Birth

Isn't dusk the blood day bleeds, giving birth to a soothing night?

Silhouette

She wrapped her fingers around him where he creased, thus creating a smooth silhouette...

Small games

We played "20 Questions" in order to answer her real one: Do you love me?

Kahaani

I have been trying very hard to recall this one, and I hope I have done justice to it.

Waqt kho diya humne, uski yaad mein,
Ek waqt tha, jab sirf dil luta karthe the.
Zindagi guzregi, uske naam lene mein,
Ek zamaana tha, yoonhi aanh barthe the.

I have lost a while in her memory
There was once, when all I lost was my heart.
Life shall be spent in mouthing her name
Not long ago, I would merely sigh thus.

Self

He walked like everyone did and spoke like most should.
He smiled quite honestly and sang without any falsehood.

He rose to leave and enter the world with all its display.
He calmly clambered on, rebuked for his nude entree.

Why are you kind? Why are you just? Why are you so singular?
He heard and wondered with them, for he knew not the answer.

He asked that one and then another to help him live a life.
Where people wondered less and teased him not in his strife.

He doned the mantle of a sage and kept his eyes half shut,
And half the world he saw thus, to the other he was a bigot.

He draped himself in an artist's dream and beauty he beheld in all,
Painted he, and sang he, and laugh did they in his 'poverished fall.

So a merchant he became and ride did he, the many tumultuous seas,
A jade out here, a diamond there, myriad gold shackles for his knees.

A scholar shall you be, for respected they are who knows the worth-
Of written words with little truth or relevance to men on this earth.

And thus lived Arthuran, who wore their garbs, many hued,
At dusk he walked back home, more enlightened and nude.

A Zen Koan

"Master!" cried the little Raidon.
His Master looked at the little boy as he ran up to him faster than the fumes that rose from his tea. Even the Master's tea knew patience. He smiled and returned to sipping his light jasmine tea.
"Master, I know a teaching of yours that is wrong." The blood splashed around in that beautiful pale vase which panted and sweated in the early summer heat. The Master pursed his lips to contain the warmth of the tea and his amusement at how early Raidon found enough tricks to annul the wisdom of the ancient sages.
"Really Raidon? You must be very quick! What is it?"
"You said that the path of Nature is the ultimate. You said that we must learn from the ways of the elements and become like them."
"Become like them, Raidon? I think I said imbibe their Truth."
"Yes, something like that" Raidon said hastily in order to proceed with his latest find.
"Hmmm. Do go on." The Master was smiling as the flavour of jasmine was perfectly brewed with the earthy tones of the water. He always preferred to fetch water from the Suki lake for his tea.
"That teaching of yours is incorrect."
"None of the teachings are mine, dear."
"I mean what you called the wisdom of the ancient sages - that teaching is wrong."
"Hmmm. This is a serious allegation you make. Pray, tell me how you wish to prove them wrong."
"The elements are foolish. They do not know anything and do not decide. They are without life and without faculties of discernment. They are stupid and hence do nothing to set an example of life or living."
"And why should that be against your taste?"
"If I were water flowing down like a river, I would not give water to the bad men, like thieves and murderers and the like. If I were the wind I would not let evil men breathe."
"To give to all what you give to the One is wrong?"
"Absolutely. How can you treat everyone alike? It seems like a stupid way to live."
"And it would be fine for the river to have favourites amongst the men and women who bend to fill their pitchers?"
"Surely."
"If you were one of them, it is."
Raidon looked down at his feet, for he was surprised as to what kept him standing after that statement from his Master.
"Raidon, fire burns all and by doing that it is. The water that flows, is. The air that is a breeze of silk, is. The mountains that stand tall, are. They continue to be what they are no matter how many times the world changes. The elements aren't irresponsible in their demeanour. They simply are."
And he smiled at the pot which had cooled his tea. Cool jasmine tea had its own flavour.

Another celebration

Hi guys,
Another round of celebrations on at our magazine site!!! Click on the fireworks below.

Time well spent...

