Rain

The drizzle began as suddenly as a cat can blink her eye. It came in blobs. First, small and quiet and then fast and tap-tap-tap. The rain-wiper on my car did its best to shoo away droplets clung to the pane. The stockpile seemed unlimited. I decided to drive on! Soft music continued to cascade and fill my car. Outside countless sluices popped up from nowhere. Harried pedestrians and bitter bikers seemed busy negotiating their way through the water clogged six-way-lane. It is raining Monsoon in India’s capital city and everyone and his neighbor is caught in the downpour. The country may be riding fast on the high horse of development and affluence but at the blink of our cat’s eyelid, the real state of our rueful infrastructure shows up. Chinks in the Armour, as they say!

[The beauty of nature's glower]

However --nothing can take away from me my love for rains. Not the bad roads, maddening muggy evenings with power outages and a million mutinies, as the ever-acerbic Naipaul calls us. The sound of rain on trees, lampposts and lushes across the sidewalks continue to fascinate me. I try to make some sense out of the gentle pummeling of silvery driblets on my car-pane. Upon streams. On dark evenings. I love the hurriedness about it. People trying to run for cover. How it – rains -- bring to life, the bleakest of hopes. I think anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain.

[Rain through the pane]

The 19th century American poet Henry Longfellow says the best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. It is when the fleecy clouds can hold it no more. The weary earth drinks the drizzle. Rivers lap the rains. Old wells in the countryside stock the reserve. Flowers nod. Gazelles hop. Birds break into a song. Peaches blush. A little rain, I think, is an elixir. Into each life some rain must fall, Longfellow must agree in his mossy grave. Rain never disappoints. It rains on the dead, as much as on the un-dead. The unqueer and queer alike.

God, I may drift. I need to end it now.

Happy rains

Samy

A blue Evening

I’ll keep it short. A very good friend of mine, who works with me, tells me that I am harsh on myself. I often tend to be self-critical and can be pretty relentless at that. I think we need a bit of self-flagellation at times. It only helps us keep things in near perfect shapes and aligned to the shifting situations around.

I have another weird component in me. I dream a lot. It was one of those blue-tinted dreams last evening. I saw the stitching on my shirt change color from green to electrical. Or florescent, was it! The world’s most enchanting pair of eyes floated in front of me. Magical, seditious and adorable. Angel, Am I dead, I thought. This must be heaven!

I could hear the bells toll in my head. Suddenly the phosphorescent lights went off. As if one a cue, rains came. In showers. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the beautiful image in front of me, perched on the couch. Basking in the glow. There are two kinds of light - the glow that illumines, and the glare that shines. The face has both!

There are times when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. They laugh with us on solitary evenings. They sit silent with us on noisy noons. Laugh along over un-scheduled dates.

Ah, the lovely laughter. The flowered remnants of which, go on long after I am awake.

And only I am not harsh on myslef, others too are!

samy

Let's walk in Paradise!

The winds that on the uplands softly lie,
Grow keener where the ice is lingering still
Where the first robin on the sheltered hill
Pipes blithely to the tune, "When Spring goes by!"

Samy

Attachment: The binding force

One has to have some level of attachment in life. With something real or unreal! When we are truly attached to something we realize that we still have some amore in us. Whatever miseries visit us, we can fall back on that something. That something can be a home, a pet, a friend, a lover or a crowded train. The past couple of days have been somewhat anfractuous. For us all. India on the whole!

The past week saw a series of bombs ripping through the local train system in Bombay. In a matter of less than 200 seconds, 200 innocent people were cut to an instant, cruel death. For no apparent reason. For an anger with no reasonable justification. In cold-blood. Just like that.

I flunk to understand the root of this madness. How can someone kill with such impunity? With such heartlessness. On such a murderous scale. I didn’t catch much of TV. There were only gory images on it. That – honestly -- puts me off. I despise Indian media for its naivety. Showing body parts. There is no dignity of the dead in this country. That is something we are yet to learn – or ape -- form our western counterparts.

Still the bridled tears linger. The sound of a million sobs. The initial scare may well be over but the scars remain. For five days on the trot, images of people hurriedly running helter-skelter --like alarmed ants after a micro-stampede -- filled the newspapers. Pictures of suspects. Stupid looking guys who look distinctly unlettered with a prominent rage-filled head.

I lay reading a book in my bedroom, the next night of the bombing. Suddenly I went flipping channels -- with the remote -- for World-space radio to give me the latest update. Frequency 342 -- BBC world, mid-night Asia: Western Railway resumes services, the lady-anchor gushed. I couldn’t help work up a tiny smile. That is resilience for you, mates! The human spirit.

People attached to a service that they feel proud to call their lifeline. Going back to work. To life. Workers furiously mopping up overnight bloodstains. Citizens of a great city returning to their beloved possession. The Local. The spirit never bends. The affections are just too strong. Like my Dad’s fondness for our home. Whilst all my friends’ families have moved on to newer locations and fancier homes. My Pops continues his romance with our cosy-old home.

The love of Dad’s life – my mom – lived here. I know the exact reason why the beautiful people of Bombay decide to take the same train, same track, and same bogies again. It’s their love for the journey of existence. Their bond. Their attachment.

God bless us all.

Sameer

Life's like that

Passing thought: Very funny... Peter!

Kashmir

Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.
~ Vincent van Gogh

The poem

Dikhaye diye yuv ki bekhud kiya
Hamey apse be juda kar chaley
Mir Taqi Mir – 1723-1810, one of the greatest Urdu poets ever,
Known for his literary style marked by brevity, imagery and musicality.

Transliterated –
Your appearance sends me in a trance
It splits me from myself
Sameer, 2006

A few hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. I can’t say if it was a silly dream or if I am being poetic here. I often doodle -- What could we beget were we to cross – a lot of love and a little heartache, some ecstasy and a dab of passion, handful of joy and layers of yearning – all at once. Indescribable. It is that impossibly enraptured feeling. In the middle of a harrowing summer, suddenly small, cold rains came. There was above us a crash of thunder and a fierce glowering of the sky. It got cloudy. There was so much beauty in the air. I could hear my soul hum. Quietly. Urgently. Rhapsodically.

I may appear vague. Can’t help it. Excuse my expressions. My trek was enjoyably strange. Nothing much mattered. Nothing mattered much. I have so many memory-imprints that they are all jumbled in my head now. Like a ferociously schooled kid, I was reading the most endearing eyes in the world. I am not sure, if I could. Only looking at someone can be satisfying at times. Like burgundy that is purled into the cut glass goblets. Completely. Fittingly.

The song came with flawless tenderness. It had the highest alto. Sung with the innocence of a damsel and pitch of an unmated nightingale. The muggy evening gave away to a sober sweet melody. Its luster heightened by the singer’s delay and distillation. Silence. I was flabbergasted. The fizz of silence took my breath away. Just like the song. I am not suggesting that others can’t croon better. My siren song was special. Sung for me with a tutting indulgence that was all mine.

The moments slowly wore off in a clamorous, compelling spell. There are times when you want to paint every inch of the nakedness with an ancient exquisiteness. As if we were making love in bright, flashing colors and the colors keep changing from one moment to the next, like some wonderful kaleidoscope.

You can love someone just by looking in those eyes.

Samy.

Byronic beauty!

But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth;
The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth:
Flowers in the valley, splendor in the beam,
Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.

