parasomnia

Is it now, really?
Better drunk, than angry?
Bitterness is too much of a nuisance;
I would rather this bitter aroma
take over. Like a sweet love-child!
Doe-eyed, full of promises...
Unfulfilled words, and forgotten kisses;
Like the evening light, and
A naked moonshine.
Did we really run out of time?
Too busy
Working on those dreams I never planned.
Failed to notice you weren't around.
Girl! It's a harrow feeling'
Now that it's come to dealing
With facts, and I know you're missing.
I keep waking up... hoping
I was dreaming.
Six years of dreaming, Girl!
But do I have to?
Please tell me,
Do I have to keep realizing?

Riddles

Hint of cedar and oak
As I sip on...
Grain blended, single malt and what not!
Matured mead and whiskey
The gulp of fire running down my chest;
I can't help thinking... I know this wooden aroma,
Why does the whiskey smack of that old tree "We" stood under?
Am I drinking out of my old friend’s corpse?
Ah! Hell.. what does it matter?
“Eat of His flesh, Drink of His blood”...Communion... Salvation
It's all so confusing.
Does the truth even matter?
Can there be a right at all?
Or is it just the whiskey getting to me?
I don't know?
But should I care?

because someone asked me...

So, someone asked me, "When you meet that adamant phantom, and he points his finger right at you and says,'ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee', and you know it's time to write that last page of your diary, what will your last wish be?" Nice question. I can't deny that I've never thought of it. And still it was a bit baffling. Really now, what will it be? I've never really answered that thought before, always having asked it to myself. But now I had to give an answer to someone else. What would it be really?

As I tried to gather my thoughts together, it occurred to me that Death, personified, would really be our oldest friend. That 'adamant phantom' as one aptly put it, is there right from the moment we utter our first cry, promising never to go away. And no matter who you become, what you do with your life, he is one friend who will never judge you, who will never tell you he is too good for you. That's one promise that is never broken, one friend who Will be by your side at the darkest moment of your existence, even if no one else is. So, that way, if we are to believe 'a friend in need is a friend indeed', who can be a better friend? So if I had to ask One thing to my oldest friend, had to make one wish, what would mine be? It was difficult. But once I had put it together, it wasn't so baffling anymore!

What can I say? I guess I will ask Death to show me my whole life in one big slideshow... that way, just before I exit, I will know exactly why it isn't at all unjustified! And be reminded of what exactly made living so worthwhile, all the little memories... savor them all, just before I kiss them goodbye. One last breath to skim through what was, what wasn't and what could have been... hear the old laughters, taste the old tears... one deep breath... one hefty sigh... one last twitch at the corners of my lips. And then exhale. Look death right in the eyes, and smile, "It was great while it lasted. I'm all yours." And then like good old friends, reunited, we shall walk out, shoulder to shoulder, step beside step.

Bildungsroman

MARCH,1986: Curtain-raiser.

March,1988: Surprised toddler, trying to explore the limits of his 6'x8'universe.

MARCH,1989: Toddler's first brawl. Opponent: DEATH Duration: 3 rounds lasting a month each. Winner by TKO: Toddler. Rematch pending.

MARCH,1991: Curious kid annoying most, and amusing rest with his relentless efforts to decode the universe.

MARCH,1994: Kid is surprised at how thin the line between LOVE and EXPECTATION is. Confusion

MARCH,1995: Kid has just realised that he is a rat. And that the other rats are trying to win a race. And that he is in the race too! There is just one block of cheese.

MARCH,1997: Kid sees more cheese where the bigger rats won't look. Hope??

MARCH,1999: Young rat with too many explanations and too many ideas. Convinced that he can elaborate.

MARCH,2000: Young rat bleeds. He didn't draw the first blood. Shocked at the passive in activeness of the ones he called "own".

MARCH,2002: Rat being told that other rats are leaving him behind. But the rat feels, if they could just see from the other end, he is really at the front... by a large margin. Violence. Rat is scared.

MARCH,2003: Rat's first major race. Fancy name too... ICSE. But the rat is beginning to doubt he really isn't a rat. A mouse perhaps? Troubled with something else too. The picture on his ID doesn't match the face in his mirror!

