Invisible Blood

[I wrote this piece in light of the tragic Paris attacks.I condemn terrorism and pray for those who lost their lives to it and also for their near and dear ones. I also condemn generalizing communities based on a few individuals. I pray for those who face unnecessary judgement for their beliefs.]

What would you say if they asked you why?
Why do people treat them differently?
Is it their headscarves or their names?

Their hands are stained with invisible blood.
Blood from murders they did not commit.
They can't see it no matter how hard they try. 
Then why do others see it?

You would recall numbers that the media used to sum up casualties.
Those numbers always fell short of the real number of victims.
There are more victims, they've  stayed hidden from headlines.
They may not have lost their lives, their limbs or their blood.
But they've lost the respect they deserve.
You'll recognize them by the invisible blood stains on their hands.

And then what if they asked you why millions should atone for the sins of a few?
What would you say? 
Why has unjustified hatred become a popular means to execute justice?

So tell them that you said prayers for those who had their last breath at the end of the barrel of a gun,
for those whose heartbeats synchronized to and were silenced by the ticking of a bomb
and for them too, the ones whose hands are stained with invisible blood.
And so may we wash away the invisible blood off the hands of the innocent.
Divine judgement is reserved only for the guilty.

Star crossed lovers

Maybe the sun and the moon are two star crossed lovers.
Fated to shine in the absence of one another.
For the briefest moment we catch a glimpse of what they could have been
when they come in perfect alignment with each other.
And we watch spell bound at how a love like that eclipses everything else.

Paper life

I see her looking down at me. Hoping to see the words take form on me and appear as though by magic. And then it happens, her pen dances across me, her words etched into my very fiber. She sets her pen down. Satisfied? I can’t tell.  And then I’m folded up and put in an envelope sealed with the greatest trepidation.  And then I travel miles and miles for days or perhaps even weeks. I can’t tell time in this envelope. I don’t know if the light I see through the envelope is sunlight or a spotlight. And finally I hear a sharp rip of the envelope. Light and air pour in and we embrace each other like friends reunited after a long time. I’m put on a table and flattened. It isn’t her I see now, the one whose words I was entrusted with, it isn’t her. He reads while his fingers run across the ink idly. And then in one swift move, he crushes me into a ball and tosses me away. I feel pain and I already know that my pain would travel across miles and eventually reach her too but in the form of absence - absence of a response. I hear a crinkle as I to stretch myself little but all in vain. Hours go by as I am reminded by the omniscient ticking of a clock. I also hear water dripping from a faucet somewhere. The silence is suddenly broken by footfall and the unmistakable flicking of a light switch followed by the buzz of a tube light flickering and then flooding the room with light. I’m picked up and then flattened against a table top. It’s him again but something has changed. He reads me over and over again and finally pulls out a sheet of paper. I watch as his pen dances across the paper just like hers did. He flattens me against the table top again and then folds me and puts me into a box. And then I meet a hundred other letters she wrote him and we share our stories. I also meet a few he wrote her but never sent. He opens the lid of the box. Letter in hand deciding where it should go. The box suddenly plunges into darkness but just before it went dark I caught a glimpse of him scrawling something atop an envelope. And that ink pattern I suppose is where she is.

Contemplate

(This is my try at perspective writing. I have written this narrative not in my own words but in that of an old man who finds himself contemplating over the journey of life)

I see a page torn from a newspaper I owned some decades ago. It’s preserved between the pages of a hard bound book. The page has turned yellow with age. I run my trembling fingers along my face and feel my own skin marred by the same agent of time. This is the way things go I suppose. I remember being a young boy full of energy. I recount scabbed knees and other bruises I earned on the playground that I wore with the same pride as if they were medals of honour. Those cold winter nights that I watched melt into summer days were a true act of magic. Back then I possessed a vivid imagination and it would breathe life into the most dullest and mundane occurrences in life.

Then came the next phase – youth. Things seem to complicate themselves unnecessarily and whirlpool of emotions didn’t make it any easier. I remember having to make several supposedly life changing decisions and only carrying on ahead in life to realise that those weren’t the decisions I had to be careful about. It was the others that had to be made on a whim, the decisions that didn’t come with paperwork and formalities. Those are the ones that still haunt me today. The decision to down another peg in spite of knowing I was already too drunk was one amongst my regrets. I burnt several bridges at the time and built many afresh.