Samy

Candid sighs

I've never touched somebody
Like the way I touch your body
Now I never want to let your body go
Bryan Adams -- Song: Let's make a night to remember

A time comes in our lives when we feel a sudden pleasing fluency in the myriad thoughts we think. As far as my memory goes back, I’ve always been a surmising type. Thinking about very naïve things -- like the alluring colors of butterflies in our kitchen garden, back in the serene yards of Kashmir. I would be fascinated for instance by the gooey cheeping of tiny-fluffy chicklings that mom used to raise. The tender shards of old folk-tales our ever-old neighbours' granny fed us. How did the wily wolf understand Urdu, I often wondered?

As I grew up, I found myself still pondering. Still curious. Still asking? All my education, upbringing and love for books made me some kind of a liberal. Thoughtful. Activist. Feeling for others. The downtrodden and helpless. The cruel travails to their drumming my car-pane at traffic signals. The world has been living with such extreme contrasts, I try telling my heart. Still their desperate eyes pike me at odd hours. If God is just, why does He let these kids starve, heart throws back.

I have stayed hapless on many counts. I could never cease to be a romantic. I could never shrug that innocence which love evokes. Love for nature, friends, kind souls and some. I still believe in unadulterated, unconditional love. Another matter, no one takes the call!

Then there is a humorous side to my musings. My pals will vouch for it. I believe a sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.

I will be candid. I have a heart which is simply: f**** caring. Now this means two varying things. At one level I have been compassionate and at yet another, I got hurt more than anyone else. Misunderstood! It is not that my choices have betrayed me. I think my stars go astray somewhere; I think I can’t align myself to anyone anymore. Like those gypsies. Nomads who wander. My heart wanders.

They say journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think. I am glad that I’ve a candid set of scruples and I always – loved. With all my heart and soul and everything!

I don’t think many will ever understand me in this life. Anyways, I don’t believe in a second life. Afterlife – can’t say. A friend – who is a co-religionist – is hard trying to convince me that there is an after-life and people go to heaven or hell. He goes on, ‘Your mom was kind, she will be in heaven’, you don’t pray, you may go to hell’.

Hope they let me see mom for a while. Hope they allow brief reunions.

Samy

Love alarm!

Love is setting up early alarms
and melting into bracing arms
Little strokes on the hand
saving a solitary hair strand

When all blades in the meadow
and all pines in my clough
Despite their lavish lush
can't match your sweet blush

Sound of the summer rain
brings back your images again
Duck's quack or goose' honk
I can hear you in every cronk

Million maddening mysteries to crack
and only your memories to stack
Dreams locked away in glee
open only to your magical key

Love is waking up each nightly hour
to check on the mystic flower
to look at the alarm clock
and answer heart's tender knock

samy

Internet religion.

I am a Muslim. A non-practicing one. I don't pray a lot. I rarely visit the mosque. I believe in God. I trust the goodness within us. I would prefer watching the moon coming up slowly and caressing the stars, rather than chant hymns, a thousand times. I reckon, God does not need that mindless murmuring from us. Organized religion cheeses me off. Region – to me -- is an intensely private affair between God and man.

I chanced across a riveting web-link today. It is a quizzical page. Worth it. You answer a couple of engrossing and engaging questions. The computer does the rest. It gives you the option -- of which faith you are closest to, in your heart and soul. And thought.

Guess what, I got a tie between Islam and Paganism. Contrasts again, but thats me...Unconventional!

Why don’t you try this out? It’s fun. And yeah…you don’t necessarily need to change your faith after the results.

Enjoy

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=10907
With Thanks, Pragya

Sameer

Emotions

I don’t want to be overpowered by emotions.
Anonymous

I’ve heard the words before. I know the exacting meaning they convey. There seems to be a liberal dash of restrain, some amount of pain and a delicate sprinkling of logic to them. Imagine loving such a bloke. It provides the person a perfect get-away. A clean-chit. You can’t blame. You can’t complain. Period.

In hindsight it is perhaps not a bad idea not to be overwhelmed by emotions. Unnecessarily you loose sleep. You begin to dream. You start caring. You tend to be protective. Quick reveries occur to you. Suddenly you feel tasked. You begin to like daffy things you disliked most of your life. That is what darned emotions can do to you.

Dale Carnegie was one of the biggest thinking heads of his times. The American once said to a massive audience: When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. Somewhere Carnegie attempts – and probably manages to – put his finger on the exact mash. That is because each stealing glance, every act of laughter, whenever the heart races fast, when we clap, as we shout, as we canoodle -- we unknowingly nip an innocent slice of that sacred sentiment, called emotion. Logic comes in much much later.

Then there is a soft globule in us. We call it heart. The heart is forever inexperienced. We may attempt to grow. Grow up. Grow rich. Grow wise. Grow smart but the heart always remains inexperienced. Unpolished. Curious. How many times our mind says no to something but the heart gets tempted? You may have a mind of your own but the heart…. it understands no logic.

In reality life is hard. Tough. Mean. Skewed. I reckon, the unreal is often more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they too die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. Nothing can take away -- for instance -- certain forbidden memories from me! Like prespiring badly on a hot day, moiling, just to be besides someone.

You can't barter certain things for all the gold in the world. I won't be selfish because one's emotions aren't programmed that way. All the Virtuoso, Encounter, Incisive, Allegro tasks don't teach this simple paradigm.

I don't really know when emotions took the better of me. I am not the least apologetic. Yet some people do reason the very premise of emotion. Marquis de Vauvenargues, the 17th century great French philosopher and moralist says: Emotions teach the mankind to reason. They perfume our lives.

End of it all, I can’t have a say in someone’s life. The decision to stay away. To hold back emotions. Never let them out. Never fathom other's sentiments. May be I never truly understood what love is. May be I never will! Poor me. All I know is that your heart is my piñata.

I am sure vocabs aren't always that good. You’ll have to look up for Piñata!

Samy

Glimpses

blog layouts

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy. I don't feel like to write these days. No writers block. Just plain indolence. Instead, I will beam you a couple of pics. One of my best mates, a cabalistic-colored lamp and a sweet girl!

Tanseer: In some swanky hotel -- in Almaty, Kazakistan!

The Mystery lamp: A lovely pic by a friend

Pragya: Letting her hair down in a comely grab

Sameer

You have a mail!

images

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

Samy

The Seductress!!!

Volkswagen's production delays are finally over and the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is ready to hit the road. The car sports a W16 engine fed by four turbochargers, can go from 0 to 100 mph in six seconds and uses unique cross-drilled and turbine vented carbon rotors that draw in cooling air for braking. Top speed: 407 kmph

Sizing me up!

Not in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deem'd;
Not in those visions to the heart displaying
Forms which it sighs but to have only dream'd,
Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seem'd:
Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek
To paint those charms which varied as they beam'd
To such as see thee not my words were weak;
To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak?

George Gordon Byron, English Romantic poet
Born 1788, Died 1824. I think he is still dead!
Celebrated author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. (My fav)

I have been thinking to write a ruminative piece about me. I often jot about others in these pages. How about putting up an honest assertion about Sam, I doodled? I reckon, it is difficult to label oneself. How does one size himself up? Destiny’s child is one milder way of saying how I see myself. Flower-kid!

I love nature. I love friends. I love birds. I love Music. I love the rain. I love the feeling of being loved. To love. I hate vainglory. I seek no glory. I am not overtly ambitious. I have no concrete plans for the day after tomorrow. That may a negative trait but I am being scrupulous here. I am not the one who is going to die for his beliefs because I may simply be wrong.