I would like to share with you the joy that is the latest release of Alvibest. It has been a very joyous time when the Editorial Board worked on each of the submissions and debated like life depended on it!! :-D

The experience, the product, the hours spent with a virtual blue pencil, the commitments in our individual lives... blissful.

For those who wondered whether Eroteme would ever fail to put things to words, your prayer has been answered... I am genuinely at loss for words. It was a truly Alvibest experience.

A Divine Request

The following was found, carved on a granite slab at the temple construction site:

Dear Mason, please do not build me a temple. I never asked for one. I came here into this stone that you wish to enshrine, of my own volition. I wish to enjoy the world as it is; its rains, its storms, its winter, its sunshine and its spring. I want to see all those who walk past on that road, not merely those who enter your temple with floral offerings for me. I am not only interested in roses and jasmines but I also want to see the bright pinks and muaves of wild flowers, which you people decided aren't good for me. I want to stretch under the sky and enjoy the breeze.
I suppose you might expect me to shoot your efforts down with lightening and disease in order to indicate this preference of mine, but I wished to appeal to your senses. Don't cut me off from the world I created.

A duet...

Fall unto me
To my hard parched crust.
Bereft of you
I am amorphous dust.

Where else shall I go?
To you I shall longingly cling
With a helpless love
A pitter, a patter I sing

But a great lover you are,
Making such a heavenly descent
What do I have to give you?
No stars, no angels, nor a crescent

Without a bed am I
And a soft one you give.
Mountains for shoulders,
Green valleys to live.

But in your fall you rise
The petrichor, my blush.
A divine love's serenade,
In the voice of a thrush.

As you rise to meet me
With your soil I shall merge
And this world, in our love, shall-
Bloom with passionate urge.

This is dedicated to Madhura, who inspired this poem, in her own unique way...

Making a difference

Warning: What follows is fairly bland for artists

I got a mail from a fellow blogger. She brought this article in ET to my notice. I was delighted to read about this. It takes a lot of courage and conviction to do something like this. And this provides fodder to all those vacilating hearts, which remain undecided about what they must do with their lives... Hats off to these guys; whether they succeed or fail is irrelevant.

It is true...

It is true that I feel different today. I am unable to put my finger on what exactly I feel like, but I am glad that I am clueless; that should tell you how different I feel today...

I feel like running
Running over streams
Running under a bridge while a train chugs on it
Running around the tree till it feels dizzy and sheds its fruits
Running with the goats and in all the directions the kids skip
Running through the lush green of paddy, with the hope that others shall feed on this excitement
Running on the beach clapping hands with slapping waves
Running amongst family and hearing them shout out to me to take care

I feel like laughing
Laughing with the birds that tango in the wind
Laughing with the rain trotting along my roof
Laughing till I cough and then laugh because I managed to cough
Laughing while the bathers watch me take their clothes and run away
Laughing without opening my mouth
And then open it to guffaw
Laugh like my grandmother while her dentures lie elsewhere

I feel like being silent
Silent while the evening breeze wraps in shades of colourless indigo
Silent like the sunrise
Silent like the pleasure of holding her new born child
Silent while thin roots unite with the magnanimous earth
Silent like a caress
Silent like a shy gaze
Silent like the conversation of hearts separated by miles...

I feel all this and yet more... People would say I am in love. For once, I agree.

I have found love - again.

Alvibest Feb 2006

We have some information up on Alvibest's page. This issue will be interesting in that it has a hidden theme. The readers are invited to enjoy the various pieces put together (with a lot of joy and pain) and figure out the theme... Hope it is an interesting issue.

And this I feel...

As the posts make a transition from one form to another, I chanced on this poem (though a very familiar one) which describes a constant undercurrent of voices in my head...


Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
---William Henry Davies

From the diary of a cuckold...

Jan 19th 1937

In disgrace I find strength. She must think of me at least before the creepers of the night entangle her in the affairs of her manufacture. She must think, "How useless he is" or "And to think he doesn't know about Raj or Shikast or Assadullah or the many who have let their inadequate imagination abrade the adequacy of their manliness." And then the night consumes her, rather she consumes pawns in the span of a night.

But I know.

