VERSIFICATION (EVOLUTION OF POETRY--3)

“THAT IT WILL NEVER COME AGAIN

 IS WHAT MAKES LIFE SO SWEET”

                            --EMILY DICKINSON

I was passing through a very depressive state. There was a huge lot to study but I wasn’t game. I was bored. The future was beckoning the present to make it. Looking at the old diary I can see I have written 10.45 p.m on December 7. The night must have been cold as is in Faridabad in all Decembers. I must have been trying to study when I wrote this:

THE NIGHT IS DARK,

THE STREET LAMP BURNING

A COLD WIND BLOWS

NOT A SOUL NOW AT SIGHT

THOUGH DISTANT SOUNDS OF VEHICLES

PIERCES THE SILENCE

THEN A TREE CAUGHT MY EYE

STANDING ALONE DECKED WITH FLOWERS

BATHED IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAMP

MY THOUGHTS WANDER AS IN A TRANCE

LEAFING THROUGH THE ALBUM OF MY PAST

I FORGET THE NIGHT AND THE WINDS

TO LOSE MYSELF IN MY THOUGHTS.

I must not have scribbled much in December because the next verses were penned in Jan 1994. Must have felt extremely depressed as I find death wish coming inside my verses-the kind which considers death to be a relieving force or an escape. To make death more attractive I have personified death as a feminine gender which is uncommon in English..:

THE VOICES HAVE GONE FAR

NOW LONELINESS CREEPS OVER ME

WITH ONLY SILENCE FOR MY COMPANY

I WAIT LONGINGLY FOR DEAR DEATH

TRYING TO HEAR HER SOFT FOOTSTEPS

FOR LOSING MYSELF IN HER HAIR

AND TO LET THE DARKNESS ENVELOP ME…..

In spite of the depressions I did have moments of happiness mostly supplied by my memories but what those memories were  I have no idea.The verses also doesn’t mean much and fails to interest me now:

Just the mere thoughts

Of thy glowing face

Lights up the path I trace

The lovely times shared together

I joyously do remember

Fighting,flirting,loving and joking

Just to make the days memorable

I know it is futile to live in the past

But neither can I forget so charming a past.

The next is definitely an under pressure verse. The pressure of exams were on me. So much to cover and so little time:

THE GODS ARE BREATHING OVER MY NECK

I CEASE TO BE WHAT I AM OR WHAT I SHOULD BE

I HAVE LIVED MY LIFE

BUT STILL THE PAST BECKONS ME

TO LIVE IT AGAIN

IT IS A PITY THAT DAYS FOLLOW NIGHTS

AND THE NIGHT FOLLOWS DAYS

I FEEL A BLANKET OF DOOM

DESCENDING OVER MY HEART

AS THE CLOCK TICKS BY……….

The depression continued….But I find some rhyming entering my verses

 I FONDLED WITH CARE

THE GLORIOUS ICONS OF GLOOM

USING MY OWN BLOOD

TO MAKE THE FLOWERS BLOOM

EVEN AS DID GLOOM FLOOD

I LOVED THEM WITH ALL MY HEART

BUT MY BODY PIERCED WITH THOUSAND DARTS

WAS NO LONGER FIT TO HOLD THEM FAST

AND SO I WATCHED MY DARLINGS SLIP PAST

The next verse had a small heading in Latin on it. I don’t remember why I wrote such a heading. I had written “desunt cetera”. I don’t know the meaning. I have searched the net and found it means “the rest is missing”.Cannot recall why I wrote such a name for the following verse.:

 HE WILL COME

WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF LOVE

EMBRACING ME

PRESSING ME TO HIM

WRAPPING A DARK WARM CLOAK

AROUND MY BATTERED SOUL

I SHALL FLY UP,UP AND UP

ABOVE THIS CURSED WORLD WOULD RISE

AND GO WITH HIM TO HIS DARK WORLD

AND MINGLE WITH THOSE TIRED OF TRIALS

Looking back only the last two lines I find readable.  Just beneath the verses I had penned:

THE PAST BECKONS

THE PRESENT SNARLS,GROWLS AND BITES

THE FUTURE BARES ITS FANGS

SHOULD I COUNT UP OR DOWN

Funny……..very funny.. the way the adolescent mind wanders……………..