I only listen to those I respect. Most people bugger me. I do assert. I am impassionate and intense. Utterly romantic. A tad wild and mostly protective. I revere loyalty.

I can be fascinatingly faulty. Childish beyond belief. Socratic and quizzical at the same time. In one quick breath. Daring the world yet docile to a charmed inner circle. Both impetuous and indolent. Contrasts, yep but that is me…always unconventional. Always longing. Thinking. Reasoning. Romping. Always loving.

I may appear gloomy -- at times -- but am more happy than any other. I tend to get impatient with the mediocre and fickle-minded. I know it may sound eccentric, flamboyant and controversial to some. But I don’t care two hoots.

I am all-inclusive. Friendly. Too emotional, too conflicting. Too introspective. I don’t like crowds and am more likely to rubbish most of the social institutions and societal norms. I believe in God but organized religious rituals don’t really excite me.

I may well be an exile.

I value freedom, more than anything else. One's own space. Liberal values and still liberal mores give me a far greater high than all the crass glitz and glamour around us.

I seem to have transcended my sexual identity. I love madly. Ardently. Like Lord Byron.

Love me or loathe me. But that’s me. Honest and regal.

Sameer

Week-end Pixs

Wasy and me: He is tense because the sky is overcast!

Amidst all the lights, I steal a glance!

Can't stop lovin you!!!

The first time our eyes met
It is the same feelin I get
Only feels much stronger
I want to love you longer

Every word I say is true
I remember all your moves
I remember you!!!

Samy

Aloof!

Distance never separates two souls that really care, for our memories span the miles and in seconds we are there. Almost. But whenever I start feeling sad because I miss you I remind myself how lucky I am to have someone so special to miss.

There are many things in life that one wants to keep masked. I often have this stupid -- crying -- feeling at the most strangest of occurrences – many of which are simply outside of my control. I cry rarely, yet I do. Boyz don’t cry, I suddenly remember. Guys don’t want others to see them emotionally feeble.

Then we cry inside. At least I do. Can’t tell you why. There are times when one has to be really concise. One misses. The rain softens you even more. The beats skip fast. You pretend to be a toughie. It is a very different innervation. Like a mystical experience.

I am sorry, you’ve to be a little touched to feel it!

samy

Only if....

Only if I could fly
I would hover round thee
Only if dreams came true
I would never let you go
Only if flowers grew in snow
I would pick all of them for you
Only if time stood still
I would freeze in your thought
Only if week-days were off
I would just color portraits of you
Only if pebbles were diamonds
I would stack them up for you
Only if it rained forever
I would walk you for miles
Only if life was magical
I would surprise ye always
Only if God gave me another life
I would not stop loving you!

Samy

Here I come

Still good!

Human-interest stories always fascinate me. I love the power of emotions. The sanctity of sentiments. Truthfulness of soul. There is hardly any evidence of this mix in my native land – Kashmir. Though the place is beautiful and so are most its people, physically. However their spirits are often not too beautiful. I cannot take their artificial beliefs. The chicanery they harbor. Hang me for it but I have this brew of affection and aversion for them. Most of them – and that leaves out a small chunk – will talk to you cleanly, like the sharp edge of a knife. Cold and hot at once.

Nevertheless there are instances when one cannot help sketch a smile at the sparkling residues of humanity that still exist in the valley. I was happy to learn people are still good at heart and don’t necessarily view everything through the blinkered lens of religion. When people realize that the indifference to other cultures doesn’t always work. That’s when the spirit of goodness rises and suffuses over every thing small and stupid.

Some things do actually gladden hearts. Here…a news-item, re-produced from Greater Kashmir – Dated June 14, 2006 -- Kashmir’s best English newspaper. (Another matter it is far too mediocre in its style and presentation).

Sameer

There were no OB vans, none from the army of photojournalists and no security bandobast either. Although sombre, the scene was still heartening—it was Muslims mourning death of an aged Kashmiri Hindu woman.

They outnumbered the Hindus or Pandits at the funeral of Shamoin Gigoo, 81, wife of late Sham Lal, who breathed her last on Monday evening at her residence at Indra Nagar, Srinagar.The Muslims stood calm at the Karan Nagar cremation ground as Ramesh Kumar Gigoo, the eldest son of Mrs Gigoo lit the pyre.

Yesterday it was the family friends, majority of them Muslims, who stood by the Gigoos in their hour of grief, and arranged for the funeral. In turn, the bereaved family, took due care of religious obligation of the Muslim mourners of offering Namaz. The cremation on Tuesday was deferred from 12 pm to 2.30 pm. Later, amidst sighs and sobs Shamoinee was consigned to flames as per the Hindu tradition.

About 50,000 Pandit families migrated to Jammu and many parts of India when anti-India uprising broke out in the Valley in 1990. But the Gigoos, like 7,000 other Pandits comprising 1,600 families, still live in the Valley. The Muslim friends had counseled late Sham Lal and his wife to stay put. “They were reluctant to leave their homeland, they were very nice people,” many mourners said.

Link:
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/full_story.asp?Date=14_6_2006&ItemID=15&cat=1

Smile!!!!

Smile an ever lasting smile
a smile can bring you near to me
don't ever let me find you gone
'cause that would bring a tear to me
this world has lost its glory
let's start a brand new story
now my love
you think that I don't even mean
a single word I say

Smile can be infectious. Some smiles can kill. A smiling face reveals that your mind is happy. I love smiling faces. Even smiling eyes. I know someone who smiles -- if only intermittently -- the most beautiful smile in the world. It ricochets off you if you stand in front. It propels skywards and falls on your earlobes if you stand besides someone. That is what a smile can do to you. Flatten you. Hurl you softly up and -- leave you -- gasping for more. A great smile symbolizes success to me.

I believe success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. I think I heard that before but it doesn't matter. The locution still holds. Some things don't seem to be affected by the progression and ravages of time. Certain smiles are like that! They make you love from the bottom of your heart even in a bad -- loveless -- world.

I am glad someone has more smiles to share. No memory of past can come to a sniffing distance when you have Samy around, as they say. I wish I could do more to keep the smile constant. Beaming. Glowing. I seem to have only these stupid words to offer. Lots of love too. It is my armor. My serenade.

As the Boyz-zone croons:

It’s only words
and words are all I have
to take your heart away

I reckon, there is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Samy

Sleep, little eyes

Sleep, little eyes
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
Be comforted! No grief of night can weigh
Against the joys that throng thy coming day.

Sleep, in the chill!
There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
Sleep that you have no more fears
And sorrows won't pass you for years.

A Mccre adaptation

Samy

I am a Tramp!

Life gallops on at a reckless pace
I know not where it will stop
The reins are not in my hands
My feet not in the stirrups
sam


If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were. Khalil Jibran, one of the greatest American thinkers averred many many years ago. Not only is Khalil my fav – I have read ten of his books -- his lines are etched in my mind like wrinkles upon a nomad of 100. I’ve no reason to feel unloved yet by some medieval, weird deep rhyme inside me I do. Only at times. I take solace from Jibran’s timeless words. Then there is another dusk.

I was woken today by soft chimes of the cell phone. Still half-asleep, I wished it were that ‘special’ someone saying good-morning, Samy. Long back I used to get such calls. Sweet interludes. Not anymore. It turned out to be some silly girl trying to sell me a credit card. I put my head down on the pillow, the ac-chill wheezing through the room. Do you require the silver tinted, gold-hued card? The poor girl went on. No, I said in a threatening tenor; I need someone to make me feel naughty. The chick hung up!