My choices right or wrong led me to the self-same path of adulthood. I came face to face with the real world only to realise just how naïve I had been up till then. And then it happened, I started to relive the phases I had already passed, through my son. But it seemed to go by a lot quicker and eventually an air of melancholy set in when time dragged along distance into our relationship. His hand that was once small enough to fit in mine completely was now just as large as mine and that same hand that would reach out to me so often now pushes buttons on a phone to contact me in an attempt to bridge the distance of 1000 miles that lie between us.

The years roll on and things change some more. My limbs become stiffer, fatigue is a frequent visitor and my hair is coloured a distasteful white. But it feels as though my hair isn’t the only thing that has lost colour in my life. These days the news mourns the death of personalities I knew well as a child. And I sit here contemplating the life I made, words left said or unsaid, opportunities utilized or wasted and I ask myself what it’s all worth. Lying six feet under the dirt would render my social status irrelevant, my shoes would lose their shine and my crisp black suit would become a befitting shroud. All I hope to have earned in this lifetime was some love and respect. Maybe then I’ll be granted immortality in someone’s memory. Just like the page of the newspaper that turned yellow with age. Perhaps it’ll be discarded someday but I’ll still remember what the headline read.

Miscellaneous lessons

When your life is plagued by stagnancy know that change is always expected to arrive shortly

because even the dark sky transforms into a canvas at the crack of dawn

painted with crimson and a band of gold at the horizon.

And when the first attempt fails know that perseverance will succeed 

because even the roughest boulders were smoothened over time by relentless waves.

Let your fading scars remind you of how every wound heals.

Let this thought be your anaesthetic to pain.

When society tries to conform your life within the margins and categorise you 

remember that masterpieces weren't made by colouring within the lines.

The cynical will mistake a brilliant blaze from a bonfire to be solemn crackling sparks from a funeral pyre burning away at deceased dreams.

Fear not where the wayward currents of life carry you for serendipity pays a visit when least expected.

Pied Piper Perhaps

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Gambles I make aren't with grand gestures.

Worlds I make are with words not wands.

No tricks up my sleeve.Never.

Well just some well-orchestrated wordplay.

Lifeless limitations like full stops don't bother me.

To my ears the sound of words creates a pleasant mental melody

equivalent to the ringing of fingers running across the rims of a thousand half filled wine glasses.

Every clever concoction of words I brew has a different aroma

that drifts and startles the senses of the unsuspecting.

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Words are my only weapons.

These stanzas are my only shield.

Expression through words is my personal elixir of life.

I wander forever in a tantalised trance of unwritten words in the labyrinths of my mind. 

Perhaps you could call me pied piper.

I'll draw you in at every intricate indentation.

What I live and breathe for is weaving words with seams of sentiment.

Behind the glasses

Let's talk about my vision. If you've met me in person you've probably never seen me without my glasses and with good reason, my prescription is a jaw dropping -6.00(L) / -5.75(R). So without my glasses the well defined contours of objects melt away into a blend of colours and very vague silhouettes even if these objects are very close to me.  Close is a relative word isn't it? Okay how about I explain it like this, through my eyes large and bold writing dissolves into its own background. Now that brings into question how big the font is and the relative distance between me and this aforementioned clear piece of writing. Okay then this might be the best way for me to put it, it's much like the blurry vision a person who is about to lose their consciousness experiences. That sounds about right.

I got my first pair of glasses when I was 8 years old. At the time my prescription was a modest -0.75. And from then on it proceeded to shoot up at regular intervals. As you can imagine visits to the optometrist were also just as regular for me. Once a year or so. And I absolutely detested those visits much like how children(and adults too I guess) detest visits to the dentist. Well there is nothing physically painful about these visits but my hatred was primarily because it usually ended with the realization that my vision had worsened. For some reason I blamed myself for it. But I was constantly reassured by optometrists that this was largely(I sense the possibility of a pun here) due to the fact that my eyes were still growing. And yes let me dismiss the wildly popular myth that your eyes don't grow after birth. The axial length increases up until you reach the age 18, a fact which when coupled with my pre-existing nearsightedness resulted in me going through several pairs of glasses in a relatively short amount of time. And just two weeks ago I visited the optometrist for my annual eye exam and for the first time I was told that my prescription hadn't changed since my last visit. Well I guess it's about time since I'm 19 now.

