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Openings and Closings..
Openings and Closings.. I keep opening you in my dreams, in my songs, in my search for reasons in my reasons for living layers after layers, thoughts after thoughts like those nesting Russian dolls And by some strange magic you become bigger and bigger in my dreams, in my songs thoughts after thoughts as if i am not opening you but closing my self into a bigger you 7 Jan 2015 luxembourg
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Hints
Hints Like slight hints of cinnamon and cloves whispering songs of antiquity in a perfume full of wild roses of Isparta I feel you… in those hints of life. Missing… yet so much there all present , yet all hiding As if, though covered in thousand veils of silk curtains in concrete medieval fortresses in skies after skies of surrounding nudity, Yet all these efforts of veiling reveals you more and more.. Like a universe revealing itself in the eyes of the smallest Babushka doll. And I write these songs of longing and hope in pursuit of those slightest hints of cinnamon and cloves. And i wonder If , in…
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These days and nights
These days and nights Smiling…and smiling again, your thoughts awakes me. Taking those long deep breaths, I smell my morning tea Observing those Rooibos thoughts of you simmering… infusing….blending giving their better selves to hot water… (In those moments I think one should live life like a tea) Stopping by the traffic signal Watching one of us, two raindrops sliding slowly on the windscreen The one moving faster than the other asks ,Why? All day Fingers speak and eyes listen the dance of the dots, on a one ft screen. The keyboard beats like a heart beat The real heart beats somewhere else And in that somewhere place I find…
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Ode to a broken Hair
Ode to a Broken hair Tangled-up in a purple sweater, a broken long blonde hair. soaked in some free moments of yesterdays Twisting, moaning ,imprisoned in time (Not willing to give up it’s momentary existence) An iceberg, a sun, traveling, moving country by country heart by heart Carrying along, cold snow of so many winters Different places, so many people, just one story. A grandmother near a window, holding an empty pot of a ‘gone flower’ A grandfather, with smoky bearings somewhere up in the skies, smiling A mother, concerned of her grownup children A father, thinking, who will show up next smiling. Generations of unborn children dancing in a…
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Desire Imprisoned
“Desire”, imprisoned in this long, vast prison of “Life”. Just like remembering an old forgotten melody tries to find herself… Her feet of “thoughts” tired of so much walking in the dark beg her to stop and rest for a while But “Desire” What can a “Desire” do When this mighty black monster of “being-ness” With a leather whip soaked in with still wet memories reminds her of passing time. And even with this 4th cup of Bitter coffee in Stockholm central station this distance of just one lifetime between you and me does not seem to end S. (Verses born in the midst of discussions with self) Stockholm
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Guatemala Diaries Part- II
The climb to Mount Pacaya was steep and I was sweating like hell, though this time it was not out of working my way up but because of the hot land of this volcanic mountain. The trek was hell black with volcanic rocks, where few months back the eruption destroyed seven hundred houses nearby. It was just 20minutes on the trek and one can already feel the heat around.This was my second visit to Guatemala after two years. Nothing was changed. For some reason I was remembering my dialogues with her two years back. Your theory of natural abundance and connectivity makes sense, i said, but what if people donot…
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Hammam… Human dirt, Wars
It was a hundred year old Hammam building, in the middle of a nowhere town in eastern turkey. Dirty, rusted, tiled up with old bricks, and like all Hammams had that distinguished smell of decades of dirt coming out of thousands of souls, scrubbed, massaged and cleaned to purity every day. As per the owner of the hammam, business used to be good in old days but now people seldom come. But today was Baiyram Night (Muslim Eid festival) and alot of people , mostly living in big cities were here to re-cherish their roots and identity. The town itself is called ‘Kangal’ and as the name suggests have nothing…
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Konya Flashbacks….
“But is it really possible to find beauty in the most imperfect of things” asked the novice Sufi to his Sufi Master. The Master smiled. In that smile, were images of years and years of memories, of joyful and sad experiences, of lost and re-found love, of hopeful desires and fearful reasons. The Master remembered his own time years back when he was young and asked the grandmaster a similar question on how to find true happiness when all things are so imperfect. He remembered his own disillusions and then the moments of epiphany where he finally realized, it’s not about finding happiness in life but creating it and often with…
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The tavern of my mind
The Sufi was the last person to enter the tavern. There had been a fierce argument going on the table of wisdom. Feelings showing their emotions, passions seeking their ideals, imagination was skyrocketing here and there with a total disregard of the achieved harmony and balance in life, and rationality speaking more with fears than with hope. All of them were trying to convince the self that they know better and that the self should follow their preferred way. For the owner of the tavern, it was one of those days when he had to worry about broken chairs and wounded faces, though he also knew in the deepest corners…
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Magnolia blossoms…
The season of yellow leaves and frightened trees is gone. Life is coming back to life. Luxembourg is blossoming… You see Neruda today sitting on a bench in a park. He seems lost in looking at two teenage girls on the grass, reading perhaps a naive love novel together and giggling for no reason. Just nearby a big magnolia tree is shouting at each passerby, “It is spring, it is spring, see what spring has done to me”. You take the seat with Neruda. Neruda looks at you and smiles, and you know what is buzzing in his mind and he too knows, what you are thinking….. I go so…
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First meetup . Bookclub – Luxembourg
For some old and rather odd reasoning, I always thought of Europe as a place of lonely individuals with shallow relationships and similar views about the depth-ness of communal life, a place where all values and ethics revolves around the individual self and one has to feel that loneliness to become a European. Was this because of my time spent in middleast and Africa ? where people are expected of thinking of others as a part of their own extended selves? and life is not just a collection of dots but a one big existence; in Shakespearean term full of sounds and fury? My time in Europe this time is…
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Joberg.. Another story unfolded…..
