Tham Jaa (Beauty of Austria/Salzburg)

tham ja thahar jaa
waqt zara tu yahin ruk ja
mere kabr par apna
haq jatane se pehle
do pal saat saat to thahal jaa

tere aahosh mein madhosh
waqt tera nasha hai chadha
jannat agar yehi hai
to main behosh anjaan hi accha

tujhse hi yeh haseen waadiyaan
tujhse hi samandar gehra
meherbaani teri is modh par mujhe le aaya

saansein to kab ki ruk gayi meri
par ab lagta hai zinda hoon zara

Durga pooja

Oil baths and sunrise rituals

A brighter dawn from rows of light

Jasmines and mogras, lillies and lotuses

Vibrant colors adorning the Goddess divine

Soot flying high from the earthen wickered lamps

The air fragrant with the smell of sweet burning oil

Loud temple bells and soul stirring chants

Deafening drummers within pandals of joy

Merry go rounds spinning with dizzying speeds

Bright colorful lights; yellow flashes all around going faster and faster

Teenage giggles and scurrying feet

Drunken revelry and gambling high

Hurried preparations for evenings of satiation

Cymbals clanging in loud approval

Exile to the darkness; the lights dancing in glee

The air thick with anticipation; this is the last of wrong doings and bad

Aggressive, victorious, excited and anger appeased

All powerful reigning supreme; she comes proclaiming loud victory over the devil

Mass worships and rejoicings galore

The goddess has returned; triumphed over evil !

Grahan ka intezaar

Yeh kaisa prem tumhara

ki din badalte mukh chupaati ho

kya yug se bhiti hai bhara

ya mere teevr prakashit prem se darti ho

ya hai khel, tumharey ghanishth pranay se sara?

kal jab kshitij se jhaanka

to neend mein khoobsurat

pari si thi tum

in chand palon ka avirodh

kya yahi hai bhaag hamara?

main idhar to tum udhar

jidhar amavas, woh poornima kidhar

isliye grahan ka roj mujhe hai intezaar

jab kshanbhar hi sahi, aahosh mein mere sama jaati ho nidar

kal phir amavas hua to kya

Mujhe to bas hai, us grahan ka intezaar

(c) Dec 3 2010

Marriage after so many divorces? Why not...

Finding a good manager is pretty similar to finding a good spouse; afterall you spend a good third of your day with him/her if not more, have to please them, put up with their yelling and tantrums and humor them. If you are lucky in finding the right one life is good and you help each other. You do the dirty laundry, take out the trash at times, polish his/her shoes at times,

ensure they are well fed with updates and ready to go. While in return they ensure you are taken care of, have a roof over your head and 2 square meals a day with maybe a vacation every now and then. Besides if you ever do the unthinkable and yell at them, they let it go and give you another chance. And like any good marriage the love continues long after the honeymoon period.In short you grow old and wise together not to mention that translates quite well into the moolah department.

However if you are not one of those lucky few at striking gold you are faced with the harsh reality of divorce after divorce till you either strike gold and join the aforementioned elite group or throw your hands up in the air and reconcile to singledom. The singledom situation is rarely the norm though so that should be comforting.

I for one have not been in the elite group so far but I have not given up yet. I face every new singledom with renewed vigor and the same level of hopes I had of my first partnership and patiently wait as the honeymoon period wanes to reveal the true state of affairs. Kind of like a kid with bated breath as he draws a quarter out of his pocket and starts the process of scratching out the silver lining off, that masks the prize announcement on the little redeem card he got in exchange in his cereal box. My very first partnership ended in slight animosity with a challenge thrown my way to find someone who treated me better and i did, or rather on hearing about the challenge the next partnership came looking for me. The animosity with the first one just grew for the very obvious question of "In the whole wide world could you nly find this one" a feeling referring to my second partnership since my first and second partners were at daggers drawn way before my entry into either of their life's.

The second one unfortuantely ended in disappointment at how poor a provider it was turning out to be. Unfortunately for me I overstayed in partnership number 2 with questions that plague most newbies...is it me? What am I doing wrong....its takes a bit to realize that sometimes somethings are just not meant to be and that the faster we move on the lesser time we spend in therapy... I was quite crestfallen after partnership number 2 especially when I found out how partner 2 was bitching about me to everyone in sight...and this is exactly when friends come in handy...a weep here, a shoulder there and vigor renewed hunt for partnership number 3 started.

I was particularly careful not to repeat any patterns here and I must say I was quite successful for the most part..I moved cities, looked in places I normally would'nt look and took it slow and easy till all my terms and conditions were accepted...i finally caved in and said I do and partnership number 3 ran relatively smoothly but the non provider mode eventually showed up. What is the use of all the service to your spouse if there is no get..just gives. But partner 3 had been better so I tried to work things out. We went in for counseling and had candid conversations about what was wrong and for a while things started looking up again but alas it was time for partnership number 4. Partner 3 failed to understand like most people that a relationship takes work..sustained work and unless that happens the affected party will get up and leave. It was a rough parting because partner 3 woke up just as I had both feet out the door and begged me to stay.

How could I have when I had already signed myself away to partner number 4. And as I thought at the start of all new partnerships in days bygone, here I am with the same dreamy look in my eye believing this is it... this is the one that will go all the way...

I sometimes look at old partners who have long been together and still going strong and wonder were they plain lucky or did they just grit and put in the work together for them to walk hand in hand growing wealthier, wealthier and wealthier. Have they worked out the perfect symbiotic relationship of provider and follower...the provider being the archer and the follower being the charioteer in this case?