 All though most people are baffled at how bad my vision is, I've always held the opinion that I have a very unique view of the world quite literally. Each and every pair of glasses I have gone through over the last 11 years was a talisman of a period. Each with a different story to tell from its point of view. And when pieced together in chronological order, you have the last 11 years of my life.

Familiar fragrances

Some memories are stowed away in photo albums.
Some play in songs heard one too many times.
And some others waft in air through familiar fragrances.

The smell of wet earth after a rain is an aroma infused
with a thousand tales from monsoons of the past.
The smell of fresh jasmine and incense, sounds the bells of the temple
A rush of nostalgia sets in with one whiff of these familiar fragrances.

Take a breath. Make a memory.
And just like that you've thrown a message in a bottle into the water.
Years fly by and you find yourself walking new shores
 only to stumble upon that bottle and you uncork it to momentarily relive an era that passed.
All through a familiar fragrance.

And as I open my mother's perfume cabinet I find myself walking out onto a private beach.
There lie a hundred bottles peeking from the sand.
The messages encased in these bottles are memories from different periods in my life.
I shake the last vestiges of perfume in the older bottles.
Memories come to life in these familiar fragrances.

Musings on a homecoming

Tonight at 20,000 feet above ground the world looks a tad different to say the least. As we fly above the tapestry of clouds I peak through gaping holes where the seams have run loose like a child peaking from behind a curtain and the sight is spectacular. The city I call home sprawls before me as a sea of lights, white and yellow. Some jagged lines of yellow curve through and join others like tributaries of a river. The white lights set to the background of this dark night makes me reminiscent of starry nights drowned in city lights. We cruise above places familiar to me, above roads I have often taken. And down below, my loved ones carry on with their day momentarily interrupted by the rumble of a Boeing 777 gradually descending onto the airstrip. It's funny how every time I return home I expect it to feel different, to feel new again like I have never been here before. But it doesn't feel different, I just seem to pick up from where I left off.

The City

Welcome one and welcome all
to the city.

The only stars you see here are illuminated windows in tall towers
and the twinkling red beacons upon their tops
warning the insomniac metal birds of night sky.

Watch as skyscrapers shoot up and pierce the sky.
Scaffolding is torn down
a new building takes birth like chick hatched from its egg.
And there beyond the horizon, construction cranes steal glances lovingly.

When the sky grows grey
and the water washes down metal spires and glass panels
it pools along the edges of roads with the luminescence
of neon lit boards and street lights.

The sirens from ambulances and police cars,
vehicles zooming past on the tarmac
and a hundred hushed conversations
chime into one melodious symphony.

Electric lines, water lines, drainage lines run beneath the ground
pulsing like nerves, arteries and veins beneath the skin.
Lives here are disconnected and solitary.
Eyes that dodge that of others, indifference but to their own
and an existence that fades away into oblivion.

Welcome one and welcome all
to the city.

Drift

[I am not sure what to call this.  Drifting poetry perhaps? Each pair of sentences in this poem is independent of the preceding one. However the last word used in each pair links to the first word used in the next. And the final sentence links back to the first]


The path strewn with leaves of a hue brown,
the others green with envy await their fall.

A fall into water echoes far and wide
as ripples race to the edges.

Edges are where we arrive at a crossroads,
a decision to either soar high or dive deep.

Deep beneath the surface, roots reach downwards
gripping the soil like underground claws.

Claws of nature that tear apart the earth in vengeance
in quakes and along creases called fault lines.

Lines that run on our palms
claimed to be drawn by destiny, the artist.

The artist that splashed colour on the canvas,
like the peacock that proudly unfurled its feathers.

Feathers blown in the wind
voyage into the unknown like wisps of smoke.

Smoke that ascends and dissipates
a true vanishing act performed by air.

Air that dances through the trees dropping leaves once green
to shrivel to a golden brown, on this path.

Identity Crisis?