I tried to close my eyes in an effort to shut out the hurt. There are times when one wants to snort joyful volumes of that familiar scent. The tutting indulgence. The cold combination of garish stuff and bland, beautiful eyes. Innocent face on my bracing biceps. Looking outwards in the same direction without any purpose. Without reason. Trying to find some arcane excuse. Make some reason out of life’s complex turns.

I am a tramp, I am sure. Nobody gets my message!

Samy

Fanna: Annihilation!

I reckon the title says it all. I watched the much-anticipated flick Fanna during the weekend with friends. Despite a super star cast – Aamir and Kajol – and coming from the stables of Yash Raj – India’s original romantic production house, the film disappoints. It is a pedestrian, dull job by Kunal Kohli, the acclaimed director of Hum-tum fame.

The movie starts off well. The music is good. The cast is impressive. That is it! Titans like Kiron kher, Satish Shah and the funny Jaspal Bhatti have simply been wasted away. A blind girl is unanticipatedly operated upon for sight-correction. Suddenly she starts to see light. Like the 70's crap.

Our film-makers still think the audiences are a dumb-lot. Terribly short of creative tales, they weave ordinary stories with the same old formulae. Fanna, so high on hype is actually low on quality quotient. It does not make sensible cinema. It looks like one big roughhouse. The direction is slip-shod. The screenplay unoriginal. Trite.

The usual Kashmir angle. Terrorists, wanting to nuke India. The elusive trigger. Wild chases. Wasteful expenditure. The bad guys infiltrating the army. Female intelligence sleuths. That is Tabu, for you. Little spattering about history. Don’t we see the same banal theme repeated in C-grade hindi movies so often.

The movie scores at: screen chemistry between the lead stars, that old world feeling of an all girl’s band going to Delhi from Kashmir, great cinematography. And ofcourse Kashmir – ever beautiful! Poland too.

Albeit Kokes may give it a 6/10. Fanna gets a five on ten from Wasy and me!

Sameer
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pic: Kashmir -- in Summer

Missing you

Cold vapor breath on air revealed
I'm Missing You

Have you ever felt like me? Strange and revelled in someone’s craving thought. In my mastery of the most exquisite eyes I have ever come across on the terrestrial ball -- called earth. Or someone's mastery over me. Or is it some kind of phantasmagoric magic? Misty. Mostest. Mine!

I'll be 26 in four months. Already swollen with life. I feel raw as exposed flesh. What generation must we be, unable to rein in our longings? The MTV gen, as academics prefer to designate those born between 1975-1985. I don't know what on earth has possessed me. I lie and wait for someone to amble across in my life. Slither the flocculent finger slowly upon my brow. My heart pounds in my ears. God, I miss the lone conqueror of five evils. I really do!

The mink feeling tugs at me in the strangest of places – for example in the middle of an interesting conversation or while I am driving – in level 5 – at 90 miles/hour. It shakes me to my innards. Makes me feel like a naughty child who greeds for his share of pie. Something vibrates in me with a living pulse. What that – something is – I can’t tell. Yet it oscillates. Like my dad’s traditional German wall clock that has been cheeping every hour ever since I’ve grown up.

Last night as I drove back home, globs of new rain streamed on my windscreen. In the middle of a cruel summer. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, ploughing it up like gunfire. A dark sky suggested some storm was building up nearby. In my heart a tempest raged. My hand released the steering and moved to the ubiquitous cell phone. Searching for the button. Clicking it and then letting it go!

I can’t be weak. I can’t seem to allow myself being too schmaltzy. Yet I miss. The rain continued to fall. I could go straight or I could take the next turn home. My heart beat at million thuds a minute. The pulse quickened. The grass outside the tinted glasses of my car looked wet-green and pleased. Trees bent.

I drove home. I am strong. I can go slow. Yet I miss like hell.

Samy

Of Longing!

Distant eyes across nigh desires
Unruffled as the tempest grows
Like a robin as you skirl aloud
beats shake upon magical notes
Waffling loyality of your words
fills this heart on quiet dawns
Faint sharpness of thy skin
swims in my loving gaze
Images I carry back home
to lie awake with on dull nights
Eyes from God's own stock
least expressive but most endearing

Samy

A very romantic rendezvous

I ask you to stand firm in your hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!
Pope Benedict XVI in Krakow, Poland, Saturday May 27, 2006

I have always been a dreamy lad. Those white fluffy clouds in sleepless eyes. It makes me go bonkers at times and yet prods me to carry on amidst all the lovelessness. Impulsive and illusory. That has been my story thus far. I can’t seem to clearly remember when I mingled the delicate dash between infatuation and love in my mind. I’ve been flying too swift to notice that. Occasional gusts tossed me up in the sky but the flight didn’t end. It glided on. Till Saturday. I reckon, around the same time the celibate Ratzinger was visiting Poland and he said the words,” Stand firm in your love”. It stirred a magical cord in me. My bowels asked me to follow my heart. I was led to a dream.

My angel. Or was it a fairy. I have been thinking of this angel ever since I was a kid.

I dreamt a beautiful dream. I was transported to a surreal land. It was full of wonderful people with lovey-dovey eyes. I was suffused over by pure unadulterated love. Tomes of it. It made me realize that there is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. I clearly rejoiced in the ceaseless love. Only a little laughter broke the spell sporadically.

It was hot. Heat of the plains. I could smell heat even in the brief, compendiary bits I slept. For the first time in my life, I loved the laconic spell of my sleep. God, how I love the feeling. How the countdown to our next reunion almost immediately triggered. Is it a bond? Is this what they call love? I donno. It was a dream, that is for sure. The beat that my heart misses every time the images flicker in my mind. Blue-blooded-elegance. The calm eyes. The emaciated feet. The purple glow in the brow.

Imagine raw sensuality. What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes as they say. The maxim haunted me since ages. It was right next to me in my dream. When Jhelum flowed into the Chinab river. When heat ceased to exist. When sweaty hugs felt better than a million perfumes. When I didn’t want the smells to go – perhaps for the first time in my life -- and did not use my expensive colognes in a long time. It was a cross between hope and love. Betwixt desire and longing. It felt like crying after a long time stunned. Drinking after a lifetime’s thirst.

There are times when you forget the bed. You also forget the pillow. You share the warmth. Despite the stingy harshness of the summer. You want to hide the relation in camouflage of the darkness. The shadows. There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day. It is a feeling I will nestle in my little heart for long. A very special feeling. Like a bird who comes from cold hills and perches on top of my palm. And cooes most sweetly.

My alarm went off. The dream broke.
It is another day.

Sameer

To Reserve or not to Reserve

Everyone's entitled to be stupid, but you're abusing the priveledge.

India seems to be stuck in a reservation rut. There are fierce debates in TV talk-shows. I never knew Dalit writers can speak English so fluently. Endless deliberations continue in university canteens and drawing rooms alike. I had a fiery arguement with a schedule-caste friend, over coffee last Sunday. God, How I hate to use this terminology. Lower and upper. Scheduled and Unscheduled castes. It sucks. We stop being us and suddenly become you chaps and we!

