#222
With my outstretched hands
I roam through the lands
I have thorns in my feet
Ain’t got much to eat
I have dirt on my face
No home or home-like place
I got no friends, no kin
Yet I feel glad within
For I am free, free and alive
Eventhough I got nothing
I still have this life
And look! It’s so full of beauty
And so full of colour
It’s all I think I’ll need
To get through forever
#219
I don’t know what’s on your mind
What that smile hides behind
If I could read into your silence
I am not sure what I would find
I can never tell when you sigh
Can’t ever guess the reason why
When you say these things to me
I wonder if you lie
But looking into your eyes when we kiss
I see mine reflected in them, in them I find bliss
What we have probably ain’t love
But love must be something akin to this
#174
You kept on knocking, knocking
Knocking at my door
I kept on granting, granting
Until I could no more
Like many others before you
You filled your cup and left
Never once it crossed your mind
You were leaving me bereft
I kept on knocking, knocking
Hands outstretched at your door
Knocking until I was reduced
To a bloodstain on the floor
When everything is over
When we no longer come to be
You’ll explain to heaven
While heaven will to me.
#172
You think you know me well
Well you only do almost
No, it’s not your fault at all
I kept my windows closed
You know my words not my silence
You know my heart not my mind
It’s all of my partaking
I couldn’t make myself unwind
You think you have seen me well
Well a lot you haven’t seen
You’re a friend to someone you know
I am sorry but he’s not me
#169 RELIGION
We’re scared dwarfed and awed by it
We look for reasons, meanings and hope in it
We fight, we kill, we die for it
What is it, that we find???
A blind all-consuming faith
A confirmation of our condemnation
A recognition of our incompleteness
What do we see????
A looming loss
A doom deferred
A never-ending road without signs without purpose
What do we get?????
A choice
Nothing more and nothing less
Nothing but a choice
A choice between rotting in the sod
And burning to ashes.
#164
Staring out the window
I feel one open in
I sense the melancholy
Hear silence creep within
I feel a certain craving
I know I have had before
And everytime I face it
It leaves me weak and sore
I feel a constant yearning
I bear a seasoned ache
I keep on longing, longing
It seems for pity’s sake
You too have some wistfulness
You know you have felt it but
You hide it, try to fight it
And keep the windows shut
#97
My brain’s many folds
Hide the things it holds
The testing truths, the lovely lies
The ifs and buts, the hows and whys
Tears and fears and broken dreams
And emptiness bursting from the seams
Here and there a happy patch
Where the thoughts of freedom hatch
Now and then your memories pass
I fail to make them stop.Alas!
It seems my brain is leaking blood
And I am drowning in the flood
#132
In this moment,
This tiny fragment of time
The universe has moved
And with it has your life
For you have lived it
And lost it forever
In this moment
This thin slice of time
Your destiny has been written
For in it you have
Buried your past
And fathered your future
This moment
This pathetic little piece of time
Is as eternal as fragile it is
It is where you exist
And everything else there is
This moment-it is holy, it is divine.
#41
This ain’t the day
When I cease to be
Seems far too ordinary
My last day on earth to be
So much beauty
I still have to see
So much of mmyself
I still have to be
Million thoughts unknown
Yet to cross my mind
There’s far too much here
To leave it all behind
I have no dreams no plans
I just let myself be
And you’ll be informed
When I cease to be
#39
Last night she died-alone
With just memories for company
Her final fareell
Her parting wish
Were lost forever
Her last confession
Be heard again never
No one did witness
The end of her time
To see her absolve
Into the divine
Her last moments on earth
Came and went by
She left for her journey
I heart YOGA (purely for its entertainment value) PART 2
As I was putting off my shoes outside the hall, I noticed a group of girls go in, one of whom could be described in the AIIMS-lingo as ‘garam’. I suddenly thought to myself, maybe coming to this place wasn’t such a bad idea afterall. Maybe after so many years of anal-probing destiny was finally making upto me. But you all have to know one thing about destiny-it’s a bitch! yep it’s a nefarious she-canine which loves nothing more than to bend you over the fence and screw you over again and again . As you must have guessed it already, the hall was divided into two halves by a screen through which even the most lecherous eyes couldn’t peer. And all I could see this side of the screen in my vicinage were septuagenarians, morbidly obese dudes, balding veterans with gyanecomastia, and what could only be described as humanoid grizzlies (who had sauntered into the hall after having a roll in the night soil).I mentally rebuked myself for acting like a prude, but no sooner had the yoga begun that I wished I hadn’t.