For satisfying the romantic in my heart……perhaps the increasing vocabulary of my formative years helped me rhyme new words and as was natural for a young boy to write about love as adolescent hormones were searching for ways to attract mates so I wrote:

MONTHS HAVE FLOWN BY

YOUR VISIONS HAVE FADED

STILL MY SPIRITS ARE HIGH

FOR MY LOVE HAS NOT JADED.

                                       LIFE HAS BECOME LIKE RITUALS,

                                      DEVOID OF ANY COLORS

                                        LOST ARE YOUR VISUALS

                                      USELESS SEEM MY LABORS.

IN THE EARLY HOURS OF DAWN

YOU VENTURE INTO MY DREAMS

FOR STROLLING IN THE LAWN

AND SWIMMING IN THE STREAMS.

                             SO REAL THOUGH A DREAM IT SEEMS

                             THERE FOR ME TO TOUCH AND FEEL

                              I KNOW IN SLEEP MY FACE BEAMS

                              AND THE SCARS IN MY HEART WILL HEAL.   

 RHYMING CONTINUED……:

IN MY MIND DID I FALTER,

THE IMAGE IN MY HEART DID I ALTER,

IN MY LOVE DID I FUMBLE,

OR IN MY PATH DID I STUMBLE.

               CAN MY LOVE BE SO WEAK?

               OR WAS MY HEART SO MEEK?

                DID IT GIVE IN TO SOME PASSION?

               WILL THEE BLAME ME OF MENTAL LIASON?

NAY, NAY NEVER CAN IT BE.

NO OTHER FACE DO I WISH TO SEE

THOU I CAN NEVER EVER FORSAKE

AND NON ELSE MY MATE WISH TO MAKE.

In 1996   I received a letter from one of my seniors trying to pep me up …pull me up from my homesickness in the hostel…….I decided to write again….a reply to that letter was as follows……..later I named it NOSTALGIA…..it was as follows:

TRUE THAT I CAN’T LIVE,

IN THE TIMES GONE PAST,

NOR IN MY MEMORIES THRIVE,

WITH THE DAYS GOING FAST.

         YET THE DAYS PULL AT ME,

         IN MY LONELY HAUNTING THOUGHTS,        

         TO RETROSPECT AND TO SEE,

         THE PAST HAVES AND PRESENT NOUGHTS.

FUTILE  I KNOW IS MY LOVE,

FOR THE DAYS GONE BY,

MAY BE ITS TIME NOW TO BOW,

AFORE THINGS MORE HIGH.

                  NO ADVICE DOES MY HEART HEAR,

                  FOR THIS LONELINESS IT CANNOT BEAR,

                  THE PATH I TREAD HAS NO END,

                   BUT HAS FLOWERS AT EVERY BEND.

THE HORIZONS THAT LOOK BRIGHT,

GIVE US BUT FOOLISH HOPE,

AND WITH WORDS THAT ARE TRITE,

DOES WITH SORROW OUR HEART COPE.

EVOLUTION OF (MY) POETRY-PART-2

THE VERSES GET A BIT LONGER…………..

The second stage came while I was in my  +2 classes. The pressure of peers and studies were bogging me down..It was not so much about letting down the expectations of near ones as much as the fear that all your friends might make it and you might be left out that was pressurizing. Looking back it is surprising that we had so little choice then.There were choices but somehow it was kind of “follow the leader” kind of game. Everyone who was doing science was expected to try for medicine and surgery. Students now are more resourceful and gutsy to try out new things.

            One thing making up verses did to me was it made me more sensitive to my surroundings. The quality of verses had nothing to do with it. I was becoming more receptive to nature, noticing small things around me, personifying objects.everything was live, communicating to me. May be that’s the reason why meditators all round the world supported artistic qualities. Painting,poetry,music,dance all was nothing short of meditation.It made you more alive more aware. Incorporating these in their meditation techniques new age “guru”s have made millions.

          
The verses I wrote had a depressive feel about it it seems but I had tried to end it often on a hopeful note. Hope was created with some imagination though. The back ground of each verses  I don’t clearly remember,but vague images are there.