Anti-reservations protestors have now spread all over the country. They tried everything -- hunger strike to candle-light vigil. Cops brutally caned peaceful students in many places. The government of India watches the spectacle. Suddenly a new form of activism has taken over. Reservations have ripped open a pandora's box. The muck, they say, has already spilled. Different groups are busy mopping it up. Arjun Singh, India's ageging education minister is on the verge of doing a VP singh. VP, India's ex Prime minister, let loose the mandal demon, implementing what was long-considered a political tinder-box. No wonder tempers are up. SMSes trickle in by the minute.

Reservations -- for those who came in late -- did not come from the blue. Indian constitution has a provision for bringing at par various groups, castes and tribes in this country who have been deprived equal opportunity for ages. Under the process a certain percentage of seats in places of higher education and government were kept warm -- and safe -- for India's underbelly. VP just accelerated the process. 27% seats to the lowly blokes. The ball was set rolling. Many thought that justice was finally served, piping hot. It will square off many scars, I mused.

Many benefitted. Good. The country is still in deep schisms. Castist, superstitious kinds. Stones on fingers, hypocitical, absolute-hatred for people other than their own. We can't marry them because they are lower-bred Hindus. 'Our caste is higher than yours' is entrenched in the pshyches of millions. Uneducated and educated alike. I guess a small % of modern public school-educated generation-X think otherwise. The lower-caste still cannot make it to good primary education, decent colleges and are looked down upon by the high-end society. So trying to bring about a uniformity through an affirmitive action -- like the reservation policy -- was perhaps sane.

Unfortunately, thats where the buck stops. A famous maxim goes like," You can't have everything. Where would you put it? I think that says it rather succintly. The government of India, led by a technocrat, former economics professor and a champion of globalization Dr Manmohan singh suddenly decided to up the reservation levels from 27% to 49%. Now an idiot can make it out. This is politics. Half the seats to the lower section. India is a country of 1 billion souls. Where are the so-called upper-classes supposed to go? Now it is no rocket science, upper class means, only a stupid tag. You can be poor and upper class. And most people are. What about them? They also need a pat.

Not under-estimating the capabilities of the low-caste folks who make it to our colleges and universities, can they really be at par with the best. Cynics argue that tribal and lower caste students are incapable of engaging issues at a sophisticated level like those who enter through merit. What does merit mean? People ask and whether the wisdom of the current system really works, an expert chips in.

It doesn't work. The government doles out the quota-cards. The cards are used and over-used. Human beings are selfish. In India where mere survival is a challenge, the reservation card is an easy route to success, even if it means scuttling the hopes, chances and dreams of bright meritorous students. Rather than shamelessly emloying the Quota trick for petty politiking, the governmant must try and address the issue of granting these guys access to good schooling. Make it mandatory, perhaps. That will bring them at par. Simply transporting a half-baked, ill-tutored guy to a prestigious institute like AIIMS or IIM and make him share the desk with a brilliant mind doesn't make an iota of sense.

Extending reservation is not the answer. There has to be a nation-wide census and instead of the schedule cates and tribes, we must endeavour to bring in the economically unpriveledged classes -- which includes SC/ST/Upper classes -- in the reservation net. Cancel the cards of the folks who are well to do and flaunt it unnecesarily. Limit the reservation to 30%.

Let merit arise. Let India continue be the world's talent hub. Let us emerge an even stronger, more resplendent democracy.

Hope some sanity prevails on the good old professor of Economics and his vizier with the curved stick.

sameer

The No-No limerick

Do we go out tonight
to catch a yummy bite
No place can you ever find
because you not in my mind
A soul who is outta sight

samy

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An imaginary limerick that came to my mind

The good-bye Limerick!

Good bye and see you
words kept so few
Rain in familiar airs
love inside endless layers
You gotta go, I always knew

Samy

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Limerick is a light, humorous poem of five verses in which the l st , 2 nd , and 5 th lines rhyme and the 3 rd and 4 th lines rhyme. {Rhyme scheme aabba}

Join me!

How do you describe a place that is at the cusp of beauty and battle. It exudes oodles of charm and yet occassional booms scare the daylights out of you. Fish still swim in its tranquil waters. It brags the purest of airs. Yet a storm is always ready to form. Luckily, I live in a more affluent part of the paradise. We have occassional parakeets as guests, chirping at the top of their voices on pleasant spring mornings. Butterflies in a myriad hues waltz in my small garden. The roses cling tightly to our three-storey home, where only two people live. A lot of sparrows, a few white rabbits and old pictures also live in my home.

I am away from Kashmir, both in distance and time. I miss the sound of rain on my pane, the snow flakes, the radiant sun-downs, the cricketing days with old pals. I work, read, write, reflect and play cross-words these days. When I was a kid, mom would ask me to do sums, read poems aloud, eat my breakfast with a chartreuse-top table-spoon -- often to my great annoyance -- before I could go out and make my own snow-man. How time flies? Mom. I see her in childhood-type dreams and she still asks me to eat and read aloud. Ofcourse I don't obey her now. I don't eat much and instead of reading aloud, I prefer writing poems. For a dream of another kind. I've an electronic juicer in my kitchenette to make my breakfast, which I hardly care to touch. The green-headed tablespoon is still locked away in a tiny corner -- in my bedroom -- in Kashmir.

It used to be so much fun to go to the city suburbs. See the villagers take their flock to graze. Driving past the stunning lakes. I guess evenings in the Dal lake still rock. No amount of mall-lights in our big cities or the plunging necklines in the parties we go to can compare to the balmy evening breeze. The morning sparkle stretching acoss the Pungam lake or the old-world lighting by Srinagar Boulevard. Barbeque in the canoe. Ducks gliding by. A tender sky watching you over.
What are you thinking about? Camp-fires, hi-altitude fishing, heaven! Join me for the Kashmir vacation, will you?

Samy

Waiting for you

I never thought it was worth it, you know waiting for love,
and then I felt your kiss, I could wait forever for you.

Samy

Unnoticed!!!

Like last night's rain
that fell on your lane
upon my stupid dreams
when the bed went cold

Like the humming bird
which calls its mate
on lonely nights
when black thunders roar

Like old mulberry tree
full of ripe juice
which moists some lips
but spoils my new shirt

Like a bee which is busy
kissing endless flowers
massing sweet piles of honey
in the jagged old comb

You too are pre-occupied
like the slanting rain and tree
Like the humming bird and bee
To even notice me

Samy

That is what war does to you!

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him? Blaise Pascal, the great French mathematician and philosopher who invented the adding machine in the 1600's once remarked. To my mind, nothing can be more preposterous than starting a war and living in a war zone. Even your theory of probability can prove it, Mr Blaise.

Nearer home, Kashmir has been experiencing a low-intensity conflict for 17 long years now. Among the first fatalities of the war have been the cherished values of Kashmir. In local idiom they called it Kashmiryat. Ellaborated it means -- the secular fabric. When my hindu teachers would force me to eat red-red Rajma at their home. When mom's specially-made pickle was an essential part of our hindu neighbours' dinner. Suddenly it was all gone.

Almost instantly all social institutions which contribute -- brick by brick -- in the development of any decent civil society started collapsing. Morals, ethics and discipline vanished almost overnight. Hooliganism and vandaism of the first order started. Some people looted abandoned homes, weeding out what was left of the centuries old trust we reposed in one another. Many became rich overnight. Fake drugs, fake bills, fake fruits. Everything became so unreal. This was a state that was reeling under severe economic harships -- all development funds went to the security apparaturs -- and still people drove around in glitzy new cars. It befuddled me as a youngster.