I know every skin that stuck to her navel when she steeled herself under the throes of unfaithful pleasure - the greater she strived for rigidity, the greater the pleasure that reverberated in the nether folds of her being... resounding with my disgrace.

But that is how she loves me, why else would she strive so hard to insult me? She thinks that in grinding my honour and self-respect between her abdomen and a strange, though virile, one, she could break me under her foot - stray glass on the corridor. But she can't and in not being able to do so, she strives harder. To shatter me, to make me fall at her feet, to lick beneath her toenails... and thereafter she will love me, her lover who has emptied himself of all pride only to be filled with her love. But I shall hold this up for a longer while. I shall prolong the final outburst of ecstasy, like every man learns on the first night in bed with his wife who dotes on him, but loves him not. For without such disgrace, without pride ground to fine powder which fills the air, there cannot be love...

An artist's confession

I am not a good person. I am an artist who is slave to the wants and gestures of his art. I am a magician holding the wand that is my art, but the wand holds the magic, while I hold it out to you. I delight you with all that is beautiful and all that can be beautiful. I treat you to what you have known but never perceived. I bleed the redness out of red and whisper the completeness of white. I make the strings hum a tune and the empty space within the flute resound. I use words you knew, to effect a sensation you didn't. I stir in your heart the love for my woman, which you could never feel, but always wanted to. I am an artist. But I am not a good person.

I house the vilest gargoyles and wizards and lascivious women who run their tongue on every sensation that I put to words or let drip from my brush. Every tune that I twist such that it makes you smile and shake your head in wonder, is rendered when these demons clench my throat and and twist it between their thumbs. My expressions on my face as I play a tortured Draupadi or a spurned Shoorpanaka, is the stomping of heavy feet through my innards making me wince with a pain that is not mine. And when I play the lovelorn damsel, such irony tears my soul when I realise I have none in this world who shall pine thus for me. And my expression, then, is considered superb! My being is no longer mine as I whore it to the love for the arts. How could I be a good person?

How could I be a good person, when I chose the vagaries of an artist's life to that of a secure and social one? How could I be a good person, when I feed these monsters so that they torture me enough that I cry out as beautifully as you would like to witness? These demons who haunt me when I am alone in my studio with no one around me telling me how gifted I am, how blessed I am - blessed with the company of beasts that ensure that I have none to beautify my life while I colour the world around me. How could I be a good person when I want this? I want them more than I want you. I want them more than I want the luxury of a socially acceptable life. I want these miscreations more than all the beautiful women created by the Lord. Think how tormented an artist He must be to send His creation forth with the hope that they will live their lives trying to love Him or fear Him. I want the spirits that wet my tongue and drown my soul so that I can be what I, as a person, cannot. I want that joint which will make me forget and in my unconscious state let my barbarians come forth such that they create what none has ever done. I want those women who throng the evening street so that I know their dispassion while they clasp me with mechanical earnest. And through these loathsome acts - which you call loathsome - I destroy myself and give these demons a greater hold on me. Thus, art is created while I am destroyed, for art alone will stay when I am gone and all those people who called me a bad person lie under the sods.

Let me be so, for I am not a good person.

Life

Shall I call Life a winter's night,
Long, with longer dreams?
Or call it a mid-summer's day
A warmth too late, it seems?

Sleep dear one...

Oh! How I wish
That you would
Not close those eyes,
Those eyes that hold me
With invisible hands
And love me
Like the only sun
But... Sleep dear one...

I would like
To take you to different
Worlds
Full of flowers
And musical rains
And tangy air
To click our tongues on
But... Sleep dear one...

Don't be afraid
In the realms
That open to
Your eyes
While they are closed to me...
I am here
Your halcyon.
But... Sleep dear one...

When we are together
We will dance
And play with your hair.
I will let you fly
In my arms
You'll swing-
A wave of flaxen
But... Sleep dear one...

Do wake to wipe my tears
Do wake to tell me
"Just five minutes, dad"
Do be warm in my hold
Do quiet the voices in my head
Do whisper in my ear
"I'll return for certain"
But... Sleep on dear one...
Sleep on.
'Tis not your hour...
Sleep on.
I have no strength...
Sleep on.
I love you so...
Sleep on.