Hope you all are having a great time. I am exceedingly thankful for your encouragement and support. The joy of reading your blogs has no parallel. It’s been a significant journey growing together as a community.
Through this post, I invite you to partner me in founding an NGO working for the welfare and rehabilitation of domestic violence victims. Anyone interested and passionate should email me at : thewideblueray@gmail.com
Incandescent peaks of halcyon hills seize your gaze in the evening when weary sun grazes those hilltops and sky simmers with crimson, vermilion, azure and milky white lights. Slowly a fiery red flush creeps over the valley and spills around the horizons sprinkling the sneaky woods with a soothing blush. Leisurely the dimming sky gathers darker, exotic cosmic shades of night. The river, the woods, that narrow track snaking along the river leading to woods, placidly all pass to slumber. Trees become sombre and quieter, mysterious and resting for the night.
In the morning, a soft golden glint slowly bursts through the sky. Trees patiently await the sun to rise while birds trill their flurried chirps. The glory of the pristine mountain, bit by bit, heaves to the sight. There’s a dignity, an incorruptible beauty in the solemness of the robust hills. Wholesome perfumed air conveys the scent of pink and maroon whispy blossoms and fills the whole valley. The spectacular vista of lush little folds of majestic mountains and the free-spirited river is spellbinding. There is a deep calm and stillness that blooms into an intense and profound peace. An extraordinary sense of life overflows. One can lose track of time and still a tiny whit of life is never missed.
***
As though I am indigenous to a quaint, sequestered isle riddled with damp mossy soil and scads of jutting peaks. I have sought solace in the penny-pinching halts amid the frantic sand of time careening along days, weeks, months on and on. Quietness in the world is a different kind of necessity. Thousands of nights I slipped off into slumber awaiting nothing, anticipating the morning never arrives. Nevertheless, it did. The grisly clamorous morning, screeching a wound in the hidden recesses of your soul in inexplicable respect. You sink and smother in the thick mass oozing off the surrounding that preys and feeds upon the reaction. When living simply implies either ignoring or responding or reacting. You need to be registered in a certain manner that has to be understood/misunderstood/un-understood by a certain kind of mind obliquely but forcibly demanding you to be adjustable, to suit its reactions. This phenomenon itself substantiates that one cannot meet the blinkered or imaginary expectations even when reduced into what one isn’t. You are here, at this moment, and this is sufficient. Who you are isn’t contingent upon anyone’s understanding or reaction. Anything in nature never depends upon the mental dexterities of a particular person, his beliefs or ideas. It isn’t necessary to be presented to the world for further distortion. You are always present without that. Is being not enough? Your presence is perpetually disturbing. Who you are — is a problem that needs to be solved. You can’t lay your mind to rest. You have to shut down or open up on someone’s commands disregarding your inner guidance. Your natural response is consistently contorted or off-balanced that eventually yields to silence. You endeavour to protect it for all your worth. This invisible struggle ramifies into a myriad of repercussions.
An itsy-bitsy cluster of mud houses is nestled among colossal verdant banana farms. As the dawn breaks, dwellers dash off to their farms along the dirt-road throwing a cheeseparing glance to other farmers’ wives who are often caught leering at thousands of bananas spluttering ‘neath green and yellow skin while they are completely devoured by the sweet fragrance of ripe and mushy bananas and glugging the saliva spurting from their salivary glands. If you go by bicycle, it may take quite a while to reach the other side of the farms but if you plump for taking a scooter, you will finish it in ludicrously small hours. However, the dirt road is treacherous at certain points in this neck of the wood and you must keep your toolbox handy.
Newly wedded brides hum their way to the fields where they prattle about bananas with their emollient bashfulness as though their allegiance is transferred to the dreams of lip-smacking bananas and non-veg curries. The intoxicating scent of chicken in hot red gravy simmering on earthen chulhas and half-fried eggs sends the village lasses to an irresistible culinary adventure where they begin to gyrate like hooded snakes balancing their swanky bags on their shoulders.