Religion took centre-stage. That age old ploy. Exploit the ignorants. Use electronic beads and rosaries. God's chant turned digital. People continued to die. Get killed. Yet others continued to get rich. The likes of those who lived in servant quaters and some of the hoi polloi. No one knows how. Lots of mysteries hover the small paradise. No one ever knows who kills whom, for example.

I am not very surprised to learn about the latest sex-scandal emanating from the peripheries of the famous Dal-lake. A nexus of politicians-policemen-prominent people. Sex-clips from a war-zone. Amidst the blood and bombs. I am sure most of these guys would feign religion and claim to be nice. I've been cynical about the Kashmiri in general since the war began. That is because one wintry night in 1989, we lost our innocence.

There never was a good war or a bad peace. Benjamin Franklin American printer, journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist, abolitionist, public servant, scientist, librarian, diplomat, and inventor said. True, mate!

Sameer bhat

Silence!

Silences make the real conversations between friends.
Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
`Margaret Lee Runbeck -- US author (1905-1956)

Have you ever felt compelled to say something to somone but you didn't say it? It happens to most of us. When we want to holler, but stop just short of doing so. When you go completely blank as you meet the one who makes butterflies' circle in your stomach. When you ring someone up only to utter everything you don't want to say. When you miss a person like hell and you meet up -- and get together for a long drive -- you suddenly are at a loss to mutter a word.

The captivating silences that creep in. The beguiling thoughts that come to your mind. Looking at each other from the corner of your eyes. Lump in the throat. I think saying nothing...sometimes says the most.

I often wonder -- Don't I wonder a lot!! -- how nature grows in silence. The trees, flowers, grass. The stars, the moon, the clouds and the sun, how they move in silence. Isn't it beautiful. We need silence to be able to touch souls. I used to feel strifled earlier when somone clammed up before me. I realised soon that silence is sometimes the answer.

In a world of loud sound bytes and defeaning noise, where every beautiful expression is drowned in cacophony, silence too is lost. In media and politics -- expression is paramount. In a cutting-edge technological world, one needs to present his point. As market forces get more powerful and advertisers more boisterous, speaking out becomes necessary. Asserting yourself. Saying it loud and clear and crisp and fluent.

I understand the premise but can we ever equate or contrast it with walking on a beach, pants folded, twilight in the evening sky, sea-gulls hovering by, a deep blue sea in your eyes, someone special walking besides you, touching your little finger, in heavenly silence.

You can't compare some things in life!

Samy

The heat is On!!!

It is early May 2006 and the mercury is merciless. It touched 112 degree Fahrenheit -- 44.5 degree Celsius -- on Friday. I think 118 and the psychological barrier of 120 -- 49 degree -- will be breached in the weeks ahead. Yet people continue to work. Amidst the grime and gunk. Feeble workers go about carrying brick-loads on their delicate heads in ridiculous temperatures. Their unwashed children not far away. Watching their poor parents build roads and overpasses for globalised Indians.

Life is harsh in this part of the world. Not that it doesn't get difficult -- or hot -- elsewhere. In parts of the US, it is hot -- Florida and Hawaii for instance. I think only Las Vegas and Phoenix touch 90 F in July but there is no cause to fret. Developed west has conquered nature long back. Snow or Swelter, rain or heat -- nature is stopped in its tracks. We rate miserably when it comes to giving our populace even basic amenities like power, water, heathcare and infrastructure, despite -- having a nuke -- and stupidly considering ourselves at par!

Nearer home, Gulf is very hot. The African continent is on the boil -- in perpetuity. However, the Arabs are super-rich and hardly a soul ventures out in the sun. The Africans are too well adapted -- because of their color and genetic make-up -- to the blistering sun. That leaves only the blokes in sub-continent to reel. I personally think anything above 100 F is difficult.

India gets sultry in summers. The hot winds singe you in the face. However, the humdrum never stops. Hopes never fade. People continue to work. Fight. Children go to the school. Lovers canoodle. Peasants water their fields. A million mutinies, functioning. Evolving all the time. The show must go on, as they say. There is no heat emergency-- even at 120 F. More than half the population does not have an AC comfort. No probs. Brought up the hard way, Indian's tackle the tacky temperate hands-on. Resilience, mates.

On a more individual note, I was born with an allergy for heat. Bred in the cool zephyrs of Kashmir -- India's honeymooning paradise -- I just cannot take heat. These days I have to make do with the artificial machine chill. Home, Car, Office. I am not in my element, the moment, I step out of it.

Sometimes in the middle of the night -- when there is a power-cut -- I close my eyes and think about Kashmir. Cool, quiet nights with seductive layers of darkness all around. Breeze in the hair. Only the sweet cooing of a small nightingale in the distance.

I keep thinking and thinking about it. Till light comes in the capital city of the fastest growing economy in the world!

Sameer

What is beauty?

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
Kahlil Gibran -- Lebanese poet, artist and philosopher

It has been haunting me since many moons. I am conflicted in my mind. A little Confused. Something stirs in me like a reed in the wind. Tugs at me on lonely nights. Frightens me. I doodle about the most beautiful eyes I've seen. Taken by them. Something in me moves, shifts and settles down. Moves again. I begin to ask questions -- to my own soul. Answer myself. An emotional whirlpool draws me in and out!

Are we enchanted by beauty? Don't heads turn -- and hearts tip -- when something beautiful walks down the ramp or anything graceful meanders by. It is all natural. Within the obvious brackets of human perception. Whatever impinges my heart hides somewhere in this precarious zone. The thought. Can eyes deceive? Can nice faces cheat on you? What really is beauty?

I am no Confucius. I cannot truly comment on this. I am not even able to understand the only person I liked in a long while. I think 'what is striking and beautiful' is not always good, but 'what is good' is always beautiful, as Ninon would aver. Beauty may mesmerise us. Eyes may rake a small flood in the viens. Physical appearance may overwhelm. Still the heart must conquer and not the face. True beauty is what's found inside, what is in our hearts. Humility is beautiful. So is sincerity. So is truthfulness. Goodness of soul. Self-esteem too. In the end it is the love in your heart -- and belly -- that subdues everything else.

Eye-candy, beautiful, sizzling. Can these characteristics ever compare to compassion, care and the love in you. No. The reason is simple. Things transient and temporary cannot outlast the eternal.
Looks flee. Love remains.

Bernard Shaw was an influential thinker of his times and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. He wrote to his friend:

I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong.

I guess that sums it up!

Samy

When I am dead

An old composition. I understand people don't talk death in their 20's. Mind you I too have no premotion regarding mine. I often wonder if someone -- with flirtatious eyes -- will ever pass my resting place with a flower in hand. I'll love those impassioned moments.

One often wonders how short our life-spans are! We are born once. We die once. We truly love once. Anything else is only habit, settlement, companionship.

In reality we never die. We continue to live in memories. In old hopes. Alongside ancient thoughts. In hearts. In friends who care. In the laughter of children. Old walls. Like cute rodents scurrying across a roof.

I think some people may miss me when I am no more. If you miss me, I'll sure compliment it with a smile from the sky. I wrote this poem -- many aeons back-- but I mean it.

When I am dead, my dearest
dig no crosses for me
When the gusts go strong, my dearest
breathe no gasps for me
As my echoes wear off
say no praises for me
When I am visible no more
drop no tears for me
When the lights go out, my dearest
lit no candles for me
As my thoughts fade away
hold no hands for me
When the spring breaks again, my dearest
Watch me in the cowslips
by my grave
I'll be there for you

Samy

God, Put them to Sleep!

