Treachery Within...

Try as I might to place you on a pedestal,
To make you stand strong,
In all your weakness and sneakiness,
You escape my guard
To seek mundane little delights.

Oh treacherous heart of mine
When will you ever learn – that
It is I alone you can trust
And I alone you must love.

Have I not been telling you,
for as long as we have been together – that
Intoxication (of emotions) is bad for the soul,
both, yours and mine.

But do you listen to me, ever?
Instead - you sneak away from me,
Despite all the little reminders I feed you with,
You sneak out to seek silly little pleasures
And come back with a prick here, a bruise there.

How will I ever make you see?
What should I do to put some sense into you?
Aren’t the scars you see in you lessons enough?
Don’t the scars smart still when you expose them again and again -
To the sickly delights that you keep running to.

When will you ever learn to stop?
When I rip you off me,
And bury you into deep slumber?
Will you then stop, O silly, treacherous heart of mine.
Will you then learn your lesson?

Or -
will you push your way through the wet earth,
And go seek your mundane delights in the world of the dead
In the world of dead hearts…

Writer Unknown

Sign of Madness, or...?

For the first time yesterday, since I started driving 13 years ago, I found myself sitting in my car, (which was first in line) staring blankly into space while the traffic light turned from red to green to yellow and back to red. Drivers and passengers coming from the opposite direction gave me mocking smiles as they passed me.

First time in 13 years.
First time for a woman who is known for her vroomings the moment the light turns green - every time without fail for the past 13 years.

Yesterday however, she was no longer the woman she had been for the past 13 years.

What's happening to her, I wonder...

An Excerpt from SONG OF MYSELF, Walt Whitman

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Is she celebrating herself like Whitman did?
Is she assuming what he assumed?
Is she living in the "now" that he claimed was perfection in its most perfect form?
Or has she gone into a mad state otherwise known as ...?

I wonder, yet again.

Mahakavi Bharathiyar on Who's a Poet & Who Isn't...

கவிதை எழுதுபவன் கவியன்று.
கவிதையே வாழ்க்கையாக உடையோன்,
வாழ்க்கையே கவிதையாகச் செய்தோன்,
அவனே கவி!

He who writes poetry is a poet not!
He who embraces poetry as life -
and who lives his life as if it were poetry,
He alone is a poet!

Music in Me...

I don’t know if there is music in me,
Perhaps – there is
Perhaps –
I don’t even know what it means –
To have music in a person.

As a baby sleeping in a makeshift cradle,
I must have heard my father sing.
As a foetus growing in my mother’s womb,
I must have felt - that part of him in me -
singing his soothing lullabies in a soundless voice.

I was said to have sung,
even when I was a baby,
Humming along as my father practised ragas after ragas
In-between his rocking of my cradle.

They say children’s memories don’t withstand the years,
But I can still see flashed in front of my mind’s eye -
The days when I sang.

No more than four,
Seated cross-legged at the verandah of my childhood home,
Singing into the tin-can telephone my brothers had made for me –
singing as though the whole world sat at my feet listening
Into the ears of little boys listening in rapture and pride -
admiring the little singing star they believed they had helped create.

But you see – even then,
I didn’t know if there was music in me.
Perhaps – it was
Perhaps –
I was too young to even know what it meant –
to have music in a person...

But sing I did...
With no sense of musical notes,
No regard for diction,
No knowledge of what I sang.

Even now,
I still don’t know what it means -
to have music in a person.
And perhaps that’s why –
I sing no more into anyone’s ears
Except, that of mine.

But there is one thing I do know...

Even in the absence of this physical body -
this 'me' that I am known to be today,
this 'me' that I once was - the 3 year old singing star of her family

Even in the absence of it all,
The music within, and without me - will continue

Even if it was, or could be sung -
...only in a soundless voice.

Among the Multitude...

Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled - but that one is not - that one knows me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

The Madman Speaks...

TO A STRANGER...

Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you - your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass - you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you - I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait - I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Powerful Sparks from Mahakavi Bharathiyar

தேடிச் சோறு நிதந்தின்று- பல

சின்னஞ்சிறு கதைகள் பேசி- பிறர்

வாடப் பலசெயல்கள் செய்து- மனம்

வாடித் துன்பமிக உழன்று- நரை

கூடிக் கிழப்பருவம் எய்தி - கொடுங்

கூற்றுக் கிரையெனப்பின் மாயும்- பல

வேடிக்கை மனிதரைப் போலே- நான்

வீழ்வேனென்று நினைத்தாயோ



Thedi choru nithamthinru - pala

Chinnanchiru kathaigal pesi - pirar

Vaada pala seyalgal seythu - manam

Vaadi thunbam miga uzhanru - narai

Koodi kizhapparuvam eithi - kodung

Kootrukku iraiyena pin maayum - pala

Vedikkai mainitharai pole - naan

Veezhvenenru ninaiththaayo

The One Without a Filter Between His Brain and His Mouth...

Can one be so evil and yet so adorably cute? Only if he goes by the name of Calvin, and has an imaginary tiger named Hobbes! :)

The Genius of MS Subbulakshmi

Breathtaking Divinity...

Mihintale Buddha, Sri Lanka