Words

tonight – a ghazal

It doesn’t matter what I think tonight
The paper just won’t catch ink tonight

The clouds all spent, the moon still hides
The wait though long, I won’t blink tonight

The beloved lives near but is a world away
The realization alas, raises a stink tonight

Sit an arm’s length from me, a ‘mehfil’ let’s make
Let our eyes be glasses and clink tonight

The day got tired, is now asleep fast
Night opens the door, with a wink tonight

The heart yearns for what the mind is against
Old foes once again at the brink tonight

A mirage love is, in this desert of heart
‘Adee’ will quench thirst with a drink tonight

-adee, @delhidreams 03/03/2015

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R.K. Narayan’s ‘The Guide’ -not a review

The Guide: Image from my instagram account: https://instagram.com/delhidreams/

Hmm. What do i say about a book that i just finished last night and which has been growing on me since then…too early to say anything? Yeah, maybe. But if i delay, i won’t be able to pen down this mini-review of sorts. You can read the story’s summary anywhere, on the blurb itself. So this post is not an attempt to be a review in the literal sense. This is an attempt to record the impression it has left on me.

In the simplest of English, R.K. Narayan builds a bildungsroman of sorts, the story of a man named Raju. Actually, weaves would be a better word instead of writes, because the book is actually a tapestary of Raju’s life and that of other major and minor characters, Velan, Rosie, Marco, Gaffur, Raju’s mother and uncle interwoven with life in a small town and village in southern India. Actually India is as much a character in this story as the main protagonists, because i don’t think it would have taken place anywhere else in world. 

And yet, like truly great stories, it is universal in appeal. The rise and fall of a man, love and ‘unlove’, marriage and infidelity, a woman’s place in a patriarchal society, a conman and his final redemption (maybe?)- there are so many lenses that this story could be viewed from, understood and appreciated. And then there is humor, sparkling and earthen and as Indian it can get, though it kind of toned down towards the end.

I’d seen the classic Indian movie based on this novel a few times already and i’ve always loved the story, especially with the lyrics by Shailendra and music direction of S.D. Burman. It was surprising for me but i found the novel more mature than the movie. The open way infidelity is introduced and the ambiguous ending, wouldn’t have been possible in the India of 50s and 60s. 

All in all, a must read for its timeless tale of a man’s fight with himself, what he was, what he could have been, and what he became.

-Adee @delhidreams 26.02.2015.

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prithvi, patthar aur dil / पृथ्वी, पत्थर और दिल

prithvi se seekha hai humne
dil ka dhang sayana ji
andar chahe jitna pighlo
upar, patthar ban jana ji

पृथ्वी से सीखा है हमने
दिल का ढ़ंग सयाना जी
अंदर चाहे जितना पिघलो
ऊपर, पत्थर बन जाना जी

-adee / आदी 23/01/2015

sometimes, you have to, got to learn to become a stone. no matter what, no matter who…

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2014

 

they left me with my ghosts

in a room without a ceiling

and then piled-up words … after words

till they lost all their meaning

 

the flooring gives away

the ink seeps-in through my veins

and now i’m suspended (in-between)

my nightmares and your dreams

 

“you can’t really see the stars here”

though you hope, you hope, you hope

 

-adee, @delhidreams

during the last days of december in the year 2014

 

note: the line in quotes is taken from the latest book i read, Station Eleven- “a spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity” all set in a post-apocalyptic world. the novel and the year together gave birth to the poem above.

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of gods and beggars and lonely nights

There are times when i match the most powerful gods in history.
When i feel i can give shape to any moment there is, any feeling there was, will be.

Pain, pleasure,
Envy, emptiness,
Traveling at twelve in the night through Delhi’s streets,
See those guys riding on a rickety motorcycle,
One whispering who knows what secrets
In the ear of the other.

There are times when i can create the whole world
Just with these words and the silence in-between.
And then, there are times when i don’t get this power,
these nano-particles of immortality.
It is then,
that I feel i’m a beggar in the realms of men.

That is what poetry does to you.
There are no middle grounds in poetry.

That is the unending agony of my craft.
I’m a god and a beggar before that first draft.

 

-adee, delhi, 22/12/14

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that kind of day, that kind of love

“All my life I have loved in vain
the things I didn’t learn.” -Yehuda Amichai

some days you search for the meaning of not only life or death or existence or purpose but of everything, and then you come across one illuminated verse of poetry, one line that burns and brands your heart for life. this is that kind of day, this above, is that kind of love.

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and this is how I live

It was another December,
some other year,
another week,
some other day.

I was happy
or sad
or dreamy
or desolate.

The morning dawned,
the day ran away with time,
the night fell apart.

The sun,
the moon,
the hands full of lines filled with shifting stars.

Emptiness breeding emptiness.

And this is how it goes,
the life,
till I don’t get time to die.

-adee

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gate 10

Big city airport

waiting to board an early morning flight

between a sea of bodies

anxious of waves

a mother sits still as an island

half-awake and half-away

holding a sleeping world in her arms

-adee, 07:50am, Nov. 25, 2014
at the Mumbai airport.
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if i’d invented time

the wait

if i’d invented time
an hour without you would have been a century
and a year with you a minute
now that today
after countless centuries and eight minutes
we’re still apart…i only wish
that someone had not invented
this ache called waiting

-adee, october 22, 2014

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traffic signal

koi sau mein ek baar to traffic signal par bhi bheek mil hi jaati hogi/
apni toh haalat aur bhi kharab hai/
khuda ne apni khidki ka sheesha, kabhi neeche kiya hi nahi…

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