MARCH,2004: Rat did win the race. But they won't let him have the cheese. Says the margin was too close. Rat angry. Whether you win by an inch, or by a mile... winning's winning, right? WRONG, they shout! More violence. Fear turns into frustration... frustration breeds anger. But they are so many.

MARCH,2005: Bliss. Met a white mouse! One who is willing to share her cheese. And doesn't care about inches or miles. Says its better to heal his own wounds than fight back. Willing to show how. Another race coming up. Says lets run together! And does. Rat is happy that he is a mouse after all. Feels secure... after years.

MARCH,2006: Mouse is terrified beyond imagination. White Mouse is gone. The one who who promised to be his mentor has banished her. Says White Mice are bad for health. The world laughs. Says there are other mice to meet, that mentors know best. Pain... terror... pain... anger... pain... hatred... pain... helpless... alone...

MARCH,2007: Evolution!!! Mouse is now an angry, violent, outcast schizophrenic. Mourns the death, long ago, of his new-found idol, his Fuhrer. Reads Mein Kampf. Pain turns into hatred... Hatred breeds Violence, and Violence gives birth to Determination. Codes are broken, scruples are abandoned, rules and regulations have no meaning anymore. Mouse is dead. A new breed is created... a ruthless GO-GETTER... with one goal, VENGEANCE!

MARCH,2008: Another one bites the dust. The next stage of his journey begins. Ready to leave home, and start the training that will let him take the best and the worst of the wold and turn it against itself. Resolution. The strongest man is the one who stands most alone. He will fight fire with fire. If the world makes him cry, he will make it cry with him. Yes! He will leave, a mouse, and return, An Angel... The Angel of Retribution... burning down anyone and everyone who stands in his way. Woe be the day the raccoons decided to hunt an innocent mouse. They asked for a demon, they will get a demon. And the day the transition is complete... The Devil may cry.

MARCH,2009: Realisation. If he was pushed, he only allowed himself to be pushed. The picture on the ID card begins to look familiar.

MARCH,2010: There are sharers still. He only had to put down his guard, and stop suspecting people. Of course it was not easy. But then, if it was he wouldn't have been who he is...at last. The first one to share will always be special, like the first bite of your favorite ice cream. But that will not make him through the rest of it away. Not anymore.

EPILOGUE: Six years... and a man has finally left the shit behind. It took a long time, but at last he has put it all behind him... got past the silliness of it all... rats and races, mice and angels. Strength is now a given. He will never be pushed again. But the very assurance of that strength, so hard earned, is a balm in itself. The need to use it is no longer his Moksha. He will no longer seek answers and explanations from those who had tried to move his cheese. No. Doing that would entail going back down those same dirty streets, back into that filthy gutter where the dung-beetles still dwell. No. Not again. Doesn't matter anymore. None of that sorry crap figures here. He will rather walk down the road less taken. The one they tried to keep him from. Head held high, no thorns at his sides, no stolen gold in his pockets ( may be a few thousand Dollars though... :P lol), and his palms to the sky. And when he sits down under an occasional oak, and talks to the travelling Old Monk, or meet his fellow Walker called Johny, or may be see the Grey Goose fly, his heart will be glad that once he was in a race with rats, and that he had met a white mouse who had shared cheese with him, and given him the faith to look out for more sharers. It will be a good life.



What do I know of the cultured ways?
The gilt, the craft, the lie
I, who was born in a naked land,
And bred under the open sky!
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile,
They fail when the broadswords sing.
So, rush in and die dogs,
I was a man before I was a king;
The phoenix on the sword.
---Cimmerian Folksong---

An Ode to Whiskey

prologue :- "There are some yards that we need to walk alone, Sayantan."
== S ==



“Gold is precious !”
He had heard it said so
The shiny yellow thing they tore out of the earth!
“Gold is precious”, they said,
“One day, Son! You will see it's splendor”, they laughed.
Couldn't have been more right, those pitiful, cowardly souls.
He sees her beauty now;
Now that the hard and lonely years have showed him some of what is to be his destiny.