All that time i was trying to realize if she was a good salesgirl or a good human being. I ended up buying couple of skin products apparently originating from the dead sea in Israel from her, even though i knew i was paying more money then i should. I think i figured out her to be a good human being in the end. It was almost a small story unfolded there in that busy Sandton city mall in Johannesburg(S.Africa) where the big smiling statue of Mandela gives hope to all humanity. I was in Joberg on business and found few hours before the flight to buy some last minute…
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The dancing girls of Dar…
Dear Ertyaas, I should have taken you to watch the dancing girls of Dar, when you were here. You can call it my inflamed sense of protectionism or may be i wanted to keep something for you and me to come to Dar in the distant future. You had your Pani Puris and Indian food tasting here but the subcontinent is not just exporting food. There is a thriving and not so underground culture of dancing bars here as well , kind of a mini Chandni Chowk or Rung-mehal in the heart of Africa… can you imagine that!!! It was some months back when an office colleague told me about…
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Guatemala Diaries Part-1
“The only way to really connect with someone is if you are willing to connect to his/her dreams and reality” she said. “But what about my own dreams and my reality” “Why do you want to connect in the first place if you are so concerned about your own dreams and reality? ” I was visiting Guatemala City for business. The hotel lobby Having taken a long transatlantic flight I was feeling jet-lagged so I went to the hotel lobby. I found her there. She was there for some conference on Central American economy.I asked her if she knows English, and there we started, from basic small talk to politics…
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Zanzibar Dreams….
I remember it happened to me some time back, I was traveling a lot back then, and one day I woke up unable to remember which country I am waking up into, the hotel rooms all look the same after a while. Took me some time to figure out I was in a west-african country with noisy Atlantic ocean. But that was nothing compared to what happened to me this time when i woke up. I was visiting Zanzibar islands and for a change stayed in the old town, in a 500 year old building converted into a hotel, with colored glasses and extended Jharokay (جھروکے balconies) made of wood,…
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دھوئیں میں تجھ کو ڈھونڈتے رہنے کی عادت هو گئی تھی
دھوئیں میں تجھ کو ڈھونڈتے رہنے کی عادت هو گئی تھی میں جلتا تھا اس لئے، مجھے بجھنے کی عادت هو گئی تھی خیالوں کے اس نگر کی، وہ اونچی سی چوٹی میری سانسوں میں، جینے کی کہاوت ہو گئی تھی اندھیرا تھا ، مگر پھر بھی روشنی سے بڑھ کر تھا نہ کچھ دکھتا تھا ، مگر مجھ کو محبّت ھو گئی تھی کہانی لکھنے والے ، سمجھتے تھے کے انجام ممکن ہے کہانی جینے والوں پر ، ہر ایک لمحہ قیامت ھو گئی تھی زمانوں سے نکلےتنہا ستاروں کا کہنا تھاکے ‘دوری’ سے فلک کا حسن قائم رکھنے کی ، ہدایت ھو گئی تھی میں، تنہا تھا ،…
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Worlds, thresholds, year ends…..
We all create worlds around us. Worlds with self given names, desired dynamics and associated predictability… be it a world of business or worldly relationships where we want ourselves to act in a chosen way for a desired outcome OR a personal world where like a painter’s canvas we expose ourselves to the mercy of other beings who we think have all the rights to create us. This creating of worlds in the midst of controllable and uncontrollable predictability is sometimes i think what we call as living life. I am seeing every day, people around me creating, non-stoppingly, different worlds of all sorts, dark and horny worlds where the…
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Saffron Stockholm nights…
“We Swedish love saffron in our foods” she said. It was my last days in the cold windy Stockholm and I was invited for dinner at her place… the apartment was kaleidoscopic in its own humble way… as if the the colors of time and space were dancing all around her living room, sometimes beaming with oldness and the coziness that comes with old buildings , and then as you look on the other side the contemporary sofas and sitting tables and ipads and lcd screens brings you to present times… seeing on one side the African handicrafts hanging around, takes you back to the continent of raw hope, and…
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Masoomiyet Muzesi (The museum of innocence in Turkish)
Dear Ertyaas, Your butterflies are not leaving me anywhere in the world. They start flying from the books of Gabo, they show themselves in the museums of your city, and now this time this single one appears in this first shelf of Masoomiyet Muzesi, the house of Kemal where he is collecting all the objects that reminded him of her beloved Fusun. I was standing in front of this shelf carrying the ear-ring of Fuson’s in the form of this tiny little butterfly about to fly into the unknown, and i was thinking of you….. Orhan Pamuk who built this museum of innocence in downtown Istanbul once said that, “If…
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Inner most desires…
Its funny, whenever I ask someone what his/her inner most desire is, they always tell me of their fears. Then I have to correct them, telling, I am not asking about their inner most fears but inner most desires. Is it something to do with the uncertain times we are living in, that people have forgotten the difference between desires and fears, or is it the fear taking over our inner most pure desires like a virus, to the extent that we have forgotten the difference…. It was Ertyaas, who asked me the same question first time, about what my inner most desire is. I still remember we were sitting…