After following your nose for a kilometre you come across many scary potholes. When you round the corner and try to elude the eerie calls coming from the old banyan tree settled on the left side of the dirt road, you notice that a few witches are hanging out with their pals on top of the banyan tree, letting their hair down and having some lighthearted banter while relishing human snacks. You might have noticed their massive cauldrons hanging from the limbs of the banyan tree. As a displacement activity, you pray for not getting caught sneaking into their world. No one likes to be envisioned as a meal after all! Let’s not put too fine a point on it, man is a selfish creature. As a matter of fact, these mythical creatures have lain their eyes upon you and sizing you up beseechingly licking their lips. These are those rare moments of your life when you render yourself in sheer awe when you realize that you remember Hanuman Chalisa by heart!
There are moments when we catch sight of the faintest glimmer of the truth. We fathom it out that everyone is trying to plot the map of their ‘right’ and we all are employing the tools bestowed upon each of us separately namely, the mind. We all are relentlessly wielding our swords to make our way through this dense rainforest to arrive at the sun-drenched tropical island where this ‘everything’ is ‘right’ and one day we find our lost bearings. We look back at the trails of complete fiasco blazing away and it dawns upon us that we all are flawed. Suddenly the unquenchable magnificence and the lucid splendour of the flawed and imperfect ‘everything’ engulfs us. The frail and fragile is mighty, the wrong is always right and there is a pernicious lame excuse behind each shred of truth. We witness the truth of the ‘right’ melting into another wrong as we head to the other side of it. Our addled hearts break into a gleeful song. The next best thing is not holding ourselves back from loving each other so we make yet another tentative move toward our home. Together or separate, close or distant or completely different. Disagreeing while still loving each other is magic. That’s when we trip the light fantastic.
You say you’re my family but where were you when I was hurt, when I needed someone, when I needed you? You weren’t here. But they were always. You turned my heart into a volcano. My eyes have become molten lava. I wondered how easily you propped up to fake morality. Of course, there are laws to protect the rights of the oppressed and forsaken but they are of no use till people like you are here who instantly take up the cudgel against any law or reform but show no concern to the victim when the hideous act of violence is right in front of them. They just duck and dive. Fortunately, there are people of another breed also. And then I muted the world and dabbled into a little observation since my assumption was false that you’ve changed for you no longer need my best toe ring neither would you use it to cover your lack of integrity. But just that time has passed or people move away, suddenly doesn’t brings change in motives and goals, unless the person decides. By moving from the venomous mounds, I can discern it clearly now. I watch energy to know who is what.
If you get to know Mr Jagdish Bashu, you would realise how worthless you are. At times he is a moralist but behind the semblance of a mature and adult person whose idea of right living is propped on the people professing culture or morality, there is a wounded child who knows how worthless he is – as life, if he isn’t wealthy, or has his goodness approved by people walking on two legs, no wings no tails, and possesse a certain entitlement. Each of his daughters — ripe fruits he has consigned to someone for relishing it, getting sexual pleasure and taking orders — know him differently. Well, that we will discuss some time later. You might as well want to erase some facts from your memory. If you spend enough time with him, you’d come across a coward who’s quite apprised of the truth of professors but has no pluck to follow the honest path and he would coldly dismiss any happenchance that has been in your experience if it doesn’t dovetail his agenda. However, most people prize their life experiences above any scriptures and God. They are just incapable of rejecting what they are living, how they feel etc. And that’s surely a bit of a tiff now. There are a few golden rules that Mr Jagadish Bashu always follow:
” It does no harm to be courteous”
1. ~ to the person who is abusive, spreads lies and brings you down.
2. Let’s just say Ram Singh and Asaram were disrespected and humiliate. After all, she said NO even after those trivial episodes took place.
” How can this person harm you with his words (lies).” It has many implications.
1. Only your resistance (words) to abuse, harms the innocent – the perpetrator(s).
2. If someone does something wrong to you, you’re in the wrong.
3. If you seek help from someone or go all by yourself, don’t expect anything from me. I can’t see you not accepting abuse.
4. If something happens to you, only the perpetrator will be heard and what he says should be accepted as truth.
5. The perpetrators are honest, calm, collectable, truthful and compassionate people. You’re flawed.
Love empowers. Hate disempowers, enslaved you, blindly toils to take away the right to your own life.