From the Highlands, wrapped in oak,
They travel through space and time.
Each passing day goes into making its years,
And each year dissolves some more musings.
In the cold belly of mother Earth they wait;
Bidding their time...
Outside the oak walls time passes by,
And dissolves inside the barrels of ancient wisdom.

Silence; patient, understanding and solemn.
Centuries go by as the elixir of life awaits the one,
One who will pour her into his veins,
And pour his heart into her.
And the accumulated silence of her years
Will sing to him a melody beyond the realms of Heaven and Earth;
And whisper to him words he had yearned to speak.

Yes! Yes! She will take him into her arms,
Embalm his senses, dissolve his refrains,
And give him wings, carry him away.
In her embrace he will shed his crust,
Ruffle his soul, and spread his wings,
And in the dusky glory of her intoxicating radiance
Discover anew, the unstrained limits of his consciousness.
She will return him then;
To his mundane world, with a loving smile.
For he will return,
Walk back to the shelter of her sweet intoxication...
And there he will forget the world that had hurt him so...
And with the accumulated wisdom of her age
She will teach him to forgive life.

Of inspirations... and The Inspiring

prologue:
"He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, fosterchild and fosterbrother."

....

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

====== A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce=====



My dear S,

I really don't know how best to put this, so you get exactly what I, and most likely others whose lives you have touched (and thereby, and most likely, deeply affected), mean when I(we) say and/or feel, that you are an inspiration. Most people, rather we all, except the most non-human ones- the half-evolved Ape-types who won't lift up their hearts to a fine tune and a peg of old oak-matured whiskey when the sun sets- go through life looking for an understanding of our selves, within the self, and outside. What I mean is, that what makes us human is the human heart; something that cannot be made, cannot be programmed; you cannot write it to a disc, or put it into a chip. The real miracle of evolution; a mere 'pump' that seems to pump more than the fluid running in and out of it's tetra-sectioned tanks! And every heart beats an unique beat, and every beat tells a different story.

But you know, what the problem is? The heart is not a book you can open and read at your pleasure, or a cassette or disc to be played, at the mercy of your whims. And it's language is unique, the symphony is unworldy; the notations cannot be taught. Not all stories are meant for everyone to hear, as the ancient Norse would say. You can only tell your story to one who is meant to hear it. The sooner you come across the one who was meant to hear yours, the better off you are. Once you have had that meeting, your life is never quite the same. And no story is complete unless it has been told, and heard. An untold story is like locked up animal; it strains and struggles and fights to get out, to break free. And it will scratch and dent the cage, and damage it beyond repair. But just letting it out is not enough; you have to let it out where it can be at peace.

So, we go through life, trying to feel at peace. Looking for some way to reinforce that tiny voice inside that tells us to be true to ourselves, that no matter what, our life is ours' to live, and that it'll be alright. Hoping to come across that point in life's highway where someone will tell us, “ hey! That's one hell of a story, and don't worry, you've made it this far! You're gonna write the rest all right.” And that happens only when someone who was meant to hear your story, comes across it. Now, when you find that people have traveled the same road before you, and not lost themselves, have written a similar story and not broken their pen, nor torn their diary, rather have traveled the way, all the way, and is waiting for you to join them on the other side, as their kinsmen, the little voice inside, once timid and squeaky, now roars with delight. And you cannot help but feel that wonderful feeling inside, of gratitude, and encouragement, called inspiration. The ones before you might not have, and most likely did not, set out to do anything extraordinary. They had just done their part, done it well and smiled when the ordeal was over. But all the same, the very fact that they had come before you, and had yet lingered long enough, not faded into oblivion, but have stared the down the road they had traveled without dying on it, was bound to tell you that it can be done, the road can be traveled. Had been traveled before you, will be traveled long after you are dead and gone. They have already become the ones inspiring you to stay on your feet, telling you that the end comes to all. That doesn't matter. What matters is how you meet it, on your feet or on your knees. They are the ones you, we, look up to and feel comforted, because they are Inspiring. The question, whether these people deserve the tag, does not arise. Because they did not ask for it in the first place. As one wise man so wonderfully put, “ Inspiration like much else is something others see in you. For you to accept it or not is irrelevant to them!"

born to be wilde

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

— Oscar Wilde, Delight