There's a thin line between fact and fiction. Fiction tends to be a morphed version or an alternate interpretation of reality. In this day and age where we find ourselves having easy access to books, movies and TV shows, is our individualism endangered by the overwhelming number of fictional personalities we encounter on a daily basis? As much as we would hate to concede our identities to someone else's figment of imagination, the fact remains fictional characters have taken root in us subconsciously. And the observable result is far deeper than imitation.
The truth is that we rarely find ourselves at a loss for words. We have a database of popular comebacks for any situation ready at our disposal. Dialogues recited before a camera echo in a ripple as its eventually spoken by a thousand tongues that adopt these scripts as words of their own. But the comparison doesn't end with just words, personality traits and habits can also be attributed to fictional influence.  Even our very morality is constantly subjected to fictional influence. Why? Ask yourself this.  Aren't the dogmas of morals and ethics are just a collection of popular opinion? If so how does popular opinion come about? Art is our one sole unifying medium with the capability of re-enforcing ideas of morals through stories that force us to calibrate our morality scale.
Personally I don't fear a zombie apocalypse I fear a fiction apocalypse. Perhaps it has already begun, maybe we're already walking around as amalgamations of a multiple fictional characters. How can we ever know who we really are?

[I was inspired to do this piece after reading a very brilliant and thought provoking quote from the book 'Gone Girl' by Gillian Flynn. It's rather long and all I could find online are these few lines from it. On the subject of the book, it's a great read. I recently watched the movie. Somehow seeing the very same book come to life in the motion picture was eerily chilling.] 

Modern Pangea

Topic courtesy of Writing Prompts at http://writingprompts.tumblr.com/

I would like to paint this picture by creating a work of fiction. Set in present day I present to you an earth where we revisit the Pangea.

It has been nearly thirty years since the 'Great Re-formation'. That's what this unprecedented event has been etched in history as. Seismologists across the globe failed to detect anything unusual in the tectonic activity prior to the 'Great Re-formation'. But once it started, the effects could hardly be ignored. Over a span of ten years the former seven continents of the world came together. This reunion since wasn't a peaceful one. Tsunamis, earthquakes became frequent across the world during this period. Small islands submerged as a result of strong currents caused by these rapid movements.  Billions of dollars was set aside to research this unusual phenomenon and to stop it. It soon became the topic of international debate. But as the years passed with fruitless expeditions and scientific research everyone came to a silent acceptation of reality. People feared that this was in fact the end of the world as we knew it. They worried that the predictions of Nostradamus, the Mayans and several others had just came to us in this package. Some researchers were skeptical that the people of the world could survive what is to come in the journey of the continents. International effort soon refocused on dealing with the repercussions of the shifts and preparation for what was to come. The movements were now monitored with greater vigor and seismic predictions became a field of interest.

No one can say for sure when the shifting stopped. It slowed pace and came to a gradual halt is what experts claim. The former seven continents - Asia, North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and Antarctic merged into one large land mass. It was christened with the name "Modern Pangea". Maps were re-drawn. To this day, the older maps and globes depicting earth as a seven continent planet are still sold in remembrance of the past. Optimists say that this was nature's way of bringing the world together as one big happy family. But this couldn't be more distant from the truth. The years that followed  the 'Great Re-formation' saw the greatest of international tensions.  Several countries began working to strengthen their defense. Borderline security was of utmost importance now. To popular protest, defense budgets were raised higher than ever before. Some countries carried out tests of nuclear war weapons. Military forces across Modern Pangea grew stronger. Only the coastal countries of Modern Pangea possessed naval forces. All other countries reassigned that man power to their military or air force. Smaller countries that weren't at par on defense formed alliances with neighboring countries.The world was now sleeping with its eyes open, ever ready to catch that dagger to that could hit it in the back. Everyone feared the start of a world war. There were tug-o-wars across borders for resources, particularly water. The coastal countries of the Pangea provided pipeline supply to several inner countries but at exorbitant rates. However the 'Great Re-formation' did have a positive impact on businesses and commerce. Production and delivery worked at a faster pace than before since shipping time had been drastically reduced. The increased proximity encouraged companies to extend their operations to countries that weren't a part of their initial network.

Here stands the world, thirty years later. Much has changed in this time, many wish that the earth could go back to what it used to be. But perhaps the former seven continents were pieces of a puzzle that had to come together maybe to put the giant jigsaw of the human race together. We will never really know why this happened but we do know this, the pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly.

Perfection

Writing prompt: Name something you used to believe in as a child and don't anymore. Why?

One word :- Perfection. As a child I used to believe in perfection. In much the same manner as other children believed in tooth fairies or Santa Claus. Come to think of it I think we were all believers of perfection, at least when we were children.
As children we assumed that things could only be perfect or imperfect. There was no grey area. Almost everything fell into the former category. Whatever we didn't fully comprehend was perfect by default. Like adulthood for example. The great beauty of looking through a child's eyes is that you can only see the good in things. When I saw the adults around me I believed that adulthood was simply cooler. All that freedom and no school to attend, how I longed for that period of time in my life. Let me clarify here that right now I am not  quite an adult yet. I think that depends on where one draws the line and I draw mine pretty far. I am just an 18 year old college freshman. But that in itself is validation for me to spout out my naive childhood beliefs.