Love and survival, two most powerful words that symbolize the commanding forces of nature. Love is spirit and isn’t tied to merely romance. It could be your mother, father, teacher, colleague, neighbour, stranger, friend, daughter, guru, virtually anyone that might have come to your mind by now. Yet it’s the most profound emotion, the greatest romance of your life. It’s the expedition that takes a lifetime to embark upon and that goes beyond many lifetimes to flourish before coming to fruition. It ends only when the distinction between you and your beloved is dissolved. And it becomes a part of you without leaving a trace, remains forever with you. Because it has always been you.
Every night in my dreams I see you, I feel you….🎼🎼🎼
Love is not just praise or attention. It’s neither an obligation nor a choice but the indigenous language of your soul. The song that is composed solely for you and your beloved… It will never evade you. Heaven forbid, don’t try to avoid it! You’ll be worsted and crushed, eventually ruined to dust and to your utter astonishment, it’ll still be flying in the face of all moral cants and thorny hedges of societal edicts. Its profoundness will engulf you, smash you, throttle you in millions unimaginable ways. You will fight for the last scrape of your being until nothing is left as you. And it will transform you into the person you really are, the aroma mingled with your soul. You will be reacquainted with yourself and with the world in a way you never thought is possible. So how do you recognise it? Does this question still merit an answer? To be honest, yes. Sometimes, you can’t recognise love unless you recognise hatred. So here I am juxtaposing love against contempt and malice —
1. Love is the song of your soul, hymns of your heart, that instantly strikes a chord with you and you instinctively recognize it. You feel loved, validated, and praised even without explicit validation.
Hatred, on the other hand, is the absence of love that keeps you deprived, always gives you a rush-about, and remains uncommunicable. You feel this dearth and feel invalidated despite the fawning.
2. Love opens you up to the world. By the canon of nature when you bloom outside, you bloom inside and vice-versa. It’s the most telling sign of love. Love always brings you back home ~ to you.
Hatred blocks you, your possibilities, your expressions in the world. Blocked inside, blocked outside. You stop listening to your inner voice and rush to appease others that goes against the voice of your own soul. To find your worth in someone else.
3. Love is your strength, makes you courageous. An invisible shield that guards and protects you from the evil and obstacles that reside within and without.
Hatred makes you feel unsafe, unworthy, wants to enslave you, compromise your truth, your real nature, your dignity.
4. Love is trust, freedom and faith. Your personal power.
Hatred, envy is mistrustful, insecure, slavery, lack of faith and enmeshed. It’s the want of power.
6. Love cannot be thrust upon, disowned or ruled. Love doesn’t imposes.
Hatred forces, demands, wants to rule and disowns.
7. Your heart might swell with pride when someone grants you praise, attention meets your needs or desires but all these are unwritten codes of survival.
But love is your very nature, the might of your soul, the state of being, the sacredness and purity of heart that your soul knows, instinctively identifies in others. Love reflects in your life, your decisions.
8. Love never controls, it doesn’t need to. Love is calm, is bliss.
Spite is the lack of personal power and strength, it’s chaos.
” When survival meets love, life is in harmony and it’s healthy living. When survival meets hatred, it’s wrong living.”
My attic never blocked out autumn from lavishing me with buttery rays of Sun. Curled up in a ball I lay there on the bed of scrunchy leaves unless my feral friends eavesdrop on my noiseless moan. I have heard of those legendary beasts bracing up. The rustle of rich burrito drifting past me as the fettered beasts are roused from their slumber. Howling and frantically aching to flex their strapping wings to gauze the azure of the sky with their wingspan and balance the universe along the interstices between the beatings of the wing.
Tulips
And yet away from the glare of public circumspection I am listening to the quiet gurgle of the pandanus brook brimming over with fragrant roseate cordial. Caught up in an endless fusillade of the petals of mountain lilies through weeny gestures of your lush gander that gives me ample soaking, I vamoose from the eternal hunt of the argus-eyed beasts and keep the flatterers at arm’s length as the raging inferno of longing wolfs down everything that gets into its way.
Here is an invitation to writers and dreamers to submit their work for the upcoming anthology – Quiet Pulls to be published by Spectrum of Thoughts.