It doesn't get more disheartening than this. Thirty innocent people are slaughtered -- yet again -- in the forbidden mountains of Kashmir. Masked gunmen stormed a tiny hamlet and ask people out. Next moment a volley of bullets was showered on the petrified villages. In an instant thirty humans are cut to a swift, horrible death. In cold blood. Some people had to feign death to escape the marauders. They call it a freedom struggle. I think this is a violent struggle. Taken over by criminals and assassins. When you kill 6-year olds just because they have a different faith -- in this case Hindus -- you deserve to be called inhumans. Period.

I can't be an adjudicator sitting in plush ac-ed comfort -- in my space -- far from the action. It may well be intelligence sleuths.The government rarely knows about the serpentine games of these dreaded organizations. Whoever the culprits, I think we have long lost the right to be called civilised. That happened one wintry night about 17 years back. 1989. The first gun-shots in the beautiful, serene valleys of Kashmir were fired. The nightingales suddenly stopped chirpping. The tweedle was abruptly silenced. Overnight, the cherished Kashmiriyat went up in flames.

I was close to the grotesque events in Kashmir -- for some time -- and I could see first hand-- even at a tender age -- the futility of war. Tryst with a destiny that was not ours. A fortuity full of gore that was red. Red in runnels. Red skies. Red waters. Suddenly the famed band-pather (dances) gave away to abomination. For no rhyme. Bombs in markets full of people. Stray bullets hitting people in their homes. Sisters' running barefoot after their brothers' coffins. Old parents staring at their children's graves on their birthdays.

At times, I am glad that we left the bad tidings behind. Incidents such as yesterday's bring back the ugly reality of the senseless violence. Kashmir -- it seems -- has been completely stripped of its innocence. Or whatever remained of it!

Meantime an endless cycle of violence continues. It is both vicious and costly. It cost the bloodied paradise another 30 innocent souls last night. The killers are on prowl. Hope someone fixes the problem. I wish God puts the barbarians to sleep and they never walk to kill again.

Amen

Sameer

Life Line

Another poem from the lost repertoire. Now that I try to remember why I wrote this poem, I cannot. I -- however -- can recall that I was in a library and my mind was drifting away from books. I took a bit of paper and jotted the poem in a matter of minutes.

I've always been me. A regular guy. I may attempt to appear sensible in my musings. I reckon, I do that only under the creative license that writers think they can weild. Stupid me! As humans we are so fragile. Last night, I cried. For a very small thing. Like a kid insisting on his favourite candy. Not realising that we need to grow up in life and try and be content.

The rebel in us revolts. The kid insists. The candy allures. The heart weeps. The spirit consoles. Life carries on with its many vissicitudes. Ground beneath our feet supports us. Not many souls who walked upon her got what they wanted from life. I may not be an exception. Just one of the legion who wished for too much and got too little.

Some people are tough. I wish I too were! But then I may loose the power to dream, to reflect, to write, to smile, to cry, to love!

Here, I might drift again. The poem:

A cartful of desires
in a life full of mire
Across corners and crossroads
as my cart trundles on
I find no virtues
only evil in flow
Ragged airs in a rude world
indifferent souls with emotions curled
Lonely pangs hold me fast
Uneven tides tear my mast
Narrow creaks in the gabled door
tender worlds I seek to explore
I trod to end of the planet (on my cart)
met only dazzled doves
My love-darts still in my bag
can't shoot, won't throw it away
Everything is so rife
in a short, sweet life.

Poem orginally written in June, 2003

Sameer

School time

Hey guys, I found some of my old poems today. Not too old, really. I scribbled them in the fall of 2003, when I was just 22. Then I lost them. Being the messy kind, that I am. Writing on scraps and then throwing the pieces around. I luckily retrieved them today and here... I share with you the first!

Where fun hangs in air
and ideas take their root
Where hands learn to draw
and world starts to unfold
Where chalks roll the year long
and mind opens for a lifetime
Where bells toll a welcome break
and manners make a man
where teachers help you tread
and life takes a shape
Where friends share secrets
and hearts flutter aloud
Where words fly past
and legs run and slide
Where benches, boards and books
never fail to tire
Where ties, tunics and tricks
always are a must
Where first sweet crushes
turn you red in cheeks
School, school, school
nicest time of my life

Sameer

The Tiff!

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain

There is a golden rule in fighting. Hit first and hit hard. One must never pick a fight but when someone tries to slog it out with you, then as a matter of amour propre one needs to be on top of it. I -- for instance -- am a pacifist. It is not the likes of me to start a fight or join issue with someone. Then there are exceptions!

The cab driver was suddenly abusive. He wanted to push ahead perhaps and finding himself lagging behind, started bad-mouthing.
Scene: Crossing. Cab, next to my car. Issue: Next to nothing, the chap was plain calumnious.

Assuming that a bespectacled 20-something guy who does not share Stallone's biceps may be harmless, he loudly uttered some invective. Then another. I got down, went over to his door. Pulled him out and knocked him over. All brashness of the dusty kind -- and the rustic machismo -- came flying out of him. A quick aplology followed. The burly guy added, will behave in future.

I think the punch left a blue spot in his eye and a perfumed sweetness. I usually spray Hugo-Boss on my wrists. I think some of it passed on.

May be, I never get to see him again. But justice of the swiftest kind was served piping hot. Matter finished.

Moral: ne pas oser le désordre avec moi. That is -- Don't dare mess with me -- for those who don't know french.

sameer

You are my thought!

You are the thought that comforts me
you are the breeze that wraps me
you are the belief that haunts me
you are the silence that hurts me
You are the sheath that cuddles me
You are the lap that holds me
you are the feeling that engulfs me
you are the wind that nourishes me
you are the idea that consoles me
you are the treasure that spoils me
you are the touch that amazes me
you are the flight that ducks me
you are the vibe that teases me
you are the shade that harbours me

You are the one I pester
You are the one I like

Samy

mad mad world

Ah...the sameness of things! The slumber of each night. Sweet hours of the morning sleep. Fast-paced life. The morning rush hour traffic. The hollering masses. People creaking open their land-cruiser doors to spit out mouthfuls of paan (Beetlenut). Rickshaw-wallas veering dangerously close to your automobile untill you go bonkers. The mad rush to nowhere. Girls with lanky boy-friends sneaking into shady parks. Trying to find true love. Preyed on by curious eye-balls. Guilt-ridden and yet satisfied.

There are curbs upon every nook. Corrupt corpulent cops. Only belly's, no morals! Difficult officials. In colleges and universities. Egoed politicos and professors. Haughty, hectoring. Unlike the west! But then they -- westerners -- are good for themselves alone. Outside their borders, they sell arms to everyone and his mother -- including us -- and our notorious neighbor. And we kill each other. We pillage. We flunk to negotiate. The stalemate continues.

Back home...the development curve dances and continues to rise. There are still pockmarked roads that trammel your movement. It gets so spiritless and stuffy. Not to forget the stupid advertisement blitzkrieg. Everywhere. The usual chatter on FM radio. Junk Music. Talking through their tired brains. Any piece of crap passes. As long as you speak. News-papers are no better. Journalism has long been trivialised. Less than 5% people read books. Intellectual development, who cares! The beauty of Shelley is lost. I can't help smirk.