First of all the instructor--(who must be 50+ but looked half that age and boasted about the tone of his external anal sphincter as a matter of factly, like he was telling you about Sachin Tendulkar’s batting skills, I kid you not, this guy seriously started yelling about his bowels and nether regions to a class of more than 70 which included women)--asked us to sit on our mats and start the pranayama. What followed was a practical demonstration of how upper respiratory tract infections get transmitted. People were coughing up purulent sputum in copious amounts ,but all hell broke loose when the instructor asked everyone to increase the frequency, people started dripping snot from their nostrils like they were trying to water their gardens with a hose. Meanwhile I, who had overdosed on the infectious diseases chapter from my Robbins and Cotran’s pathology textbook was testing my breath holding capacity so as to avoid providing my respiratory tract as a petri-dish to the microbial carnival going on in the surrounding air. Within no time the increase in the ambient moisture content was palpable. One guy actually created the world record for the farthest flight of phlegm from a human throat and another almost usurped the snail’s position in the kingdom animalia in terms of mucilage production.
After a lot many more variations in the acts of inspiration & expiration, the instructor asked us to lie down on our backs and repeat the entire routine which was repeated time and again in different positions(now if only you expand the instructions and replace breathing in and out with pelvic gyrations and try it with a female partner,u really don’t need vatsasayana’s magnum opus). Half an hour (and multiple ghon’s foci--for all the non-medical personnel its a kind of lung lesions seen in T.B) later, we were done with the breathing exercises. Next he made us lie flat on our backs and fold our knees and press them into our bellies. Major mistake because his next words were drowned out by the explosive sounds that filled the room as the wind trapped inside people’s bowels for weeks suddenly found itself forced out through their aboral apertures and exclaimed loudly with mirth at its newfound freedom. Next we were told to raise our legs straight high up in the air and try keep as much of our midriff airborne simultaneously, now it sounds easy but just like everything else it is much harder once you get down to doing it in real life. But sadly the few who managed to accomplish the feat were in for a disappointment because the many, whom gravity wasnt too kind on, crashed their legs into the others’ in their ill-fated attempts to master the asana(whose name is escaping me at the moment which is pretty understandable given the fact that most asanas have larger than octasyllablic names).even as everyone was nursing their newly-acquired wounds the instructor who seemed oblivious to the surrounding pandemonium moved on to the next asana. He asked everyone to lie flat on their bellies and raise their torsos and legs off the ground at the same time(an act i believe is possible only if you wave a magic wand and say Wingardium Leviosa---harry potter fan anyone????).Now by this time I had resigned myself to blindly following whatever I was told to do.Again major mistake, because no sooner had I lifted my torso off the ground, I found my visual field completely obliterated by the 40 feet wide perineum of this fat dude in front of me. Acting on a reflex I immediately bowed my head down and the veteran to my right immediately blurted out “Beta you are not doing it right,you have to look up”, thankfully I chose insubordination over suicide. Over the course of next 45 minutes which seemed longer than a weeklong stay at Auschwitz.We were made to test the resilience of our joints in ways which no human being ought to. Thankfully the number of people present started dwindling on account of things like muscle cramps, sharting(u know when shit comes out along with a fart),seizures and angina.
Mercifully the class came to an end eventually.I am in no way undermining the benefits of yoga but after my ordeal I have reached the conclusion that it just ain’t my cup of tea. In order to keep healthy I prefer the good old AIIMS way –Always keep a bottle of Listerine, an Industrial strength disinfectant and enough Augmentin ready.
Well now that you guys know the truth,you can make an informed decision whether or not you wanna join the yoga bandwagon.As for me I am just keeping my fingers crossed in case my dad gets another one of his ‘wonderful ideas’.