Theme -: The book outlines the inexplicable mysteries of the soul beyond the bounds of rationalism. Genre -: Open Language -: Hindi, English Entry Fees -: Rs 250 Submission ends on -: 15th September 2021.
The publication is focusing on providing substantial exposure to new and talented writers still in the queue. It’s a great opportunity for budding writers to have their work published. Anyone interested should ping me on my WhatsApp no – 8953332095.
I stretched my legs on the deck and drew in, letting the wild smoke fill my lungs. I loved the naughty nips of the sensual vermilion evening. A few yards away Sunny was gazing at the horizon across the blue ocean, through her dark glasses, slowly melting into the salty water. She wrapped her paisley print babushka around her neck and gathered her skirt in her hand.
I felt peckish and scouted for someone to inquire about it. They were still leering at my collar bones, the way I endeared myself to them. The intoxicating aroma of hummus emanated from the kitchen reminding me how starved I was…
Brumal tales woven through the fringe of her eyelashes, her eyes curled in soft crinkles. Her gaze, habitually aloof, drifted outside the thatched cottage.
” How did you come to know that drover?” he asked sternly.
Suddenly her luscious eyes grew paler. Her glassy face mirrored the embers crackling ahead of her.
” I saw him.” at long last she said sheepishly.
Her glance drifted back to the door.
“When? When did you see him?”
“Everyday.”
“…”
” I listened to the canorous song of his lush, luminous eyes. They last forever.” Grief was etched into her face and her voice cracked…
” He looked at me as though I was the only thing he could see…as though I was his universe.” She went on.
“And you went to him to offer him gratitude, didn’t you?” He said coldly.
” Initially, he was my enemy. I was cosying up with him. I was dropping hints but he…he didn’t seem to cotton on.”
“…And you rushed to give him a hug.” His voice grew coarser.
” I….I was zombified and….and just conked out in his arms on our way home…”
” And you doubled up with him since there was hardly any room to swing a cat here?” Said the inspector running his eyes around and his unkind voice broke into cackles.
” Yes Sir” surprisingly her voice was calm and brooked no offence.
” We cooped up in the hut for three days due to unremitting blizzard and hailstorm. The area was heavily clogged up”
” So, he was your esteemed guest for three days straight and you must be feeling obliged to serve him with delicious meals and generous hospitality?”
The constable waiting outside looked cheesed off and was grovelling on the floor.
” No sir” she let out after a pause.
” We barely ate anything. Just some apples and bananas. We had to keep each other warm to stay alive.” She seemed to be choking back her tears. Her gaze drifted back to the majestic hills.
He looked a wee nonplused. After stealing a glance at her puffed up belly the inspector chewed on for a while.
” I gotta scram now. Give me a buzz if you ever need any help. I am just a thought away. And take good care of yourself.” He said dotingly.
I feel so thrilled to share an old post that I inadvertently came across today. Hope you enjoy it. Happy reading!
Love is love.
Those impassioned, rhapsodic lyrics undulated gently upon my ears in a sublime mellifluous cadence. An irresistible power devoutly cajoled me into discovering the source of sweetness. Driving through the night I desperately peered into the darkness, too dense to read the milestones. The discomfort was beyond my kin and the enigma haunted me ever since.
It could be that our serendipitous rendezvous was part of a grand design and I caught the same voice once again after a short sojourn in France. I could recognize the haunting sweetness of your compelling voice even with my eyes closed. And suddenly you were right before me. Attired in a meticulously hand-embroidered lehenga highlighted with zardozi, crystals and deep-sea pearls, embracing your deeply romantic decadence, you were standing ablaze. Unflushtered under the unblinking gaze of suitors, you manifested no fear and allowed no one. Your centre-parted sleek hair and perfectly carved body accessorized with a rose-cut diamond choker and diamond studs polished your statement look. With your elegantly phrased arguments, you won many hearts. Your charm was unmistaken.
Mesmerised and unable to take my gaze off you, I ambled up to you and all of a sudden you whirled back as though you already discerned my footsteps. Our eyes met and abruptly the world stopped spinning. I was in a trance. Aeons flew away in the blink, unnoticed and uncared by the world. I cannot forget that hypnotic gaze, Supriya!