It was winter in Faridabad. The evenings were cold and silent. Our garden was in full bloom but standing alone there made you a bit melancholy:

THE WINTER WINDS WERE RAGING

THE COLD SWORDS OF NATURE PIERCING

AND I AMIDST THE FOG AND MIST

WAS WONDERING FOR WANT OF LIGHT AND WARMTH

AND THEN PERCHANCE I CAME UPON YOUR DOOR

TO BEHOLD YOUR SMILING FACE BEAMING ON ME

YOUR EYES HAD ALL THE LIGHT OF THE SHINING STARS

IN YOUR BENIGN PRESENCE THE WARMTH MY HEART LONGED FOR

     Reading it now I am reminded of Raj Kapoor’s “jaagtey raho “ last scene. May be that inspired me in the dreary winter.

         
 In our eleventh class  we were supposed to do a project  in each of our science subject. I had selected “ash analysis” as my  chemistry project. It required me to collect leaves of plants ,dry it and then burn it. Collect the ashes and do salt analysis on it to find what it contained.Each sample was labeled as after it is reduced to ash it was hard to say which was a rose and which was from the "ber" tree. I had then written:

ASHES SHOULD I CRY OVER YOU

YOUR PAST UNKNOWN ,YOUR FUTURE UNCERTAIN,

NO ONE TO PRAISE ,NOR ANYONE TO ADMIRE,

BUT THEN SOME SAY YOU DO HAVE HOPE

WHEN YOU WED THE SOIL TO BECOME ALIVE AGAIN.

           

                I came across a feather  in the play ground. If you watch the texture of a feather you can but admire it. But I pondered:

 FEATHERS DROP

  OR ARE THEY DROPPED?

   THAT THEY MAY NOT HAMPER THE FLIGHT

   THEY DROP WHEN “THEY” FIGHT

    OR DURING A SUDDEN TAKE OFF

    AND SOMETIMES WITH NO REASON.

    HOW HARD IS THE PARTING

    ON THE FEATHER OF THE BODY

    NEVER DOES THE BODY WAIT TO PONDER.”

            At the school we used to go to the play ground with our lunch boxes during our recess. Sit in the shade of some tree and eat together. After finishing the lunch we just loitered around. Sitting in the grass my eyes came upon  a tiny flower in the grass just in front of where I was sitting. It was a single flower. Tiny that it was hidden by the grass. Perhaps the purpose of the flower to be there at that moment was to trigger the following lines:

THERE UNDER THE BRIGHT SUN

IS A SPOT OF DARKNESS

NO ONE SEES IT ECLIPSED BY THE LIGHT

BUT NEVERTHELESS THE SPOT IS DARK

DARK AS THE DARKEST OF THE NIGHTS

BENEATH THE SPOT HIDDEN BY THE GRASS

IS A TINY PINK FLOWER

CRUSHED AND BRUISED ARE ITS PETALS

NOT KNOWING IF TO CURSE THE FEET THAT CRUSHED

  
           I came across the following lines-DUM SPIRO SPERO—While I breathe,I hope I wrote under those lines:

“Hope never dies

It just goes below the surface

Only to pop up again

With greater vigour and vitality.”

                   I don’t really remember why I wrote the following lines. It was written in 1993.That is clear from my diary. Something had hurt me. Isn’t it strange the same things which hurts us so strongly  become so trivial that we do not even remember them after a while. If only we could whenever we are hurt, stop and think how we would rate an incident 20 years later  we would be a forgiving race of human beings.----

LOST ARE THE TIMES

A CHAPTER OF MY LIFE CLOSED

LEAVING ME WOUNDED,BLEEDING AND SHATTERED

NO DOUBT THEY WILL HEAL

FOR LONG IS THE ROAD I TREAD

BUT SCARS WOULD REMAIN

TO REMIND ME OF THE TIMES

BUT GREAT ARE MY HOPES FOR THE MORROW.

Funny thing is now even the scars are not there and I was never hence reminded of the "times". I might  have made the same mistake twice ……since I did not remember…."the times".

                                                      WITH THE FOSSIL(S)( TREE)

THE EVOLUTION OF (MY) POETRY

                                                 BLISS WHEN ONE WITH NATURE

                         I should have inherited poetry in my genes going by my father’s interest in poetry. But I had this extreme hatred for memorizing things. It was always  “read, understand, reproduce” for me. Hence poetry was not something I liked. Since I was good at speaking out in class most of my teachers had  a belief that I might do well on stage items. To please them I often got on stage but personally knew I was not so good. The problem was I could not(read -would not) memorize prepared items and forgot  in between. Most of the prizes I won were because my competitors were worse and I was not proud of those prizes. Thanks to my father and initial good schools I attended my language was good. In fact I now feel it was better than what it is now. Since my father was a voracious reader who read widely and did not focus on a particular type I traversed the same path. After rhymes and multiplication tables I thought days of memorizing were over.