Religion continues to dictate people. Govern lives. People cheat, loot, plunder in its name. Wars are fought. Bombs are thrown occassionally in temples and mosques. Yet people pray. This is called faith. It keeps people going. People want to discover God, forgetting that God is nothing but goodness in us. How good we are. How loving we are. How compassionate and humane we are. And how unselfish we are. No one cares for the homeless. The poor. The needy. The elderly. Yet people will take cocunuts and fruits to offer to gods. Do god's need the stuff ? I don't know. I might be hacked for blasphemy. Looking down upon mankind and looking upto God, makes no sense to me.

The sameness prevails. Albeit love makes us strong! Some special thoughts keep us fresh and happy in the mind. And jovail in the heart. Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees, Victor Hugo once said.

sameer

Dreamz....Thank you!

Thanks for coming in my dream
though you didn't stay too long
Thanks for breaking bread with me
though you didn't munch a lot
Thanks for exchanging love notes
though the ink was a shade dark
Thanks for gracing my tiny space
though I couldn't offer you much
Thanks for being part of my thoughts
though it is difficult to part with you
Thanks for dropping by anyways
Hope to see you again -- in my dreams!

Samy

Of Passion!

Passion can be a tricky feeling. It has to happen to you to be truly felt. If you are not touched by the boughs of passion, you may simply miss on the elation. It is welded somewhere betwixt the beautiful ripples of love and the often sinful indulgence. Where sin ceases to happen, as two souls transcend. Levitate!

I've to be balanced here... It is -- or was -- touches. Hugs. Drawn ever closer by desire. When waves of concupiscence wash us over. When cool winds suddenly blow hard. It is a million crumples on the little piece of cloth and squeaking of the bedstead. The incandescent flickering of eyelids and random wandering of hands.

Bare and Good. Heaven!

Passion
Certain delight
Actions between lovers
Entwined involved movements
Fervor

I've to stop. Some one might kill me.

Samy

Come join me!

Hold onto me close/to bliss-land we go/where nature nestles us/as we lie upon pine scents

samy

The Mystic trek

A perfect person does not disclose the secret of Friend
Bakhtiar Khaki

During the weekend I went on a spiritual-trek. I am not a religious guy but spiritualism fascinates me a great deal. Still I rarely go to shrines, neither do I visit any reverned places of worship. I believe in the goodness of spirit.

My friend's mom wanted to visit the tomb of a famous Sufi saint. Perched in the labyrinthine bylanes of Merauli in Delhi, the place oozes a marked difference from the imposing Qutub Minar nearby. Just beyond the fashionable Qutub Colonnade, where designers meet occassionally to talk artificially over endless sparkling glasses of champagne and beyond the faintest idea of many tourists to Qutub, lies the modest tomb of Khawaja Qutub Uddin Bakhtiar Khaki. I didn't know the place existed before Sunday.

We had a tough time looking for the place -- me, wasy and his mom. Our car led us to dead-ends. Luckily, we chanced across a guy -- Azhar -- who happened to live in the precincts of the shrine. The good samartian led us to the place and told me an interesting tale on our way. (My journalistic instincts to enquire). Back in the year 1200 AD, a lady accused the mystic of making her pregnant. She made the accusation -- egged on by the sufi's foes -- in Emperor Illtutmush's court. The godman was hauled to the King's courtyard. Stunned, he simply said, 'Let the unborn speak'. The embryo then muttered, this man is not my father.

I do not believe in myths. I think the tale is largely made up but Azhar said it with extreme faith. Miracles do happen -- I trust -- but my rationale doesn't absorb these allegories. Luckily, after a short while we made it to the outer-enterance of the shrine.

It is a mystic heaven. Lost in a million attirs (perfumes), the place sways to Qawalis ( devotional music) sung by impromptu singers -- who were the least melodious. One has to wade through a motley of shops -- cubby-hole types -- and across a succession of mendicants to the actual tomb, which is situated atop a small hill.

History amazes me. A 12th century mystic. Super-natural powers. Saintly. An author and a poet. Lover of Music. Humane. Spiritual. Chant-er of God's name. Traveller. Guide. Mentor. Protege'. One word: Exhilarating!

The joint turned out to be mysterial with no grandeur. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims pray at the shrine. Girls in jeans. Aunties in saris and Maulanas in beards. It is a mixed brew. There are graves littered all over the place. Amazingly, the hilltop is clean. Men read Quran on staircases. Qawali's belted from the nearby cubby-holes, mainly re-takes of popular hindi songs. People come -- pray, weep, reflect and leave. Some bow. I remained quiet, noticing the small crowd. Taking mental notes.

900 years later, one feels good inside to travel the same paths. Touching the same stones. Climbing the same hill. And perhaps experiencing the same highs!

sameer bhat
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Descending from Prophet Muhammad's grandson -- Imam Hussain -- Khaki was born in 1173 in Transoxania (modern-day Uzbekistan and southwest Kazakhstan).

Free Love

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world.
But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs,
and thou keepest me free.

Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone.
But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.

If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart,
thy love for me still waits for my love.

Don't we feel the same, at times. Words are the constant yet unnoticed currents that carry our thoughts. Aeons back, Tagore said the timeless words on Free Love. Decades later, I can easily identify with the greatest philosopher India has ever known!

In our small life-spans we truly long for a special glimpse. Although the whole world may conspire to like you and even if you may bask in the glory, you still yearn for that free love.

You rekindle the flame in your mind when it is nowhere else in sight!

Socratic again. That's me.

I will be concise. I've lots to catch up with!

Samy

A thought

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

Sameer

My legion

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born - Anais Nin

My best mates, and why I admire them

Wasy: Taurian: As sweet as they come

Because he stands by you in rain and thunder; Because he is an anchor we all must have!

Suhail: Virgo: Loyal to the core

Because he still remembers you despite his US accent; Because his is the first thought when you think home

Salus: Acquarius: Truthfully yours

Because he is honest to the core; Because his is a very rare tribe.

Tanu: Scorpio: Kindergarten buddy

Because he reminds you of your priviledged childhood; Because he will stay awake in a different country to say happy birthday at midnight.

Salah: Pisces: Concerned and Caring

Because he dreams the same dreams. Because he is a constant support

Sam

Let loose the rains

Let loose the rains
From Eden, Nirvana, Shangri-la
Wash away, wash away
Cleanse and purify

Let loose the rains.
Cleanse the marrow
Of hate and fear.
Wash away
The hunger in the wide-eyed child.
The tears of the mother with no job

Let loose the rains.
Cleanse the souls
Weary and bruised.
Wash away
The funeral wails from heaving chests.
The dust from hands digging in rubble,
Where is the child buried there?
No, no, when she is found.

Let loose the rains.
Wash away, wash away
Cleanse it all.
The grime in the streets.
My dirty hair.
The thickening air.
The eyes filled with despair.
The screams.
The pain.
The apathy.
The water.
The bricks.
The sirens.
My hands, my hands.
The blood soaked lands.
The torture commands.
The godforsaken sands.
The prisons, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
The news.
The skies.
The lies.
The gutters.
The trees.
My heart.
My mind.
My memories.
The contingencies.

Let loose the rains
From Eden, Nirvana, Shangri-la
Wash away, wash away
Cleanse and purify.

A soulful windy rendition, I coudn't help adapt!

Sameer

Reaching out!!!

Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn't there the first time you need him, chances are you won't be needing him again.


Samy

Horsing around

Lets horse around and run wild in the snows!

samy