You were a congenial company and quickly after a formal introduction we were talking about trifling matters and in no time we became close friends. From that moment on, life was a gathering of stars that overflowed with chuckle and mirth. A vivacious Athena, you struck up harps, lutes, joyful drums and gay flutes. You spritzed millions of tiny droplets of ice-cold scented water on my barren soul with your delightful presence. You graced my life with your lenity, endearing charm and expensive wisdom. Cheerful and gay, may I compare you with a tree endlessly blooming whilst I was lying underneath? I could even scent the roses perched atop your elaborated coiffure! How could we know we were on the verge of falling so deeply in love? Unknowingly we trod in the throbbing world of amorous youth and unfettered passion as we walked hand in hand. Latched into each other’s arms, we kissed passionately and made love amidst the soft lapping of water on the seashore, and the rustle of the breeze through the swaying leaves of the trees. Life was flourishing and it was all cakes and ale. It must be the case that the bitterness I gathered in past many lives melted into a luscious chocolate swirl of yours. A little of what you fancy assuredly does you good. Oftentimes, I looked at you with sheer awe, how a quintessential lover and the loveliest of all belle found her home in a blowsy woman’s heart living a quotidian and mundane life, at the age when girls swoon over tall, dark and handsome men. Sometimes, you led me to the sylvan surroundings, verdant valleys and joyous rivers flanked by unkempt lush green meadows wooded with aged deciduous trees. On occasions, I kipped beneath a huge oak tree after basking in the uncommonly beautiful blue and gold coloured sunset.
Love is indeed blind. How could we forget that society called us a name and such pure love is stigmatized as the last resort for marital union, So much as dismissed altogether in the garb of rigid and ruthless societal norms? Dark clouds of unforeseen future loomed large on the horizon. And the fateful day arrived when a messenger conveyed me the news that you will soon be in my ramshackle cottage. Lay at the door of some unrecognisable fear, Supriya, I lapsed into oblivion, deeper and deeper, as the hour of tryst drew closer. In my woeful ignorance, I disregarded you. Large tears might have welled up in your innocent eyes, nevertheless, you internalised your pain. That’s when things between us began to crumble. Fate cruelly intervened and gave us a ticket to different days. Two star-crossed lovers drifted apart yet my words can never betray the indescribable mysteries of the souls.
After you were gone, life was a sullen sunless sky. I came to know about your wedding. I propped up the bar and drowned myself in drinking and smoking regularly which helped me forget the mud and worms, their tickles and the lost souls. I was afraid that the downward pull would again pull me back into the dark pit of suicidal thoughts. I plunged into the pit of despair and became sullen and uncommunicative. In a deeply intoxicated state, I acted like a maniac and went to your man to hurl torrents of abuse and curses at you. I knew you were always somewhere in the near vicinity but I turned a blind eye. An unheralded yawning crevasse had emerged between us. Oh, beloved Supriya, how could you endure such pain? On your baby shower fiesta, I acted indifferently. I deeply regret my brutish impertinence and wish your children to live healthy and happy life. May their innocent smiles and chortles bestow you the bliss that anyone in the universe can only dream of.
In your absence, I sluggishly heaved my life on a lonesome path and without committing to anyone I gave birth to three ailing, pale children. Presently, I have weaned my children off but they still don’t earn their bread and butter. Nowadays, sometimes I leave them a meal to survive a few more days but I have nothing to keep the wolf from the door. I can’t say how long the precarious state of my family will persist. Owing to the fading youth, my lips are withered and hair has grown coarser. Sanguinely, my offsprings will find better parents as I am leaving them at the mercy of astral influence in this harsh and unkind world.
As the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder, I still have a heart which is stout to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrow. I find myself enormously grateful for your lively and graceful presence in my life. A rose is a rose is a rose! The day is drawing neigh when your heart will soften to grant me amnesty and you will say yes. I would consider myself the luckiest woman in human history to lead my beloved to the altar. Say yes, Supriya!
P.S: The story is my humble contribution to support LGBT rights.
You must be logged in to post a comment.