          
But then life I have found is there for a purpose-it will steer you towards those very things that you want to escape. Many who while learning driving would have experienced it. If you see a stone or something at a distance and strongly want to avoid it often we find ourselves steering the vehicle to that area subconsciously. We get what we want very strongly. People have since ages known it. Some called it prayers. They  would go on to say if you prayed really “hard” your prayers would be answered. Little do they know our thoughts and nature connive to make it happen. Of course  we blame it on an external power—God. The other fact is that those things that we hate often chase us down. If we are loving something and hating the opposite of what we love simultaneously chances are more that we come upon the object of our hatred sooner—as  hate is a stronger feeling than love.We do more extreme,more irrational things in hate than in love . So if you seek something you love make sure  not to hate the opposite or else….

      
In my case I had a revulsion for memorizing  and I came upon the career which to take wings required me to memorize not just simple poems but entire chapters and books. The above part was  an introduction why there was no reason for me to go after poetry in spite of the books in my father’s collections. He still has a lot of urdu poetry books-Ghalib,Mir and other books in hindi, I remember H.R. Bacchhan’s “madhubala” and “madhushala”to name a few. Occasionally bored  by fiction I used to venture into them and read some poetry especially the parts where beauty and love were explained hoping to impress some girl  somewhere. All movies and mills and boon sort of stories were rife with women and girls who fell head over heels with poets etc….so the notion struck.....even  if it was copied.

    
I always thought poetry was all about rhyming and arranging words in attractive manner. The idea changed after I came across Waltwhitman’s style of poetry….he became my favourite poet then…..I understood how poetry was not about pleasing others but it was more pleasing yourself……a vent for your repressed feelings…….a reprieve from depressed state of mind. It was not ovation that most wrote for, as the best got ovation only after they were long gone.

     
 I found another use of poetry ----was while writing autographs, and filling up greeting cards. After school farewell I had filled up plenty of books for those to whom I seldom talked while  I had the chance.

  
 Apart from a translation I did of a hindipoem  written by a hindi poet who called himself “nirala” I did not do much verses. The translation must have been good as my father was amazed by the deep inner meanings in the lines and immediately said the poem wasn’t written by me! I impishly told him I had translated it  and showed him the original one in hindi. He was impressed by my translation skills then. I even had my English teacher Mrs. Monga impressed by the same poetry but I told her it was translated stuff that took away  all the credit.

The  very first of my verses were written  in 1993 or at least that is the only records I have. I was in school and wrote n a small notebook. I called the notebook “heart beats”. The verses went like this:

MEMORIES LINGER ON

AND REFUSE TO DROWN IN THE SEA OF THOUGHTS

BUT POP UP NOW AND THEN ON THE SURFACE

TO GIVE US HEART ACHES HARD TO BEAR……

I don’t know if “pop up now and then” qualifies in poetry but then that is what I wrote.

The second verse was for an old English teacher who taught me in st.joseph’s convent. She was my class teacher when I was in ninth class which I consider the best period of my schooling. There was so much fun and there was so much to learn in ninth class. I had given her a card on xmas or children’s day and I wanted to make it special so had coined up the following:

IN THE JOURNEY THROUGH MY LIFE

A GENTLE BREEZE OF FRAGRANT FACES PASSED ME

AMONGST THEM WAS YOUR FACE

WHICH STAYED ON BRIGHTER AND CLEARER THAN THE SKY

LONG AFTER THE BREEZE WAS GONE

The third of my verses was written at Okhla railway station after a visit to the international trade fair at pragathi maidan with some of my friends. We were dead tired but had enjoyed ogling at the pretty models at the stalls and were munching on some bread pakodas available at the station. I loved bread pakodas especially from the station. We had gone somewhere in Delhi after pragati maidan and had decided to board our emu at Okhla. May be I had let my fertile imagination run amok with some pretty face at trade fairs……I don’t remember…..but any how it went like this:

FATIGUED ARE MY LEGS

STILL I REGRET NOT

A GLIMPSE OF THY FRIENDLY FACE

SENDS MY SPIRITS SOARING

AGAIN DOES THE LAMPS OF HOPE BURN

THE NECTAR OF LOVE QUENCHING MY THIRST.