According to my younger self, perfection wasn't the content of a sacred chalice or a rare gem in the depths of the earth. It was ever present like the air that surrounds us. When you haven't seen much how can what you see not be the very epitome of itself?
 People seemed perfect all the time. If they were older than me, I automatically labelled them 'perfect'. Then somehow slowly those innocent eyes of a child get clouded or cleared(depending on your perspective) and there it is lo and behold :- IMPERFECTION.
 Imperfection was a myth in my childhood and perfection was reality. And as the years passed, as I grew out of those clothes and the scratch marks on that impromptu height chart go higher up I realize that through all the rites and rituals of growing up  the roles of  'myth' and 'reality' were reversed.

But I don't see imperfection as gloomy presence in our lives. Never. Imperfection is the very reason we continue to live our lives isn't it? It keeps the wheels of life turning I would say. Why you ask?
To become better people, to have better experiences, to perform better don't all these aims spring from the root of recognizing imperfection? Isn't that what its about? Striving to attain perfection, be it in your own eyes or someone else's or both. We know we can't get there so we just try and get as close as we can.

Imperfection is not a haunting presence in humanity or the world for that matter. Its God's greatest gift. Embrace imperfection. For without imperfection, there would be no purpose to life. And if that's what perfection entails then I think its highly flawed!

The Youth Anthem

Here's a siren
amidst the symphony of silence
a call to the young blooded.

It's our time
to blaze our own paths
on ground marred by the trails left behind by others.

It's our time
to start our own journey
even if our destination is unknown.

It's our time
to get drunk with the vine of victory
even if we have to taste bitter defeat first.

It's our time
to be original,
to break free from the bars of conformity and tradition
and to be a limited edition.

It's our time
to read between the lines of history,
to rewrite expected endings
as we walk across the tight rope between yesterday and tomorrow.

It's our time
to let the gloves come off and fight
to defend dreams and build beliefs.

It's our time
to love and lose,
to run and to chase
it's the right time and place

Our hearts beat to the rhythm of this ultimatum
"Now or Never"
Dreamers here's your wake up call.
Let the adrenaline surge through your veins
lace up your shoes, roll up your sleeves
grit your teeth and brace yourself

It's our time
Ready. Set. Go.

The Lighthouse

It stands alone
looking out into black waters of the night
as its light caresses the perils beneath.

It's a listener
forever listening to the conversations between the waves and the rocks
Its light embraces the water
like old friends reunited

How many years have those glass eyes seen pass by like this?
When the rain trickles down those very eyes
Does it cry tears of loneliness?

But it did have a frequent visitor much like it
One that shone in the morning instead of night
Maybe through the light and warmth of day, they exchanged a thousand tales
Maybe it cringes, every evening when  the sun dives into the water 
And says goodbye

Solitude is a way of life
Far too familiar to this guardian angel
Today, tomorrow and for eternity to come

[ Truth be told, I have never seen a lighthouse other than in pictures and movies. But I do hope to see a lighthouse someday, perhaps all the way in Glasgow.]

Prisoner of words unspoken

My tongue is the prisoner of words unspoken.
Bound by the shackles of self doubt,
these jail bars I call teeth clash down
finally sealed by my lips.

And inside, in the dark
an unasked question, an opinion, dies away.
Its ashes leave a bitter taste.

My eyes lets the soul of my words escape.
It diffuses into the air and hangs there, indecipherable by another heart.
 
I have often asked for what sin is my tongue serving a sentence?
And how can I ever acquit it,
when I play two roles
first of the judge that slams the gavel down at every hearing
second of the lawyer pleading in defense.

My tongue dreams of freedom
while my words dream of echoing in mind other than my own

The prisoner of unspoken words lies in waiting
And its only redemption
is my indifference to the opinions of others.






[The idea for the poem came to me one night just as I was desperately trying to scrape at sleep. But due to my lack of stationary items and the comfort of my bed I let it be. The following day I started typing it out on my train ride. But it was far from complete. It took me another month to get back to it and pen the rest. A month more to add the finishing touches. And finally three years later it's been published online. Procrastination is deadly.]