to the Russian by Boris Pasternak and Aane Akhmatova.W.B. Yeats had written the preface to the first edition of Tagore's own translation of the Gitanjali in 1912 and Ezra Pound in a revised edition in 1913 compared him to Dante.Meanwhile twenty two of Tagore's titles had already been translated in 1917 to an immaculate Spanish, mainly through the pen of the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jiminez (who later won the Nobel Prize in 1956) and that of his would-be wife, Zenobia Camprubi who was an American.They seemed especially responsive to Tagore's idealism and his sensitivity to nature's subtleties.It is perhaps their legacy that in Spain even today poets still compete for the Rabindranath Tagore prize for poetry and his books sell more than those of many younger Spanish-language poets.In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in other parts of Europe and America,the excitement that Tagore's writing had created in the early years of this century was ephemeral and has largely waned at present.

Latin American literature was certainly influenced by these developments.A number of litterateurs including the nobel prize winners - Mexican poet Octavio Pa'z (who was once vehemently attacked later in his life by Neruda ) and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (she had wrote on some of Tagore's work and had an indelible influence on Neruda who met her her at an early age) came under the spell of the Tagorean magic.Victoria Occampo, an Argentinean lady was so moved by Tagore that she even came down to stay at Shantiniketan.But few in this continent were as deeply moved by the great Indian as the Legeandary Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

It was Neruda's "Twenty poems of love and a song of despair" the book that catapulted him to glory.More poems followed and they ensured him immortality.The book had an unusual diffusion and went on to sell more than a million copies in a few years .All that success did not free it of the controversy: poem number 16 of the book and poem number 30 of Rabrindanath Tagore's "The Gardener" were almost identical.This was discovered by the young Chilean poet Volodia Teitelboim. His critics (particularly Pablo Rokha who was the most vociferous and venomous among them all) kept on discovering "plagiarisms" of Neruda to Tagore,Vincente Huidobro, Diaz Casanueva etc .This controversy was to follow him for life.

"Twenty poems of love and a song of despair" are full of a sensuality and an eroticism that was new to erstwhile Latin American poetry.The poet had said in his memories that he had thought to himself to put in a note explanatory recognizing that it was a paraphrase of a text of Rabindranath Tagore, but his friend Joaquin Cifuentes Sepveda advised to him that he should not do it: "...you are not idiot, Pablo. They will accuse you of plagiarism... ".He was not mistaken. In the second edition at Buenos Aires, the explanation was included.

"In My Sky at Twilight"
Pablo Neruda

(This poem is a paraphrase of the 30'th poem ["Tumi sandhar meghamala" ]
in Rabindranath Tagore's" The Gardener")

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and color are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
My sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depths of my eyes, you plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins.


The Tagorean influence on Neruda can also be seen in the following poem..Tagore has a song "Jodi tor daak shune' keu na aashe'...ekla cholo re" which loosely means " If no one answers your call...walk alone." Tagore writes on to say how this person whose call no one has heeded should even walk on the thorns for his conviction, lighting his ribs (or renouncing everything) for illumination on the way....and perhaps if the person was ever asked as to how it felt during the lonely journey the answer might just have been this poem of Neruda:


"Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew"
Pablo Neruda

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

The geysers flooding from deep in itsvault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

[Translated by Stephen Tapscott ]

Her Presence

We were talking about films.
My films.His films.
The meeting had been specific
How to get the script out of me

The producer found a way-
“ You give me the script and I will provide you the location for your next film!”

Not a bad deal. Not at all!!!

He left. And we were left alone.
Talking of his films. My films.

And suddenly, he remembered her.
“ You lost her because you backed out! You thought too much!!”

I did not deny.

And suddenly,as usual, she popped out.
Out of nowhere. On the TV screen.

“ There she is.”- I pointed out.

“See what I mean. Its God’s will. Both your lives are entwined.”- He said.

He, who had seen the buds of love blossoming,right in front of his eyes.
He, who reminded me then,that I was in love, when I was wholly unaware!
He, who had then betrayed both of us.
He, who then one day returned to be my friend.

“ She will return.”- My heart whispered.
That embryo of a tear smiled
Melting into a lump of sugar in my throat.

“ Meet her. Cast her in one of your films…” –He said.

I am cast in her mould.