Reading back  the verses now I feel I was heavily influenced by the lyrics of hindi movie songs of the times and had taken “inspiration” from them. But then that was inevitable

                                                                             …….to be contd.

                                                   THE VIEW ALWAYS DECEIVES

LOAD SHEDDING

                                THE FEEL OF WET GRASS BENEATH THE FEET

                There is no electricity, it is around 2.15 a.m. My mind is getting clouded…A lot of memories come rushing in. The mosquitoes are buzzing in the ears. Without the fan it is difficult. The humid heat becomes unbearable but somehow my memories keep me calm. Perhaps that is the function of memories. They have always done so for every person. As the present situations worsen and because the future is uncertain, most get solace from their past, and some get strength. May be that is the reason why we find our past better.

               Now as it was hot I had an urge to get inside the blanket! It was a strange habit that I had when I was a kid. When we had first started staying at Faridabad we used to live at 5NH(NeighbourHood) at a house owned by one Mr.Adlakha. His wife was a teacher at Dayanand Anglo Vedic  school at I NH where  my brother and I got admission initially. The house which was rented to us was a portion of ground floor, the other portion owned by another malayalee family of Mr.Kurien. Our portion almost had no windows. In the hot afternoons I remember using a hose to water the walls of our room. The white washed walls would soon soak up the water and the ceiling fan would dry up the water and what remained was a cooled comfortable room. In this room I used to lie on the floor under a blanket. I sweated then the ceiling fan did the same to me what it did to our room.             

                 Thinking back now though we did not have much, the family was together and close. It is difficult for me to make anyone understand the way our family bonded. The relationships were so beautiful. As comforts increase families have ceased to exist. People are now interested in arrangements. Often these arrangements are what we know as families of today. Arrangements where all try to outwit, clash to let their egos tower over the egos of others. When “the fathers were the head of the family and mothers were the heart of the family” children had  better childhoods. With equal rights awareness reaching dizzying heights most families have become double engine trains where often the trains are pulling in the opposite direction and the compartments suffer.

                Near the Adlakha residence there were small stores where you could buy a lot of things. Bottles of sweet soda with a marble to cork it and they were known by the name of marble-“kancha”.Its true in life too .Often the bottles are forgotten the corks  get famous. You could rent comics for 25paise for one day. Evenings you could buy chappattis and sabzi.

                  We started playing cricket with Sonu and Raju, Adlakha’s sons. Due to heat and frequent dust storms in the evening and the ill ventilated house we lived in my mother who was a chronic asthmatic became so sick she had to be hospitalized. Now being a father myself I can but marvel at the way my father handled two children with my mom at the hospital. I had shifted to St.Joseph’s convent near by. We later shifted to one Kishen lal’s rented place which was not far from Adlakha’s.The best feature was it was on first floor and there were big windows with large panes throwing in plenty of light and air.

                          MAY FIREWORKS ADD THE SPARKLE TO THE NIGHT

THE CAUSE OF DISEASES

                  LIFE---ROSES HIDING THORNS AND WHITE CHILLIES THAT
                                    SHOW THEIR COLOUR INSIDE THE MOUTH

For a long time I was wishing to write. May be it is natural that when you imbibe too much you have to purge…..then we don’t just imbibe…..we process what we imbibe then there are wastes which we have to purge out…..in cases where wastes are not  made still when there are products …good things which we make and cannot store we have to get it out……maybe that’s how we write….most of us write….I used to write poetry once upon a time…..it used to come and I wrote for myself….some were good enough to be given for college magazines but I never thought of checking if it was good for anything else. It somehow did not matter…..my ego was satisfied by just seeing my college mates reading them…..may be if I wrote more and my ego had grown I might have sent it to some publisher…..but then one fine day the poetry was no longer there. I did not run after it too.It did not come on my beckoning so no use running after it.