Whom are we judging

We participate in contests, competitions and get judged for the level of our expertise and finesse in whatever it is that we are competing about. At work we have appraisals where someone is constantly judging our work and mannerisms and skills. But what qualifies someone to be the judge? A few extra degrees? A few extra hours of practice at the art being evaluated? How can we have one standard expectation for a skill level, and use that to judge across people who are so different? What makes them different then? Why is there a need to fit everyone into one box of assessment and grade them? Is this not unfair because everyone is on a different life-path and a different stage in their spiritual evolution and realization of being one making them different; in which case we are judging apples and oranges and not apples and apples necessarily. So in this case how do you even say that one is better than the other?

Or is competition and judging fair for the exact same reasons - that we are all one and hence I am in fact just judging my own self; trying to better myself? But in this case then the whole concept of competition is a facade because how can you compete with your own self and be better than yourself?

So whom are we all being judged against - our own selves or someone so different that the point of comparison is mute? Or should we change the first requirement of all competitions so all souls participating are on the same level which would bring me back to the first point that then there would be no point competing. So then why are we all wasting so much time in our lives comparing and entering contests and judging and getting ourselves shattered with the outcomes? Whom are we judging really?

Everything else is but a dream !

So I don’t know if I am shaking because of all the coffee I had this evening or if its from the movie “Inception”. Now that I mull over the question I think it’s the movie that’s gotten me in this state. How do I know if I am awake or asleep just right now? How do I know what level I am in? What’s my token to keep check on what’s real and what’s not? Then again maybe this is not real. And all the incidents and people in my world are afterall my projections….imperfect projections of my own sub conscious and I am my own subject in my own dream filling it up with all these experiences so I can learn lessons from them and believe that the lessons I learnt are from my own thoughts and creations, but are they really my own thoughts and creations or simply what a higher self of me wants me to think is “my” independent thoughts? Have I then truly created this world? To live in a world that lasts a lifetime but that’s probably only a few minutes or seconds in some higher conscience of mine? How would I ever know? Do I need to die to wake up and realize what is true; to unveil what’s beyond this life and existence? Do I need a kick to jolt me out of this dream where everything is so real and yet not so real? I cannot wait to explore what’s beyond when I wake from this state; probably a glimpse of which I have already tasted once during my meditation where I was indeed living in a world created by myself….but then who is this me? What level of subconscious is this “me” reverberating from? Is that why I have started feeling a sense of detachment at times from this world? Because a part of me realizes that I am asleep and my sub-conscious is jolting me to realize that its time; time to wake up to a new reality? But the true question to ask is why am I here? What brought me here? But if I created all this who is this “I” in the first place? So am I the architect and the subject in this dream? Whats the goal? Whats the purpose? I need to self –enquire, go deeper so I can rise, rise above all that seems to be. I need to push the elevator to the top floor and see what’s there. I need to find my token and keep looking for whatever it is that I am here to take back with me as I rise above !! And till I can do that I need to be the architect of my own dream and continue to build without letting any of the events pull me into limbo, without letting any event get larger than the dream itself. But what if I create a dream so intricate for my own self that I don’t know how to navigate it? Is that what a “messed up” life is supposed to be? What happens to people who create these daringly bold mazes that they get trapped in? is that why we traverse life’s; or in other words die to wake up and then sleep so we can be born again to continue our search; kind of like a diver who needs to return to the surface every now and then for a breath of fresh air only to dive back into the thick dark strange ocean full of endless possibilities to continue searching and building what he seeks to achieve? How far down should I dive to retrieve what it is that I am here for? I guess I will know when its time or that’s probably why I am building these people around me. All I need to do now is dream on and not fear what events I have to traverse in my dream because what I wake up with is what really matters…everything else is but a dream !!

Memories

I remember those days when I was allowed to be an innocent little girl who admired my mother enjoying Seetha Kalyanam as she sat with the transistor perched precariously on the 2 legged rickety wood stool …she always liked listening to cassettes on that “transistor”, as it was known back in the days, since not only was it new but also thinner than the older monstrous player cum radio that we had, with the long antenna, that I so loved extending out all the way coz it would rise to touch the roof of the room….anyways… the monstrosity of a player was always only used to tune in to some tamil songs at 4 pm as the milk was boiling and amma was braiding my sisters’ hair, with me running around buying as much of play time as I could gather without popping up on her radar for not having done my school work….evenings were meant exclusively for the thin new transistor player and as she sat with one ear pressed close to it and eyes closed Maharajapuram Santhanam transferred her to another planet….a planet that I wish I could have accompanied her to for she looked so peaceful while there…away from all the chores and duties and responsibilities….away from everyone, where she could be whatever she wanted…even the little Paru who never forgot to hold out her little finger lest her ring not be seen in the photograph….the face is etched in my memories …. still green and fresh as if from yesterday….and that is one of the memories I will take to my grave…on the days when appa was at home he would join her on that planet…. I will always remember fondly my dearest amma and appa of those days….I wish I could have halted time so those innocent days never ended !! If only wishes were horses ….and then as the evening matured they would go back and forth discussing ragas and singers and songs bygone and there would be perfect harmony…dinner done, the music would continue and we would all lie down with the lights off as BMKrishna or MS or Santhanam weaved in and out of our dreams….sometimes if it was too early for lights off, I would make my bed right in appa’s lap and curl up like a little dizzy pup tired of chasing its shadow....