But I have been thinking what had triggered this writing after so long .May be it was the smell of paint…my consulting room was painted yesterday. As I entered the room I was greeted by a strong smell of paint and distemper…..the stimulation took me back….when we were hopping from one rented house to another….the owners would white wash and paint just before we shifted …the smell would be there….we would take time settling down…going to nearby  shops buying what we needed……finding corners in the new houses to keep our belongings….a corner to keep the photographs of our GODS….a corner to keep our trunk boxes……books to be arranged in racks……all these were there somewhere in my brain …these were the times when I used to write …letters, diaries etc….which would be a vent to my creative purging of thoughts…..and then it took just a whiff of smell of paint to bring it all out of some corner in the brain…I can see small electric impulses travelling through the olfactory nerves and stimulating some areas of my brain ….what a wonderful mechanism…..designed to give us joy as much as the pain it can give.

    
Often I have wondered about this mechanism……the thoughts rising inside us….love, hate, insecurity,  the will to live, …the wish to die……all originating in the same brain…….it is surprising how some chemicals….neuro transmitters are capable of creating good .bad and neutral kind of thoughts….with some signals…..the thoughts of a diseased ,prejudiced person are so different from one who is positive in all types of situations….if only we knew what reactions were happening in the positive kind of guy and could simulate the same reactions with some drugs in a person…..there would be no one unhappy in this world…..happiness all around….so much happiness that we would be soon searching for ways to be un happy.

I have often found myself at strange crossroads where I have wondered if I should be happy or sad….I had wanted to be angry but couldn’t…..may be that confusion was my most important personality trait….helping me in situations where patience was required…. For the situation to pass off……but time again this was taken as a weakness on my part…. And I have tried to feign  anger, determination, kindness ….as it was supposed to be so….

Talking about thoughts and its effects on body ..we see people speaking about how hurting words have an effect on them when they are at the receiving end of the words but forgetting all when they are generating the same words. If all words and thoughts are but chemicals reacting in a particular fashion then the thought as well as the words will harm the generator much more than the people who are at the receiving end. The doubts, ill feeling, hatred,scheming all will have chemicals to produce ill effects on the body in which it is produced…the building blocks of good as well as bad thoughts are the same chemicals…but it depends upon us how we design and combine these to create thoughts and words….once created the end product is a harmful chemical which is not expelled from the body…..it affects different parts and results in diseases…and many a doctor in this world will agree many diseases are caused by no reason. Often we see people complaining what have  we done to deserve it….but in reality everybody has got only what they deserved….some are lucky to have ill ness in old age…..it just means the negativities in them were so less that it had accumulated for years to reach the threshold to cause illnesses..

Others had accumulated so fast that they have to suffer in their youth. The concept is not new. An old ayurvedic text “ashtanga  hridaya” which deals with diseases,  prevention and treatments starts the treatise with a shloka which is roughly is translated as “Obeisance be to that extraordinary/rare physician who has destroyed without any residue ,the diseases like raga (the term raga means “kama”(lust),krodha(anger),lobha(greed),mada(arrogance),matsarya(envy), dwesa(hatred),bhaya(fear)and such negative emotions) which are constantly associated with and spread all over the body, giving rise to outsukya(anxiety),moha(delusion) and arati(restlessness)

      All physicians deal with diseases of the body but obeisance is made to extraordinary physician(GOD) who helps in curbing such ill feeling. It is important to note the verse says raga is “constantly associated with and spread all over the body giving rise” to known diseases of the body and mind. More and more the world is awakening to this fact…..exercises are being formulated to purge the negativities…..through music,breath, meditations etc….people are flocking with sacks of money to godmen to tell them positive things which they already know….tell them ways to get rid of their guilt feelings which arise as they do things they know is wrong yet do it but feel relieved when somebody they revere say “go and give bread to a poor fellow…or…put so much money in the church,temple etc….build so and so things for god etc..they do it and feel happy….the negative feelings are replaced with positive feelings which give them a sense of well being….they start getting a reprieve from their existing illness which adds to the Godliness of their spiritual teacher..more people turn followers…

   
Positive feelings are also generated by music and dance and reading….we are seeing music and dance becoming therapies instead fo modes of entertainment. Calm and quiet places are selected for convalescence. Alternative therapies like aura,pranic and reiki are gaining importance…..all are just making the mind quiet….all concentrating on expulsion of negative energies and initiating healing….the negative feeling chemicals getting neutralized by positive feeling chemicals produced inside our body.